Garrett Marino is back. Should he be? The Saskatchewan defensive lineman was dealt a two-game suspension for a low hit that sent Ottawa QB Jeremiah Masoli to the injured list, as well as Marino’s chest-thumping and helmet-raising after he was ejected for the tackle.
The CFL also gave him a one game suspension for comments he apparently made about Masoli’s Samoan heritage, in what the league called a clear violation of its code of conduct. And this is not the first time.
Dan Barnes, a writer for Postmedia, wrote on July 12, 2022, “And it does indeed appear the Roughriders are willing to bring him back after time served. So what of their culpability in this fiasco?
"Sadly, it’s growing. . . . Head coach Craig Dickenson, as decent a person as exists in the league, managed to exacerbate the mess by diminishing Marino’s comments about Masoli’s heritage. . . . The coach soon took to Twitter to apologize.”
It truly is a fiasco for the Riders’ organisation.
Fiasco means a complete failure, usually in an embarrassing or humiliating way. The word came into English in 1854 from the French faire fiasco meaning to fail. Fiasco was first used in theatre slang for a complete failure of the production. It eventually came to be used for any catastrophe, debacle, flop, or failure.
The French adopted it from the Italian word for a glass bottle, fiasco. It seems that whenever Venetian glassblowers were labouring on a beautiful piece of handiwork that became flawed in the process, the work became a fiasco, an ordinary bottle, instead of a creation of art.
A masterpiece was downgraded to the ordinary to salvage something of the labour. A bottle of Italian Chianti wine in the traditional straw covered long-necked bottle became known as a fiasco in English in 1887.
The ordinary bottle, less than perfect, was encased in straw to hide any flaws. So now in English, whenever something goes completely bust, and there is an attempt to cover it up somehow, it gets labelled a fiasco.
There is the Hockey Canada fiasco. In The Star (Edmonton Bureau) Kieran Leavitt wrote on July 27, 2002, “Millions of dollars have flowed from Hockey Canada to more than 20 victims of sexual misconduct going back to 1989, it emerged Wednesday, as the curtain was at least partly pulled back on how the organization — now under a cloud of suspicion and scandal — has systemically dealt with allegations against its members.”
Then there is the Canadian government agency dealing with passports experiencing a fiasco due to continuing issues with people applying for passports. It really is a systemic problem.
“Delivering services to Canadians has been an Achilles heel of the federal government for 30 years because of political disinterest and a senior management of “travelling salesmen,” who hop from job to job and barely know the business of the departments they lead,” says former senior bureaucrat Ralph Heintzman, who proposed the creation of Service Canada.
The CTV News service has its fiasco over the dismissal of Lisa LaFlamme. And now, a Bell Media executive is taking a leave from his job amid the fallout from the expelling of Lisa LaFlamme as anchor of the company's leading newscast.
As long as there are imperfect human beings in the world there will be fiascos. What the Creator intended as beautiful works have become marred. The Bible calls it the sin problem.
Yet the Creator did not destroy the product but salvaged the work through a process carried out by Jesus Christ, according to Christian teaching.
We have all probably had a fiasco or two in our own lives.
Our corrupt humanity is not an excuse but does explain the ongoing issues. So, don’t be surprised at unending fiascos in all sorts of areas and situations in this world but be attentive, as best you can, that you are not entangled in any future fiasco. It usually is an embarrassing situation.
Columnist John Kreutzwieser loves to research words and writes this weekly Word Wisdom column for Moose Jaw Express/MooseJawToday.com. He has an interest in the usage, origin, and relevance of words for society today. Greek and Latin form the basis of many words, with ancient Hebrew shedding light on word usage.
John would like to know if anyone has a sincere interest in a relevant word that he could possibly research for an upcoming column. If so, please send your requests to [email protected] . Words will be selected according to relevance and research criteria. We cannot confirm that all words will be used.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
