The mayor seems a little tightly wrapped these days, eh?
Bob from Flacklife lists some of the lowlights of Larry O’Brien’s career as mayor today, finishing up with the Mayor’s temper tantrum yesterday.
It seems the Mayor’s grown son, Michael, was poking around in the blogosphere and didn’t like some of the things he read about his daddy. He left some allegedly insulting comments on Apply-Liberally’s blog.
Later, during an interview, a CBC reporter asked the mayor about those comments, and the mayor blew up, said some things, and then attempted to erase the reporter’s tape.
Apparently Michael doesn’t like people criticizing his father and Larry doesn’t like people criticizing his son, which could be seen as noble if it weren’t so naive.
One might think that Larry should have understood when he took the job that he was removing himself and his family from a life of relative obscurity.
One might also think that a reasonably intelligent man in his 20s should be able to understand that every citizen of this city has the right and the responsibility to question whether the mayor is doing a good job.
The whole family should know by now that when any one of them steps into the limelight by doing something stupid, especially in the mayor’s defence, the rest of us are not going to politely avert our eyes to spare them the embarrassment they’re causing one another.
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So…it would appear that mayor O’Brian thinks he can control the media….How interesting!
Well stated, ma’am. I often despair for the state of city politics with this mayor.
He doesn’t seem to understand that if one (two, three, four…) of his near family are alleged to have behaved badly, he has no right – none – to order the media or anyone else not to check the stories. If the allegations aren’t true, that will come out. If they are true, that will come out also, no matter what he tries to do about it. But trying to squelch them so publicly and clumsily just looks bad.
And since he’s a guy whose past career is (ahem) alleged to have hinged on being tech-savvy, isn’t it ironic that he can’t figure out a simple digital recording device…?
Sigh… it warms my heart to read about the strong bond between a father and a son… “Like father like son”… “the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree”, etc. I bet Larry thanked his son profusely for defending him publicly. That sure took courage… sigh…
Carmen, his efforts to control The Ottawa Citizen have been reduced to a petulant refusal to read it. 😉
Coyote, yes, it just shows that there are a multitude of ways in which a city cannot be run like a business – and one of them is a mayor can’t just slam his fist on the table and treat everybody like they report to him and he has the final say. He’s just the mayor – he doesn’t control the city.
What’s particularly humorous about all this is that very few of us would hear about these boneheaded things his family members are doing if the mayor wasn’t drawing attention to them himself with his bizarre over-reactions.
Woodsy, either it was a warm bonding opportunity between them or else Larry took Michael out to the woodshed afterwards. If it were me, I wouldn’t be upset if my son left comments defending me on someone’s blog, but I would be embarrassed if those comments were as dumb as Michael’s were.
I was being facetious, Zoom… ah, but you knew that ; )
I doubt Michael was reprimanded. I don’t imagine that Larry understands anymore than his son that they are the cause of their own bad publicity…
Yes I knew that woodsy.
Did I ever mention that facetious is one of my favourite words, because it’s one of only two words in the english language that contains all the vowels, in order?
I love the awesome power of the internet. I’m always amazed at how many people who really should be getting on top of this medium are being defeated by it. A guy in the mayor’s position should have a full-time person monitoring blogs and social networking sites to keep Mayor Larry in the loop and to devise clever ways to deflect, mitigate and improve what is being said about him.
A month or two ago I read on David Reevely’s blog that the mayor said he was going to start a blog of his own. If I remember correctly, the mayor saw it as a way of circumventing the pesky media and communicating directly with the citizens of Ottawa.
I hope he does it. The fact that it’s taking so long makes me think either he’s chickening out or he’s going to hire a ghost blogger. (Or maybe he’ll hire his son -bwahahahahahhahahaa!!!)
Hey Zoom,
Been lurking a while and thought I’d poke my head in.
Do we know each other? There is something very familiar about you…I did live in Ottawa for 7 years recently…
Hi Wandering Coyote. Thanks for dropping by and saying hi. As far as I know, we’ve never met. I actually had no idea you had lived in Ottawa til right this minute.
I liked your list of pet peeves. I hate it when people spit on the sidewalk too.
zoom
I like the word facetious too, Zoom, because I associate it with a very funny story.
Hmmmm I might just blog the story…
It also tickles my tongue when I say it…