Don’t kid yourself - the scandal rocking Hamilton that is known as Peggygate is not just about money.  It’s not even really about Peggy.  

Peggygate is about much more than Peggy Chapman the Mayor’s Chief of Staff, her shocking 30k raise, or the attempts to shift blame to City Staff.

It’s more serious than that.  Peggygate is really about Hamilton Mayor Bob Bratina and what the Hamilton Spectator columnist Andrew Dreschel recently dubbed his “political paranoia”.

Paranoia is defined as: “An illogical fear or suspicion of people, companies or organizations being consciously against you, and the belief that they are constantly trying to ”get” you… the thought process, which is heavily influenced by anxiety and/or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion” (Urban Dictionary).

There is evidence of this political paranoia dating back to before the word Peggygate existed.

A week before the Mayor and Peggy made that fateful call to give me as Producer of the OShow the exclusive about her raise, I had conducted an interview with them on my podcast www.laircast.com where the Mayor immediately railed against the media for their agenda against him - a complaint he had already made in other forums.

The subsequent raise to Peggy, the public announcement of it, and the storytelling about its origins wasn’t just about fair compensation. The raise was also about sending his critics a clear message that he would defend his often maligned and most valued, loyal employee at all costs.

The message may have been sent, but the cost to his reputation was so grave that it made the decision a totally irrational one.

His political paranoia was even more painfully on display in this week’s explosive missive to the Hamilton Spectator.  He was so vitriolic and accusatory that it has caused Council to consider censuring him AGAIN, and Hamiltonians to inundate me with emails, Facebook comments and tweets - from a former Cabinet Minister who calls the scandal “an embarrassment for Hamilton” to people asking about his state of mind.

There is a warning in media relations that you don’t want to chum the waters of a scandal because the media sharks will smell the blood and start a feeding frenzy on you.

Bratina’s letter this week wasn’t just throwing chum in the water - he slit his neck and threw himself in the shark tank. 

It was such a destructive move that yesterday on the Bill Kelly Show on 900 CHML,  Bill and I struggled to understand why a smart man would do such an ill-advised thing http://www.mediafire.com/?051qkqcfkekxjj1

The important question is: if the Mayor doesn’t change course how do we stop the destruction that is Peggygate?

How do we stop this scandal that is wasting Council’s time, distracting Hamiltonians from other important issues, embarrassing our city, and hurting the Mayor and those closest to him - including Peggy?

Council must try to deal with the underlying issues - not just the Mayor’s official conduct.

They need to deal with the anger and political paranoia the Mayor is displaying.  They need to understand why their colleague is feeling so besieged and help him out of his growing isolation.  

To merely have the Mayor fire Peggy, or punish him by censure is to potentially reinforce what he may already be feeling: that people are out to “get him” and those close to him.

Yes Council can and will continue to function well in spite of all the drama coming from the Mayor’s Office - but they shouldn’t - to let it fester is to do a disservice  to the citizens of Hamilton, our productivity and our image as a City.

We have two years left in this term of office.

It’s time for Council to get past their justifiable outrage and punishment options, and find a substantive solution to the real Peggygate problem. Fast. 

Do you have ideas on how to improve Hamilton? Do you want to share them with the entire city? Then I suggest you enter our brand new contest to be a guest on the popular Chats from the Lair with Laura Babcock.

If you’re interesting, opinionated, and have great ideas on making Hamilton better then enter TODAY. Now! Pronto.

All you have to do is like us on Facebook and email your ideas to our producer at kaitlin@powergroup.ca. Please be sure to include your contact information. 

Just head on over to our Facebook page to get started.  

All completed entries will be entered into a draw and the winner will be announced in the Spec and powergroup.ca. We will contact the winning entry to book their Laircast interview. Remember, don’t forget to “LIKE” us on facebook and include your name and information.

We look forward to having YOU in the secret lair and hearing your thoughts on how we can improve Hamilton!

GOOD LUCK!

Entry Deadline is October 21st at 4pm 

I considered starting this post by asking you to recall your worst memory. Then I decided that I would probably lose a lot of readers because really, who wants to think about the less than stellar moments of their life? I sure don’t.

When I read that the University of Montreal had conducted a study which showed that the drug, metyrapone could reduce levels of cortisol (a stress hormone associated with memory recall) I immediately thought about one of my favourite movies – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you remember (pun intended), the story depicts Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski as they fall in love, fall out of love, attempt to erase the other from their respective memories, and eventually (SPOILER alter) find each other again. The story is beautiful and believable, despite the fact that at the time, there was no study to prove that we could forget painful memories.

Now that there is proof we can reduce things like post traumatic stress disorder, we can begin to look at how important negative moments and emotions are to our everyday life. It seems a little freaky science to play with nature like this, but as Marie France Marin, lead author of the study explains in the National Post, “If every time you retrieve [a bad memory] and it’s not helping you because you cannot calm down a bit and put things back into perspective, it might be a good idea to retrieve it under the influence of metyrapone so you will recall less of the emotional or very traumatic part”. That seems like a reasonable argument, as they are not actually erasing memories (insert Men in Black reference) but “reducing, modifying [and] decreasing”.

Personally, this isn’t something that I would do. I know I said I don’t like to drudge up the past, but I recognize the importance experiencing pain, learning to live with it, and subsequently moving on. That being said, I wouldn’t judge someone who went through a traumatic event (war, violence, etc) and used metyrapone to modify the memory.

I wonder, does the saying “Whatever doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger” apply here?

Do you know what real fear feels like? I’m not talking about the “are you afraid of the dark” kinda fear, but the “imminent death is upon you” kind. There are only two times in my life that I have ever felt this fear. The first occurred while driving to my high school and a car ran a red light while I had an advanced green, almost smashing my car to smithereens. The second was in Marseilles, France when an EXTREMELY large seagull tried to attack me. I kid you not; it was straight out of Hitchcock’s Birds (Editor’s note: I told this story to the team last night, and while they laughed at me, they all agreed, it was a scary event).

Despite the fact that these were my only near (or perceived near) death experiences, fear still played a huge role in my life. It crept up on me when I was trying to live my life and make decisions to propel my career and personal gains forward. Making important decisions involved more than weighing the pros and cons, I had to take my own automatic fearful reaction into account. The reaction would often include, imaging failure (see number 4 on this list, I suggest you read the rest of the article to learn more about the science behind fear), people disliking me or my choice, and a whole series of bad events that were sure to follow.

When I first started working at POWERGROUP, Laura taught me an acronym that would forever change the way I approached my life. Laura told me that FEAR stands for False Expectations Appearing Real. A lot of the negative things we expect to happen once we take the plunge and make a decision are merely untrue expectations that we focus on so much they begin to look and feel real. I think a lot of this has to do with us projecting our own insecurities onto situations and imagining the worst possible outcome. Kind of taking that age old saying “hope for the best but expect the worst” to a new extreme.

Now that I know this acronym, I often use it when faced with a decision. When I hear that tiny fearful voice in my head that claims failure before even trying, I think False Expectations Appearing Real. I almost always realize that the tiny voice is inaccurate at assessing my abilities and is the only thing standing in between me and my goal (she’s also kind of a bitch).

So the next time you have a decision to make and you find your own fear creeping in, remember the acronym for FEAR and see if it helps shed some light.

Oh and in case you were wondering, no acronym in the world will cure my fear of birds.