The LA Times Op Ed

Right on schedule (at about midnight, PST), the LA Times put up my Op Ed. It’s a pretty dull headline (In fact, it reminds me of some of those you see in The Onion, like Local Man Inspires 14th Offbeat News Story ) The title I had written as a slug was The Country is Always Bluer on the Other Side. Yeah, I know, too ‘clever’.

I was told that it was also picked up on the LA Times Wire, and have since found out that it has appeared on one of my favourite liberal news aggregators, Common Dreams. Holy cow! 4th from the top this morning, 2 away from (Oh crap!) Ralph Where-the-whole-mess-started Nader.

So, without further ado, I post it here, for that day when it scrolls off the current news and I may want to refer to it:

Dems in Control? We’re Still Staying in Canada
by David Drucker

My wife and I awoke, as usual, to NPR. Before political correspondent Mara Liasson got to the end of her first sentence, I knew the news was disastrous. George W. Bush had been reelected.

“Honey,” I said, “remember when we talked about moving to Canada?”

I’m sure a lot of other dyed-in-the-organic-wool liberals muttered something similar that dark morning in 2004, but unlike most of them, we meant it. Plan A: John Kerry wins, we build that dream ski house in Vermont. Plan B: Move to Vancouver, Canada.

So, Plan B it was. We’d had enough of Bush, the direction the United States was going, and this was the last straw. Never mind that we lived in Cambridge, Mass., arguably the most liberal city in the bluest of the blue states. We were packing our bulk granola into our diesel Beetle and heading out.

Eight months later, we were settling into a new home and jobs in British Columbia, when Canada had its own election. For those unfamiliar with the Canadian system of government, the prime minister is elected by parliament — not every four years but after losing a no-confidence vote. After a few of those there was a parliamentary election in January, which led to the election of a new prime minister, Stephen Harper, of Canada’s Conservative Party.

Harper ran on cutting taxes and turning a federal child-care program into a monthly payment per child. The opposition’s negative campaign ads sounded eerily familiar: He supported Bush’s war in Iraq, was against signing the Kyoto environmental accord and wanted to “reexamine” gay marriage (which is legal in Canada). A shiver rippled down from our berets to our Birkenstocks.

Then, a few weeks ago, we awoke, as usual, to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Before CBC morning show host Tom Allen got to the end of his first sentence, I knew: Back in the United States, the Democratic Party had won control of the House and the Senate.

“Honey, did we make a big mistake?”

By “big mistake,” I mean, not the kind in which you switch lines at Whole Foods and the line you’d been in suddenly starts to move. We’re talking big mistake like selling all of your stock in Ben & Jerry’s the day before Unilever buys the company.

But it turns out that Canadian conservatism can look awfully liberal. So far, Harper — derided as “Bush lite” — has, for instance, introduced a partial tax credit for monthly transit passes. The Conservatives have proposed a Clean Air Act for Canada, and although it’s not ideal, it’s still something. Harper said that these new laws would “institute a holistic approach that doesn’t treat the related issues of pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions in isolation.” When was the last time you heard any U.S. politician utter the word “holistic”?

Did I mention universal healthcare? Even Harper seems committed to keeping that.

We’ve come to the conclusion that the United States has drifted so far to the right that any self-respecting Canadian Conservative would be considered a raving liberal in Washington. Stephen Harper is no George W. Bush. We may not agree with him, but we don’t feel ashamed every time he opens his mouth. We might yawn, though.

So we’re staying in Canada. But good luck with that new Congress, eh?

They cut a few items here and there, including a ‘cheap shot’ according to one editor, that I took at Bush.

In the interest of full disclosure, we did, in fact, leave Boston in a Diesel Beetle, but there wasn’t any bulk granola in it (but we have been known to eat, and even make granola. Seriously, if you’ve never made it from scratch, it’s worth a try, at least once.) We sold the car and dropped it off in Washington D.C. . While Pam has been known to wear a beret (and Birkenstocks), I don’t own any (with these oddly shaped feet, fuggedaboutit!). We do listen to Tom Allen, the host of Music and Company, but I can’t remember if it was he or Judy Maddren in the World Report on the hour that had the news. I guess I just wanted to give a plug to Allen, since I’m a huge fan of his show and him. Finally, I make no claims about getting the whole Canadian parliamentary system and election process 100% right. We’ve only been here a relatively short time and I’m only just starting to learn how it all works. I’ll get it down eventually, in preparation for citizenship.

My Newest Writing Assignment

I mentioned in my last posting that I was working on a ‘writing project’. I no longer have to be vague and/or mysterious about it. Through a series of referrals (Thanks very much, Maktaaq and Travis), I was put in touch with an editor at the LA Times, who happens to be an old friend of Travis.

It seems that the LA Times Editorial Dept. was kicking around the idea early last week that an American who had left the country for Canada due in some part to the reelection of Bush in 2004 might have some potentially humorous commentary on the fact that that they now live in a country with a Conservative Prime Minister while the US has since elected a Democratic majority in Congress. So with three degrees of separation traversed, I offered to try to write the Op Ed, knowing full well that if they didn’t like it, my efforts would be up on this blog and that would be that.

I gave it my best shot, spending a three-day holiday weekend holed up in my office at the keyboard writing drafts and running them by friends and family (Thanks also to Pam, Sooz and Matt), trying to get the jokes right, and trying to get it down to between 500 and 800 words. (it’s always easy to write more, harder to write tighter).

The result is…tomorrow I’ll be published in the LA Times! As soon as the URL goes live, I’ll blast out an email announcement to everyone I know, and will copy the text to this blog, since the link will go dark after about 30 days, and I can’t very well plagiarize myself.

Do I like the piece? Well, it’s probably a bit more intentionally humorous than I typically write, and there was one joke in particular that was pulled by the editors because it was a ‘cheap shot’. No matter. Like most writing projects (and I can now say this with conviction), the best part is now, when it’s over and done with. Just as I was happy a decade ago to get to say “I’ve written a couple of books”, I’m also pleased that after tomorrow, I’ll be able to say “I’ve written for the LA Times”.