It is the Easter weekend, and who doesn’t have bunny on the brain? Ever since I can remember, Easter has always represented to me great big chocolate bunnies which looked delicious in the store and tasted better than anything I can imagine.
This Easter, however, a different kind of bunny has invaded the cerebral hutch. It is the one created half a century ago by the Hugh Hefner fun factory. Please do not misunderstand. I am not for a moment suggesting that the Playboy Corp.‘s feminine assets replace the real cottontail in Easter parades or any other celebrations of the Resurrection.
I simply have Playboy’s rabbit in my think patch because some people in Winnipeg have decided to rhetorically crucify their mayor.
Sam Katz, a 50-something guy who has been a professional politician for less than two years, has slipped on a banana peel. It happened after a civic ceremony in which he bestowed local honours on speed skating champions Cindy Klassen, Clara Hughes and Shannon Rempel. Joining them were two members of the gold-medal-winning women’s hockey team, Jennifer Botterill and Sami Jo Small. These women were on stage for two simple reasons. 1) They distinguished themselves representing Canada at the Winter Olympics. 2) The first ice they skated on was in Winnipeg.
Katz, who made his bones as a promoter, and is a master of the photo-op, helped to create a very good one for the community, its treasured Olympians and himself. A short time after the ceremony, in which he shared a platform with the five female athletes, he found himself in a conversation with a reporter. He was asked what it felt like to be there. He uttered these little words: “For the first time, I got to feel like Hugh Hefner.”
Quick like a bunny. Just think about how easy it would be to turn those words into bullets and shoot them into the image of a middle-aged man who feels flattered to be seen with five very accomplished young women. Was the politician thinking with his big brain or the one that rests in one’s cotton briefs? It is the kind of line that creates nightmares for political spinners working for a politician.
They know the words “Hugh Hefner” are loaded with possibilities for opponents of a public personality. The path of least resistance is always the easiest one to take. A critic can say the mayor is comparing women of substance with women of fluff. This demonstrates his insensitivity to women in general and the talent of these women in particular.
Sounds like the ancient feminist lamp oil that burned in the ‘60s?
Now, I will be the first to say that in 2006 if you are a public official and you have the benefit of hosting a ceremony with five star, world-class athletes like Klassen and Hughes and Rempel, you are shooting yourself in the foot by bringing up the name of the great sexual lamplighter of the ‘60s, Hugh Hefner. Let’s face it, guys.
While some of us still think he is cool, if any 80-year-old man wanted to date our 20-something daughters, we would tell him to stuff his pipe where the sun don’t shine.
Was the mayor’s ad lib out of synch with the times? You bet. But for anyone to draw the conclusion based on a few careless words that any man saying them must have no respect for women of excellence is a bit fluffy.
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