"Bad Boys"

You cannot write effectively when you’re angry – at least I can’t – because you – I – am unable to maintain the appropriate, what’s the word…

Distance. 

No. 

Objectivity. 

No.  You see?  The anger is already messing me up.

Detachment!  

That’s the word!  So I guess I am not excessively angry or I wouldn’t have gotten it.  Either that, or this is all nonsense, and I forgot the word because I’m old.

No.  I’m angry. 

And also old.  Old and angry.  It’s a shock I can remember anything at all.   

By rights, I should not even be talking about this, because that is exactly my point. 

My point being,

I hate “Bad Boys.”

They behave like idiots and get all the attention.

That crack-smoking mayor of Toronto?   I’d punch him in the face.

Oh, Earlo!

Okay, I wouldn’t punch him in the face.  But I’d like to.  I am prohibited from following through because I’m a “Good Boy”, and “Good Boys” do not punch people in the face.  Or anywhere else.  In the shoulder, maybe, but only in fun.  And always apologizing immediately afterwards.

“Just horsin’ around, eh?  Soh-rey.”

“Good Boys” are not, however, immune to terrible thoughts.  Though even there, as reflected in the italicized response, they are heartily dissuaded from expressing them.   

“Binge-drinking son-of-a…”

Sorry, I had one left.

Toronto will unquestionably survive.  It takes more than one intemperate blowhard to upend a city’s image as a boring metropolis.  It’s a shame its reputation was even threatened.  It takes a long time to develop a persona as a colorless city, unwelcoming to loudmouths.  Which would normally mean Americans, but apparently we have a few, albeit a small number, homegrown embarrassments as well.  

The media loves this story.  It fills the “slow news” gap between kidnapped children and murderers who get off.  And it is so atypically Canadian.

“Oh, look!  Aunt Harriet is into the sauce!”

None of that bothers me as much as the fact that an idiot has once again commandeered the spotlight.  What lesson does that convey?

“You wanna be noticed?  Break all the rules.”

Internationally, there are stories about Syria, Iran, Korea, whatever they call the Soviet Union now.  When was the last time you read a blaring headline about Belgium?  Belgium behaves itself, and nobody knows it’s there. 

Well, Holland, maybe.  And possibly Luxembourg.

It’s the same thing with people.  You spend your life coloring inside the lines and you go down in history…

You do not go down in history at all.  It’s like,

 

“Thanks for coming.  What was your name again?”

Everybody knows the mayor of Toronto’s name (which I shall not give him the satisfaction of mentioning), a monstrosity who, in Canada and possibly elsewhere, would be characterized as “a real piece of work.” 

The mayor of Toronto:  “Claim to Fame?”  He disgraced his office, and turned a sensible nation into a laughingstock. 

Give him a hand, and book him on every news show on television.

The news business has become essentially a freak show.  Edward R. Murrow would be seriously dismayed.

EDWARD R. MURROW:  Hey, Joe McCarthy was a freak.”

Joe McCarthy endangered American democracy.  This guy’s only dangerous if he falls on you.”

We are not talking about endearing scalawags “crossing the line” with a wink and a twinkle, or the “Robber Barons” who eventually “got religion” and endowed  libraries, where there’s an “one the one hand, and on the other hand” availability for debate, though I am not ready to let either entirely off the hook. 

What we have here is a charmless “Yahoo” who, if he’d attended the Toronto Hebrew Day School – an apparent unlikelihood from the looks of things – would have gotten “the strap”, and been sent home with a carefully worded letter from the principal. 

  

“Your child is a conscienceless troublemaker.  And that will be on his ‘Permanent Record’!”

A man behaves egregiously and, instead of punishment, gets international recognition. 

THE MEDIA:  Hey!  We’re here to sell tickets, for a hero or a hyena.  The audience prefers the hyena.  Can your really blame us for putting them on?”

The media controls the airwaves and they decide whom to cover.

So I would have to say yes.

But I’m in an ungenerous mood.  My only consolation concerning the attention this post may provide this baboon-who-walks-like-a-man is that very few people read this.  Still, I regret participating in this “Notoriety-Fest” at all.

But, given limited behavioral alternatives, the atrocious shenanigans of the Canadian mayor?

It makes a “Good Boy” want to…

Write something.