Vaughn Palmer in the National Post:
VICTORIA - It was billed as a "no-holds-barred" speech about a woman's lot in B.C. politics, and since Joy MacPhail was the one delivering the goods, they arrived pretty much as advertised, not sparing anyone, herself and her colleagues included.
She began the address on Thursday night to the women's rights committee of the New Democratic Party by saying that she hoped there were no news media representatives present.
Several helpful delegates pointed to yours truly standing in plain sight at the back of the room. Ms. MacPhail said I could stay, and if she held anything back because I was taking notes, I can't think what it would have been.
Not when she characterized the posturings of male politicians as so much ...
Well, I doubt this newspaper would print the expression she used.
So let's just say she accused the men of publicly brandishing their, ah, members (and I don't mean the honourable ones) as a form of one-upmanship.
Hmm-hmm.
Then there was her extended riff on Cabinet appointments in the former NDP government. She divided them into "girl ministries and boy ministries."
Boy ministries involved resource development, the economy and finance -- trucks, dollars and dirt as she tended to characterize it.
In contrast to the kind of things that boys got to play with under Cabinet's equivalent of the Christmas tree, the "girl ministries" were those involving social programs, the needy and other drains on the provincial treasury.
She got her start at the Cabinet table in a "girl ministry," social services, in 1993. She recalled how on the day before then premier Mike Harcourt appointed her, he'd gone out and attacked welfare recipients as "cheats and varmints."
"Oh, and by the way Joy, you're now in charge," she added. "Thanks Mike."
Actually, for a girl, not bad for a rookie. The Social Services portfolio is typically the third-largest in a province, after Health and Education.
After a couple more Cabinet stints, "I finally got a boy ministry -- finance," where, as it happened, she did not make a lot of friends.
"There are a lot of stories about how I was a bit hard on my colleagues in Cabinet," she said. "I have no idea where those stories come from."
She proceeded to tell a real corker. Seems one day a male minister came before her budget-making committee with a new program costing -- ahem -- $100-million.
"It was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard." Pause. "Luckily that day I had PMS, so he didn't get the money."
With women still defining themselves in the political arena, not many would venture a laugh line about pre-menstrual syndrome.
Hey, since she brought it up, maybe I could point out that during the other 21 days of the month, she was running the province's economy into the ground.
But Ms. MacPhail didn't hesitate to joke at her own expense about shopping: "I used to ask, 'Why are we having all these caucus meetings in towns that do not have a Holt Renfrew?' " She also referred to her frequently changing hairstyle: "The first time I appeared on national television, my mother called to say, 'Did you ask the hairdresser to cut your hair that way?' "
Hmm-hmm.
So it went, and the audience roared with glee. She was at it again Friday afternoon, in a speech to the entire party convention that was sprinkled with laugh lines.
She ridiculed Premier Gordon Campbell as a typical male: lost but too proud to ask for directions.
Hmm-hmm.
She portrayed the daily barrage of abuse from the Liberals in the provincial legislature as "full frontal rudity -- and with that group, it ain't a pretty sight."
She brought down the house by joking that B.C.'s New Democrats have gained plenty of wisdom from the mistakes of their leaders over the years: "From Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark, we've all learned to stay the hell away from wooden decks."
Oh, yeah. This is cute. Clark is fair game -- he was forced to resign after an influence-peddling scandal concerning a deck that a neighbor built for him. Said neighbor later turned up with a lucrative casino licence, and the RCMP launched an investigation. He was eventally acquitted, but he showed poor judgement throughout the affair.
Harcourt is a rather different matter. He was at his oceanfront house last year, on the unfenced front deck. The deck was wet from rain, and he slipped somehow and fell 20 feet to the rocks below, knocking himself unconscious and breaking his back. He well might have drowned if his wife hadn't gone looking for him after awhile. As it is, he was lucky to escape paraplegia, though he still uses a cane to walk.
But it's all grist for the comedic mill, eh, Joy?
She even saved a little something for the news media: "I have always seen a positive role for the media and you've never let me down." Pause. "But you have pissed me off ..."
Through it all, there was a serious message about women in politics, from one of the few members of her sex to have risen to lead a major political party in this country.
There was? What was it?
She said the big challenge for women is getting their voices heard among the chorus of assertive men dominating the field.
She dreams of a day, so she told the women's rights committee, "when women speak and the men in the room listen to what they have to say."
Uh, why should they, if this is the best you can do? If a man delivered a similar speech, rife with triteness, cliche, vulgarity, and sexism, capping it off with a big horse-laugh about a female politician's medical misfortunes, Ms. MacPhail would be leading the lynch mob.
Yet another reason to not vote for women. We've got no shortage of mediocre male politicians, and at least we don't have to listen to them prattle on about their superior intellect, compassion and (entirely mythical) bond of sisterhood.
Nor do we have to walk around on tiptoe for fear of wounding their exquisite sensibilities.
Where's Margaret Thatcher when you need her?