A Politician Goes Back to School

Overshadowed though it was by events in the wider world , we held an election up here in Canuckistan this past week.  The conservatives won.  The candidate of the losing Liberal party (don't let the name throw you off, they're pretty centrist) was Michael Ignatieff, a former proffie of Cambridge and Harvard.  I can't argue one way or the other about his status as an academic rockstar or his positions as a politician.  But it was encouraging to have a proffie candidate for Prime Minister, someone who approached politics with some intellect and analysis rather than innuendo and attack ads. 

Of course, the electorate enthusiastically embraced this opportunity to hand him his ass in a gift box.

Naturally, too, the campaign ads against him painted him as the dilettante effete profflake.  What else?  How could a professor of world affairs possibly have what it takes to address the issues?  Our last election also saw a former proffie systematically demolished - that time as owlish and ineffective.

So the past week has really rubbed my nose in the fact that most of my fellow Canuckistanis see my profession as essentially useless.

Having lost the election (and his seat in parliament - a big deal in our system), Ignatieff did what any losing candidate does, and went back to his day job.  The paper reports he's taken a position at Toronto's Massey College.  All well and good and yet...

I don't begrudge him his success but...

And maybe it's just the way the paper reported it but....

But Jeebus, Jumping, Junebugs in a Jockstrap, Iggy - didja have to go the Full Monteigh?  The "cozy" office.  The floor to ceiling bookshelves, (oak, one would imagine).  The en suite living quarters no less, overlooking the arboured quadrangle!  And to top it all off, a fireplace by which to pore over learned tomes.

In short did you have to reinforce every sherry-swigging, syllabub-snarfing stereotype people like to hold about perfessers?  Strooth!

My office has floor to ceiling bare cement fer crying in the rain!  Never mind a fireplace - I'd settle for a thermostat - or ventilation for that matter.  (Though in fairness, I must admit my office has a very effective irrigation system - so I frequently am, in fact, crying in the rain.) 

But try explaining that to the neighbours now. 

It's May, and semester is over here in Canuckistan. So naturally, everyone wants to know how I'm "enjoying my vacation."  Tell them I'm schlepping in to my office just like anyone else with a job, and they assume I'm taking a few contemplative hours in my study.  Not trying to arrange crowd control for the three hundred newbies who will descend on me in the fall expecting that the brand new labs in the brand new course will go off without a hitch.  Not trying to publish as the only viable alternative to perishing. 

No, my neighbours are on to my game.  They know.  They know because the most visible proffie in the land has just taken a post that makes universities look like some sort of brainiac day-spa for superannuated eggheads and peripatetic Russian nobility.

*sigh*