Scandals setting Canada apart as just ordinary

These are marvellous days. You don’t have to take my word for it. Listen to The Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

‘‘ Marvellous adj. 1 astonishing. 2 excellent. 3 extremely improbable.’’ The only quibble might be with that last one, No. 3. We still insist on thinking what’s been going on is extremely improbable, when every news cycle brings us fresh evidence that it’s part of the national fabric. Only in its dreams can the Cirque du Soleil hope to be as astonishing and excellent — and hair- raising — as the future volumes of Canadian history. When the judge’s report on the MFP inquiry and the baring of Brian Mulroney’s unpleasant thoughts arrive at the same instant, it’s hard to catch your breath. Who’d have thought the national fabric could be turned into costumes for clowns? There’s even a freak show. Hurry, hurry — see a man who was prime minister whose mouth ran away with his brain.

Wasn’t that the first lesson in political kindergarten? ‘‘The journalist is not your friend.’’

This can be tricky if the journalist is famous and you are a showoff. And if the journalist, as Peter C. Newman did, helped write your speech to the 1976 leadership convention while he was editor of Maclean’s. And if the journalist, who is every bit as calculating as you are, plays on your monumental self- regard. And you reveal all. In four- letter splendour. What is it they say about riding the tiger — that you ( or your wife) shouldn’t have a falling out with it when it has your testicles between its teeth?

For a smart guy, how dumb was that?

Canada’s weakness is that we have a monumental self- regard, and it’s one that our faith in our own modesty prevents us from seeing. We could never possibly have a prime minister who was as vile a human being as Mulroney was, with his own words to prove it. We could never believe that our marquee corporate entrepreneur might turn out to be as just plain crooked as his inseparable business partner has confessed to being, and turned state’s evidence. We could never conceive of a federal government so porkbarrel that it would give sponsorship millions to cronies without at least getting something in return. We couldn’t imagine that the government of our biggest city was up to its armpits in corruption. We could never suppose that same city might turn into a shooting gallery for gangsters who are as heavily armed as the police. And it wounds me personally to acknowledge that a journalist, one sometimes described as the most distinguished in the country, might play both sides: political hack by night, guiding the country’s leading newsmagazine by day. But when it comes to ethics, we could discuss journalism’s and hockey’s for the next 20 years and not pin down the difference. These other things, though, strike at the heart of our own wistful image as a better sort of place, a place where stuff like this doesn’t go on.

Or, if it does, it goes on at discreet intervals, leaving time in between to forget the previous embarrassment. Never all at once.

Brian Mulroney wasn’t the only smart guy. Conrad Black was smarter than all of us put together and never missed a chance to tell us. Jean Chrétien, we were frequently told, was smarter than he let on; dumb like a fox. When the judicial report comes down on the sponsorship fiasco we’ll see if he was actually dumb like a skunk. Tom Jakobek was so smart that he got insulted whenever anybody asked what he was up to. They were bullies, too. Notorious for it. It’s what gave them room to manoeuvre.

Agangster with a gun is a bully by definition; other bullies have other weapons. Mulroney and Black and Chrétien and Jakobek, if they couldn’t get around you, they’d storm over you. Their bombast was formidable ( ranging from the megasyllabic to the unintelligible), their bristling egomania visible from Saturn. We Canadians don’t like it when somebody makes a scene, and if you confronted any of these guys on anything they made one. We were pushovers. And here’s what it comes down to: our politicians are no different than anybody else’s, our business titans are no different than anybody else’s, our gangsters are no different than anybody else’s, and our journalists are journalists. The thing that sets Canada apart is how ordinary we are. If anybody tries to tell you they’re as ordinary as we are, tell them they’re ignorant bastards. Slinger’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays.