Category Archives: Statements

Militant Left-Wingers Overburdening Young Children

16 Friday Sep 2011

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When I was six, nothing was more important to me than pizza, the Blue Jays, and X-men.  By certain contemporary standards, I was a selfish boy guilty of neglecting the plight of the marginalized.  The National Post reported Wednesday that a father was angered when he saw the calendar of his six year old son’s day planner.  December 17 was marked International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, Feb. 6 was International Day of Zero Tolerance against Genital Mutilation, and what would an equitable, inclusive day planner for infants be without a call for Palestinian solidarity?  The Toronto District School Board issues the planners at a cost of $10 each.  Today, the TDSB is dedicated to extinguishing the ever present danger of childhood innocence.

A spokeswoman for the TDSB, Shari Schwartz-Maltz, explains that the board uses several suppliers to make the planners, plus some planners have specific pages unique for individual schools, making it hard to know how many schools received this exact planner.  Couldn’t there be other planners running amok?  Infants elsewhere might be readying for “9/11 conspiracy day,” or something similarly inclusive and equitable, but I suspect there are no “days of significance” honouring Milton Friedman or Maynard Keynes, those heroes of capitalism.

In one breath, a professor of education at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) named Kathleen Gallagher clearly identifies the problem, then defends it nonetheless: “…no educator wants to overburden a young child with difficulty that he or she is unequipped for, but at the same time I have to say with equal vehemence that sometimes these prompts provide an opportunity, however difficult, for parents and children to have important conversations.  And when it’s instituted in a calendar, it’s more likely that a child might ask their parents because walking around in the world, a child is going to encounter those ideas.”

The first part is lifted from Curb Your Enthusiasm when you say one thing before immediately negating it by saying “at the same time.” It’s less funny here.  To be a nitpicker, you can’t argue both something and its opposite “with equal vehemence”…it’s clear what she vehemently believes.  What’s really illustrative is her belief that six year old children require shielding from older kids on the playground who will inevitably talk about genital mutilation.  She confuses her hyper-political OISE world of urgent causes for the world surrounding a six year old child.  Kids only talk about genitals if they’re hit by a projectile, and that’s normally good for a laugh.

And Palestinian solidarity for six year olds?  Outrageous.  This supposes a highly partisan cause is universal, and even if it presented the issue in balanced terms, which of course it doesn’t, to discuss and learn about such a polarizing, complicated topic with kids so young is scandalously inappropriate.  Perhaps the TDSB and OISE’s Gallagher expect parents to compare and contrast Theodore Herzl and Edward Said for their six year olds?  This is standard issue from the school who awarded Jenny Peto a master’s degree for producing a rambling annotated autobiography.  This is no accident, it’s propaganda.  In another time and place, these children would be given machine guns and orders.  Having an “important discussion” like this with a six year old is designed to go horribly wrong.  Mommy, why do Jews love killing Arabs so much?  Like Dicaprio in Inception, they’re planting a very controversial idea in somebody’s unguarded mind.  Under the guise of enlightenment, militant lefties are brazenly and perniciously seeking to convert defenceless infants to their vile ranks.  This isn’t a noble but “difficult conversation,” it’s child abuse. And I’m not in the least surprised.

Reckless, radical progressives make pilgrimages to OISE en masse because, even though OISE dabbles in education, the “school” is merely a front for its true purpose as an activist haven.  During my year at OISE, I had a conversation with one of these humourless, disgruntled boors wherein he reduced Fifth Business, an internationally acclaimed novel about the way history is viewed, magic, and Jungian psychology, to a novel written by a dead white Christian man (I doubt it occurred to him that eventually he too would be a dead white Christian man). Immune to complexity, it never occurs to this species of philistine they can be mistaken, so they’re convinced they have a patent on morality.  In the same class, “Actively Educating for Social & Economic Justice,” a kindergarten teacher-to-be volunteered that he was perfectly willing to reveal his political beliefs to the infants in his class.  Politics in Kindergarten.  Nobody in the room batted an eyelash. There’s a scene in Lord of the Rings where the evil Saruman watches his demonic beasts being formed from the nether regions of hell to wage war on the innocent. Such is OISE forming their teachers.

The National Post points out that OISE and the TDSB are not alone.  The McGuinty government got heat last year for trying to introduce changes to the health education’s curriculum that would teach grade threes about homosexuality and grade sixes about masturbation—the latter a subject which, unlike say math or English, many students are autodidacts.  Jan Wong in October’s Toronto Life reports on the growing number of Toronto public schools (more than 200 of nearly 600) have gardens where kids learn to grow vegetables while one in five can’t pass the grade ten literacy test administered by the provincially funded Education Quality and Accountability Office. (As of publishing, sadly this interesting article wasn’t available online).  At this rate, believing school should have at least something to do with education will be seen as radical.

Help!

Getting Over 9/11

12 Monday Sep 2011

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Though I feel it’s necessary to acknowledge 9/11 in this space, with such an overwhelming amount of coverage I didn’t think I had anything to add. Then I considered my time in Berlin and Munich a couple years ago and got to thinking about xenophobia and the way we view history.

People wonder how to explain 9/11 to children and students without offending them and with sensitivity.  Honesty would be asking a lot.  The US suffered the destruction of two monumental buildings, crowded and symbolic, but there was a prelude.  Dresden was eradicated and major city centres like Cologne, Munich, Berlin were bombed beyond recognition, but it goes without saying that Germany waged no small amount of warfare themselves.  This makes sympathizing confusing at best, impossible at worst.  It’s easier for us decades later to forgive Germans, but not so for people who lived close to it.  In the words of Mordecai Richler in 1966, “Germany is still an abomination to me.”  People’s opinions of what provoked 9/11 seem to depend on their sympathies more than historical accuracy, but the case of Germany is considerably more clear cut.  Accordingly, I didn’t know how I would feel when I arrived in Berlin.

I heard Germany had changed a lot, but what exactly did that mean? Perhaps I’d only be spat on or beat up.  What would I think when I first laid eyes on some hulking blonde, blue eyed Aryan type?  Would I innocently ask him for directions, or wonder where his grandfather was during the war?  What might he be thinking?  Better not abuse this kike or he’ll tell some lawyer and there’ll be yet another stain on our national reputation.  Perhaps, but perhaps not.  This nice tourist looks lost. I didn’t want to believe the former, but I’d be lying to say it wasn’t somewhere in my head.  In any case, it didn’t stop me from going.

We met Dutch tourists who laughed when I told them the Bahn (subway) was cheap, as they never paid.  From that moment on neither did I.  Maybe it was out of financial self-interest, but Germans had extended this courtesy to Jews before and I convinced myself they owed me.

I toured the city by foot and saw the remarkably imposing Nazi architecture of the Luftwaffe’s former headquarters (our Scottish tour guide said ‘it’s still evil, home now to the tax revenue’); Kathedral Bebelplatz where Jewish books were burned; the unmarked plot of grass under which Hitler was buried (unmarked so neo-Nazis don’t make pilgrimages there…in fitting symbolism, residents bring their dogs to piss and crap on the grounds);  a massive sculptural installation consisting of six thousand stone tablets called “to the murdered Jews of Europe” located just metres besides their parliament; and many other testaments of the horrors that happened.  So how did I feel at the time?  I wasn’t angry, bitter, sad, or depressed.  I was fascinated and I was thirsty.  Whatever I felt about the past, I was positive the Germans wouldn’t do it again.

I got the overwhelming sense that German’s felt tormented by their history, but were absolutely determined to move ahead.  Hell, they were already moving beyond the Berlin wall, which fell during my lifetime.  Later in Munich, I spoke to some local kids over a Stein of some potent brew who, without knowing I was Jewish, volunteered their eagerness to leave Germany.  “Hitler ruined it for us…we are ashamed.”  My advice was not to let something out of their control ruin their lives…just don’t do it again.

One day I encountered the tall blonde German I feared.  He was a tour guide in Berlin’s Jewish Museum.  With conspicuous excitement he asked the group of German teenagers, “and vat is vun stereotype of ze Jews?”  Hands didn’t exactly shoot up.  Someone whispered inaudibly and the tour guide’s smile lit the room.  “Money lenders! Bankers! Good.  Do you know how zis came to be?  You see, Christians were forbidden from exchanging money vith interest, so ze Jews were forced to, you see?”  Maybe those Aryans aren’t so bad once you get to know them.  The innumerable Holocaust museums were as detailed and thorough as the Nazi’s own documentation—no coincidence.  There’ll never be too many museums and monuments, yet you couldn’t really expect Berlin to have more.  If the Germans can confront their history, so can anyone.  Yet it can be hard to attribute blame when both sides suffer, as Mordecai so poignantly put it on a visit to Dresden in 1978: “I vacillated between being upset by the bomb damage that was evidently wanton in some places and feeling that it was not enough.”  Frequently with worrying superficiality, people denounce or support decades of American foreign policy in one sentence, trivializing history and missing the point.

Unless there’s a breakthrough in medicine, 110 years from now everybody currently on earth will be dead—it’d be needlessly tragic for those who are alive to be killing because they’re embroiled over our problems.  If every country dealt as thoroughly and sincerely in their past as Germany, and was as resolved to move forward without being crippled by victimhood, the world would move on.  Upsetting Muslims and Americans is the only proper response when upsetting things have happened.

I went to Germany to learn about history and I did. Germany felt compelled to face their demons (as monstrous as they were), but they ambitiously built back their cities day and night.  It’s easy to play victim, and it’s hard to blame people for not getting over real grievances they’ve suffered, but it gets you nowhere and it halts all progress.  I should have paid a couple Euros to ride German trains.

The Mordecai Richler quotes were excerpted from:

Shovelling Trouble, “the Holocaust and After.”

Belling the Cat “Germany 1978.”

Sidney Crosby, Head Shots, and HBO

07 Wednesday Sep 2011

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Crosby’s announcement today that he will not start the 2012 season is seriously worrying for hockey fans all over.  Nobody’s sure exactly what to do about these injuries, but there’s never been so much pressure to address violence in the sport.  Fans, NHL execs/players/managers, nor media know where to draw the line between abhorrent and traditional violence in hockey.  How much savagery is too much?  Years ago, a young female fan was struck by a puck and killed before mesh was implemented above the glass behind the nets.  Last year, head hits were all the rage, dispensing and condemning them, even before Crosby was struck down.  But it was especially ominous that the NHL’s marquee player was victimized during the climax of HBO’s all access documentary of the “Winter Classic,” the outdoor game.  To be sure, he played again but was reinjured four days later and hasn’t played since.  Allowing HBO this kind of access to two of the most exciting teams was terrific entertainment value, and more importantly it recorded for posterity an unfettered slice of life in the NHL, on and off the ice.  Fans would kill to get this kind of footage of the immortals like Wayne, Orr, Lemieux, or Sundin.  The irony is the NHL’s wise decision to document their two star players in their prime actually preserved and highlighted the league’s embarrassing inability to protect their players.

It would have been hard for the NHL to live it down if Crosby’s career was never the same after this point, but that the tragedy was filmed in an attempt to showcase, with unprecedented access and budget, the humanity behind the league’s best players is a cruel irony.  Crosby’s success before the injury was hard to describe.  Gretzky, Lemiuex, Bossy, Orr, Crosby.  That may seem like high company, but that is the current order of all-time points per game, only Crosby was twenty three and seemed to be just finding his stride. After winning absolutely everything, he was on pace for his best season.  To put the gap between he and Ovechkin in perspective, Crosby missed half the season and Ovie missed only three yet they tied for goals.  If this unabashed goonery continues and it turns out Crosby’s career was ruined during the filming of the NHL’s most industrious marketing effort, Bettman and Co. might as well declare their tolerance for barbarity from a loudspeaker to the American market he’s so eager to woo.  At that point, it’ll be apparent that a little girl needs to die before this league is sufficiently shamed into doing something.

At least Crosby is no longer getting hell for whining to the refs.

Post Script: I wrote this a while ago but published today because of Crosby’s announcement.  I certainly did not mean to give disproportionate attention to a concussed player, however good at hockey, the day a plane crashed killed 43 KHL players and coaches.  The shocking tragedy is unfolding yet and there’ll be commentary to come. In the meantime, RIP.

Boycotting TIFF Parties

06 Tuesday Sep 2011

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We are approaching the swankiest time of year in Toronto, where internationally famous actors and actresses, talented and untalented alike, descend on Yorkville in droves, bringing with them the hysterical frenzy of paparazzi and citizens who get more than a little too excited.  Ordinary people (actors, however famous, are ordinary people too, but this denotes those whose fame extends merely to friends and family) will pretend to just-happen-to-be frequenting this or that restaurant, but secretly hope to catch a glimpse of a person who will inevitably,  PR aside, feel overwhelmingly indifferent.  People will no doubt rush to tweet about their ticket, or an actual invitation, to some exclusive party.  Cue the name dropping.  Do you know who was there last night?  What a grotesque pile of horse shit.

Feeling good about attending a party with cool people is a practice suitable for insecure teenagers.  Now, it’s true that if you remove the celebs from these parties they’re probably a reasonably good time, loaded with good appetizers and booze, but I’ll wager that without the celebs, most anonymous citizens and striving socialites would stay at home too.  The rush to get into one of these parties is about status, not cocktail weenies.  Frankly, I’d rather have those little franks.

A healthier way to free yourself of insecurity would be, you know, to do something with your life, not stalk famous people or use their presence to feel self-important.  Now, if you get into a party, meet an actor, and actually convince him to open up and share candid stories, that’s the stuff of human interaction. Nothing wrong with that.  They probably have better stories than most drunks at the local watering hole, even if they’re narcissistic scientologists.  But the odds are way higher you’ll pay astronomical rates for an unsubstantiated reason to feel like a big deal. You can do better than that, and so can I.

And anyway, it’s not like I’m boycotting something where my presence is remotely expected or desired.  Just the opposite: my presence at one of these parties would be the definitive assurance of inclusivity.

“Did you see Brangelina? Natalie Portman? Mila Kunis?”

“Nope…just Jeff. Very disappointing.”

I’ll stay at home and maybe watch one of those people on screen, where I, and they, belong.

Belak and the Role of Fighting in the NHL

03 Saturday Sep 2011

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There has been a horrible series of deaths involving NHL enforcers, those “hockey players” who fight for a living.  It’s an unusual role. In most sports, athletes are too preoccupied playing the sport to punch each other in the face. Fights only happen in other sports when fury is aroused, it’s not a normative part of the game.  There’s pressure to change the tone ever since, surprise surprise, new studies show colossal men speeding across the ice to smash people in the head cause lasting brain damage.  The NHL can no longer put off dealing with head shots now that Crosby is out, but this brutal string of enforcer deaths forces the NHL to decide what role fighting will play in years to come.

My love and understanding of the game conflicts with any rational observation: it seems crazy that reffs idly watch grown men punch each other in the face, yet whenever Alfredson (that gutless puke) commits any of his cheap, cowardly acts of petty violence, a two minute penalty doesn’t seem punishment enough (if the reffs even call it). I want Alfredson’s face smashed in.  I’m not alone in this.  Far from it, tons of otherwise humane people love the barbarous aspects of hockey, and can’t imagine hockey otherwise.  And while fans love it, teams need it. It’s like nuclear disarmament: all coaches agree the world would be better off without enforcers, but nobody’s about to voluntarily give up their own first. In politics, military power works better than UN sanctions: policing hockey can be done by players only, not the police.

But three deaths are hard to ignore, even for the NHL.  Exactly what to do is anyone’s guess.  Everyone agrees that it’s a tragedy and we’ll have to assess the game.  Hard to disagree with that.  But how are these deaths related? If there’s a connection, what is it?  In the meantime, all we know is enforcers enter the league aware of their role, and however tough it is, nobody forces them to do it.  There are lots of tough, stressful, even depressing jobs, but must don’t pay millions.

The grief and the tragedy belong to everybody, but let’s not forget that Belak took his own life.  We should lose no time improving our game and making it safer, but people are responsible for their own spiritual well-being, not the NHL.  Thankfully, the NHL will be under even more pressure to find the middle ground between excessive and appropriate violence.

I can’t write about Belak without saying he was one of a few NHL players I actually met. Through a connection, he was playing in a small, informal street hockey game between me and my buddies. He wore plaid pyjamas and a Kewl hockey shirt. Even for me, his lack of concern for his appearance was immense.  More than casual, he looked goofy.  I remember thinking his hands were so big he could black and blue my entire face with one punch.  True to his reputation, he joked/chirped me for having a hairy chest (I was on the skins team). I was shocked! Soon he lived up to his other reputation as I danced around him and scored. But make no mistake about it, he was in the NHL; I noticed the net jumped back at least five feet whenever he took a casual snap shot with a tennis ball.  Like a lot of people, I cheered for him more after meeting him.

R.I.P.

Heaven Help Me, I’m blogging…

24 Wednesday Aug 2011

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It used to be writers queried the best papers, magazines, or even went so far as writing a novel to show off their literary chops for popular and critical acclaim, not to mention money.   Now, any hack can write what they want without suffering editors or standards, and we’re free of requiring a basic understanding of how a sentence functions.  Today, I join this wonderful fraternity of bloggers.

I can only describe my writing as Halperinesque.  Look for high and low culture, stern writing and comedy, skewers and celebrations. Oh, and satire, because I love tearing things apart. Only if it’s deserved.

I can’t promise you’ll like it, but I can assure you I’ll abuse language and ideas as infrequently as possible to the best of my abilities.

Word.

P.S. At the top of my blog is the hallway to my apartment. Nice eh?