this hideous election

Don't talk to me right now, okay? The unimaginable has happened - a beefy-faced small-minded red-neck (what other hyphenated words can I think of?) idiot bully is now the mayor of Toronto. Unbelievable. "The revenge of the suburbs," I heard someone say on the radio before I turned it off.

THANK YOU, MIKE HARRIS, for destroying the old City of Toronto, so "the revenge of the suburbs" is possible. You son of a bitch, you must be really happy. Of all the politicians I have loathed - George Bush! Stephen Harper! - you are still, after all this time, number one, and never more so than tonight.

Ah well. Perhaps this will inflame idealistic people to get involved. I've lived long enough to know that it's possible to feel joyful at election results (Stephane Dion!) and to find out, months or years later, that things were just not going to work out. So perhaps the reverse is also true, and there will be unforeseen positive results from this horrible event. Let us hope. My friend Lynn writes from France that the country is paralyzed in protest against Sarkozy, all classes cancelled, high-school students raging in the streets. I wonder if Canada will ever be like that.

In the meantime, there's a documentary on Bravo about the Rolling Stones, the perfect antidote to tonight. What a strange band they are - Mick, the manic man-boy with no hips and big lips, jerking and writhing in the front, and behind him, the mysterious malevolence of the pirate Keith and the silent background non-entities, Ron and Bill. So totally different from my Beatle boys, four independent, vibrant personalities, and that perfect balance, for most of their musical lives at least, between John and Paul - all of them (well, rarely Ringo) writing, singing, at the front.

I am focusing tonight on the Rolling Stones, so I don't have to think about that piggy red face on the front page tomorrow. As Howard Moscoe said, in the brief bit I watched on TV, "This is a man who as a councillor couldn't even work with the RIGHT WING of council. It'll be a ride."

Yes indeed. As a big band once said, "You can't always get what you want." This time, the city didn't get what it needs, either. But perhaps, next time, it will.