Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Chantal Hebert points out that the biggest difference resulting from the NDP's emergence as Canada's official opposition may have to do with gender rather than age:

A lot has been written and said about the youthfulness of the new Parliament but at first glance, it is the larger place that women are staking out in the House of Commons that strikes the eye.

The latter is a direct by-product of the advent of the NDP as official Opposition.

Layton’s caucus boasts more women than the past parliamentary average. At 40 per cent, the NDP is as close to parity as any federal party has ever come. The party also exhibits a greater willingness to walk the talk of gender equality.

In their previous incarnation as official Opposition, the Liberals did not lack for able women but ultimately the front line of the party was very much a boys club.

Under Michael Ignatieff, the high-profile portfolios of foreign affairs, health, finance and the environment were all held by male critics. Under the NDP, three of those roles — including finance — are now spoken for by women.

- The Bloc's decision to be seen as being onside with the Cons by supporting the budget wasn't surprising enough on its own. But the choice looks particularly odd when compared to the gratuitous obstruction the Bloc leveled at the NDP in scheduling around its convention. And it surely can't be a positive sign if the most substantial contribution the Bloc thinks it can make is to try to ratchet up the incivility level.

- While Greg's critique of Jean Chretien's conservatism is right on point, I'm not sure there's much reason to criticize Susan Delacourt's blog post - particularly when it includes this needed correction to several days worth of highly misleading headlines:

(T)here are some "values" I'd definitely associate more with Conservativism, especially Harper's brand. One of those is a greater emphasis on patriotism and the military. Another would be a belief that the private sector has better ideas than government. In those terms, Canadians' support for those values is actually waning, the poll shows. So how is it possible to say that this brand of conservatism is on the rise?

In other words, the Manning spin about a country moving to the right isn't just unfounded based on a single data point, it's outright false based on past polling. Which goes a long way toward explaining why the Cons are so afraid to defend the bulk of their policies.

- Finally, Alex Balingall comments on the value of humour in getting citizens engaged in politics:

“This generation has a lot of skepticism,” says Boler. “They have a very different political world and a different sort of political sensibility.” That could be why shitharperdid.ca garnered more than four million page views in its first three days, the vast majority of which, says Devlin, came from people under 35. Journalism students at New York University also recently went for laughs by producing a music video for My Water’s On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song), which aims to bring attention to the practice of creating fissures deep underground to loosen up fossil fuels for extraction. The song has a funky, hip-hop feel and includes lines such as, “Frack baby frack till the break of dawn.” So far, the video has been viewed nearly 100,000 times on YouTube. “In all the elections past, we’ve never really had anything aimed specifically at our generation,” says Lisa Lagace, a 25-year-old editorial and marketing assistant. “It’s just been the same old thing: a bunch of old guys talking.”

Boler says this disaffection is fed by a “crisis of faith in truth,” something she sees as an American cultural import. “There’s hardly anyone any longer who has an idealized notion that those in power—or those with economic power—have our best interests at heart,” she says. “The public has lost trust in government, in politicians, in media, in people running Wall Street.” And, she adds, “this generation is growing up in a very grim world,” where laughs are appreciated as a way of tempering the bleakness. Boler also argues that political satire can create an avenue for political engagement—even if that doesn’t always mean turning out to vote. Her proof: the 400,000 who came out for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, led by American satirists Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart last fall.

And while both Devlin and Boler say political satire is on the rise, they also see it as a revival of something “almost ancient.” Comedians have traditionally used satire to express dissent and hold leaders accountable.