Belligerent and clearly in love
Posted on October 2nd, 2009 –
Let me take you way back to last Friday. For me it’s way back.
Anyway, former politician John Tory was on CFRB voicing his views on the announcement by Mayor Miller that he wouldn’t be running for office again next year. John and co-host Tarek took a call from a “Sandra from Toronto” who vigorously defended the mayor and his handling of the garbage strike.
“What the mayor did during negotiations is, for the first time, tackled that with two of the unions and said it couldn’t go on.” – Do I sense a spark?
“And I bet, John, if you run for office, you wouldn’t be able to do what he accomplished.” – Oh my! Is it getting warm in here?
“…putting out the most ridiculous comments about a man who’s probably the most brilliant politician, municipally, anywhere in the country who leads all the other mayors across Canada and was chosen by those mayors to speak on their behalf.” – Woaw, Sandra! Put it back in your pants!
Okay, maybe I’m misreading it, but that’s a whole lotta man-stand-behindin’ for an anonymous “Sandra”. And she didn’t sound like a typical CFRB caller. She was conspicuously comfortable with publicly gobbing off. At least I remember it that way; I was half awake when I heard the replay the following week. The one part that stuck with me, though, was this:
“And good luck to you, John, because you’re a three-time loser and I don’t see you being successful in the future.”
Come on, “Sandra”, why don’t you tell us how you really feel?
Okay, but that’s just the beginning. You see, “Sandra” apparently has a pretty recognizable voice. Tarek asked her, “”Sandra, do you work for the city?”, to which she replied:
“I don’t work for the city, but I’m telling you the truth.”
*ding*
Tarek was having none of it. He was pretty sure that that had been Sandra Bussin, city councillor for the fru-fru Beaches neighbourhood.
So CFRB did a little interview campaign the following day asking various councillors if the voice on the tape sounded familiar. Most responded by saying that it sounded an awful lot like Sandra Bussin. They’d know because she’s also the Speaker for city council.
It’s the Speaker’s job to establish decorum – basically to set and mediate the tone of meetings. A Speaker should also be (or at least appear to be), impartial so that all sides get to have an equal say during debates. So if this had, in fact, been the Speaker that had called in and been both belligerent and clearly in love with Mayor Miller (i.e. not impartial), that would be pretty serious.
It’s essentially breaking the first two rules of being a city council Speaker. Kind of like a cop murdering an innocent civilian and then committing an armed robbery while on the job. Well, maybe not that serious, but still it demonstrates that there’s an incapability there to carry out the primary duties of the job.
On Wednesday of this week, we discovered that – lo and behold – it was Sandra Bussin that had called in to the show. She fessed up and sent a letter of apology to CFRB in which she did the proper politicianly thing and fudged the facts:
“In hindsight, I realize that some of my comments were intemperate and that I should have clarified my identity.”
“Intemperate”, is that what you call just a wee bit of bitch these days? And I’m going to go ahead and suggest that not having an identity and denying an identity are two different things.
But, I suppose if I were doing something forbidden, I might want to hide my identity too.
“It was a very emotional day for me as result of Mayor Miller’s announcement. I called your program on the spur of the moment upset over remarks that were being made about the Mayor.”
Take a page from David Letterman, honesty will set you free, Sandra!
... with pictures
... with sounds
... with videos
... with opinions
... that's shorter
... that's longer
October 5th, 2009 12:59 pm
Follow-up: CFRB invited Sandra Bussin to appear on John Tory's show this afternoon (Monday, October 5th). I bet it'll be a good one if you're near the radio! (http://www.newstalk1010.com/player/player.html if you're not)