The pooped party: Alexa McDonough’s resignation as New Democratic Party (NDP) leader and the campaign to succeed her were a one-day media wonder last week; then it was back to Jean versus Paul and the Liberals. Why should the fate of the NDP be of any greater interest?

The real threat to the Liberals, I’d say, comes not from Stephen Harper’s Alliance, but from a fractured Parliament, leading to minority government and a role for the NDP in a coalition.

This could easily have occurred any time in the past three elections; the Liberals have been impressive at staving it off by sidling to the right, pre-empting the main appeals of the parties there.

For decades in the mid-20th century, the Liberals had sidled left, to undercut the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) , NDP, Communists etc. But, lately, they’ve been able to ignore any challenge from the left, due to a demoralized NDP (it would be hard to understate how depressed many members are); leaders who tended to fade from view, on TV or even when physically present; and a Zeitgeist that presumes the left is toast.

What’s odd about the Zeitgeist is that it’s at odds with the voters, who remain essentially social democratic in their attitudes — in favour of strong government, public versus private values etc. — according to surveys by Ekos Research and my own rich instincts. “Canada has social democratic values,” said NDP leadership candidate Bill Blaikie, “why shouldn’t they be governed by those values?”

An excellent question, if you don’t mind not being trendy. Besides, the new, revolutionary right has been around long enough now that it looks mouldy, and could be easily challenged from the left, among those who always yearn for “change” and something new.

What are the chances of the NDP taking advantage of this situation? The party is adroit at missing the boat. It’s forever trying to look pragmatic, modern and politically hip. It’s time for a woman, they said in 1989, out of nowhere. Now they’re saying it’s time for someone from a city.

How do they know these things? It’s sheer desperation. I hear them frenetically discuss “positioning” their candidate, a term derived from supermarket shelving theory. (Do you put the Frosted Flakes on mummy’s eye level or the kids’?) For my money, the only positioning voters respond to is someone who sounds like they say what they mean.

For the union makes us wrong? In a Globe and Mail column on the Canadian Labour Congress’s annual convention in Vancouver, Margaret Wente wrote, “It’s hard to see how the Mideast conflict is relevant to the labour issues of flight attendants, garbage collectors and daycare workers. But Canada’s biggest unions spend lots of time on world peace and justice.”

I’d say this falls in the category of systemic classism, on the model of systemic racism — a position not explicitly racist, or even explicitly anti-racist, but which betrays a bias nonetheless. The core of such bias is always extending a less fully human range to “others” than to one’s own group.

So workers are somehow misallocating their time; world peace and justice are out of their proper range — although Margaret Wente herself uses her column to meander from CanLit to the Mideast to home appliances. Has she any idea how constricting, strangulating and infuriating her implication — you may not go there — feels to workers and others?

This is a matter of respect for simple human rights. It is up to workers how they use their organizations. If they told Margaret Wente what to write on, she would consider it interference with her freedom of speech. Yet she does not extend to them the basic right of self-definition that she assumes for herself.

That’s what I mean by an implicit bias. It’s amazing how issues such as free speech and human rights, which I used to consider obvious, boring and best left to unadventurous liberals rather than true radicals, remain deeply unsettled and imperilled. How many people really believe in free speech? Who truly upholds full human rights?

The best sports metaphor: There’s a silly question about sports writing that asks which sport gets the best writing. “The bigger the ball, the worse the writing,” wrote George Plimpton about soccer, quoted by Noah Richler in the National Post. The self-lacerating Canadian version is: How come baseball writing is better than hockey writing? It’s become clichéd, so I’d like to propose an equally pointless, irresolvable topic:

Which sport has the best metaphor potential, as in Thomas Boswell’s notion that life imitates the World Series. On this one, I think hockey fares well. Here are two observations with metaphor potential by friends who have watched the current playoff grind.

(1) I like hockey because it combines brutal physical collision with dainty, mincing footwork and delicate stickhandling manoeuvres, jammed on top of each other.
Wham/Skate. (2) I like hockey because of the decisive role that raw emotion can play in the outcome. You couldn’t say either of those about baseball, could you?

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.