Hargrove, the One Fingered Bandit

Class, is defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as : elegance, grace and dignity. These traits in no way describe Buzz Hargrove, or anyone else who calls themselves "Buzz" for that matter. Well, maybe with the exeption of Buzz Aldrin. I guess Edwin Aldrin wasn't a cool enough name for him. Hargrove's real first name is Basil. From this point on I will refer to "Buzz" by his Christian name. Perhaps it will remotely transport a bit of elegance, grace and dignity to his profoundly short sighted brain and ingrained sense of spectacular ineptitude.

As if our city's hard earned reputation as the Asshole of Canada needed any more bolstering, we now have the Grand Chancellor of Assholes, Basil Hargrove to thank for his one finger salute to the Prime Minister during his farewell address. He also peppered his final speech with eloquent lamentations such as:

"They don't give a damn about the industry. Not to help the workers and families and communities. They don't give a damn about them,"

and my personal favourite,

"They're doing it trying to convince people that they're good people and they want to buy the votes of the autoworkers."

I had no idea that approximately 4,000 votes were so valuable. Lets do the math. 80,000,000 divided by 4,000 votes comes out to about $20,000 a vote, give or take a few hanging chads. Yeah, that makes perfect sense Basil, you are a gentleman and a scholar.

Perception, unforuntately, is reality in today's society. If people see our "leaders" such as Basil giving the Prime Minister the bird, then what does that say about Windsor's regular people?
Perhaps we could all start some sort of national campaign to convince the rest of Canada that giving the middle finger is a common greeting in Windsor. Let's trick everybody else. C'mon it will be hilarious! Tell them it's a part of our local culture, like a Brooklyn accent, or a Philly cheese steak. That giving the finger in Windsor is a great sign of respect, and that Harper should be honoured at such a gesture. Hargrove was simply thanking his PM in his customary way. We could say things like, "Our mayor gave us the finger last month after announcing the plans for the downtown canal, and we were all so thrilled, it was such a treat. In all my life I've never been so flattered".

All kidding aside this event today simply cements in the collective consciousness of our country that Windsor is a backwater town, not a city, full of loutish, beer swilling losers who wait until after they recieve free money from the government to tell that same government to go fuck themselves. Basil you truly are a master of public relations, a gentleman and a scholar.
I, on behalf of the rest of this city, thank you, Basil for ruining any chance of the Conservative Party, or any other party for that matter, helping us at all in the future. Oh, and can someone tell Basil our economy is about as vibrant and healthy as a man with altitude sickness? I don't think he knows. Maybe his handlers just keep giving him the same 30 newspapers from 1995, over and over again, so in his "mind" we can flip the prime minister off because people come from all over Canada to work in the auto industry, gas is 30 cents a litre, our dollar is worth 50 cents American and that new episode of Seinfeld, the contest, was really hilarious! Have you heard of this thing called the "internet"? He hasnt either.

Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope beyond hope that people suddenly will want to buy Volkswagen and Nissan minivans by the boatload even though they drink as much gas as the domestics.

Food for thought: the Nissan minivan sold a whopping 1,800 units per month last year. They are flying off the shelves, and Windsor "may" get to build them. I love this town and it's optimistic attitude, yet we fail to see the bigger picture. Excuse me while I go over here and bury old Mr. Diversified Economy in the cold earth over here... there we are. Oh and you wont be needing that history book that tells countless tales of countless towns who relied on one industry until that industry finally left. This eventually turned those towns into havens for the greyhairs, or better yet, "service based" economies, but I digress. Let me just throw that into that lovely fire over there... nice and warm isn't it? Don't worry, history never repeats itself.

I will close this evening with some Fun Facts. Hope you enjoy them, and remember, knowledge is power, and so is a Nissan minivan. Also, when in front of guests from out of town, make sure we give each other the finger and show each other a great deal of respect.

-Basil is reknowned throughout the world as the "king of the herbs", and is widely used in Italian cooking. The word basil derives it's meaning from the ancient Greek "basileus" meaning "King". "Buzz" has it's origins in twentieth century North American parlour language, describing a haircut.