Politics
Why comics and cartoonists love, love, love N.L. politics – CBC.ca
An election held in the dead of winter — and amidst a global pandemic that has come back locally with a road — isn’t great fodder for comedy.
We were on the edge to begin with. Small businesses have struggled to keep their doors open, flight routes out of Newfoundland and Labrador keep disappearing, and the looming shadow of the debt that Newfoundlanders owe on Muskrat Falls has nearly blocked out the sun.
When we toss in candidates going door-to-door and contending with icy sidewalks, freezing temperatures and the distressing confirmation that community spread of COVID-19 is here, well, there’s precious little to laugh about this election season.
Or … is there?
Usually, vote-casting creates a perfect storm for parody and satire. Politicians, desperate for our votes, do more radio shows, stick their photographs on buses and vans, and look for every opportunity to get their name out there — even positioning themselves as the possible butt of jokes.
This election, however, has been relatively satire-free, which is surprising as it’s a tool with two purposes.
The first is to help people feel less stressed, depressed and anxious about the current political reality. Political satire as catharsis, if you like.
The second is the jester speaking truth to the king, or the jester speaking truth to the people. Political satire as a weapon, one as old (at least) as Shakespeare.
Swing a sword for satire
Mary Walsh believes that it’s a tough time to be a political satirist. Often enough, the news headlines turn out to be beyond imagination.
“There are folks who believe Democrats run a satanic pizza parlor in Washington, then there is the global pandemic, and finally you have to contend with folks who’ve made an art form out of being offended easily,” she said. “I think satirists have lost heart.”
Walsh was a founding member of the blisteringly hilarious CODCO group, and created and for years starred in the still-running This Hour Has 22 Minutes. She was awarded the Order of Canada (2000), the Governor General’s Performing Arts Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award (2012), and the Canadian Screen Awards Earl Grey Award, one of the academy’s highest honours (2019).
Her ball-busting, sword-swinging alter-ego Marg Delahunty is famous for ambushing and then skewering politicians on both coasts.
“When I’m Marg, I’m riddled with anxiety because her whole schtick is ambushing politicians and you don’t get a do-over. You’re there with a small crew and you’re trying to surprise someone and if it doesn’t go well, you don’t get to ask, ‘can we try that again?”
‘Who owns the fool?’
As Marg, Mary Walsh has surprised everyone from Preston Manning to Rob Ford. Reactions to these ambushes differ wildly, but there was one politician that could always be counted on to take the joke well. “You never worried with Jean Chretien. He was so at home with himself, so steady. He could roll with punches and match wits.”
Walsh has often felt concerned for the role satire plays in election outcomes.
“Maybe we were naïve, but when we started This Hour Has 22 Minutes, we believed we could make a difference. We thought we could effect change.” She sighs, “We took the Federal Liberals to task for years, and then of course the Harper government came into power.”
“I couldn’t help but wonder if we had played a role in that. At the start of it all, we’d be ambushing politicians, by the time we left, politicians would call and ask to be ambushed. You start to wonder, ‘who owns the fool?'”
‘Elections are usually easy’
Kevin Tobin officially began drawing editorial comics in 1987 for the Telegram newspaper in St. John’s, which means he’s drawn satirical political comics through a dozen provincial election cycles.
“Elections are usually easy. There are lots of ideas floating around,” said Tobin.
“It’s the summer where you have to reach. Things are closed, politicians are on vacation. If I’m stuck in the summer and the idea isn’t there, I’ll spend more time on the illustration.”
Tobin says he works in the British style of editorial comics. “American editorial artists tend to be more influenced by comic strips, whereas the British style is more about caricature and punchline. I also prefer stark illustrations in black and white and I like to use as few words as I can. I’m inspired by sketch and parody—things like Monty Python.”
Tobin doesn’t explain the joke to readers. “I feel that explaining the premise is a waste of space. I start each comic by assuming that readers are informed enough about the issues to understand the jokes.”
Generally, politicians have been good sports about Tobin’s illustrations. “I have an entire book of Danny Williams editorial comics and he was gracious enough to come to the book signing. You have to remember that Danny was a bit of a rock star, so the line at Chapters that day could only be compared to liquor store lineups in the days leading up to the start of the pandemic.”
Tobin mentions that Danny seemed put-out by one comic in particular. “He mentioned that he didn’t mind the comic himself, but his staffers had been offended on his behalf regarding a comic I had drawn with Danny and Muammar Gadafi sat at a table for a meeting of the Little Dictator’s Club.”
Generally, Tobin doesn’t spend too much time worrying about being nice when creating his illustrations. “As I’ve gotten older I do try to think a bit harder about avoiding meanness in my work. That said, if you have a big nose, well, you have a big nose.”
Who is easier to draw?
Currently, Tobin is taking a lot of joy in drawing Ches Crosbie.
“He’s a dream to draw. He has a small chin and sort of sour cat expression. His father was one of my favourites, too, with the big jowls. It’s harder to draw Andrew Furey. Allison Coffin is easy, you go with the big hair and the big smile.”
Heave it outta ya, Che’s b’y. <a href=”https://twitter.com/StJohnsTelegram?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@StJohnsTelegram</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/ChesCrosbie?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@ChesCrosbie</a> <a href=”https://t.co/IyQLmgqVuS”>pic.twitter.com/IyQLmgqVuS</a>
—@KevinTobin58
Tobin creates three cartoons a week for SaltWire and his goal for these cartoons isn’t necessarily to make someone laugh. “A chuckle or a laugh is great, but the goal for me is to make someone pause…just linger a little longer on the page.”
A little thin-skinned, maybe? <a href=”https://twitter.com/StJohnsTelegram?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@StJohnsTelegram</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/PremierofNL?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@PremierofNL</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/election2021?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#election2021</a> <a href=”https://t.co/lQn6LGIE71″>pic.twitter.com/lQn6LGIE71</a>
—@KevinTobin58
A close look at editorial comics from Newfoundland yields certain trends. Plenty of comics published in the 1990s could be printed today.
In fact, one of Tobin’s comics from 1996 shows politicians making cuts to everything, but spending franticly when an election was called, an action that mirrors the spending announcements and news releases that the Liberals made just before this current election call.
“There are patterns because while the faces of politics change, the game stays the same. It is a little depressing.”
As for Walsh, there’s one main target she’d still like Marg to meet.
“I think Marg needs to ambush Dame Greene,” said Walsh, referring to Moya Greene, the St. John’s-born retired executive who is chairing the Premier’s Economic Recovery Team for Furey.
“This is the woman who privatized the Royal Mail and historically, it’s never been good for Newfoundland when the dames and earls start showing up. Lord Amulree showed up in the 30s, and we lost the right to self-governance, so I’d like Marg to meet this dame.”
Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
Politics
Florida's Bob Graham dead at 87: A leader who looked beyond politics, served ordinary folks – Toronto Star
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A leader like Bob Graham would be a unicorn in the hyper-partisan politics of today.
The former Florida governor and U.S. senator wasn’t a slick, slogan-spouting politician. He didn’t have an us-against-them mentality. Sometimes, he even came across as more of a kind-hearted professor just trying to make the world a better place.
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Politics
The Earthquake Shaking BC Politics
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Six months from now Kevin Falcon is going to be staggering toward a catastrophic defeat for the remnants of the BC Liberals.
But what that will mean for the province’s political future is still up in the air, with the uncertainty increased by two shocking polls that show the Conservatives far ahead of BC United and only a few percentage points behind the NDP.
BC United is already toast, done in by self-inflicted wounds and the arrival of John Rustad and the Conservative Party of BC.
Falcon’s party has stumbled since the decision to abandon the BC Liberal brand in favour of BC United. The change, promoted by Falcon and approved by party members, took place a year ago this week. It was an immediate disaster.
That was made much worse when Rustad relaunched the B.C. Conservatives after Falcon kicked him out of caucus for doubting the basic science of climate change.
Falcon’s party had fallen from 33 per cent support to 19 per cent, trailing the Conservatives at 25 per cent. (The NDP has 42 per cent support.) That’s despite his repeated assurances that voters would quickly become familiar with the BC United brand.
BC United is left with almost no safe seats in this election based on the current polling.
Take Abbotsford West, where Mike de Jong is quitting after 30 years in the legislature to seek a federal Conservative nomination. It’s been a BC Liberal/United stronghold. In 2020 de Jong captured 46 per cent of the votes to the New Democrats’ 37 per cent and the Conservatives’ nine per cent.
But that was when the Conservatives were at about eight per cent in the polls, not 25 per cent.
Double their vote in this October’s election at the expense of the Liberals — a cautious estimate — and the NDP wins.
United’s prospects are even worse in ridings that were close in the 2020 election, like Skeena. Ellis Ross took it for the BC Liberals in 2020 with 52 per cent of the vote to the NDP’s 45 per cent.
But there was no Conservative candidate. Rustad has committed to running a candidate in every riding and the NDP can count on an easy win in Skeena.
It’s the same story across the province. The Conservatives and BC United will split the centre-right vote, handing the NDP easy wins and a big majority. And BC United will be fighting to avoid being beaten by the Conservatives in the ridings that are in play.
United’s situation became even more dire last week. A Liaison Strategies poll found the NDP at 38 per cent support, Conservatives at 34 per cent, United at 16 per cent and Greens at 11 per cent. That’s similar to a March poll from Mainstreet Research.
If those polls are accurate, BC United could end up with no seats. Voters who don’t want an NDP government will consider strategic voting based on which party has a chance of winning in their ridings.
Based on the Liaison poll, that would be the Conservatives. That’s especially true outside Vancouver and Vancouver Island, where the poll shows the Conservatives at 39 per cent, the NDP at 30 per cent and United lagging at 19 per cent. (The caveat about the polls’ accuracy is important. Curtis Fric and Philippe J. Fournier offer a useful analysis of possible factors affecting the results on Substack.)
And contributors will also be making some hard choices about which party gets their money. Until now BC United was far ahead of the Conservatives, thanks to its strong fundraising structure and the perception that it was the front-runner on the right. That’s under threat.
The polls also mark a big change in the NDP’s situation. This election looked like a cakewalk, with a divided centre-right splitting the vote and a big majority almost guaranteed. Most polls this year gave the New Democrats at least a 17 per cent lead over the Conservatives.
Politics
Political longevity of Sunak smoking ban likely to outlast PM – BBC.com
Unless the opinion polls shift and shift quite a bit, Rishi Sunak knows his time left as prime minister might be running out.
But he is the instigator of a smoking plan with substantial, cross-party political support, which looks set to herald a sizeable social change.
And that cross-party support suggests it’s an idea with greater political longevity than he might have, because Labour wouldn’t scrap it if they win the election.
In other words, whatever happens, it is what some in politics call a legacy.
As I wrote here when Mr Sunak first set out his plans last autumn – in what he described at the time as “the biggest public health intervention in a generation” – this is a government seeking to nudge, or elbow, a societal shift along: the near end of smoking.
On Tuesday, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said she hopes creating a smoke free generation will “spare thousands of young people from addiction and early death as well as saving billions of pounds for our NHS”.
What was once mainstream is already marginal. Now the attempt to near-eradicate it, over time.
This isn’t the end of this discussion: what we have seen so far are the early parliamentary stages. There is more to come before it becomes law.
So that is the big picture, potential social change stuff. What about the politics?
Nearly 60 Conservative MPs voted against Mr Sunak’s idea.
Yes, they had a free vote – they weren’t told how to vote – but they defied him nonetheless. The cabinet minister Kemi Badenoch among them.
Another 100-ish abstained. The cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt among them.
A source close to Ms Mordaunt told me that she abstained because “she was not a supporter of the bill. She has many objections to it. The practicality of it. The implementation and enforcement of it. But being a serving cabinet minister she thought voting against it would look more confrontational and posturing than abstaining would have been.”
Who could that possibly be a dig at? Ah, Kemi Badenoch.
And what do Ms Mordaunt and Ms Badenoch have in common? A splash of ambition.
They are both talked up by some as future Conservative leaders.
Read more about the smoking ban
When you look at the numbers, nearly half of Conservative MPs couldn’t bring themselves to endorse one of their leader’s flagship ideas of the last six months.
Which tells you something about the fractious nature of the Conservative parliamentary party, although not a lot that wasn’t pretty clear to the regular observer already.
Labour are already gleefully talking up that it is a good job they backed the idea or Mr Sunak would have lost.
And they are also publicly pondering what those opponents might do once the chance arises to change the ideas, to bolt on amendments.
But then again they would be defeated if those in favour keep backing the plan as it is.
When governments manage to latch on to a plan which goes with the grain of where a society is already heading, the might of the law can shove it along profoundly and, probably, permanently.
This idea – for now at least – looks like it might be one of those.
And, for all his political troubles, it is Mr Sunak who is its author.
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