How has sneering at Ford worked?
Next time you’re slapping your forehead at some unbearably self-righteous moral pronouncement by your local neighbourhood “progressive,” take a moment to consider this: maybe they just can’t help themselves.
Passing judgment on other people’s standards seems baked into the DNA of liberals and leftists. They can’t contain themselves, they HAVE to be condescending. Justin Trudeau demonstrates it every time he lets slip some sarcastic remark in front of the common folk — “Thanks for your donation,” “We like to say peoplekind.” The need to preen appears particularly acute among urban dwellers, but I imagine there’s a solid core of rural-based pompous twits out there as well. (Note to social media: please don’t take it on yourself to prove me correct in that last supposition.)
Thus, the Ontario government’s effort to nudge alcohol policies out of the Prohibition era is being greeted with just the sort of supercilious priggishness that so often accompanies “progressive” thought. Premier doug Ford got a good dressing down from habitués of coffee bars and vegan eateries over his “buck a beer” campaign, on the presumption that no one this side of Fred Flintstone would be caught imbibing so cheap and lowly a beverage. If Ford had championed buck-a-peroni it might have been different. Or buck-a-craft-ipa, beers that taste like a fruit salad being all the rage right now.
But that’s the whole thing with being an imperious bore. It’s all in the fine details. Plenty of imperious bores drink beer, they just like to establish lines of demarcation over which sort is acceptable, and which isn’t, because nothing says “progressive” like an arbitrary standard that divides the respectable from the riff-raff.
The neo-revolution Ford introduced in his government’s first budget produced a predictable cry of horror from those who consider themselves more qualified to dictate public taste. Policies on the sale of alcohol that have operated in civilized countries for decades, without producing whole populations of slobbering drunks, are still viewed as far too permissive for some still-active corners of Puritan Ontario. What about drunk driving? What about increased risk of liver disease? One educated onlooker remarked that “increasing access to cheap alcohol” was certain to aggravate these problems, which would no doubt be true if alcohol in Ontario was actually cheap. It’s not, and Ford has shown no sign of wanting to make it such. Buck-a-beer was a stunt with a very short shelf life.
New democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath reacted with her usual display of horror. The fact members of Ndp-supporting labour unions will now be able to buy a beer at the end of their night shift — rather than waiting for more socially approved cocktail hours late in the day — struck her as yet another sign of the government’s heinous disregard for human health. “When you make these kind of changes you have to recognize that they will have (social) impacts and plan for those impacts,” she said. “Any person who has lost a loved one to drunk driving would be horrified.”
The World Health Organization’s global status report on road safety indicates Canada is already one of the worst countries for drunk driving, while a u.s. study found we top a list of 19 wealthy countries for percentage of roadway deaths linked to alcohol impairment. The figures suggest decades of draconian restrictions haven’t done much to remedy the problem. There are many factors behind drunk driving; shifting booze sales from a shelf in one store to a shelf in another store isn’t necessarily an overwhelming cause. Tougher penalties, stricter enforcement and heightened social disapproval are more likely to produce results.
Public prurience towards drinking might sit more comfortably if Western governments hadn’t already abandoned themselves so wholeheartedly to the sin business. They happily collect billions of dollars from lotteries, casinos and tobacco taxes, they encourage the wine industry, and they make cushy deals with monopoly beer retailers. The federal government can’t stop congratulating itself for keeping its pledge to legalize the marijuana business, which it sees as validation of its far-sighted progressivism, notwithstanding the fact it means kids will inevitably have a much easier time getting their hands on some weed.
That’s because pot is cool, expensive wine is sophisticated, lotteries are just a bit of fun, but a glass of beer at the wrong hour of the day is a sign of social collapse and moral disorder. Wineand-cheese before the concert is entirely civilized, while a tailgate party before the game is for boors: one Liberal admirer in the media denounced “American-style” tailgaters, presumably recognized by their prominent Obama-biden buttons. If you sip a drink inside a barrier on a sidewalk outside a restaurant, the universe moves on undisturbed. Take away the barrier and all hell might break loose.
Ford gets a lot of grief for his blue-collar tastes. Imagine a guy who doesn’t look down on people who waste their money in roadside casinos, rather than flying to Vegas to take in Celine at $500 a seat. Who might, God help us, favour installing a ferris wheel at Ontario place (people love ferris wheels, but never mind that).
He has also been justifiably criticized for some klutzy decisions in his opening months as premier: bungling the rollout of new autism policies, feeding critics by appearing to target cuts at the most vulnerable, retreating too often from ill-considered decisions.
What the critics miss is that the two aren’t linked. The government may have made mistakes, but not because it identifies with working people rather than profs, highbrows and the over-educated. Any more than Mcgill university can be held to blame for the judgment failures of Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts. They made their own mistakes, all on their own. The people looking down their noses at Ford over his tastes rather than his performance say as much about themselves as they do about him.
FORD GETS A LOT OF GRIEF FOR HIS BLUE-COLLAR TASTES.