Election no laughing matter

BY ERIC DOWD

Someone tried to inject a spot of humour into the Ontario Oct. 10 election the other day and was threatened with a punch in the nose, and this may be another reason humour has almost disappeared from provincial politics.

A representative of the conservative-leaning Canadian Taxpayers Federation dressed as Pinocchio, whose nose grows longer every time he tells a lie, said he was pushed and threatened by Liberals when he tried to follow Premier Dalton McGuinty.

The Liberals are not enthralled when a critic reminds their leader of broken promises, but it is hardly enough reason to threaten violence.

The only other hint of levity since the campaign started months ago was when McGuinty promised a new statutory holiday every February and Progressive Conservative leader John Tory mused wryly, “the next thing you know he’s going to declare a second Christmas.”

Humour can be valuable in taking some of the boredom out of politics, making the public more interested and politicians look human and winning support, but it is becoming scarce.

McGuinty had some left in the last election in 2003, when he quipped Conservative premier Ernie Eves was ‘blaming me for everything these days and soon he’s going to announce I’m the cause of premature baldness.’

New Democrat leader Howard Hampton held up a slice of Swiss cheese and claimed the policies of Eves and McGuinty were full of holes.

There was more humour when McGuinty said Pizza Pizza had a better system for delivering pizza than the Conservatives had for delivering medicare.

Politicians have become worried that what they intend as a joke will not be seen by others as funny and almost anything they say may be seen by someone as offensive. In 1999 Hampton mentioned McGuinty’s resemblance to actor Tony Perkins, who played murderer Norman Bates in the movie Psycho.

McGuinty did not object, saying he fancied himself more as Gary Cooper, the lone sheriff fighting outlaws in High Noon, but others including the Canadian Mental Health Association protested Hampton trivialized concern for the mentally ill, and he had to apologize.

In other examples, McGuinty said in 2003 Eves was like a used car salesman, refusing to let customers look under the hood. Car sales people protested he accused them of dishonesty.

A Conservative strategist also put out a message McGuinty was an evil, reptilian kitten-eater from another planet, which was so outlandish no-one could believe it and it could have been meant only as a joke. But Liberals and much of the news media took it as deadly serious and lambasted the Conservatives and demanded apologies.