These violent delights have violent ends*

* This is a quote from Romeo and Juliet, with thanks to Mr. Shakespeare, who was such a good poet that today's bards are still using the forms he created to produce modern poetry. Of more anon...

Have you noticed the way politics and blogging tend to collide and create little clusters of

Arrogant bloggers...

As most of you probably know, Queenie is up to her tonsils in a federal election at the moment.

And it being 2006, which is the Year of the Blogger in Canada (well, actually, it's the Year of the War Bride, but it's really all about edgy blogging this year).

A Liberal guy called Mike Klanders got sacked from Team Martin (what the Prime Minister of Canada is calling his election bid) the other day for saying rude things about the other parties on his blog. Specifically the NDP leader and his wife Olivia Chow.

Queenie was a bit bemused when she heard this. She was always taught that you should think of very rude and amusing things to say about the other parties (them lot, as we would say at home, or that shower). And then you ring journalists or meet them on the stump, and say the rude things to them in the hope they’ll get published. And she’s pretty certain that’s going on here too. In fact she heard a bit of it today, but it was all very good-humoured and witty. And that other lot had started it.

Anonymous comments don't get people sacked. So why do people blog about stuff they shouldn’t put online, and then tell everyone they have a blog, and then get sacked for having stuff they shouldn’t write on their blog on their blog? And why don't they use an effing pseudonym?

Because they want to be famous. That’s why.
They all want to be Arianna Flippin' Huffington.

Is Queenie the only European who remembers Arianna when she lived on that side of the pond, and who is therefore FLABBERGASTED at her metamorphosis into an important person in American politics?

Which is fair enough I suppose, if fame is your buzz. As it is for so many people these days.

Queenie reckons anonymity is going to be the new fame. In twenty years time, when Dick and George and Paul and Tony and Bertie and whatsername in Germany have read everything on the internet, Queenie's bland unimportant identity, and Percy's pristine credit rating, is going to be worth a fortune to the right person.

Presumably to ensure balance and fairness (so important in federal elections) Klanders had also written an entry on the offending blog, that listed one of his Top Ten hates of the election as ‘being dragged to a Liberal rally, being lied to so I turn up 30 minutes early, and having to stand in a hot room small enough to look packed”. (I’m paraphrasing here)

Yes, he said Liberal.

I agree, that’s probably why he was really sacked.

Queenie reckons there aren’t that many women who’d do something that stupid.

But that’s just Queenie being sexist.

Which brings me to confident bloggers...

As well as being sexist, Queenie is quite possibly a latent racist, apparently.

She commented on someone’s blog recently that maybe they were experiencing a bad mood dirty look rather than a racist dirty look, in a stupidly naïve attempt to cheer the blogger up, after he had mentioned that he was getting racist looks due to his ethnicity (Queenie doesn't know what it is of course, this being bloggerland).

This was because a) it happened in Halifax and she gets dirty looks on the bus all the time when she opens her mouth and it’s obvious she’s a ‘come from away’ but who cares, that’s just people, and she gets lots of smiles too, and

b) he is writing a blog about being a poet who is working for NDP candidate Alexa McDonough in the federal election in Halifax, which is Queenie's riding, so Queenie is very interested in it for all sorts of reasons, and reads it every day.

But instead of cheering him up she totally insulted him. And he made a comment about it in his next post, along the lines of SOME PEOPLE...

Because she doesn’t understand.

Because she hasn’t experienced it.

Which is a fair enough point except she has. There’s more than one form of racism in the world.

Queenie got very upset.

So she commented again that she totally understood because that happened to her all the time because she was a woman and she was always being told it was all in her head.

She just HAD to.

Then Colombo told her to stop because she doesn’t understand the racial tensions in North America and she had probably really insulted him.

So she did, because she doesn't really understand (although that doesn't stop anyone else from having an opinion) and although she had enjoyed baiting him. Not because of his ethnicity, mind, more because he has the kind of confidence that makes us Celts want to go hide under our beds in embarrassment. We being raised to put ourselves down at every opportunity.

Not that Queenie is denigrating his confidence. Queenie wishes she had some of it herself. She just doesn't understand why a dirty look on the bus would matter if you're that confident.

But Colombo is probably right. She doesn't understand.

But she kept reading. And then he wrote an article about the need for proportional representation in Canada, so Queenie wrote a sensible non-confrontational comment about the different types of PR, about which she knows more than the average person, as a peace offering. Which she then had to submit to him for clearance when she tried to post it.

Him putting up a moderated comment system is fair enough, as he got spammed recently; we all do. And Queenie had baited him the previous week.

But he hasn’t published her comment.

Why?

Queenie is going to be magnanimous and assume he hasn’t had time to post it on her behalf.

But she keeps checking the blog to see and today she noticed he had a post which was called ‘Maybe now I’ll be famous’, which was all about being filmed by CBC writing in his blog about the election, because Alexa had mentioned it.

Queenie had to sew her lips together to try not to say HAAAAA!

They say politics is meeting in the centre; Queenie reckons it’s meeting in the Green Room for Canadian Idol.

Finally, Queenie's found blogger love ...

There's a wonderful political blog run out of Nova Scotia, called Liberal4Life. No, not a SPUCer (prolifer) liberal, a true grit - an 'I'm in it for the long haul' guy, who refers to himself as HisHighness.

Queenie is obsessed.

Maybe she has found her Prince Charming at last!

He was ranting today about how the US Christian Right are interfering in the election trying to get the same sex marriage decision overturned.

So they do that in Canada too??! Queenie thought they only funded religious groups in Ireland.

Although Queenie has a feeling that it may be the Nova Scotian Baptists/ Catholics/ Pentecostalists doing the running on this one. It's coming through quite strongly on certain doorsteps. Queenie was told by one elderly lady the other day that 'they'll be allowing brothers and sisters to get married next'.

What do you say to that?

But the best post is the one where HisHighness is paralytic with excitement at the opportunity to meet Scott Brison, the Liberal Minister for Local Government, and local MP, at a fundraiser for the soon-to-be-unseated Mike Savage.

The post is entitled Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!

I don't know about HisHighness, but the last time Queenie said Oh my God! three times in a row like that, she was having all kinds of kinky fun!

She would like to assure her readers that it wasn't with a politician.

Here are some photos of Scott.... mmmm...!

night night!