Community Sustainability Equity
Pie Didn't Hurt No One
September 1, 2009
Lily Phan yesterday received a sentence of 30 days in jail for an attempted pieing of Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach. She was charged with assault. Everyone knows though that a pie has never hurt anyone.
Pie to the face for many years was a practical joke. Early 20th century comedians and audiences loved the pie in the face joke. From the silent films of Mack Sennett, to Groucho Marx, and even to the Bugs Bunny cartoons, pieing was funny.
Pieing was traditionally done to someone who was arrogant. Humble pie, in the face, brought a person's ego back to earth. Even today, it is a ritual in hockey and baseball for a veteran teammate to pie or to put shaving cream in the face of a rookie after a breakout game while he is being interviewed on national TV.
I have never heard of a rookie suing a teammate for assault for getting pied. The rookie takes it all in good humour. The good sports usually sample the pie and make the best out of the joke.
Politicians, entertainers, and businessmen are also targets of pieing. One of the best was in 1977. Anti-gay activist Anita Bryant was pied at a press conference. Many may know Bryant as the family values crusader who was the nemesis of San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk.
The pieing guru is Noel Godin, who is from Belgium. He has pied Microsoft’s Bill Gates, filmmaker Jean Luc Godard, and Premier Jean Charest. Godin is part of the Entarteurs, an international group who pie political and cultural figures who need to be humbled. Their slogan is “The pie's the limit!”
Pieing gained popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This was a time when neoliberalism peaked. Citizens were told that governments were beholden to international bondholders and business.
Politicians like Prime Minister Jean Chretien were elected to provide decent paying jobs for Canadians, to opt out of free trade, and to provide universal daycare. Governments around the world did an about face and implemented policies that were not on their platforms.
The most pernicious policy was the attack on the poor and government services. Citizens, through the corporate controlled media, were persuaded that the only option was to make deep cuts to government services and income supports. We were told that these were the cause of our ‘out of control’ debt. The poor were the hardest hit.
While the media and the right wing institutes were clamouring about the deficit, Hideo Mimoto was working for Statistics Canada and just happened to be working on a paper analyzing what exactly the cause of the deficit was. His findings were contrary to the rhetoric heard on TV. Government spending in social services had not significantly increased since the mid 1970s and had in fact not expanded relative to the economy.
Governments in the 1990s began axing unemployment insurance, welfare programs, old age pensions, affordable housing programs, and family benefits. Mimoto startlingly found that all of these contributed to raising the debt just 3.9%! He found instead that the growth of the debt was mainly caused by the late 80s and early 90s recession.
What caused the recession? The Bank of Canada chose to fight inflation by significantly increasing interest rates, as opposed to pursuing full employment or even pursuing both. Bondholders were the biggest beneficiaries. They go country to country searching for high interest rates. High interest rates though increased Canada’s debt. Mimoto found that higher interest costs contributed to 70% of the increase in the debt. The Bank of Canada’s policy actually prolonged the recession and increased Canada’s deficit. Mimoto's findings were ignored by the media.
With democracy highjacked, many found that pieing was one of the only ways to humble politicians beholden to money, rather than citizens. At first those pied were just annoyed. Instead of being humbled, politicians became angry. In acts of vengeance, politicians convinced the courts that pieing was not a joke, but an assault.
This was also a time of mass protest. Even though protestors supposedly had freedom of expression, many were sentenced on phoney charges. Pieing and protesting became a crime. These people would not only be jailed, but would spend years and thousands of dollars in court. This proved to be quite a deterrent. Democracy was jailed.
In 2000, Evan Brown pied Jean Chretien. Brown received a 30 day jail sentence, the first Canadian to ever get jail time for pieing. Christopher Geoghegan also received a 30 jail sentence for pieing Ralph Klein at a Stampede breakfast in 2003.
Lily Phan in 2007 attempted to pie Premier Ed Stelmach at his annual Premier’s Stampede breakfast. Some of the pie hit a security guard. Only a small lick landed on Ed.
Phan said the pieing was to bring attention that the Conservative government’s policies that created homelessness and a dearth of affordable housing. Phan was sentenced to 30 days in jail for assault and resisting arrest to be served on weekends, 40 hours community service, and a $100 fine.
In a statement by Phan, she said, “Our politicians have neglected the poor and the environment”. To Phan’s credit, she offered no apology and expressed no remorse. It should be the politicians apologizing to us and to Phan for their draconian policies that are not in the public interest. Phan noted that only the Premier’s pride was damaged and that at most the biggest inconvenience was a small dry cleaning bill.
Jail time for pieing is a travesty. To put it into perspective, Donte Stallworth, a football player for the Cleveland Browns, recently received 30 days in jail for killing someone while driving drunk. Phan’s pie didn’t even hurt anyone, yet she gets the same jail sentence. At most it should have been a small fine. Or the Premier should have just laughed it off like the rest of us mortals would have.
Our society as a whole though is showing an increased hubris. We are a society of princes and princesses. We need to start taking ourselves less seriously.
It is time that we rise up and say enough is enough. A pieing is a joke. Democracy is the real joke. The way we treat the poor and the environment is no joke. Those who poor bash and rape the environment on behalf of money for money are the real criminals. Our legal system continues to protect the rich and those who destroy our environment. This is the biggest crime and should be punished to the full extent of the law.
"Someday people like me will end up in jail" said Ray Anderson, founder and chairman of Interface, Inc., the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer. He was referring to those heading corporations who like himself "never gave a thought to what we were taking from the earth or doing to the earth in the making of our products."
Until this happens there truly will be no justice.
