Vanderpool’s brush with ‘oil wrestling’ no liability

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

If the New Democratic Party is going to form the next government, and there is a very good chance that they will, don’t we want its MPPs to be like the real, live Ontarians they’re representing?

As the NDP rise in the polls, they are threatening not only to topple the Liberal government, but also to hand the Ontario Progressive Conservatives their fourth consecutive pie-in-theface humiliation of losing an election that was theirs to win.

Of course, their adversaries are now trying to bring the New Democrats down.

One of the latest victims in the name-and-shame game is Fitz “The Whip” Vanderpool, a former boxing champion, now running for the NDP in Kitchener South-Hespeler.

A couple of days ago, the Liberals dug up some ancient history about him having been endorsed by Campaign Life Coalition back in 2006 when he ran in the municipal election. He had filled out a survey from a group called Defend Traditional Marriage and Family.

Vanderpool survived that knock by issuing an apology and setting the record straight: “I completely support marriage equality for everyone including same-sex couples.”

But it was a one-two punch. Now we have him rubbing shoulders with oil-wrestling women.

The Toronto Sun published

photos and interviews placing Vanderpool at Capers Sports Bar in downtown Kitchener five years ago, with an organization called the Female Oil Wrestling Federation.

It’s pretty much the way it sounds: bikini-clad young women glistening with oil, who wrestle and pose with each other to entertain a male audience. They often appear at bachelor parties and sex conferences.

Their appearance was apparently sponsored by Vanderpool’s boxing gym, and he was there.

A representative for the New Democrats told me Friday that Vanderpool isn’t available for comment “at this time.”

One performer who had her picture taken with Vanderpool said he and his friends were back in the kitchen “hitting on all the girls.”

But the woman, Aliscia Costantiini, told the Sun everything was “harmless” and “not all rapey or anything.”

Well, that’s kind of refreshing. We all want diversity in politics, as in life. But if you check the NDP candidate biographies, you won’t actually find much of that.

Look for yourself on the party’s website. The vast majority of these candidates are union activists, social workers and “passionate” social justice advocates. That’s a lopsided sample when compared to Ontarians as a whole.

The extreme left-wing views of a few of these candidates have led them to be called out for their hostility to Canada’s military and to Israel. Thankfully, those views are only shared by a tiny fraction of the rest of us.

Vanderpool is a welcome exception to his peers. He immigrated here from Trinidad as a child, became a world boxing champion and runs a gym where he works with at-risk youth.

He’s a well-liked guy who owns a business, not a virtue signaller.

Like most of us, he evidently saw nothing wrong in participating in a type of sexy popular culture that is part of the sport and in which no one got hurt.

“Part of his profession is required to wear costumes, and that’s what he has done,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath as she defended him.

Horwath got the details wrong — it was the oil-wrestling women, not Vanderpool, who had the costumes.

But she got the rest of it right with her “who cares and let’s move on” attitude.