The headline could be wishful thinking but Brown really needs to go. He has been the Member of Parliament here in Babel for five years. He is, beyond a doubt, one of the sorriest Members of Parliament we have ever seen. And we have known some really bad ones during almost 50 years of activity on the political scene.
We have seen the vindictive, the incompetent, the shrill, the self serving, the stupid, the egotistical, the dishonest and the overly partisan. They can be of any party. Nobody’s perfect. A friend once gave a speech defending the ignorant people who are elected to Parliament. He insisted that ignorant Canadians deserve representation in the House along with the intelligent.
But there is no question that the average I.Q. in the House of Commons could improve when Brown is gone. And despite the humour of what our friend espoused, the voters of Babel do not deserve Brown. Nobody deserves that.
In clinical terms, Brown might be a case of arrested development. All a layman can do is note the symptoms and hope he gets professional help.
At 32, he certainly does not act his age. Maybe one of the reasons that he comes across as so juvenile is that he has never held a job. He lacks life experience. Women in his age group do not appear to like him. Men his age often seem uncomfortable with him.
One of the better aspects of Brown’s door-knocking during the election campaign is that more voters are meeting him. It does not improve his vote.
His campaign is very shallow. In a four-page letter he had ready to mail to Babel voters at the beginning of the campaign, it was amazing how little he had to say about his time in the House of Commons or on House committees. He seems to have never had an idea, a suggestion or a strong belief other than to be at his party’s beck and call. He certainly does not represent his electoral district.
As would any callow youth, he tends to fabricate his stories for the voters. As he is a heavy advertiser and water boy for the local media, they are hardly critical of his fabrications. Their preferences are all too obvious.
As a member of the House of Commons Heritage Committee, that is responsible for the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, we watched him appear before the Commission earlier this year. He gave them a silly story about his grandmother watching him on city council and he lauded CTV’s /A Channel for providing the coverage of city council for the people of Babel.
The only problem with his story—as we pointed out to the Commission after he left—any Babel resident knows that it is the Rogers Cable channel that has always provided regular coverage of city hall.
What is worse, Brown thinks he is still on city council. That is another story.
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