Tiny Alligator

Margaret Atwood Hates Harper More Articulately Than I Do

I’ve been fuming for days, ever since Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s ignorant and pandering remarks about ‘ordinary Canadians’ disliking ‘liberal elite artists’. Mr Harper suggests that all artists ever do is attend shiny, expensive galas, bathing in jewels while whining about their diminishing grant funding.

Since then, I’ve been planning this blog post in my head. Something angry but clear, explaining to ‘ordinary Canadians’ how incredibly amazing it is that I am here, in New York City, using Canadian grant money to learn about and make music. How, despite the ridiculously huge cut I took to my standard of living to be here, I wake up every morning excited to hear what new sounds I will hear today. How thrilled I am to be able to take these new sounds and new perspectives back home with me, so that I can be a unique participant in the Canadian cultural voice. How, with the training and experience I’m getting here, I hope to eventually be able to actually employ the musicians in Canada who are generously working for free for me right now.

I was going to include a witty paragraph joshing about the ‘galas’ comment: the biggest ‘gala’ I’ve attended thus far was the night I opened a bottle of cheap corner-store ‘wine’ in celebration of the fact that the roaches have stopped crawling into my bed at night. If this is the life of a ‘liberal elite,’ I’d hate to see how the rest of Canada is living.

There was a piece I was going to say about how, were I part of Harper’s traditional (c)onservative, ‘ordinary Canadian’ voting base, I would still be absolutely offended by his comments. He speaks to the people as if we are 15-year-old high school debate team members looking to score points at the county-wide Federal-Provincial Conference Simulation (I know, because I was there once). This kind of childish stereotyping, this kind of pandering to each camp’s generalized sense of self, helped us to win at high school politics. Please dear God, tell me it doesn’t work in the real world.

But, thankfully, in today’s Globe and Mail, Margaret Atwood has beaten me to it, and said it much better than I ever could have.

Please read her article, pass it on, and encourage your friends and family to keep our cultural voice in mind when they vote on October 14th.