In the speculation surrounding the Rahim Jaffer/Helena Guergis scandal, one tidbit caught my eye: It has been suggested that Mr. Jaffer walked on the charge of possession of cocaine because, when the police pulled his car over, the cocaine was in his suit jacket pocket and his jacket was hanging over the back of his seat.
Really? Is that how it works? I have to admit that hanging up a coat properly does go a long way toward establishing character in our house. Anyone does that correctly and his other offences do tend to get overlooked – but I had no idea this kind of slack was being cut on a provincial legal level.
Just hang it up nicely and you're a free man, apparently. Why, who made the laws in this country? Joan Crawford?
This is excellent news for me because if Mr. Jaffer did have a possession charge dropped because he hung up his coat, I think I could pull off something totally Ocean's Eleven over at Casino Rama and walk because, God's truth, I'm careful with my clothes.
Why, I think I could rob a bank and shoot a bystander and yet when the details of my laundry life were revealed, I'd be allowed leave that court with an unblemished record.
“Your Honour,” my lawyer would only have to say, “my client files her stockings in individual bags, owns a Miele washer/dryer set and may I enter into evidence her imported hand-wash soap for delicates, which she washes in a dedicated sink?”
“But does Miele not have a stellar hand-wash cycle, counsel?”
“Yes, your Honour, it does, but my client still hand-washes many items as a precaution.”
“Case dismissed!” the judge would announce, banging her gavel (carefully avoiding hammering her sleeve) as, over in the next courtroom, the court stenographer dutifully records the time-worn legal cliché, “I'm aware of the serious nature of my client's offences, your Honour, but ask you to consider both his time already served and his shoe trees!”
If a suspect said, “Yes, that's my dead Gran there, officer, and yes, we'd been quarrelling, but look, I have her in a garment bag!” would he only get community service?
A friend of mine read about the Jaffer-jacket-walk and said, “I'm going to the Big House, for sure. I can't iron to save my life.”
I'll miss him but in my ideal world, the RCMP would bring sniffer dogs to the airport and patrol for Febreze.
Now some have said the media coverage of Guergis/Jaffer has been sexist, but I don't see it myself.
It pains other women to admit it, but sometimes a woman's behaviour is just awful. We try and cover for her, correct her gently – talk over her when she gets really embarrassing. Ironically, we sometimes say, “Psst, darling, status of women, cut it out.”
What do you think we're doing together in the bathroom? Maybe you've seen one of us lunge across a party (or an airport), all-Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon-style, yelling “Noooooo!” when another woman starts behaving in a manner that is both appalling and reinforces a derogatory stereotype of our sex – as did Ms. Guergis.
Now I suffered the indignity of a near strip-search at an airport last week, and it wasn't until they said, “Please remove your boots” that the absolute insanity of Ms. Guergis's response hit me.
What kind of a person throws boots? First of all, please see above on the proper care of clothes. And second, whether one's fighting or running away, one is going to want one's boots. Thank God she wasn't Minister of Defence.
No, Ms. Guergis was Minister for the Status of Women. Sigh. Thanks a lot, Helena.
No, the coverage of this hasn't been sexist or racist. If anything it's been cocaine-ist: As soon I heard about the charges against Mr. Jaffer, I knew his political career was over, and yet had he been caught with any other drug, he could have run for office again.
A little marijuana? Maybe he'd have actually won next time. Heroin? Meth? He would only have had to apologize, cry, enter rehab, then gun hard for those sympathy votes – but cocaine's just too urban, too decadent.
The truth is a guy could stumble out of a suburban Tim Hortons in Brandon practically leaking OxyContin (and OxyContin does sound like something one would leak) and the Tories might consider rehabilitating him. You get caught driving out of Toronto with cocaine in your suit jacket, the charges may vanish because you're sartorially unimpeachable or something, but politically, you're toast.
