Why The Canadian Media Sucks

IT'S ONE THING to source entertainment stories from U.S. wire copy, and to only report on Canadian talent once the courtly eye of U.S. interest descends upon them, or to not report controversial remarks by a culture minister for more than a day, and to mostly miss the context after that -- but as my friend Howard Bernstein points out, that's small beer.

Our media isn't particularly good at asking the hard questions on real news, either.

From Medium Close Up:

Everybody’s main focus of the coverage of the summits has been the security details, the fences that surround a large portion of downtown Toronto and Huntsville, the street closings and the charges and counter-charges from the protesters and the police about what each of the groups is preparing in order to greet our foreign visitors. There have been the inevitable think pieces and op-ed deconstruction of summits past and what they accomplished. University profs are cashing in pondering the usefulness and possible success or failure of this summit. Heck, Global TV is even doing a story on the legacy of the summit on the Muskoka region, who knew the G-8 was about helping out Ontario’s lagging tourist industry? This may be good public service information but it misses the point for all but a few Canadians who live and work in the fenced off parts of Toronto and Muskoka or are macro-economists and historians.

Canadians want to know about the fake lake, but as a symbol of the money being thrown away. Yes, the fake lake is a national, no international, joke and it truly is a waste of 56,000 dollars but it is such a small part of that waste. I still do not know how the government of Canada is going to spend over a billion dollars to do what the United States did in Pittsburgh last year for $30 million and what the British did two years ago in London, a much more difficult city to secure than Toronto, for a mere $50 million.

It would seem to me that these questions should be the fodder and the lifeblood of everyone who calls him or herself a journalist in Canada. So far we have not seen or heard of any of the investigation and the resulting reportage that I for one, expected from our fourth estate. Until now we’ve got the obvious. Tony Clement’s riding being the recipient of millions of dollars of summit cash for fake summit projects to beautify towns that are nowhere near where the world leaders will be. Mr. Clement won his riding by a mere 38 votes in the last election so Prime Minister Harper is buying him enough votes to get re-elected in the next election. But even that is a drop in the bucket of the over a billion dollars. Do the fences cost that much? Is police overtime the issue? Are the transportation and hotel costs of police from across Canada driving up the cost? Why isn’t the army being used more? I don’t think we have to pay them overtime. Why are the costs more than twenty times more than in London? Where is the money going? Are there partisan political connections to where the dollars are being spent?

These are the kinds of questions Canadians are asking and not getting the answers to. From coast to coast citizens are asking how a government that preaches belt tightening can throw away billions on a five day palaver about the world economy. Yes it is Stephen Harper’s job to explain, but when he doesn’t it is a journalist’s job to poke and pry and get to the bottom of what is all too clearly a boondoggle.

If they can't get the big stuff right, what hope do we who depend upon the puff piece have?

(Did that sound as pretentious and solipsistic as I meant it to? Gosh I hope so.)

FOX North? Oooh! Wow! Puh-leeeze.

YOU CAN TELL that they're scraping the barrel for Canadian news (because you can't report too much on the fact that Toronto is already a fucking detention camp because of this stupid G20 meeting, because nobody outside Toronto cares because it's Toronto) by the fact that the ridiculous "Sun TV" "we're bringing right wing news to Canada!" story is getting so much play.

The whole thing is risible, and it's shocking that no one's calling them on it.  Well, there's Brioux, and the slightly less fulminated Howard Bernstein, but like most media stories in the Great White North, this one's being allowed to waft hither and thither without much of a reality check.

As Howard put it:

So far very few right wing media organizations have succeeded in Canada. The National Post can barely give their newspaper away. Alberta Report faded away. Sun Newspapers (owned by Quebecor) have been losing money and laying off staff for two years. So where is the market? It might be the talk radio crowd. They seem to gravitate to the wild right but every poll of their listeners has shown them to be older, lower income and lower educated. Not the crowd that the advertisers are looking for.
The bottom line for me is that the Canadians I know, even the very conservative ones, tend to be more moderate in their ideas and their expectations. In the land of “sorry” I am not sure that media crazies will be a welcome addition. Quebecor’s track record for picking winners in English Canada is a poor one. I expect we are getting our shorts in a knot prematurely.

The fact is that even in Canada's fractured parliamentary landscape, 4 out of 5 parties that people vote for consistently are left of BOTH the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States.  Break down the, oh, be nice and call it 40% of the populace that would EVER watch this news channel (very few of whom are already watching FOX News -- the channel does hash tags here) and how many are non-old angry white guys who advertisers don't care about?

Brioux busts the Category 1 thing wide open, and points out the inconvenient truth that an effective news channel requires money, which is something that Quebecor is allergic to spending.  Oh, and let's go there again: they have failed at EVERY SINGLE THING they've tried to put on the air in English Canada.

Mondoville also broke down an interesting point that if this was a viable alternative, there's at least five cable channels on the air right now that would have tried it already.

Kory Tendollarshoes is sure entertaining -- and I'd love to see some livening up of news panels & coverage in this country. And lets hope that the spectre of this never gonna hunt dog might do it.

But wow. The day Canadians open their cable bills and read that they have to pay a dollar a month more for a third national all-news channel -- and this one's like FOX news?  Oh man, I'd hate to be manning the phones that day.

This is a supremely silly story.  It's not even 'truthy.'  You'd have to be a brain-dead idiot with no understanding of either the country you live in, the media landscape or the fundamentals of business to even entertain it as a viable notion.  Can we all just stop with the handwringing and move on?

Tweets Have Consequences

CANADIAN HERITAGE MINISTER James Moore likes to call himself "the iPod Minister."  He's "hip," and plugged into new technologies, and is the guy pushing the CMF to get all jiggy with that online content creation that hasn't made anybody any money yet.

And yet...

I was very surprised when waiting for a plane to find he'd tweeted this yesterday:

Now, on the one hand, it's almost a funny.  I wouldn't have minded the evocation of the 2nd iteration of the Alberta wingers who took over the Conservative party a while back, but Moore is a politician -- and words, whether they're calling a constituent a 'bigot' or choosing a team in a match -- have impact.

Yes. I know.  Moore is from Vancouver. He should be expected to root for the Canucks.  He could have said any version of, "My team in this playoffs is the Canucks," he could have said, "West Coast Rules! Vancouver!" or anything similar, and we would have taken it in that spirit.  But that's not what he wrote.

"The Canucks are Canada's Team in these playoffs."

What does that mean, exactly?  Well, to an eye practiced in the art of discerning & interpreting Conservative Party spin -- a task that most of us have grown to learn since they took the reins of power four years ago -- it is the same old thing of splitting apart into an us or them.  Us doesn't include the CBC, artistic elites, union people, city dwellers -- and Quebec.   In a fractious, minority parliament situation, divide & conquer, shore up your base & cherry pick some ridings here and there might be the only way toward stability. But it's killing the country. Killing it.

Sports is a special metaphor for everything. People invest so much because, in the end, it's not as gnarly & real a thing as your pension, or your employer maybe shutting up shop, or the fact that you're not sure you'll be able to pay your mortgage in three years.  Sports is freighted with an emotion greater than its actual, real-life importance.  Someone in the political class surely knows that.

Now let's talk Hockey.  84% of the country watched the Gold Medal Canada Hockey game.  The Hockey Playoffs are routinely the highest rated shows of the year in this country.  Moore's party knows that -- they even changed the Citizenship guide so that immigrants would know how important the sport was to this country.

Which is why Moore's comment -- coming on the heels of one of the most stunning comebacks by a team that a whole lot of "Canadiens" think of as "Canada's team" goes beyond tone deafness, into a very much darker corner of the current political climate.

By circumstance, I happened to be in Montreal the night the Canadiens walopped the Capitals, and did the unthinkable -- advance to the 2nd round of the playoffs by beating the best team in the game. 

It was unlikely. It was surprising, and it was joyous.  The bar I was in erupted.  The man beside me, a 72 year old in an old style Habs sweater, let loose a strain of joyous French invective that sounded like Jacques Brel coughing.  He told me later that he'd seen his first game at the Forum in 1946.  

To my right there were three businessmen from Cincinatti.  One was a Penguins fan, but said that "tonight I'm rooting for MONNNtreal."  These were nice, decent guys -- and the convo only got dicey a couple times when they started talking about Barack HUSSEIN Obama -- and the heart of division came back to the fore.  I subtly indicated that, in fact, I was Team Obama, and a remarkable thing happened.  We sort of, by covenant or mutual agreement, agreed to let it go. We were tired, and in a fun place. We agreed that maybe the sides working together a bit more was important.  They said that they loved coming to Montreal because it was so different that it gave them a totally different perspective on the world.  "That's why I like it too," I said. 

Another beer, another story, good natured -- about the Democrat friend one of the guys always gives a hard time to.  And he gives it right back.  "I'd like to see what he did to Hannity if he got a shot."  Still neighbours. Still friends.  The war in the media doesn't have to hit main street after all.  By the time they left, I had a standing invitation to visit Cincinatti. And Patrick to my left had regaled me with the stories of the three times he'd met The Rocket.

Outside in the streets, up on Ste. Catherine, the flags were waving and the kids were screaming.  Anglo & French, songs shouted together.  A legacy shared across a language barrier.  If nothing else, that's why the Canadiens win was important.  More important, in fact, because of how unexpected and unlikely it was.

That's what Sports is good for too, Minister Moore.  Crafting the unlikely metaphor for life, that if you listen and live it, just might transfer a bit of hope to other areas, too.

We're so tired of everyone in Ottawa acting like a bunch of two year olds.  Your party's default position of blaming everything on the other -- liberal plots, the CBC, bias from the civil service -- doesn't cut it anymore. You've been running the country for years now. Whatever's wrong -- you own it. We don't want to hear whose fault you think it is. We want you to fix it. You have a minority government.  That means you need help.  Start looking for help and stop looking for who to blame.

And while you're at it, next time you're in an unfriendly (read: Non-Conservative) part of the country, may I gently suggest you take the iPod earbuds out of the ear and listen for a moment?  My specialty is the cultural sector, and I know from listening to you & reading your tweets for a year or so now, that gosh, you get an awful lot wrong.  I can't believe that's not true in some of the other areas of your stewardship.

It's ironic that a party that takes so much of its energy from regional, Western disaffection concentrates so much of the power in one man's office, and refuses to accept outside ideas or advice -- even from within the party.  Perhaps you tweet & twitter so much because the PMO's door is closed to you, too. I don't know.

What I do know is this: there are many of us out here that yearn for a Canada where the first thing you don't hear from a Vancouverite is how much they hate Toronto; where you can enjoy the beauty of an Alberta trail without getting into an argument; and maybe where the spirit of those anglo kids & French kids shouting for joy in the streets can be marshalled for something other than the most unlikely of hockey wins.

I did a quick in-and-out trip to Winnipeg in the last couple days for a seminar.  I met some great people, had wonderful conversations.  On the flight there, I watched Defendor, the Woody Harrelson, Hamilton-shot movie written & directed by an Actor I first met when he was in my Miniseries Across The River to Motor City, Peter Stebbings.  It was great.  A wonderful movie about personal responsibility & heroism & about how ordinary people can do extraordinary things.  On the way back I saw a funny, scabrous dirty heist movie, The High Life -- about four hapless guys trying to pull a bank heist. It was like a rougher Canadian Guy Ritchie movie.  And it was based on a play that I remember seeing in Toronto several years ago.  Yes. That's right. A movie based on a Canadian PLAY.

Accessible, entertaining, Canadian. Made for us. Made by us.  Not the slightest bit elitist.  I also, as I do a lot, flipped through the TV section, lingering over the French language episodes of Les Boys & a Patrick Huard comedy special. I keep hoping one of these days I'm going to see these available on the inflight entertainment system with English subtitles.  I'm curious. I'd like to see what Quebec is watching, too.  And right now my French isn't good enough to follow it. I hope one day to fix that, too.  Because I think that's kind of one of the cool things about Canada.

When you take the iPod buds out of your ears to face a non-Conservative audience, it's amazing the things you'll hear.  You won't like some of it.  But I'm confident you might hear one or two things that could change your perspective a little.

I guess the question is, what's more important to you?  Serving the great nation that Canada is? Or working relentlessly to make it over in the Conservative ideology you support?

There are two Canadian teams in these playoffs, Minister Moore.  You're from Vancouver, and we'll give you a pass for rooting for the Canucks.  But don't tell us who's more Canadian. 

That is not, and will never be your call to make.  If you don't get that, then there's something in your ears besides earbuds.

UPDATE: I stipulate that the "iPod Minister" thing probably came from the Press, not the Honourable MP himself.  Quick on the uptake, if not the accepting of responsibility.  "Lighten up," of course is the familiar riposte of anyone who's ever been taken to task for telling a sexist joke or making an off-colour remark.  I learned from personal experience years ago that "lighten up," is about the worst answer you can make in about 99% of these circumstances.  But it heartens me to think that we won't see any kind of puffed-up or manufactured outrage coming from the Minister the next time a Liberal MP makes a bad joke, or if somebody on a CBC Panel tweeks the government.  It's clearly a new day dawning, where we'll all be able to "lighten up." I salute the brave Minister for choosing to lead the charge.  Follow through, and you'll be a better man than I, Gunga Din.

AND YET ANOTHER UPDATE 05/03: 


A commenter, "Red Snapper" below points out another excellent take on the subtext of this article:

I also question his increasing use of the "block" function. He's actively shunning cultural organizations he's supposed to be standing up for as well as taxpayers who are so outrageous as to now [sic, he means 'not'] fawn over him 24/7.

That's a great point. The Minister got Pissed off at ACTRA a few weeks ago and blocked them, so that he doesn't have to read their responses, and they can't "follow" him.  This is a regular thing now with the Minister.  If you're not in step with his worldview, he does the digerati equivalent of putting hands over ears and petulantly shouting, "naah naah nahh can't hear you!"

You know, part of the rumbles over the Gordon Brown gaffe last week (separate & apart from the debate over whether the woman he spoke to was actually a bigot or not) comes from the fact that deep down, this is what a lot of us fear about politicians -- especially in a Parliamentary system where they're supposed to be more loyal to the party than their constituents -- when the doors are closed, they barely pay lip service to other people's opinions.  We're not naive.  We saw the result of George W. Bush's government shutting out any and all advisors that didn't conform to their worldview:  it transformed government into a purely political apparatus, with disastrous effects for the United States, and the world.  (In contrast, if you'll remember, to the Clinton years, when Republicans had to worry and harrumph over stained dresses because any of their good ideas were actually, you know, embraced by Clinton)

Blocking contrary voices on Twitter just proves that the guy is really, really interested in saying how great he is going around handing out money -- serving his portfolio? Not so much.

The Power of Self Immolation

IF YOU HAVEN'T seen this piece of tape yet, watch.  It is incredibly painful -- and the reaction is human and instructive. Mortification in action.

In Canada right now we're dealing with a Prime Minister who the majority of the country thinks hides his real views in a similar way.  He's at war with every aspect of the civil service. He's concentrated all the power in the PMO, and gone on the hunt for "enemies of conservatism." Today it's the CBC, but it will be someone else tomorrow.

Oh for one open microphone to catch that slipping mask.

Drama & politics -- it's all about the sudden turn, innit?

Bad Mercer! Bad!

IT'S NOT SO funny when you see the other side now, is it?

You may have heard what happened to ACORN, a controversial national anti-poverty organization with a chapter in Arkansas that lost its funding after a video seemed to depict some of its employees advising undercover filmmakers on running a child prostitution ring. The recent release of the unedited footage paints a different picture - the filmmakers obviously spliced and diced the video to promote exaggerations and falsehoods. But the firestorm had already forced ACORN to shut its doors.

It recalls memories of an experience I had in the late 1990s, when I was a naive ex-newspaperman working on Huckabee's communications staff. One day, a Canadian film crew arrived at the door and made a vague request for a quote from the governor congratulating their country about some igloo that had been found there. I assumed it was an important archaeological discovery and, trying to be accommodating, notified the governor, who agreed to make a quick comment on his way out the door. And that's what happened.

Only it's not all that happened. It turned out that the nice reporter actually was Rick Mercer, host of "This Hour Has 22 Minutes," which fills up part of that 22 minutes by ridiculing Americans for their lack of knowledge about Canada, much to the delight of Canadians.

The article gets more interesting from there.

For my part, I remember clearly the Canada Day Globe & Mail story from about three years ago where they showed that only 65% of Canadians could identify a picture of Sir John A. MacDonald.

Americans, by contrast, recognized George Washington 95% of the time.

It's a terrible thing when you seek out only the information that speaks to your biases.  That's why it concerns me when I see the reality that Republicans now largely refuse to do critical interviews -- Rachel Maddow has a litany of names that she asked to appear but declined; they prefer to only do the interviews on FOX 'News' where they know they'll only get softballs.

The direct result of that is no-nothings like Sarah Palin becoming national figures with ... credibility.

That's why things like blocking Ann Coulter when she comes to Ottawa is so spectacularly wrongheaded. The antidote to speech that's outrageous or inaccurate is more speech.

And writers who tackle a subject, or a theme, should never be afraid to really explore both sides. Don't put your finger on the scale.  If your cause is just, let people make up their own minds.

After all, you should be focusing on the story anyway, right?

Domestic Partnerships are Nifty!

LIKE MANY PEOPLE living in Canada, I've been looking at this photo on and off for the last 24 Hours.

Have You Heard the News? There's Good Rockin' Tonight!

That's Chad Kroeger, the lead singer of arguably the most hated band in the world, Nickelback, with the Prime Minister of Canada  Stephen "Don't call me Steve" Harper, at the door of the Prime Ministerial residence, 24 Sussex Drive.

I don't quite know where to begin with all the things that are wrong, so very, very, very wrong with this picture. The one armed half-hug.  The pink shirt. (For those not in the Canadian know, the PM is the type of guy who buys his blue shirts & leaves the hanger in when he wears them.) During the last campaign, they put him in a warm and fuzzy sweater in front of a fireplace, and kittens everywhere started to explode.  This guy's about as warm and fuzzy as a glass of orange juice poured onto a canker.

Sunday Evening Coming Down, or Go Ask Alice.

A FEW WEEKS of hard work and bouncing from project to project has led me to this: a rainy Sunday in Central Florida, trying not to turn on CNN until the vote in the House is close at hand.

From time to time on this blog I might have talked about my septuagenarian father.  An industrial plant manager til a wave of downsizing in the 1980's,  my Dad & I spent several years on parallel tracks -- me trying to get established in a series of careers I found satisfying, him trying to cobble together a living til he could retire. 

Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but I found my footing enough to make a rough stand doing what I loved -- at least so far.  A lot of the values I've taken with me came from my Dad. He was the one saying as I was a kid that you had to get involved; that if you thought something was wrong, "you should write a letter."  He negotiated labor contracts as a manager and explained to me the pitfalls of unions & management excess.  He lamented about a change in the business culture he saw firsthand -- an MBA driven, winner take all mindset that did nothing to make people's lives better.

But at the same time, my Dad was a guy who loved shopping at Wal Mart.  He thought Jack Layton was 'shifty' and liked Mike Harris, the paleo-conservative golf pro who ran the province of Ontario for a while. 


My Dad also still gets visibly angry at the mention of Robert McNamara's name, and can't watch a Jane Fonda movie.  He can't forgive her for being "Hanoi Jane."


My Dad's an Irish Catholic guy from the Bronx, born just before the 2nd world war.  His Dad died when he was a teenager. He got his Accounting degree in Night School at the City College of New York -- and reminded me that the whole time he was there he was aware that there were 3 or 4 guys waiting for his seat.


I told my Dad yesterday -- as he fired up the grill on a gorgeous, sunny warm spring Florida day -- that one of the most profound things he ever said to me --something that I've thought about a lot through the years, at a lot of different junctures -- was that he was seventeen before he realized he'd grown up poor.

He grew up in a time when everybody around him in the South Bronx had pretty much what he had. The idea that that wasn't a lot wasn't important. And it also wasn't fed back to you every day through a culture that was obsessed only with wealth.  Lucy & Ethel worried about money.  Ralph Kramden drove a bus.  I think I remember one time hearing that my Mom & My Dad went on a date to Dr. Zhivago. That gives me a good laugh, thinking of these two Irish Catholics from the Bronx, educated by nuns -- with parents who worked on the Railroads and what they used to call, "in service," -- seeing a movie with the sweep of Imperial Russia.

My Dad got successful in his career and went further than his parents dreamed.  And that career took him so far out of his comfort zone -- out of the City, through the adventures of home ownership and moving, and living in another country.   Both my parents show their aggresively NOT Baby boomer bonafides by talking about the 60's as a "terrible time."  My mom once told me that she thought I was the only good thing that happened in 1968!

But my Dad also took the same journey of thought that many of his generation and background took... he drifted toward a more conservative way of looking at the world. He voted for Reagan enthusiastically, bad-mouthed Gore.  We'd argue ferociously about politics when I was a teen and in my 20's.

I happen to even think that the ups and downs and the work struggles I watched my Dad go through in the 1980s made me a much stronger, even-keeled person when it comes to dealing with uncertainty.  If only I'd picked up more of my Grandparents' frugality through the Depression, I might really be somewhere.

Anyway, all this ramble is background to a funny little story that shows how lives change and where things go.  My Dad and I stopped arguing about politics a few years ago.  He moved; I didn't.  Part of it was living part time in the USA again, I think.  He really saw how little Americans got of a balanced view of information.  The bleating of the Liberal elite tag really does not do justice to how profoundly conservative the slant is in most media outlets. 

Anyway, this morning, my Dad got up and got dressed and went to church.  And I stayed in and worked and loved listening to it rain like hell outside.  My Dad went to the Supermarket after church today. One of the things he likes to do is cruise the aisles and sample all the various samples.  Did I mention he's retired?

So it was somewhere over some wonderful shrimp thingy, that my Dad, a naturally garrulous sort, got talking to Alice.  Alice (not her real name, but go with it) is a thin little woman, very slight, very small.  She works putting out those samples in the supermarket seven days a week.  Never takes a time off because she needs the money.  She's got a sick son. 

And so my Dad and Alice talked a bit about the NCAA. She's supporting Kentucky.  She's got a bit of money on it. 

And then Alice asked my Dad about the Health Care fooferal and my Dad said he hopes to God they finally pass it today -- and she shook her head violently and said she hopes they kill that bill because it's so expensive and there's no way to pay for it -- and anyway she's against the government taking over healthcare and going all socialist.

And my Dad as nicely as possible, gently tried to explain that she can't believe that stuff...that she's the very kind of person that will benefit, and that just like Medicare, somebody in her position who parrots the fear tactics and fact-free bromides that masquerade as "responsibility" is being duped. 

Alice couldn't believe my Dad was for the bill -- and my Dad said if he could he'd jump up and down and shout and wave his arms and make a scene if it would help it to pass -- that's how important he thought it was.

The Republican Party used to be a party with several wings.  The idea of small government was actually an idea.  So was fiscal responsibility, and encouraging individualism.  There were socially progressive Republicans.  And there were pragmatists...there were even Liberal Republicans...like Nelson Rockefeller & Jacob Javits from New York.

But when the history of today's Republican Party is written, it will be that their real brilliance was in convincing people like Alice, through fear or religion, or wedge issues, or out and out lies and repetition -- to fear and vote against what was best for them.

Time was in business, and in life, people who'd been lucky enough to earn so much, to do so well so long would vote slightly against their interests to make our society a little better.

But that was before we started going to war without paying for it, and at the same time as we lowered taxes on rich people; before we sent poor people off to fight and busted up families through stop-loss & then abandoned them when they returned.  When the idea of plutocracy and shareholders usurped citizenry & sacrifice. 

The United States is a country so schizophrenic right now that the Census can be a huge flashpoint fight. The Fucking Census.

I don't know what I'm even trying to say here.  Maybe nothing.  There's a whole lot of crumbum stuff that's going to be announced that affects the Canadian TV industry in the next week.  Most of it tomorrow.  The Usual Suspects will say the usual things.  Networks will say it's all about fee for carriage or money for manatees or whatever it is called now; but it's not.  And things might get better for Canadian creatives, but it will probably stay about the same, or get a bit worse.  And if you want to read some interesting context on that, may I suggest here and here?

But as I sit here typing this rambly thing, and hear my Dad tell my sister on the phone -- for roughly the hundredth time -- that "though he never really liked that Nancy Pelosi, he's really come around to respect her now"... I guess what I'm thinking about is Alice and her samples and her day 7 at work.

And I guess I'm just glad to have a Dad who surfed the changes in his life and grew more flexible and agile and caring as he aged -- who bequeathed to me a feeling that one ought to speak one's mind when one believes something, and that there's no shame in evolving your opinion as you go.  I'm glad I have a Dad who worked hard to make things better for his kids, who worked with my Mom to insulate us from hardship when circumstances changed; who showed us a greater world that allowed us to have more open minds, who models curiosity and the joy of speaking to others every day -- even though it was really embarrassing for a while there when I was a teenager.

And I'm glad he'd wave his arms and shout and stamp his feet to help Alice. 

I know it won't do any good.  But a vote in a few hours just might.  And Great God Almighty, I'm glad for that too.

And for bonus points -- there's my Mom, who I think is just relishing the fact that when it comes down to a street fight between Catholic Nuns and Catholic Bishops -- she gets to side with the nuns.

But how THAT side of the stew got me to how I think about stuff -- well....I guess that's just a different story for a different day.

Pass it. Sign it. And get back to it.

The Bully Pulpit & The President of the United States

WOW. YOU DON'T see this often in America. You don't even see this very often in Question Period in Ottawa -- and it's supposed to be a part of our political system in Canada. Contrast this with prorogation of government business and it looks even more notable.

It will be interesting to see how the media screws this up. But for now, here's one of the most astonishing exchanges I've seen in recent American politics. The President of the United States went to Baltimore to meet and answer questions from GOP Congressmen -- and he just spoke plain truth.

Will anybody have the guts to pick up the glove he just laid down?

Not if Rush & Bill & Michelle have anything to say about it, I'm sure. But what happens on CNN the next time somebody goes off the reservation and starts talking socialism and "death panels?"

Guess we'll see.



...At its core, if you look at the basic proposal that we've put forward: it has an exchange so that businesses and the self-employed can buy into a pool and can get bargaining power the same way big companies do; the insurance reforms that I've already discussed, making sure that there's choice and competition for those who don't have health insurance. The component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year.

Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and, certainly you don't agree with Tom Daschle on much, but that's not a radical bunch. But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that's how you guys -- (applause) -- that's how you guys presented it.

And so I'm thinking to myself, well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist -- no, look, I mean, I'm just saying, I know you guys disagree, but if you look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is actually what many Republicans -- is similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.

So all I'm saying is, we've got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality. I'm not suggesting that we're going to agree on everything, whether it's on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me.

I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you've been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America.

And I would just say that we have to think about tone. It's not just on your side, by the way -- it's on our side, as well. This is part of what's happened in our politics, where we demonize the other side so much that when it comes to actually getting things done, it becomes tough to do...

 ...I mean, we've got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes, because it boxes us in in ways that makes it difficult for us to work together, because our constituents start believing us. They don't know sometimes this is just politics what you guys -- or folks on my side do sometimes.

So just a tone of civility instead of slash and burn would be helpful. The problem we have sometimes is a media that responds only to slash-and-burn-style politics. You don't get a lot of credit if I say, "You know, I think Paul Ryan is a pretty sincere guy and has a beautiful family." Nobody is going to run that in the newspapers.

You Have To Admit It's Getting Better...

SALON has an interesting article about Obama's foreign policy successes thus far. What's notable is that I've heard every permutation I ever could have about how he didn't deserve the Peace Prize, but I hadn't thought of any of this in quite the same way -- and I read a newspaper every stinkin day.

Also, I never ever thought I would actually say this ... but it actually looks like Health Care Reform is going to get done in the United States -- with a public option and everything.

It's science fiction time, people.

The Heat and The Light

WELL, DOWN SOUTH today there's screaming headlines about "Glenn Beck claims his first scalp," and up here the gear up to the Toronto Film Fest is all about how a Director and a bunch of celebs have taken a bold stand for censorship in the face of a programming choice they don't like. The silly season continues into the fall it seems.

I don't want to talk about film directors or Van Jones. And I wrote as much today in an email to a friend who asked about the latter.

It seems to me that we've reached a point in history where the Internet rules have extended everywhere. It's important to say the nastiest thing you can as quickly as you can. If you can prove Godwin's law and work in a Nazi smear, so much the better.

But Internet rules should not apply to the public discourse. It cheapens us, and it fails us, and it celebrates our worst when the problems facing us demand our best. So here's what I wrote to my friend today about Van Jones:

There's no question to me that the problem we have now in the United States is that we have a "heat" party and a "heat and light" party. And the "heat" party got to where they are now -- a fading rump, because all they have left is heat -- having chased anyone who offered any light but Jesus out of their tent. The only shot they've got down there is that the "heat and light" party start finding a way to make the latter feel as substantial as the former. We have to demand our media start to sell the light.

So Van Jones wasn't a story until his resignation. So what? Maybe somebody should have vetted this guy earlier, or maybe it's blown up out of all proportion.

But really, as the right fulminates, where are the major policy ideas -- the new ones -- to face what the US needs faced right now? There are none. But there is Obama's birth certificate, and death panels instead of actual policy discussion, and the ridiculous notion that the President of the United States addressing school kids is controversial.

Nobody comes off well here. Nobody. So you can't tell me that what needed to be done was more coverage of Van Jones leading up to this. We need less. Less coverage of Michelle Bachman when she floats crazy conspiracy theories on the floor of the United States Congress. Daniel Inhofe wants to deny climate change? Fine. He shouldn't be reported on -- ever.

All that space devoted to the bullshit sideshow should go to actually explaining and informing the American people about things like health care, green initiatives in energy, etc.

What's happened now is that the worst of the United States media's lazy framing -- the who's up who's down horserace of the permanent campaign -- has become the default 24/7. It's sucking the air out of the room for every possible permutation of story. They say, about Obama, "the President hasn't made his case."

Well where was he supposed to make that case? How much airtime was spent on crazy people bringing guns to rallies and people who knew nothing shouting? Was he supposed to make his case there? As the papers reported dutifully for the last week that there were fears that the President's address to children was going to be something -- anything -- other than "work hard, stay in school," was it supposed to be there?

Jones resigning was the best thing he's probably done for the Obama administration. Try to smother the latest fire, so that the Glenn Beck Rush Limbaugh party can't run around like chickens with their heads cut off for another week -- and once again escape any kind of attention to the fact that their party is intellectually bankrupt, with no new ideas, and a failed passel of policies that they couldn't make work over the last eight years -- which shouldn't be a surprise, because they didn't really work when they tried them out under Reagan and Bush I either -- anything that stops that is good strategic politics. And if the left of Obama's party can't see that, then they should be ignored too. Enough. We have suffered too long because the party with the greater discipline is the one without any new ideas.

There was a brief, shining audacity of hope moment for me last year. I think of it even now, and seize upon it and hope that maybe, somehow we can see its like again.

That's when the whole Reverend Wright thing popped up. And the Right wing noise machine and the oh-not-really-we're-pretty-scared-actually so-called "Liberal" media suited up and got ready to go on the field and start calling all the old standbys from the Swift Boat, knock-em-down playbook...

..and then the Candidate stood up and gave one of the most remarkable speeches I've seen in my 35 years or so of paying attention to this kind of stuff. (And I can claim that, cause I stayed home sick from school at my Grandma's place to watch Carter's inaugural in 1977 -- I was a fairly serious eight year old.)

The way that Obama spoke truth about race that day, and the problems of framing how he subject of -- forgive me -- the subject of black and white was anything but... gave me hope. Because it was rational, and showed grace and forgiveness and understanding and sense, and a little bit of wisdom, too.

That flame of hope flickered brighter in the following days, when all the old plays seemed to come up short. They couldn't grab traction with Wright. They tried to trash how he talked about his Grandma, they tried to say that he hadn't gone far enough with Wright...The Pundits kept trying to say that Obama was still going to take a hit, still going to take a hit...

...and he didn't.

So, I don't want to talk about Van Jones. Not now. I simply do not care. I want to talk about getting those 50 million Americans covered. I want to talk about making it so that the pre-existing condition thing doesn't trap people in jobs, and that the whole sorry spectacle of U.S. insurance is whacked at the knees and made to heel for what's best for the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for a beleageured and oh-so-tired people.

And then I want to move on to the next thing. And the thing after that. And the thing after that. And I want the screaming from Rush and Glenn and all the rest to fade away in the rearview.

You want to know what I think about Van Jones? I think Al Franken. In many ways, this is the best piece of tape I've seen in weeks. It's the one that makes me feel just a little bit like how I felt when Obama gave that speech about race.

It's an elected official having a talk with some excited and angry citizens, primed with talking points. It's about speaking calmly, about what needs to be done and why. Leave it to the comedian to speak truth to the mob.

You give me Van Jones? No sale. I want more of this:

Will We Choose Liberty, or Will We Choose Tyranny?

THIS IS HOW tangential we get on this blog now. Ready? Ok. Here goes.

This was brought to my attention by @badlady, who's a hell of a writer even when she's flu-ey. She got it from Semi Chellas, who is another ... writer.

That's it. That's what I got.

But man it's funny.

The World

STILL TURTLING FOR NOW, but just a quick head poke to show you all the difference between the world of TV and the world we live in.

TV:

The World We Live In:

Via my once-and-future colleague, the great Matt MacLennan.

Hamster Nation

CANADA HAS BECOME a rather dangerous place to have an opinion. Well, that is to say, some opinion. We're at a difficult juncture in our history. Our media is among the most highly concentrated in the world. We also currently exist in the shadow of an almost-constitutional crisis, precipitated by a minority government, supported by less than 35% of the populace, who still rules from a political playbook that brokes no dissent or opposition.

And we ban people from entering to speak. If enough people kick up a fuss.

I don't rightly agree with many of George Galloway's views. I say that first and foremost.

But I am made extraordinarily queasy by this. All of these things coming together at the same time make me fear that there is a hardening of orthodoxy and small-mindedness at work. That rather than embrace the world at large, we are fast becoming a people content to retreat into parochialism, so long as our U.S. stories continue to entertain us, and no one acts too self-important.

Heather Malick's an entertaining writer who gets herself in trouble sometimes. I've run into her a few times at various events in Toronto. I remember fondly getting squiffed with her on the patio at a packed book launch.

She says some things better than I could, and puts a bit of taste into my fear.

Banning this argumentative, energizing Scot will make Canada look even more like what we are rapidly becoming: a hamster of a country, petting and fattening its dullness, silencing dissent, mocking artists, musicians and anyone who's creative, or odd, or not entirely mainstream.

Governments with tidying, controlling tendencies are fanatical about two things: borders and loose talk. Travel and chatter — these are the things that make the right wing nervous.

The more they praise free speech, the more you come to realize that they detest it and would in fact like to put a pillow over your face, right there in airport Customs.

Free speech is no longer a cause. It is a weapon used against those who wish to speak by those who don't wish to let others hear it.

I wish to hear Galloway speak and not only because he speaks so well. I am ashamed of what this country is turning into, a humourless place that celebrates unreason and the subtraction of ancient freedoms.

It strikes me that whatever problems this country faces, they can't be solved by hearing fewer voices or opinions on a given subject.

My studies of totalitarian societies, and the haunting thing I took from reading Orwell's 1984, is that if you can control the conversation -- stifle it, then you can excuse and sweep away all manner of injustice, and finally, evil.

We are silent too much in this country. It's killing us as a nation. It makes me understand anew why the clever, the ambitious, and the passionate so often leave.

22 Yoo-hoo

BILL BRIOUX does some nice work contextualizing the Geri Hall 22 Minutes imbroglio, which I took on here, over at his digs, TV Feeds My Family.

Farrell sent her to Queen`s Park at the invitation of the Queen`s Park Press Gallery, who suggested McGuinty needed tweaking about his self imposed five foot personal space limit. The local press wags even offered to keep her hidden until it was time to pounce. She waited for a signal that the session was about to wrap, which she always does. She did her ambush thing, and McGuinty was appropriately awkward. Mission accomplished.

Except NDP MLA and former Sunshine Boy Peter Kormos went ballistic, spinning the comedy ambush into some sort of assault on working people in Ontario. `Get the hell out of here!`he brayed, bringing the encounter to an end.

It all got posted at thestar.com and other places, packaged as a CP video hit. Hall`s crime was that her intrusion took place as McGuinty was speaking to job losses at Stelco in Hamilton and Nanticoke, which definitely is no laughing matter. But this was at the end of the session and this wasn`t the joke Hall or 22 Minutes were ever going to tell.

Still, Hall was quickly tried and convicted, guilty of bad timing. Too bad Kormos never dared to pick on Mary Walsh in all her Marg Delehunty thunder. She would have cut him in half.

I'm still surprised by the amount of vitriol this generated, and how out of hand the whole thing seemed. You know, it adds to my unease generally about news spin, as I've got to say that every news story I've ever had first hand knowledge of has seemed like a massive distorto-fest -- no matter how I was involved -- as an observer, journo, bystander, or participant.

I didn't make too much of this in the other piece I wrote, well, mainly because I was into my own froth about journalists and the Parliamentary Press Corps (which, I now have to say, looks like it was hyperbolic over-reaction in the other direction, in light of Brioux's subsequent reporting. Note to Queen's Park press gallery: Daddy is sorry. [more of a retraction than you'll get at some places. Oh, I kid. I kid because I love.])

Then again, those news organizations did run with the...no, no, no, no, no, Daddy is sorry. Sorry.

But baby, why you make Daddy so mad?

Anyway, having done that kind of producing work for years and years, the least convincing argument I heard from people was, "look at the footage. she bombed."

I've seen about, oh, 5000 hours of raw footage in my time. It always sucks. Part of what I used to be paid for was to make it awesome. It's part of the gig. Also, I think it's awesome that Brioux goes for it and makes the point that I almost made and pulled back from: you would have never pulled that shit on Mary Walsh. Mary Walsh would have taken Peter Kormos downtown and dropped him in the drink, bad back or no.

I heard from a number of people quite close to the show in the aftermath, but didn't feel like quoting or getting into that game, since this isn't a journalism blog, and I'm not really a journalist. I'm glad a real journalist tracked down one of the nicest guys in Canadian show business, 22 Minutes Executive Producer Mark Farrell, for their side of the story.

But I'm also glad Mark didn't talk to me because he (being aforementioned nicest guy in show business) would probably not want me to end by reiterating the following point:

Peter Kormos is a giant douche.

I'd forgotten he was a Sunshine Boy. Goof.

The Single Girl, The Jerky Pol, And The Hoity Toity Press Corps

FIRST OF ALL let us say it plain.

Geri Hall had a bad day.

For those of you who managed to miss it, Hall, one of the current anchor/comedians on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, interrupted a press avail by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty yesterday.

She did it in character, as the Single Girl. This is a character who uses tremulous, needy eyes and catch phrases to inhabit an overly sensitive woman-on-the-make, part reporter, but really just an old fashioned girl looking for love.

As with all comedy, your reaction to it is entirely subjective. I find the bit hilarious, because it seems to skewer all those Bridget Jones chick-lit clichés while at the same time pointing out something more wicked – the uncomfortable stagecraft underneath the modern politician.

Hall’s character has pulled her shtick on politicians from Ignatieff to Dion to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose overzealous security forces briefly detained her during the last election, making for headlines coast to coast and an even more memorable 22 Minutes experience. Here's Hall in character with Michael Ignatieff:



The bottom line is: this is the show’s shtick. 22 Minutes “ambushes” politicians, and does a little good natured light back and forth. The Pols that play along come out the best; at most they get lightly skewered with a bit of gentle criticism. As satire goes, it is exceedingly genial.

But yesterday, Hall had the misfortune to stumble into a presser about job losses. The Globe and Mail covered it thusly:

In character as Single Girl from the CBC show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Ms. Hall was attempting to poke fun at Mr. McGuinty's new rule requiring reporters to stand five feet back when they question him.

“I'm going to come a little bit closer and you tell me when you feel nervous,” she said.

“I get your point OK, because if a pack of guys I didn't know approached me every day, shoved their stuff in my face and expected me to just stand there while they recorded it, I'd be a little freaked out too.”

But there were few laughs as Ms. Hall vainly attempted to get Mr. McGuinty to hug one of the reporters after she walked into the middle of questions on U.S. Steel's decision to shut down the former Stelco mills in Ontario.

New Democrat Peter Kormos, who was visibly angry at Ms. Hall's routine, was on the outside of the media scrum yelling that thousands of layoffs were no joking matter.

“Get the hell out of here,” yelled Mr. Kormos as Mr. McGuinty, looking uncomfortable, stood beside Ms. Hall, who was arrested last year for trying to approach Prime Minister Stephen Harper as Single Girl.

From my reading of it, the villain in this piece is MPP Peter Kormos, who went splenetic and dialed it up to 11 on the sanctimonius scale.

The producers and Hall quickly read the tenor of the room as ugly and retreated.

Here’s the thing. They did what they do. What they’ve done for YEARS – since the days when Mary Walsh would wander the Hill in a Xena Warrior Princess breastplate.

Kormos’ reaction -- and the clucking of the press -- says way more about them than it does about Geri Hall.

There is not a Canadian alive who isn’t feeling the effects of this recession. But both 22 Minutes and the Rick Mercer Report are enjoying surging audiences. Why, I wonder? Could it be the healing, hopeful, oh-my-god-Shelly-put-the-butter-knife-down respite that comedy provides?

There’s a dirty little secret in Canadian show business. (Okay, there are many, but there’s only one that I’m revealing today) Every few months somebody likes to score an easy feature by talking about Canadians in Comedy, and why are Canadians so funny, and so on and so forth.

Canadians are not funny. There are comics who happen to be Canadian. And nine out of ten of them go to the United States to be discovered and enjoy their greatest success. Why?

Because there’s a persistent strain of priggishness and humorlessness that runs under the psyche of this country. Maybe not down east – but in most other places in Canada you’re going to find a certain schoolmarm-y squeamishness.

Comedy commercials in Canada get complaints. I’ve read them. They have to change lines and tweak shots here all the time because some dear in Abbotsford or Wingham was outraged. You want to know why ads in Canada are so toothless? There's your why. It's a mug's game to try to get anything above the level of a scottish-sounding honeybee on the air here, cause someone is going to take umbrage and get the spot changed. Quick to judge, easily goaded into self-righteousness – Canadians may not have the religious right driven humorlessness of some U.S. states, but they more than make up for it with a lack of generosity of spirit when it comes to laughing at yourself.

Canadians do smug very well. And this is the tension that underlies the image. “Oh,” the stereotype goes, “Canadians are so nice and polite.”

Maybe so. But underneath, resentment fairly seethes. Call it little brother syndrome, or the dark side of all that passive aggressivity, but from tall poppy syndrome to a national appetite for schaedenfreude, Canada eats its young and spits out the bones and you better not make a joke about anything that’s “important,” because that is just! Not! done!

In this, no one is more culpable than Canadian pols and their willing enablers, the Parliamentary Press Corps. From Craig Oliver to Andrew Coyne, you’re not likely to find a more humorless bunch at an undertakers convention. If not for Scott Feschuk, it would be rope-swingin’ time. Puffed up, full of themselves and prone to bouts of self righteousness, it’s these geniuses who’ve managed to so poorly cover the politics of the country that Canadians don’t really understand the issues or even how the government works. It’s all personality this and who’s up in the polls that. And yes, I know, in the USA they cover the horse race too much, as well. But you can find pieces on the issues. Here, every province and region is played expertly off every other province and region and nobody does a lick of work to try to pierce the received wisdom. It's much better to hang back and tsk and cluck.

In the UK, even with someone like Jon Stewart in the USA, the barbs have bite and force – and still manage to inform the populace. In Canada, it seems, even the mildness of 22 can go too far – by doing what they do every single day.

It’s the height of hypocrisy.

If you’re comically minded in any way…even if you’re not a fan of Hall or 22, I hope you’ll stand and send good thoughts in the days ahead to Geri and the crew of 22 Minutes. Guys: Don’t back down. Don’t look away. Do what you do. Use this, flip it, and make us laugh.

Because with the job losses mounting and the economy cratering, honestly, isn’t that what we need way more than some fucking humorless pol grandstanding, complete with the crocodile tears?

I mean, at least Hall’s upfront about playing a character, for chrissakes.

I Didn't Even Know He Golfed.

STEPHEN COLBERT, riffing on the problems of Iceland, their government's collapse, and the island nation's new openly gay PM, Johanna Sigurdardottir ...

"How many Lesbian Prime Ministers can the world handle? There's already Canada's Steven Harper."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ah ha ah ah ah ha ha ah ha!

OMFG!

OKAY, SSHH. DON'T look. I said, DON'T. Be COOL. COOL, okay? Just act naturally, okay? Deeeep, deeeeeeep breaths. Ready? Seriously. Ready? Okay.

He's totally coming.


OMG! SQUEEEE!

CTF Renewed

ONE OF THE things to come out of today's Canadian Budget:

Toronto, January 27, 2009 - The Canadian Television Fund (CTF) today thanked the Government of Canada for its decision to renew the Fund at the current level for two years.

“The Government’s commitment to Canadian television ensures the continued viability of this growth industry,” said Valerie Creighton, President and CEO of the CTF. “It enables Canadian producers to continue innovating and creating shows that are successful both at home and abroad. It strengthens the Canadian economy by sustaining over 22,000 jobs generated by CTF-funded shows and by advancing the already expansive global sales of these productions. And it gives Canadians inspiring and entertaining television shows to watch.”

This is big because the CTF has been something the Tories were not talking about AT ALL. So though Henshaw might not be pleased, at least we don't have to blow up the system while everything else melts.

Same level for two years is the best news we could get in this economy. I'm actually surprised. And relieved.

Something's Happening Here

FREEZING FOG. That's the weather report for Vancouver today. I've never seen that forecast before.

My hotel room is socked in. Looking down Burrard or Robson I can barely see fifty feet. Yet I'm guessing that the Hope burning off the TV in my hotel room can burn it off.

Two million on the Mall, millions more watching elsewhere. E Pluribus Unum. Finally. Finally. Finally.

May he bind up our wounds.

NO More Days

DON'T LET THE White House door hit your ass on the way out, Georgie.

I think I'm gonna watch W. in my hotel room before I go to bed. What the hell.