Make It A Cheese-burger:
September 1st, 1998

"How can you forgive people who won't even admit to themselves what they did?" -- overheard on CBC Radio 1, Sept 1st, about 12:30pm Atlantic time

Credibility is a funny thing , Auntie says, it takes years to build up and can be destroyed in a few quick sweeps. One good smear is enough to destroy a man -- recall poor Gary Hart? He clocked a lot of years in the political factory before he lost his cool and his credibility along with it.

But then we have Uncle Bubba, the cause cèlébre of the day, who should have the credibility of a smiling junkyard dog, but who has somehow managed to jiggle his way through eight years of panty waving and Bluto grade jokes -- while having the highest turnover of Secret Service agents in recent memory and watching his dear dear friends drop like flies sipping White Zinfandel.

That's the worst kind of credibility stir-fry and barbecue. The emotional sandblaster has been engaged. Broken and half-kept promises etched on your sunglasses to prettify and filter the glaring sunshine spattering down from on high. Take them off at night and not only can't you see half of it at all, what you can see is so stark and alien that it layers frost on your flesh. Uncle Bubba wanted to keep all those promises. He's awful damn sorry he had to unzip first.

Uncle Trudeau once said that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. I think it was while he was divorcing Margaret amidst rumors she was sleeping with Teddy Kennedy and/or the Rolling Stones. We still re-elected him. We Canadians love a man that'll marry a woman half his age, flip the finger to his constituents, say the F word in parliament, and yet have a family quilt emblazoned "Reason Before Passion" hanging in the front hall.

We loved, and many of us continue to love, Trudeau, because the old bastard had credibility in spades. Whether or not we disagreed with him, on some visceral level we sensed that he'd considered what he was talking about and that in some fundamental way he believed his methods were good and right and honorable. Whether it's a trick of decades in politics or not, the man's channeled lust to achieve what he believed in was so awe striking, so overwhelming, that we kept him as long as we were able. Years later, we seized on Chr& eacute;tien as eagerly as Cheers fans fell on Frasier. We wanted that sense of pure direction back. We wanted to feel we were in the hands of someone who cared.

Bubba, I don't believe you care, but you simulate it just well enough to sucker the American people into Grandmother's house. The last American president that seemed to genuinely care was probably Carter, and before that, poor Ford, who cared enough that he junked his long term goals in a vain hope of stitching the broken American heart back together. I believe that Nixon cared so much that he went insane. Oh Nixon, I would've wrapped you in my golden lasso and made you tell the truth.

I had a prolonged argument with my good friend Galahad recently, in which he said that the American president reflects the will of the people, "like a movie". He proposed that Nixon was "a victim of the times". I don't agree with Galahad's arguments about mass social dynamic -- he seems to believe primarily in the times and very little in the man, while I subscribe to a 60-40 split -- but regardless of the implications, we're in line that the president is a powerful symbol of the will of the people. It comes then to a chicken-egg question: are the people so self-destructive that they voted in a Pez dispenser of goofy indecency? Did they wander up starry-eyed and get kicked in the nads? Or did they just feel they had no other credible options, so they should tolerate?

I saw a poll a while back that said that 70% of Americans weren't interested in the bad Tripp tapes but that 68% thought everybody else was. Saw another poll today saying 62% of Americans still thought Masterprick Theatre was getting too much coverage. So who has no credibility? The polls, or the American people?

I speak on this issue now because it epitomizes a lot, for me, of what has Gone Ugly this decade. Reality has become so disassociated from our hopes and dreams that we've become afraid to even voice -- as we might get them! "Profoundly offended," Uncle Demon said, shaking his finger in my face after he read Auntie's last dissertation. The man who made the first move -- though I wanted it as well -- who first said the L word -- though I felt it as well -- who made the first overture to serious non-sexual intimacy -- which I received eagerly -- and who, as soon as I said, "Yes. I believe you. I want it all too," who bolted like he'd just walked through an anti-shoplifting device with a handful of lingerie stuffed in his backpack.

Auntie would like to say here that she's sure she engaged in her own brand of ugly, but screw impartiality -- he can write his own damn column.

I'm put in mind of Robert Myrand and his collection of love poems to his lady friend. Their relations subsequently dissolved. I am told that lucky mademoiselle got an injunction against his book, c'est aprés toi que je jappe, being distributed in Quebec, as she was identified too accurately in the work.

His situation is at least twice as funny as mine -- it involves love and money.