Rough Ridin' In Ottawa

Ottawa. It's one helluva town. The Senators are back, the Rolling Stones and U2 are the jewels in the crown of the finest summer of rock and roll shows to hit this region in years and Lonie Glieberman has picked up where he left off when he and dad, Bernie, sold the Rough Riders and got out while the gettin' was good in the mid nineties. This year he's returned to bail out a fledgling Renegades team and, not half way through the season, he's already stirring up controversy. Ward 3 city Councillor Jan Harder has criticized his Mardi Gras beads promotion for the upper south stands where women have the opportunity to win $1,000 for collecting the most beads by the end of the game from the men in the crowd. Now, it doesn't take Columbo to figure out how they go about collecting the beads and that's why Harder wants the promotion suspended. It may not be a model "family fun" promotion for the Lansdowne Park football events and it's certainly not the ideal image builder for a professional sports franchise (unless the image you're going for is sleaze), but Councillor Harder launched a personal attack on the 'Gades owner by saying Glieberman is as "immature as his size and his (something else)" and calling him an "arrogant little bitch"; a below-the-belt strike to be sure and, considering Lonie's height, it was very low.

While I'm a pretty progressive and fun thinker, my history of pushing the envelope has given me great foresight in these situations so I definitely saw this one coming all the way up Bank Street and I knew it was just a matter of time before someone whined. I just expected it sooner but I guess I shouldn't be at all surprised it took City Hall this long to react. It's quite the case of constipation we elected and it's a braintrust (if I may use that term, however so loosely) with a complete lack of vision for the city. So pardon our officials if they don't know whether to "shit or get off the pot".

If you ask me, the prime waft of arrogance permeates from City Hall itself with their persistent social and cultural engineering and their determination to impose a single set of moral interpretations on more than a million citizens in that they are doing it for "your own good" whether you like it or not. Adding insult and embarrassment to it all, they're consistently inconsistent. It's okay for restaurants and bars to suffer from a heavy handed and swiftly delivered smoking ban with no provisional considerations but Rideau Carleton Raceway Slots can have, for all intents and purposes, an indoor smoking room. It's alright to facilitate drug use by giving away free needles and crack pipes but exposing one's breasts in public is the biggest detriment to society.

For Jan Harder to raise ethical concerns may be one thing but for her to volley cheap personal insults and engage in name calling is downright shameful for an elected official and we're all the better for the fact she will not seek re-election next year. She's a classic example of the arrogance and ignorance that is rampant on Elgin Street. I think the Mardi Gras promotion should end right this minute and the remaining beads be draped over City Hall since the real boobs are our elected representatives and they've been exposed as such for far too long.

Next up, Lonie... how about "Show us your PUNT"?

Read all about it in Earl McRea's column in today's Ottawa Sun