Going into the first ballot, we knew how the delegates would vote because the ballots were pre-printed – you had to support the candidate for whom you ran, obviously, or the first ballot results would not reflect how your riding association members voted. Only independent (mostly candidates standing for Glen Murray, who withdrew) and ex-officio (presidents, politicians) could choose.

1st Ballot – Committed Delegates

Pupatello 509
Wynne 468
Kennedy 260
Takhar 244
Sousa 204
Hoskins 105
Independent 67

1st Ballot – With Ex-Officio & Independents Added

Pupatello 599 (+90)
Wynne 597 (+153)
Kennedy 281 (+21)
Takhar 235 (-9)
Sousa 222 (+18)
Hoskins 150 (+45)

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how Takhar managed to decrease his total. Was it simply that his delegates didn’t show up? Alternates were “bumped up” early Saturday, as 11 PM Friday was the registration deadline. I suppose that’s the explanation, but I’d be very interested in your analysis so do send it my way.

You can see early on how momentum was going Wynne’s way. That first result – 597 for Wynne to Pupatello’s 599 – was a huge shock within our delegation; we expected a gap of up to 100 votes. A deficit of just 2 was astounding. Hoskins also did very well. A good friend of mine, who was ex-officio, voted for Hoskins on the 1st ballot even as she sat donning her Wynne gear; she likes Hoskins, and wanted him to do well enough to make a difference… which he did.

2nd Ballot

Pupatello 817 (+218)
Wynne 750 (+153)
Kennedy 285 (+4)
Sousa 203 (-19)
Takhar 18 (-217)

Takhar dropped off and supported Pupatello but only after the 20-minute period before the ballot was printed. Clearly, his supporters followed him to Pupatello, and Hoskins’ delegates went en masse to Wynne.

3rd Ballot

Wynne 1,150 (+400)
Pupatello 866 (+49)

Let’s discount (as I have done for each ballot) those who simply didn’t vote. Given that I waited an hour and a half to vote on the 3rd ballot, it’s amazing – and a wonderful thing, democratically – that only 68 ballots were lost between the 1st and last ballots through attrition. Only a handful of ballots were spoiled on each count. As I recall, precisely one ballot was spoiled on the 1st.

Let’s also assume that those 18 Takhar voters from the 2nd ballot went to Pupatello on the 3rd, and it’s an easy conclusion that Kennedy and Sousa did indeed bring their delegates along with them to Wynne. I’m fudging the numbers, obviously, because it’s a secret ballot, but remove those 18 Takhar votes and something like 6% of Kennedy and Sousa delegates defied their candidates’ choice. Not 6% of total votes; 6% of all Kennedy and Sousa delegates.

Of course, if you ran for Gerard or Charles, presumably you trusted their judgement. I’m biased, of course, but Team Wynne was relentlessly upbeat, optimistic, and encouraging; more on that in a later post. I have anecdotal evidence that Wynne herself reached out to Kennedy and Sousa people with that last ballot in mind, and certainly, the folks I know in those camps told me privately that the respect she showed them did make a difference.

A mea culpa: we in the Wynne camp sold Charles Sousa and his supporters short. Many of us blithely assumed a clear left-right split, that Kennedy would go to Wynne but Sousa, the former banker, would naturally align with Pupatello. (Of course, our assumptions were wrong, and I am very grateful for that.)

Not to detract from Sousa as “queenmaker,” especially since his crossing to Wynne was such a spectacular, emotional moment, but if we simply add up Pupatello plus Sousa plus Takhar on one side, and Wynne plus Kennedy on the other, you end up with Pupatello winning by 3 votes. I’m quite sure that Sousa’s team can do math much better than I. Still, I do believe in my heart of hearts that Kathleen Wynne’s own demeanour, speech, and team deserves credit for running a respectful campaign.

This leads to my final point, which isn’t really “on the numbers.”

Perhaps, given the tallies on each ballot, it makes sense that the most bitter, ungracious posts, tweets, and comments today are focused not on Sousa but on Hoskins, whose endorsement was an early sign of that momentum had shifted.

Perhaps, though, it is incredibly insulting to blame one, two, or three men for a defeat, when we’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of intelligent, committed, caring Liberals who, in the secrecy of the ballot box, supported their candidates’ second choice without threat or coercion.

And perhaps it is a good thing to remember that politics is not, in fact, a chess game. We are not pawns to be moved around, praised or dismissed solely on the basis of acting as agents for our chosen leadership candidates, electoral candidates, and parties.

Kathleen Wynne did not win, and Sandra Pupatello did not lose, because Hoskins did this or Sousa did that. Wynne won because a majority of delegates wanted her as the new leader of the Ontario Liberal Party and the 25th premier of Ontario.

Only 8 – EIGHT! – days until the 2013 Ontario Liberal Party leadership convention in Toronto, & I’m in organized chaos mode trying to figure out payments, fundraising, travel, & so forth. Because I’ve focused more on LGBT blogging & Twitter lately, here are a few random thoughts before I get too busy to think:

Fundraising: I realized the other day that 2013 is a Liberal anniversary for me: the first campaign for which I volunteered was the 1993 federal election. (For the record, I made calls on behalf of Jim Peterson in Willowdale. Hands up if you remember the days when voter lists came from dot matrix printers!) Over the years, provincially & federally, I’ve been a volunteer, supporter, member, & director; served in several executive positions for three riding associations; & attended many regional meetings, AGMs, and conventions. Heck, I even attended the 2009 federal faux-leadership convention in Vancouver.

And, of course, over the years I’ve donated money to both the LPC & OLP, been a member of the Victory Fund, ABC, Laurier Club etc. Now I’m looking for Ontario Liberal members & supporters to help me to offset convention costs. I would really appreciate your support & these donations are not to me personally, but to the OLP in my name – so they’re tax-deductible.

More about fundraising soon (I’m hoping to do videos) but please consider contributing through this direct link.

Delegates: Naturally I was pleased as punch to be elected as one of – if I’m not mistaken – 5 Kathleen Wynne delegates from Ottawa Centre, especially after it was reported today that the tally was 21/130 (in 7 ridings plus 2 university clubs). “Humbled” is the right word. I moved (back) to this riding in August 2011 after a ten-year absence & I’m much better known in the hinterland. So thank you, thank you, thank you, Ontario Liberals of Ottawa Centre.

I’m hearing some anger online at the way in which we’re choosing Dalton McGuinty’s replacement. One-member-one-vote has been put before the membership in the past, but collectively we’ve put off making the change. I would suspect, however – especially since the federal Liberals have gone with a preferential ballot – that this will be the last of the old-style, delegated conventions in Ontario, possibly in Canada.

I’m in favour of OMOV & preferential balloting but let’s be honest: delegated conventions are more fun. As an old hack, I will miss them, even as I recognize that, yes, for sure, every single party member deserves a say.

Tribal politics: What has surprised me, but probably shouldn’t have, is that certain operatives from certain leadership camps aren’t being very nice. It’s not that I’ve personally been treated with anything less than respect, but I have noticed that some folks online shut down communication after I made my support of Wynne public, & some of what they’re saying about the other candidates verges on nasty.

I’ve had to “mute” a few people on Twitter but I’m sure we’ll all be friends again, once my candidate prevails.

Blogging: Attention all bloggers! The OLP now has a form up to apply for blogger accreditation. As usual, thanks are due to Scott Tribe of Progressive Bloggers for his hard work in pushing the party to make this happen, & I look forward to seeing my blogger friends in Toronto.

Will you be at the convention, as a blogger, delegate, ex-oficio, party worker or press? Let me know via my Twitter account if you’d like to meet up. Many of us know each other rather more well online than in real life & this is a great opportunity to put faces (the real-life variety, rather than avatars) to names.

The last time I visited with my father and stepmother we couldn’t bear the thought of it so we stayed for several days right before our departure in the village of Marsaxlokk. Our thinking was that, Xlendi being far to the northwest, we should stay somewhere in the southeast, and it was more convenient to the Luqa airport.

We stayed in a guesthouse with a great view of the harbour, fishing boats, and market along the shoreline, and on our first morning in Marsaxlokk, Dad noticed a massive flag down the street. He knew it wasn’t the Maltese flag; I figured out right away that it was the Labour Party flag likely flying over its kazin. I also pointed out to Dad that the Nationalist kazin, with its own flags, was right across the square from us.

Kazin just means club and both the Partit Laburista (Labour) and Partit Nazzjonalista (Nationalists) have them all over Malta and Gozo. There’s nothing to much to explain, really – they’re bars run by political parties. There’s booze, free snacks, sometimes a pool table, copies of the party-affiliated newspaper, and portraits of politicians on the walls. Of course, I love them.

Dad and I decided that it would be a very good idea indeed if we spent that afternoon on a kazin crawl, rating the political parties based on our experiences.

There were good and bad points about each. The Centru Laburista was brighter and the servers friendlier, snacks tastier. The Nationalist kazin was a bit too dark and grungy, the service cold if polite. They were quite generous with food, though – a dinner plate of bread, meat, cheese, and olives. Nationalist glasses of Cisk (Maltese lager) were cheaper.

I know that partisan kazins would never fly in Canada because of the political culture but it’s a damn shame. Sometimes it’s tough to get a handful of party members to a coffee meeting or a pub night once a month, let alone having Liberal and Conservative clubs in towns of 3,000 people. The Maltese are more politically engaged, and it’s a small country where it never gets cold, still I can’t help but think it would be an excellent amount of fun to drink a glass of red wine, surrounded by portraits of Canadian Liberal prime ministers.

It’s a strange concept indeed for those of us used to the (near) sanctity of geographic representation to understand the way candidates are chosen in other countries.

Now from Malta Today, the suggestion that Muscat, the Labour leader, might run in the 13th district, Gozo – in effect to bravely declare the PL’s intention to win a 3rd seat in Gozo, which hasn’t happened since the 1950s.

Where it gets odd for an observer from away is that, first, leading candidates always run in several districts (they can only win in one, obviously, and in the other(s) their votes are counted back); second, Muscat is not Gozitan.

I doubt Gozitans have a huge issue with this – as Canada’s leading and completely self-appointed honorary Gozitan, it’s fine by me – but one does have to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just run in one place, maybe where you live, and maybe give a chance to someone else to get elected on his or her merits, not simply because transfers flowed from the party leader in a district or two.

Gozo is a (dare I say it?) distinct society… my question is whether either Muscat or the PN’s great white hope, Busuttil, can effectively represent Gozo for the Gozitans, if you will.

Party                        - Preliminary results (99,5%) -		Ideology, Affiliation, Founding		2012	Seats	2010	Seats
	Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD) People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy	Conservative liberalism	ELDR, LI 1948	26,5%	41	20,4%	31
	Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA) Labour Party	Social democracy Third Way	PES, SI 1946	24,7%	39	19,6%	30
	Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) Freedom Party	Right-wing populism Conservative liberalism	- 2004	10,1%	15	15,5%	24
	Socialistische Partij (SP) Socialist Party	Democratic socialism	- 1972	9,6%	15	9,9%	15
	Christen Democratisch Appèl (CDA) Christian Democratic Appeal	Christian democracy	EPP, CDI 1980	8,5%	13	13,7%	21
	Democraten 66 (D66) Democrats 66	Social liberalism	ELDR, LI 1966	7,9%	12	6,9%	10
	Christen Unie (CU) Christian Union	Christian democracy Evangelicalism	ECPM 2001	3,1%	5	3,3%	5
	Groen Links (GL) Green Left	Green politics	EGP, GG 1991	2,3%	3	6,6%	10
	Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP) Reformed Political Party	Christian right Evangelicalism	- 1918	2,1%	3	1,7%	2
	50 Plus (50+) 50 Plus	Pensioners’ interests	- 2009	1,9%	2	-	-
	Partij voor de Dieren (PvdD) Party for the Animals	Animal welfare Green politics	- 2002	1,9%	2	1,3%	2
Others		-	-	1,4%	-	1,1%	-
Total		-	-	-	150	-	150
Turnout				73,8%		74,7%

If you’re anything like me, you see a gazillion parties in a PR system, many of which have names with far too many vowels, and yes, there’s a party in parliament called Party for the Animals, but what does it all mean?

Here’s the gist of it:

• The “business-liberal” VVD has obtained its best result ever under its leader, Prime Minister Mark Rutte, but VVD’s minority coalition partner, CDA, lost almost as many seats as VVD gained.
• The election was caused by the decision of Geert Wilders‘ anti-Islamic, anti-EU PVV to withdraw support for the government; PVV lost a bunch of seats. Well, good.
• The social democratic PvdA (aka Labour) has reversed a seemingly hopeless trend of losing seats. I wish it had happened under their last leader, the wonderful former mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, but good on you, Diederik Samsom – the Labour leader apparently did quite well in the debates.
• The formerly dominant Christian Democratic Appeal has been sinking election by election into an unexpected near-oblivion, losing 20% support in ten years (from 28.6 in 2003 to 8.5 in 2012).
• As for the smaller parties, the most notable results were the emergence of an eleventh party in the Tweede Kamer (because every country needs more than ten parties in a 150-seat legislature?), 50-Plus, representing seniors; and a poor showing for the leftist environmentalist GL.

The simplest analysis is as follows: PVV lost support to the VVD for being anti-EU / pulling the plug on the government, PvdA picked up support from the GL. Given that the CDA is Christian yet centrist, its losses likely benefited both the individualist VVD and collectivist PvdA.

Dutch elections have always been messily democratic but in the past decade it all just got so ugly, what with the anti-Islamic politics and the assassinations and the shockingly illiberal administrations. The rise of the Socialist Party (now seemingly in check) has also been tricky for government formation, and the VVD kept spitting out xenophobic mavericks like Wilders and Rita Verdonk.* For moderates, yesterday’s election had, I think, a good result.

Now, as to government formation, here are some numbers. The government needs 76 seats:

• VVD-CDA (current cabinet) 56; with PVV support, 69 – no majority
• VVD-PvdA (two largest parties) 80 – majority
• VVD-PvdA-D66 (so-called “purple coalition” dominant in the 90s, business-liberal/social-democratic/social-liberal) 92 – vast majority
• PvdA-CDA-D66 (centre-left coalition that excludes VVD) 64 – no majority; with SP support (not gonna happen) 79 – majority
• VVD-CDA-D66 (centrist coalition that excludes Labour) 66 – no majority; with PVV support (not gonna happen; D66 wouldn’t go for it) 81 – majority

In other words, it’s unlikely that a coalition could be formed without VVD or PvdA, unless marginal or small parties are called in for support, and that opens up a whole new can of worms: both the evangelical SGP and the PvdD are “testimonial,” Socialists refuse to go into government, PVV is objectionable to the leftist parties, etc.

A new purple coalition is a nice idea, though – I see no reason why classical and social liberals and social democrats can’t work together, and the need to keep PvdA and D66 happy would allow Rutte to keep the xenophobes and populists at bay. Still, Rutte might well take the more stable option of a simple VVD-PvdA coalition, and why not? It’s been two decades since a two-party majority government has been even possible.

And maybe such a coalition would legalize marijuana for foreigners again, because from what I hazily recall, that was pretty cool.

—

* A few thoughts about the xenophobic trend in Dutch politics. I should start by saying that of course I am aghast at how folks like Pim Fortuyn, Wilders, and Verdonk have scapegoated Islam, but having spent time in the Netherlands during the 2006 election, talking to folks in Amsterdam about this issue, it’s not as black-and-white as the once-tolerant Dutch suddenly turning into rabid racists.

While we think of xenophobic politics as inherently right-wing, it’s worth noting that none of the prominent anti-Islamic politicians have come from the right. Quite the contrary: Pim Fortuyn was a former Communist and PvdA member; Wilders and Verdonk started in the liberal VVD. That’s not a coincidence, nor is the fact that none of these politicians idealized Judeo-Christian values: Fortuyn was an atheist, Wilders is an agnostic, Verdonk a lapsed Catholic.

The uncomfortable fact for us social liberals is that the evil right-wing Arab-haters are, in their minds, protecting secular, liberal Dutch values, specifically the individual rights of women and gays, from evil right-wing Arab haters (hope you caught that subtle punctuation thing I did just there).

I must have discussed politics with a hundred people while I was in the Netherlands: all from Amsterdam, many gay, certainly none of whom would be considered right-wing here except that they all, all, hated Islam. I’m not defending this; “I hate them because they hate us” is still ugly and bad politics; but that’s how many secular, “liberal” Dutch people see it, especially since the assassinations of Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh – and of course there’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali, once the foremost critic of Islam in the Netherlands, former VVD member of the Tweede Kamer, and not exactly a white racist.

Yes, it’s very complicated.

Yesterday’s context, of course, was Patrick Brazeau’s calling reporter Jen Ditchburn a “bitch” because she wrote an article that mentioned Brazeau’s poor attendance record, and for sure, the senator’s remarks were immature, though I’d argue more in keeping with the mindset of a hormonal male bully than a grade-nine girl.

But here’s more context: as Dale Smith rightly points out, Angus “makes name-calling a staple in QP” – hardly one to lecture, and as Smith tweeted to me, “I honestly can’t think of a bigger hypocrite for the NDP commitment to ‘decorum.’” (I replied that Pat Martin comes a close second.)

I didn’t think it possible that any MP could be as bone-headed as Bruce Hyer, with his random seating plan as a panacea for House decorum, as opposed to, say, MPs not acting like asses, but Angus takes the cake. The problem with political discourse in this country is Twitter. Yes, of course! Just ban #cdnpoli as a hashtag, delete your political accounts, and all will be well.

Recently I went for afternoon tea at the Chateau Laurier with a group of tweeps. We made “pinkies up and out” jokes and nibbled on cucumber and watercress sandwiches. It was refined, but it was play-acting. It wasn’t the real world.

The essential truth here is not that a social medium turns us into babies, or even that politics can be immature, but that life isn’t a tea party, Charlie.

Might I suggest that, in fact, most people have their moments? Angus acknowledges this and all but says that he has quit Twitter so he isn’t tempted to pull a Patrick Brazeau. Given his propensity for name-calling and negativity in the House, perhaps this is for the best, but Twitter didn’t turn Brazeau nasty, force Angus to heckle in the House, or cause Pat Martin to drop the f-bomb repeatedly, and it’s not why the trolls kept sending poor Charlie nasty messages.

Politics has been ugly forever. People have opinions, and political opinions are often deeply felt and communicated from the gut, without much reflection, in terms easiest for everyone to understand: love, hate, good, bad, and so forth. Anyone who’s ever held a sign or chanted a rhyming slogan at a protest march – and I’m hazarding a guess that this includes a leftist like Angus – has given in to the political propensity to oversimplify, vilify, reduce complex issues to a few, loud words.

In a perfect world, we’d have that idealized, completely untrue vision of Athenian democracy, in which calm, cool, collected individuals sit around philosophically debating political notions and reaching agreement through logic and compromise. This is not our world, and it never was.

So what is a politician to do, when the trolls say nasty things like “I hate you, Charlie Angus, and you sing terribly”? The answer will blow you away:

Ignore it.

If Charlie Angus doesn’t get hateful letters in the post, doesn’t have to hear constituents yelling down the phone line, that’s because he has staff to shield him from it. No assistant in his or her right mind would collect all the nasty letters delivered to the office and present them to the boss. “Here you go, Charlie, this week’s correspondence from right-wing nutters!”

The problem – though I don’t think it is a problem – is that Twitter has few filters. Note that I didn’t write “any filters,” because there’s a way around the conundrum for the sensitive and faint of heart:

Block people.

One is under no obligation to reply to everything on Twitter, and equally there’s no responsibility to follow everyone who wants to be followed (or else my own party would follow me) or duty to suffer verbal abuse. A few years ago, I made the conscious decision to ignore trolls. I realized I spent too much time arguing with them, time I could be spending discussing news stories, issues, and whatnot with people I do like.

So while Charlie Angus hears the chatter of pubescent girls in his erstwhile Twitter feed, I hear the voices of people who agree, bolster each other in their beliefs, give and get support for their positions, and interact in a novel way with journalists and politicians. Sometimes people even disagree with me and we remain friends; sometimes I find my opinions changing because I’m convinced by what they tweet at me. Those who make my Twitter experience negative are not followed, unfollowed, blocked, dismissed or – most likely – simply ignored.

Thus, I don’t believe that MPs are obliged to be egalitarian in their social media, but by irrationally lashing out at Twitter, Angus cuts himself off from any chance of substantive debate on the medium, and indeed from the camaraderie he could be building with, well, not me, but with constituents and fellow New Democrats. Political social media should be viewed as a way to democratize politics, and Angus’ putting himself on this “I’m too good for Twitter” pedestal has the opposite effect: he is now more distant from the Canadian people.

How civil, how decorous, how social democratic! Actually, how unfortunate that Angus didn’t opt to:

Rise above it, and show Canadian politics a better example to follow than Brazeau’s.

I’ve been on Twitter now for four years, and have actively engaged in political social media since the 2009 Liberal convention. I would say that makes me a veteran, and perhaps even an astute observer of how people behave on Twitter, whether they be teenage girls or Members of Parliament…and it’s all the same, really, a point that Angus concedes (“I have the same instinct to say nasty, inane things and hope they get picked up but that’s not what we’re here to do”).

Every day, MPs of all stripes get attacked online as in the House. Justin Trudeau has 138,000 followers and I doubt they all say nice things. Somehow Marc Garneau manages to be a gentleman without quitting the tweet box.

So, here’s what I believe actually happened, in real life terms unworthy of a HuffPo interview. Charlie Angus let people get to him, and he reacted in anger by rage-quitting Twitter. That’s all: Charlie Angus had a fit of pique and instead of rising above it, he reacted as badly as a 14-year-old, you might say. In effect, he told the Twitterverse, “Fine! You don’t love me. You’re mean. I’m going to quit. See if you like that!”

Well, you showed us, Charlie. You’ve let us know that we are all a bunch of bitchy teenagers. If only we were more like you, what with the name-calling in the House and petulance online.

And about that 14-year-old teenage girls in a cafeteria thing: Charlie Angus might not like that it’s so, but young people who would never attend a political event are on social media, and if there’s any hope for their engaging in civics, it’s the ease with which they can follow and interact with public figures. Granted, they might prefer Justin to Charlie Angus, but I can’t help that.

So, in other words, Twitter didn’t make Brazeau call Jen Ditchburn a bitch; his anger management issue and obvious disrespect for women did. Twitter didn’t force Angus off; he quit spitefully because a few people – certainly not the hundreds or thousands that follow every Canadian politician of note – called him names.

And in both examples, even a 14-year-old should realize how disingenuous and unbecoming it is to shoot the messenger.

On one level, the appeal of Drag Race is simply that it’s a really entertaining reality show, smart enough to adopt the good bits of shows like America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway but with a wink-wink cleverness that stays just this side of satire. (It’s Drag Show’s surreal spin-off, Drag U, that is the truly devastating parody. Also, unicorns.) There are winners and losers, heroines and villains, twists and turns, fashion and theatre.

For the gay community, Drag Race offers something special: a show about real gay people like us who, unlike us, get the chance to be famous in a way that seems almost attainable. Even the show’s arch-villains – Rebecca Glasscock, Tatianna, Shangela, and Phi Phi O’Hara – have their fans and, significantly, their fans’ approval.

It’s not that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the first three seasons, and each has shown a progression in quality and aesthetic. In hindsight the winners were perfection even if I was rooting for someone else (say, Pandora Boxx over Tyra Sanchez). But that perfection meant that the winners were less relatable; BeBe Zahara Benet – Cameroon! – was exotic, Tyra was like some sort of sickening robotic doll, and Raja‘s artistry and self-confidence were more than slightly intimidating. Still, they were the right winners.

If you’ll indulge my hyperbole for a moment, season 4 was different: a full-on cultural clash within not only drag but the gay community as a whole. Sure, Drag Race always hinted at cultural clashes – country versus city, New York versus L.A., drag as lifestyle versus drag as performance, Heathers versus Boogers – but it was the appearance, and ultimately the victory, of the iconoclastic Sharon Needles that elevated the most recent season.

I declared during the first episode that Sharon had to win; it seemed obvious and necessary. I didn’t expect many others to share that opinion, yet Sharon had a massive, dedicated, positively rabid fan base from her first, ideal, RuPocalyptic appearance on the runway. It’s worth considering why.

It’s not that I didn’t have other favourites. Of course Chad Michaels should have come second and, after Willam’s disqualification, I’d have picked Latrice Royale for third as well as Miss Congeniality, which she did win. But it was Sharon, and her conflict with Phi Phi O’Hara, that defined the season, and underlined a real evolution in how the gay community represents itself.

We have that luxury now. We see ourselves in the media, on television, in movies, treated more and more like actual human beings, yet what we see is still mostly an idealistic pinnacle of gayness. Our media image is that of well-off, overwhelmingly white, absolutely fabulous individuals who struggle comically with gripping issues like how best to spoil our adopted children. Don’t get me wrong, Modern Family is a funny show, but I’ll never be Cameron or Mitchell.

Similarly, I didn’t see myself in any of the winners of Drag Race until Sharon Needles came along. Sharon Needles must have terrified her competitors, and I don’t mean due to her “spooky” persona or even because she was a formidable opponent, though she was; I mean that some of the queens seemed genuinely unable to understand what Sharon was doing.

All due respect to Latrice, but her comment after the Fabulous Bitch Ball episode epitomized this lack of comprehension; to paraphrase, “Week after week, Sharon is imperfect and the judges let it slide.” Let’s put to one side the ludicrousness of Latrice criticizing Sharon as flawed, because I do know what Latrice means by imperfection. In fact, the judges didn’t just let it slide; they recognized the transformational nature of Sharon’s drag.

Let me be blunt: any pretty boy can pluck and shave and squeeze his squat little body into a circus costume, but Aaron Coady (aka Sharon) isn’t a “tired-ass showgirl.” He’s scrawny and self-deprecating and he clearly knows what it’s like to be rejected, both by society at large and by our own community for being “imperfect.”

In other words, Sharon Needles gave many of us, well, a heroine, if in the form of an anti-hero – not only gay but gay and weird. Thank God for that, because I’m sure there are more gay freaks and geeks out there like Sharon, like me, than there are fishy pretty boys, and I prefer a community in which we praise uniqueness, clever humour, and self-aware wit over the temerity to just flat-out steal Kenya Michaels‘ look, to give a completely random example.

We wouldn’t have a Sharon Needles without RuPaul, of course. I give Ru a lot of credit for using Drag Race for good. The meme of Drag Race “bringing families together” isn’t a joke. Those moments of high melodrama – about dead parents, Christian families, bullying, AIDS, and so on – are real, and speak to a real process: how gays reconcile the traditional concept of “family” with our own histories of disappointment and rejection.

Gays lack guidance in defining our identities; that’s just a fact. We lack immediate role models for the gay aspect of who we are, and those we have are so often larger than life, from female divas to the gay lawyers of TV. The sheer variety of Drag Race queens automatically gives the show credence.

What’s more, many of us spend half our lives in drag even if we never wear women’s clothes. Often we feel that we have to hide, sometimes to the extent of staying in the closet, but even those of us who have been out forever hide in another way, by presenting the world – gay and straight – with personae that we feel are more acceptable (more straight-acting, more fabulous, more together, sexier, wittier, fitter, happier) than just being ourselves. We identify with the queens of Drag Race, and we appreciate how these lady-boys turn it on its ear, transforming our disguises into an expression of the creative self.

As for Needles, she took it that one step further, and it actually meant something to me, however strange that is to contemplate. I don’t believe that we, as gay people, should adhere any more to a set gay standard than to the implied demands of society at large, and Sharon proved to me that we don’t have to conform to win. That, for me, is the true significance of Sharon Needles and RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Now sashay…away.

Way back when (by which I mean 2006), I spent six weeks on contract in the Netherlands during the lead-up to the 2006 election, and it was way too cool to see young Socialists proselytizing on the streets of Amsterdam. It was an interesting result, with a breakthrough for both the SP and the xenophobic PVV.

This year’s election – called by VVD Prime Minister Mark Rutte (pictured) after his government lost the PVV’s support – at first glance promises a similar result, according to the latest monthly Ipsos Netherlands polls, namely a surge for the SP and the continued decline of the old-line left and right parties.

According to de Politeke Barometer, June 2, if an election were called today, the result would be:

VVD (Party for Freedom and Democracy, right-wing liberal) 32 seats, +1
SP (Socialist Party, far left) 27, +12
PvdA (Labour Party, centre-left) 24, -6
PVV (Party for Freedom, far right) 22, -2
D’66 (Democrats ’66, social liberal) 15, +5
CDA (Christian Democratic Appeal, centre-right) 14, -7
Others 15, -4

The Dutch use an almost-pure form of proportional representation, which makes government formation messy as hell. The best defense of the Netherlands’ system has to be, “Hey, at least it’s not Belgium.” Since the demise of the “purple” cabinet (PvdA, VVD, D’66) in 2002, Dutch elections have been marked by extreme voter volatility; the outgoing Rutte cabinet (VVD, CDA) only had a minority and relied on the questionable support of Geert Wilders’ PVV. Meanwhile, Labour and the Christian Democrats – formerly the bedrock of all Dutch post-war governments – have been in steady decline.

While the shift to the pro-business, yet nominally liberal VVD seems benign enough, the occasional surges for the SP and especially for anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic parties like the Pim Fortuyn List and now the Party for Freedom are frightening. In ten years there’s been a noticeable erosion of the Dutch consensus on social issues, marked by less benevolence toward multiculturalism, soft drugs, and the gays. Interestingly, there’s also a growing divide between communitarian parties of both the left and right and the more classical liberal, individualist politics of the VVD in particular (hence the PVV’s refusal to back Rutte’s austerity budget).

The recent Ipsos polls point to continued chaos in government formation, since the outgoing government, even with the PVV’s support, would come 8 seats short of a majority. The SP numbers are worrisome, if only because they lack potential coalition partners; Labour isn’t going to back a Socialist Prime Minister, and anyway, no other party except GroenLinks (“GreenLeft”) would sign up for such an arrangement.

The Dutch had a good experience, at least for a few terms, with the Kok cabinets, which seemed to broker the interests of its coalition partners rather well. Is it time for a new purple coalition including the VVD, PvdA, and D’66? Add in GroenLinks (currently projected to win 5 seats) and you’ve got yourself a razor-thin majority for a social liberal/business liberal/social democratic/environmentalist cabinet.

That may well be the most stable, least divisive result, so hey, maybe someday all those backpacking Brit tourists in Amsterdam will once again be able to smoke pot legally while ogling the legal, unionized prostitutes.

Sigh…I miss the old Netherlands.

There is nothing about this article that doesn’t repulse me. Look at the poster: 9/11? Really? REALLY?

No matter what Khadr did or didn’t do, no matter that he isn’t even in the country and “no date has been set for his return,” his family has done nothing.

This is mob rule vigilantism. The racial overtones make me sick. This is targeting innocent people for the sin of association.

This is terrorizing people in the name of opposing terrorism. For shame.

Way back when, I wrote the music column for my friend Christine Renaud’s express and upfront magazines, dedicated to “art, entertainment & life” in Prince Edward County. This review is very typical of my style at the time (or lack thereof!). I really can’t be arsed to edit it.

Remember Robert Plant’s “Tall Cool One” video, with its Robert Palmer-esque disinterested, robotic models lip-synching for Plant’s studly big eighties hair? Me neither. Even Zeppelin fans ignore it. “Tall Cool One” does have one saving grace (for me, at least) – a backing vocal by Kirsty MacColl, who sings the relentless chorus line, “Lighten up, baby, I’m in love with you.”

Kirsty was the daughter of songwriter Ewan MacColl (“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Dirty Old Town”) and backing vocalist for Tracey Ullman, Morrissey, The Pogues and Talking Heads, among others. She wrote songs for ABBA chanteuse Frida and picked the running order for U2′s The Joshua Tree, produced by her then-husband Steve Lillywhite. (She said later that the tracks are ranked in order of her preference. Clever woman – the first three have become rock classics.)

Kirsty is replaced in the “Tall Cool One” video by vacant-looking models. Of course she is. Kirsty had too much character, was too real to be commercial, despite her five near-perfect pop albums. She was beautiful but chubby. She was brilliant live, but shy and suffered from stage fright; she never went on tour. Her covers of songs by The Kinks (“Days”) and socialist folkie Billy Bragg (“A New England”) gave her bigger hits in the UK than her own compositions, though Ullman took Kirsty’s girl-group soundalike “They Don’t Know” to the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic. She was beloved by musicians but largely unknown to the listening public, especially in North America. where fans mostly know her perennial Christmas duet with The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York.”

Before her untimely death, Kirsty released Tropical Brainstorm, her first studio album in seven years. While the previous Titanic Days was her “sad divorce album,” Brainstorm is exuberant: uptempo and optimistic music paired with Kirsty’s witty and wise lyrics. The sound is a fusion of Britpop and the Latin sounds of mambo and samba. Since 1991′s “My Affair,” Kirsty had worked with Latin musicians and Cuban charities, and sadly she was killed in a boating accident off the coast of Mexico, one of the locales that inspired her music, so full of life.

The good humour and warmth of Tropical Brainstorm starts with the lead track, an ode to the relaxed Cuban character, Mambo de la Luna, continuing with the hilarious “In These Shoes?” (covered by Bette Midler and featured in an episode of Sex and the City), “Treachery,” a tables-turned song about stalking an unsuspecting fan, and “Here Comes That Man Again,” a risqué, comic tale of online shenanigans with a Dutch pornographer. Other highlights include the soccer saga “England 2 Columbia 0″ (when it comes to love, Kirsty knows “how those Columbians feel”) and the playful “Us Amazonians,” about a back-to-nature South American matriarchal society. Brainstorm closes with “Head,” a jazzy, sax-y piece as smoky as Kirsty’s late-night, husky voice.

In my store, “Tropical Brainstorm” has become a secret weapon: we play it both to raise our spirits and, I admit, because every week we manage to make a few converts. Good for business, but besides, Kirsty’s fans are known for their dedication to foisting her under-appreciated talent on all. Brainstorm is a rare thing, an end-to-end good listen that puts a smile on everyone’s face. It is, to quote “Alegria,” purely, simply, an album of “happiness and joy.”

First published winter 2003.