Now we all owe Mr. Giambrone the respect and privacy he deserves.

Like Tiger, Mr. Giambrone has some soul searching to do but not until the full impact of this ordeal has hit him. It hasn’t yet. That will come when the camera lights go out, media attention and the blogosphere refocuses elsewhere, and he finds himself thinking private thoughts in the wee hours of the morning.

That process may or may not involve Ms. McQuarrie in tow. I suspect it wont. But that too, like Tiger and Elin, is a private decision none of us has the right to invade or judge.

Mr. Giambrone, while I have never met the man, is obviously an intelligent and ambitious young public figure. Mr. Giambrone is not the first, nor the last, individual whose actions can be explained by the role of the hidden brain.

Say what you wish, but the TTC is a world class organization that is not without its positive markings from Mr. Giambrone’s contributions and influence. With time, he will reincarnate.

Time now to put yet another divergent, and unfortunate, story to rest.

It’s one thing to be brazenly optimistic. It’s quite another to be completely utterly politically naive. As soon as Mr. Giambrone comes to fully appreciate the gravity of his public predicament, he will be forced to do the only thing which public opinion will otherwise take care of in very short and brutal order.

Don’t get me wrong, the Toronto electorate is on a different curve when it comes to “house on the prairie” values. No other city in Canada has a adult classifieds listing longer than the used car section. The city is likely filled with a disproportionate share of everyday folk who think it’s okay to have one partner for getting elected and another for getting erected. No argument here.

But when otherwise every day people come out from under whatever particular fantasy turns their crank, they still have to be fine upstanding citizens who hold honest jobs, raise families, pay taxes, and when called upon to do so, elect best suitable candidates to public office. Toronto may be as avant-garde as they come, but folks still vote and fantasize with different parts of the brain.

It doesn’t take more than a scant read of the comments section the Star to assess how public opinion is reacting to the Giambrone story. Some of the very same people who may share an equivalent fantasy, or reality, will condemn sanctimoniously when given the opportunity. What better pretence than the safety and security offered by an anonymous comments section?

The Globe’s usually politically seasoned Adam Radwanski must have a personal stake in this issue, for it seems according to todays post he’s “just fine” with it because “it’s difficult enough to attract good people to run for office.” Excuse me? Canada’s biggest city is so void of public office talent that Giambrone’s behaviour is something to overlook because there is no one else?

Some may argue this space appears to apply a double standard when it comes to Tiger Woods versus Adam Giambrone. Not entirely the same situation. When Mr. Giambrone can shoot 64 from the back tees he’ll have my vote to play in the Masters, and if Tiger emerges to run for Mayor of Toronto he won’t.

The people, and it’s still too early to tell if this means a few thousand people or the masses, are discovering a tool in the form of social media that may effectively prove as reason for individuals to once again care.

Widely understood and generally accepted are that decreases in voter turnout result from growing political cynicism. People increasingly don’t believe their ballot vote makes a difference and don’t see the difference between politicians and parties. Further is the belief that once in power parties and politicians are basically all the same. The more recent and correct assessment would be that governments are about one thing only, politics. Everything revolves around power; the getting of it, keeping it and pouncing on any and all opportunity to affect who has or doesn’t have it.

While Canadians are perceived as not particularly effective, organized, or boisterous in their opposition to juvenile political behaviour, this does not mean Canadians haven’t all along been paying attention and recognizing what federal politics has become. Until now, voter apathy among Canadians of all political persuasion was based on exasperation, a belief there was no hope, no voice and no method for effecting real change.

Today and in the days ahead, depending on how the prorogation issue plays out, will determine whether or not digital democracy has hit a tipping point. My instincts tell me it very well may have.

This isn’t to say Mr. Harper’s justification for proroguing parliament wasn’t – in his mind – justified or well intentioned. Mr. Harper surely sees the prorogation tactic as no worse than the more under-the-radar tactics Liberals play in the Senate or that all parties play at Committee. Mr. Harper’s bigger problem, as Bruce Anderson has very correctly written about in his piece How to make prorogation stick, has to do with perceived arrogance and the sudden realization that voters have, just as suddenly, come to understand they possess a relatively new tool, literally at their finger-tips, which they can play with to much affect.

Mr. Harper is by no means the first politician to show some level of arrogance, much less contempt for his own arrogance. Pierre Trudeau was, at times, every bit as arrogant if not more so. PET’s quip “watch me” is but one example. However, Mr. Trudeau and all prime ministers before and after him until Stephen Harper did not live in a world whereby public opinion and the widespread instant communication of public opinion could be instantly measured, instantly controlled, and further instantly re-communicated.

Mr. Harper’s war-room counter-attack may be factually correct that parliament has been prorogued 100+ times in the past and perhaps even for equivalent partisan gain. But never before under the watchful eye of something like Facebook. It’s not so much that Mr. Harper has twice in the past year used prorogation for partisan gain nor are Canadians much more aware or truly more informed. At best, Canadian’s merely have an instinct, albeit shaped by the media and the media’s use of polling results to affect yet more polling results.

Instead, the current blip in Mr. Harper’s radar has to do with a digital vehicle over which Mr. Harper has less control, and through which Canadians can teach all politicians, not just Mr. Harper, a lesson.

I suggest that many who are today joining Canadians against proroguing parliament are doing so not because they are truly very upset the government isn’t sitting, but rather almost entirely because they’ve been given access to a new and very powerful toy that teaches politicians a lesson.

Many, I suspect, are joining the Facebook effort because of the power and thrill they derive from knowing what the numbers, if they continue to grow, may accomplish. Mr. McGuinty learned the same lesson when, in a matter of hours, Facebook caused an about-face in planned legislation affecting younger drivers’ licensing privileges. This isn’t to say Mr. McGuinty’s planned licensing policy wasn’t the right one for society in the long term, only that it could be summarily defeated.

While this digital democratic power, in healthy doses, is a good thing, Canadians are well-advised to be careful of what they wish for, for as the saying goes, they may get it.

Keep in mind, the jury is still out on whether or not it’s a good thing to be governed by a government that reacts to every blip in short term and by public opinion that is largely manufactured and manipulated, as opposed to true statesmen and visionaries who govern for the long term. Arguably the GST when it was introduced by Mr. Mulroney’s majority governments is largely credited for erasing Canada’s deficit. Had Mr. Mulroney at the time been minority governed by among other social factors, Facebook, or rather by what can, overnight, be created on Facebook, I very much doubt Canada’s fiscal improvement would have been so swift.

True, there is something to be said in support of greater representation in our current political system and climate, but there is also something to be said of equal and perhaps greater importance for being given a fair chance to make your mark and to be judged by it. This is not to be confused with the very real dangers associated with yielding, from one instant to the next, to the pressures of socio-partisan micro-management.

On another occasion I will argue that polling can be used, and is used by some not simply to measure public opinion, but to effectively reshape it. At the time, Jeffery Simpson’s piece, Prorogation will not loosen the PM’s grip was likely accurate. But a mere two days later more accurate were Bruce Anderson’s arguments about arrogance. And today we have the arguments set forth in this post that public sentiment, properly manipulated across a social media such as Facebook, can play havoc with conventional and tactical political wisdom.

It’s a good thing, yes. But tread carefully would be my cautionary advice.

However, according to the 21 APEC leaders failure is apparently an option, if you commit to it early enough in advance.

It does not take a trained eye to see this is all about spin and setting, or rather lowering, expectations. The thinking goes something like this ‘better to announce failure in advance, than be surprised or have to explain it later.’

As a communications strategy there is a school of thought that supports this approach and that’s okay if your talking about say the Toronto Maple Leafs where the worst possible outcome resulting from planned failure is, well, better luck next season.

But where, literally, there might not be a next season, surely world leaders can do better than succumb to defeat.

Some world leaders are still hiding behind the notion they are protecting economic self-interest while others see the task as simply too administratively daunting and impossible to overcome. Both great excuses for the status quo without entirely giving the impression of doing nothing.

John Ibbitson nails it when writing about the outcome of Copenhagen “All will be in, though no one will be able to say what “in” means.”

Had that been the attitude in 1970, the Apollo 13 crew never would have made it home. And yes, the Leafs lost to Calgary last night, 5-2.