THESE DUDES SMOKED OUT MY FRUSTRATION

OTTAWA -- Losing one's temper during an interview is not a sign of
professionalism, so I must confess that last Thursday I was not very
professional.

Very unprofessional, in fact. I walked out of a press conference in disgust
and feel pretty bad about it because the idiots holding the newser weren't
worth it.

Maybe if I hadn't had my 12-year-old niece Anna with me - filling in as an
assistant for the day and getting a taste of life on Parliament Hill and
politics in general - I wouldn't have gotten so riled.

Anna, in fact, handled it far better than me, finding the press conference a
highly entertaining joke masquerading as silly season news.

The problem was, the news conference wasn't intended as a joke. It was held
by a bearded, hemp-clad Michael Baldasaro, who describes himself as a
reverend brother and minister in the Church of the Universe. There is no
such church, at least not officially. It's not a registered charity, not a
member of any organization and there is no way of checking Baldasaro's claim
that it has 80,000 members all over the world.

In fact, the only things we know about this church are:

* It has at least two members - Baldasaro and his longtime companion in dope
smoking, the "reverend brother" Walter A. Tucker.

* They live in a trailer at an abandoned foundry site in Cambridge which was
donated to their "church" by another would-be candidate for the Tory
leadership, John Long, who they also credit with encouraging them to run for
office.

* They call marijuana the Tree of Life and the Tree of God, want it
decriminalized and made available to everyone, with pardons given to anyone
ever convicted of pot offences.

* One of their daily concerns in life is getting enough pot, though both say
they managed to find some to smoke before the press conference in Room 130S
of the Commons, and there was no reason to doubt that.

* Baldasaro claims he lives on a disability pension, provided thanks to a
note from a supportive doctor who says he is "a little slow" due to a head
injury suffered when he fell off some heavy machinery when he was 27, and
not to his having smoked dope since he was 21.

If Baldasaro and his pal were honest enough to admit they were just pulling
a stunt to promote the cause of decriminalizing "Mary Jane," we could
dismiss it as a little oddity story.

But they expect to be taken seriously. Questions about their drug habits are
responded to with preachy sermons about the evils of the police, the courts
and politicians.

Their fight, they claim, is for the right of the sick to use the "Tree of
God" to ease their pain, and to industrialize the growing of hemp for
clothes and paper and what have you, and, oh yes, "for spiritual reasons."

But more than that, their fight is for Canadians everywhere.

Children, even in kindergarten, should be allowed to vote, no restrictions
should be placed on anyone to run for office.

OK, so they are freeloading timewasters chasing their 15 minutes of fame -
why let that get to me?

For one thing, like most people who actually work to make ends meet, I am
too busy to have my time wasted by pot-heads who live off the public teat
and claim they are persecuted and living in a dictatorial police state.

It also really bugged me that as many reporters turned up for this stupid
press conference as for the one held by legitimate candidate Brian Pallister
last week, and that Baldasaro got as much news coverage, maybe more.

It bugged me that people would read about these two "really funny guys" and
laugh and say, "right on." Of course, they'd never think of voting for him.

Most of all it bugged me that these guys were standing at a podium in a room
beneath the House of Commons, preaching the virtues of dope-smoking and
appealing to children by telling them that $10,000 should be given to all of
them at birth, and that they should be able to vote when they are in
kindergarten.

If Anna wasn't with me I would have let it ride, but I should have had more
faith in her judgment anyway.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett