Movie trailers are now their own industry…don’t fall for the hype!

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

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November’s issue of Maclean’s contains an article “Trailers are out of control,” by Brian D. Johnson, that depicts accurately how in order to generate more buzz, a new industry has been set up where Hollywood trailers are accompanied with its own review.  Interesting, sad, but hardly surprising. Regrettably, the article is not available online yet.

The Hollywood Reporter criticized the trailer for The Avengers in a serious, substantial review.  The trailer! The movie doesn’t come out until next May.  The Avengers isn’t just a predictable action movie starring one hero, but five: Ironman, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, and Samuel L. Jackson (who even if he’s playing himself might be the most bad ass).  The trailer is very unnecessary.  Do they fight for social justice? If five superheroes are needed the world must be in great peril. Expect senseless violence and action.  But unlike the epic trailer for the Transformers sequel, this reviewer bemoans the Avenger’s trailer’s failure to convey “epic drama and conflict as well as great emotional moments.” Sounds like he’s talking about Antigone.  A review of a two minute trailer is absolutely insane. Please, let us either ignore or denounce this aspect of the new hype machine.

The article claims that since trailers are accessed in smart phones and twitter, Google searches went up 50% in the last year.  Itunes has a dedicated category for movie trailers now.  That trailers contain spoilers or are severely misleading is old news, but it is funny that a Michigan woman announced she’s suing the distributor for Drive claiming “there wasn’t enough driving,” and she was misled by “the pulse-pounding preview that made it look like Fast & Furious.”  Is she making a principled stand against an industry that intentionally deceives its customers in order to sell, or is she an idiot? If her lawsuit is successful, she’ll recoup all of her $12.50, minus legal fees. But sometimes great movies do poorly in box office because of bad or misleading commercials. William Goldman said this happened to the Princess Bride, which lacked a target demographic. Bummer.

This phenomenon of dangling tantalizing tidbits in order to entice, however disingenuous, is ubiquitous on Twitter, Facebook, and anywhere where there are links to click or things to buy.  We’re beckoned to click by alluring question marks, various lists of “10 hot things” or the like, or promises of salacious gossip.  To be sure, greatness and crap are advertised the same way, but it’s good to be cognizant of the psychology behind how our attention is being captured.  Perhaps the awareness makes you more immune to being suckered.

Anyway, the main thrust of Johnson’s article is made by invoking legendary New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael, who, by the ’80s, believed “marketing was eating cinema alive.” Johnson believes that the hype around trailers is evidence of an industry that’s contributing to its own demise, that the art form suffers. Is this true? Is marketing hampering quality movies, like the wave of American films from the ’70s, from being made today?  Would the Godfather be successful if made today, or could it even get made? Hard to know, but I’d like to think I would have had the good taste and discernment to see the movie without having to suffer a review of its trailer.

Confession: My Experience As a Racist (a hockey story)

29 Saturday Oct 2011

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From a young age, Canadians are conditioned to revile racists.  We look back on American slavery and wonder how life was really like that.  We bemoan contemporary racism and wonder if the world will ever become truly egalitarian. I’m a pretty decent guy, but I know from personal experience that one aspect of my Canadian upbringing instilled in me a burning hatred for an identifiable group of people and wished nothing for them but the wrath of hell. I’m talking about the Ottawa Senators and their fans.

Ten years ago, if you had asked me if all Sens fans had horns and hoofed feet, I’d have said “no”, but I’d have given them no other benefit of the doubt.  I couldn’t be sure Sens fans even existed: I had never seen one in real life, and even on TV their arena was filled with Leaf fans loudly booing whenever alfredsson (that gutless puke) touched the puck. I had no reason on earth to believe somebody actually liked that team, yet I hated that theoretical person all the same. When the Senators signed a player, I hated him overnight.  This went on unchecked for years, as my friends were just as racist.

My first encounter with an actual flesh-and-blood Senator fan happened in 2003, while my hate was at a late stage of maturation.  Though I didn’t expect a Sens fan to behave with civility or dignity (these concepts utterly foreign to the organization) I behaved well and the meeting didn’t end in carnage, though it started off rocky.  I moved into my dorm during first year university, and immediately put up my Leafs’ flag when in walked my neighbour.

“Nice to meet you. Hey, why are you putting up that piece of shit?”

“Where are you from…neighbour?”

“Ottawa.”

Just like that. He didn’t seem to be suffering any certifiable mental condition detectable at first glance, so I looked again. Still nothing.  Maybe something was wrong in his frontal lobes, but he looked like a normal human being.

Over the year, I developed a friendship with this curious species fuelled by intense rivalry and beer.  To be sure, however amiable, a part of me hated a part of him.  We shared laughs and violent shouting matches in equal measure.  But like mushrooms after a rainstorm, more Sens fans appeared. It took a year among their kind to realise that, in actual fact, Senator fans are people.  For years, I dehumanized their fans and their players (sometimes fairly), but the sample of fans I met turned out to be good Canadian boys who simply had the severe misfortune of growing up in Ottawa.  I had to admit: my neighbour, and others of his race, were decent.

The roster still comprised soulless guttersnipes, but I was racially more sensitive and newly convinced my hatred wasn’t blinding. I had reversed my all encompassing hate and learned to give a fair appraisal of the team. “Volchenkov can block a shot.”  Wholly unbiased now, my opinion was fair, balanced and commendable.  I had reformed and was tremendously capable of praise when it was warranted…it just wasn’t.  That year, following another epic post season Senator collapse, the Leafs eliminated the hated rival for the fourth time. 4/4. Those who remember the game see Lalime clearly in their mind’s eye. Ahh, glory days!

Meeting Senator fans has enabled me to gain perspective on a disturbing time in my personal history, but my racism was of a variety that I suspect all Canadian hockey fans have to some degree.  Still, I look back on these years of unbridled hate with regret. I am grateful for the contact I had with good people who gave me a chance to reform.  Now I can view them as dignified human beings, and they have made me a better person for it.  That said, I do have some final observations:

Chris Neil is a cheapshot artist who seriously looks inbred.

On five occasions, Jason Spezza has contaminated out heroic National team by failing to win gold even once.

Despite just yesterday writing a lengthy argument for unequivocal free speech, I’m afraid of what I’ll put into print if I candidly write about daniella alfredsson [sic]. I have not cooled one bit after his vicious hit from behind on Tucker from game 5, 2002. He should still be suspended without pay.

Free Speech: All or Nothing…Even Homophobia

28 Friday Oct 2011

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The article’s title is a common refrain, but it’s understood less frequently than it’s spoken.  In Canada, our freedom of speech laws don’t allow for expressing hatred. This is wrong.  Margaret Wente recently wrote an article summarizing the debate pretty clearly, and the comments are overwhelmingly in favour of her conclusion that it shouldn’t be illegal to express vile, odious opinions. Yet in 2005, William Whatcott, an unabashed homophobe, was fined $17,500 by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission after people were offended by his pamphlets. It’s now before the Supreme Court.  Whatcott said homosexuals are “sodomites” who spread filth and disease, who are full of “sin and depravity.”  His views are, surprise surprise, rooted in religion.

“Should we have to put up with being called ‘filth’? It makes me feel like less of a person.” Yup. Sorry anonymous complainant, the cost of freedom of speech is being occasionally offended.  There’s no right to not be offended, and anyway, you shouldn’t let an ignorant moron have any bearing on your personhood. I’m offended everyday but I don’t exploit it for profit.  At least those thinly skinned saints donated the $17,500 to charity, right? Hmm maybe.  How do you put a corresponding dollar value on offence anyway? Homophobes sure are easier to stomach when they’re made to foot the bill. More, please!

Canada doesn’t have a history of revolution, censorship, or any real civil turbulence like France, Russia, or the United States, and I think that’s why our definition of freedom of speech is so immature and privileged. As a country, we don’t know what it’s like to really be censored; we didn’t have the McCarthy era, guillotines or Gulags.  Our free speech ends the moment somebody is offended, hardly rare, and so long as you are a minority or perceived as vulnerable you can effectively enforce your right not to be offended. This right is made up, it doesn’t exist, and yet it wields more power than a right other countries have fought for.

Right now, our speech laws are bound to the current climate of plurality, which sounds terrific, except it its limited and subject to change. The only question that matters is whether undesirable speech is protected: one day it can be illegal to defend the things we value today.  If tolerance and plurality become widely renounced, I’d like to still speak in favour of it without fear.  What’s currently fashionable doesn’t last. Free speech must be guarded with vigilance, and must not be taken for granted, and can’t only mean protecting favourable speech that doesn’t need protection. It sounds more than a bit counter intuitive to go out of our way to protect speech we find repulsive, but if we only make a fuss about free speech when our speech is no longer protected, it’ll be too late.

This issue doesn’t relate to bullying in schools because bullying of any sort is already not condoned.  Whether bullying warrants a harsher protocol within schools is a very reasonable discussion, but that’s not the same as saying the speech itself should be against the law.  Is bullying based on sexual identity worse than bullying in general? Is one a $20,000 fine, the other $10,000? It seems attacking the most vulnerable group would get you the stiffest fine, but then the  group with the cheapest fine would become the most vulnerable. Students, teachers, parents and friends should be conspicuously opposed to any bullying, not just because gay students should feel safe, which of course they should. but because cruelty is always wrong. Apart from inciting violence and yelling “fire” in the crowded theatre, are those against iron-clad free speech  so scared of all the hatred they think Canadians are secretly hiding?  I thought I was cynical.

Tolerating only favourable views is something intolerant people do.  This is a regressive policy that fascist states and authoritarians use to censor and suppress conversation, ideas, and criticism.  We can’t only agree with freedom when we believe it’s suitable.  We can’t complain about Chinese and Iranian censorship and do the same here, or else what we’re really arguing about isn’t  the censorship itself, but what they censor.

So long as our free speech laws are prohibitive, we shouldn’t applaud ourselves for fighting homophobia but should bemoan what a squeamish, paranoid, immature bunch we are for our failure to guarantee free speech, that right that is correctly exalted and considered the benchmark of a free democracy.

Progressive Types Enable Cheating…They Make Me Sick

25 Tuesday Oct 2011

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Today’s National Post reported another story, this time from Newfoundland and Labrador, about an appalling tolerance for cheating sanctioned by a school board justifying its policy with vague, positive-sounding language. Students caught cheating may have a detention or suspension, but they are not to suffer academically. In other words, a student who cheats can compete for university on equal footing as a student who has studied and actually knows something.

In its justification, buzzwords abound like “alternate appropriate assessment,” a term which fails to communicate what is actually being done because it is only slippery language crackpots use to sound benevolent.  If a policy is actually good, it should be described for what it actually is. Indeed, if I had a great idea the last thing I’d want is to communicate it poorly.  But you don’t get that language here.

The board’s spokeswoman explained, “we are a district that believes in hope and second chances.”  Is she on a parole board? I agree students shouldn’t be summarily executed for plagiarism, but cheaters can still live adult lives after a forfeited assignment or test, and might learn not to cheat again. Forgotten are the honest students who should feel validated for studying and working hard for their grade. They must not be made to feel like suckers.

A test is only reliable if it, you know, tests their knowledge.  That’s why it’s shocking to hear that: “this policy change was designed to separate student’s behaviour from learning ‘to give us a true picture of what the student knows.'” As if cheating is an innocent behaviour students can’t help.  Finding out the “true picture of what student know” is the point of the test and it’s only obscured when students cheat.  That’s why cheating is bad and the onus must be on students not to abuse this trust.  Does this really need to be said? Where are the responsible adults?  A policy on cheating that would be endorsed by the most disinterested, dishonest student must be a bad policy.

It’s not a coincidence that such an inadequate policy is implemented by people who describe it in such empty terms.  The two are related.  No clear thinking person uses this language (unless they’re being consciously dishonest) or fights cheating by enabling it.  The National Post loves these stories, and you can feel the editor’s glee upon getting word of another story like this.  Still, it’s a shame these stories are too readily available and it’s a scary trend.

This policy “against” cheating is hopelessly misguided and we must learn to reflexively perceive and discredit the hollow “language” of its justification for what it is before it poisons our discourse.

Israel Shouldn’t Have Swapped Thousands of Terrorists for Gilad Shalit

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

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When Brian Burke made a multi-player swap to land Dion Phaneuf, it was pronounced that the Leafs won the trade since, of all the players dealt, the Leafs got the best one. Unfortunately, this logic doesn’t transfer well when dealing with terrorists.

Now that Israel has its longed after kid soldier they are in more danger than they used to be, though you would never know this hearing Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations’ Secretary-General: “This release will have a far-reaching positive impact to the stalled Middle East peace process.” Perhaps the moon isn’t only in Ban’s name, but his place of residence.  To be fair, he’s in the UN, so preposterous statements are his mandate. I fail to see how rearming a sworn enemy with their fiercest combatants will help the cause of peace.  Amongst those released are Yehive Sinwar, founder of Hamas’ military wing, and other notable vicious and vile perpetrators of mass murder who have been candid in their desire to kill again and express no remorse. Sure, it’s unlikely over 13,000 former prisoners will re-offend, but does anybody doubt that a serious number intend to?  Shouldn’t “1” constitute a “serious number” of blood-thirsty terrorists?  Not all prisoners released founded Hamas’ military, but I doubt there’s even one among them I’d like to have a beer with. Or vice versa.

I’m not alone in thinking there’s trouble ahead.  The Popular Resistance Committee (the Hamas dominated coalition that captured Shalit) had a representative vow: “We are going to capture another soldier and cleanse all the Israeli jails.” This is the most obvious thing for them to do, something everybody should expect, except of course Ban Ki-moon. I usually take a terrorist’s words with a grain of salt, but I believe them this time. They have all the incentive in the world to do it again and nothing to lose.

With Israeli citizens overwhelmingly happy about the swap, it’s hard to fault Netanyahu.  If they don’t blame him and they have to live next to Hamas, who am I to say? But that’s just it: it seems Netanyahu put political expediency ahead of national security. The response of my friends Facebook status’s has been joy over doubt at Gilad’s return, but unless you think rearming Hamas in exchange for Shalit actually helps the cause of peace, this is bad news.  This is the question it boils down to.

I’m obviously happy for Shalit.  Five years of living with Hamas must be an unimaginable horror beyond description, far worse than any quarrel I’ve had with my roommate. When I was in Rome in 2009 I walked by a Shul which posted a sign with Gilad’s face.  I didn’t understand Italian but the message was clear. It goes without saying Israel wanted his return, and for obvious reasons, but it doesn’t seem prudent, and possibly it’s even a breach of duty, to privilege emotional resolution over national security. Israel today is undoubtedly less secure than it was a week ago.

Israel might be giving Hamas something to crow about after the PA went to supplicate the UN, or perhaps now Hamas will stick to their word and take more innocent hostages, creating a pretext for an Israeli military response.  The only thing that won’t come of this is peace. I like Burke’s trade better.

Prediction: the Toronto Maple Leafs Will Win All 82 Regular Season Games

16 Sunday Oct 2011

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Is any NHL team capable of beating the Toronto Maple Leafs? After last night’s game, the answer is a resounding “no,” as the Leafs have proven that they can win in every way situation: shutout domination; annihilating their opponent, then barely hanging on; the come from behind victory.  This edition of the Leafs is literally unstoppable.

The defence has been poised and fearless, readily entering into the offensive attack while managing to scare the daylights out of opposing forwards, particularly those from France.  Woody Allen said 90% of life was just showing up: thanks to Phil Kessel, this is true for our other forwards.  I could describe Kessel’s domination by comparing his speed to Mogilny or his exploits to Achilles, but the damage he’s wrought to opponents is recorded authoritatively by the league statisticians: Phil leads the NHL in goals, points, and plus minus (a distinction shared with Phaneuf, that ransacking enthusiast).  Doubly impressive, Kessel’s managing to do all this with only one testicle.

The Maple Leafs are undefeated both at home (3-0-0) and on the road (0-0-0). At this rate, statistically speaking, we are heading for a perfect 82 win season. This would definitely be a triumph for a team that has failed to make the playoffs since the lockout. But in my opinion there will be doubters: “Reimer will suffer the sophomore jinx” (nah, he prays successfully to Jesus all the time); “Kessel is streaky and he’ll have another fourteen game slump” (no he won’t, how dare you!); “Bozak is a third line centre on your first line” (he’s been improving his faceoffs all summer…); “wait, you’ve only played three games” (hardly the leafs’ fault).  Be assured, these critics, depraved Senator fans, know nothing about hockey: they’re fans of a team who passed on a young Chris Pronger (prototypical defensive bully), Paul Kariya (989 pts), Jason Arnott (907 pts), preferring Daigle instead (umm…ya).  We’ve beat them four times in four playoffs. Currently sitting 1-4, the Sens have no shot at a perfect season like us.  Leaf doubters of this variety and others can all be thoroughly ignored.

But it must be said, we’re not out of the woods just yet. A bigger question remains to be seen: can the momentum from mission 82W carry over to Mission 16W?

As ever, we have no reason for doubt.

In Defence of Don Cherry

13 Thursday Oct 2011

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So much simplistic reductionism has been used to support or malign Don Cherry during his latest brouhaha. Ardent supporters of old-school tough guy hockey are behind opposing trenches against modern day ‘we juuuuust learned about concussions,’ firing generalizations at one another without really addressing Cherry’s actual stance.  To be clear, Cherry blamed three ex-fighters for denouncing fighting, calling them (in classic parlance) “pukes,” “turncoats,” and “hypocrites.”  This was factually wrong of him, because only one of the three actually wanted to ban fighting.  He should have apologized for making a mistake.  The players are considering legal action and have hinted they want his Coach’s Corner segment to end, saying it’s behind the times.  The subtext is, it’s not only this incident but his approach to the game that enables vicious, dangerous hockey, and it’s time for him to go.  But the truth is, despite his reputation is as a supporter of hockey as a primitive blood-sport, hardly anyone has done more to advance safety in the game as Don Cherry.  Paradoxically, this tendency has existed alongside his brazen endorsement of fighting, but only a certain kind of fighting, as we’ll see.

In the mid 90s, Cherry took up many causes to keep NHL players safe that are only now coming into vogue: smaller elbow pads that can’t be used as weapons; starting a campaign designed to end hitting from behind doling out stop sign stickers on the backs of kids helmets, and denouncing it in the NHL; demanding no-touch icing after showing dozens of disturbing hits causing serious injuries as a result of a more-or-less useless aspect of the game.  As a kid, on his TV segment and movies, Cherry taught me how to absorb a body-check and how not to get hit from behind. People condemn the Rock Em Sock Em videos without acknowledging all the safety tips for kids that come afterwards. People are distracted (understandably) by his loud suits, and by the force of his on screen persona, but this doesn’t eliminate all the concern Cherry has shown for player’s safety. And finally, there’s a huge aspect of fighting he denounced that nobody gives him credit for.

There is a brand of fighter, a goon, that sits on the bench until he has to fight–the kind of guy with 3000 penalty minutes, 2 goals.  Cherry has unequivocally denounced this practice, citing his own experience as a bench-warmer as humiliating.  He said the fighters on his team when he coached were four twenty goal scorers.  In other words, fighting should be an organic part of the game, occurring when tensions run high because a code of the game is broken.  It shouldn’t be the routine farce it has become, where no-talent Goliaths schedule fights in advance to remain in the league and make a better salary than they otherwise would in a freak show.  Fighting should happen the way it does in other sports and in life: when people are actually mad.

When it comes to making observations about hockey (not politics, or life in general), nobody is more observant than Don Cherry.  He explains aspects of the sport that totally escape other so-called pundits, normally ex-players finally allowed to show personality.  Cherry enriches the game by making you appreciate little things.  Last week, he showed fighters carefully moving away from a puck before a fight, knowing they were liable to step on it and injure themselves. I watched the same play live but didn’t notice.  I thought the only threat of injury was an opponents fist.  He recently showed Max Pacioretty pushing/taunting Chara after scoring a goal (typical), whereas most people focused on Chara annihilating Pacioretty’s head into a scansion. He condoned the hit as a hockey play, rightly, but but he ripped into the Montreal arena for being dangerous, offered a simple, effective solution, and showed a string of identical hits that went without suspensions. His solution was comprehensive, taking the game and player’s safety into account.  The hit was shown hundreds of times, even on the national news, but nobody else shed light on what could have been one aspect of its real motivation.  Cherry sees a bird’s eye view, the total game, that comes from watching an incalculable amount of hockey (NHL, all junior levels and even below).

Those who make it sound like Cherry is opposed to player’s safety, that he’d deny the oncoming wave of science backing up the dangers of concussions because he’s essentially a caveman, are disingenuous at best, and I suspect most of them haven’t really watched him for years and see him as a one dimensional caricature.  When he gets his facts wrong, he should admit it, and I was surprised his apology was only half-hearted.  But his opinions on hockey still enrich the game as ever, and offer a refreshing, insightful perspective that never conforms to the newest, modish opinions on the game, some of which, his detractors never admit, he predicted years ago.

If he is effectively thrown out of his position over this quarrel,he’ll leave behind a gaping hole and hockey won’t be any safer.

Toronto Needs the Arts to Balance the Budget

11 Tuesday Oct 2011

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Toronto is apparently suffering a deficit of over $700 million.  It might be interesting to consider that during the mayoral election nobody mentioned this shortfall, and that this crippling debt seems to have appeared from nowhere, yet dominates the budget.  But that’s a topic for another day. The fact is, the city is poised to stop funding frills in the name of austerity–no surprise, Ford’s sawed off shitgun is aiming straight for the arts.  Fuelling this is the assumption that anything enjoyable or soul-nourishing must be unaffordable–literally, Ford can’t afford it. Har har har.  But according to a visual graph from the Grid (the kind that unfortunately looks cute and has the undesired effect of not being taken seriously), far from a decadent expense, the arts is an economic engine.

Consider: Nuit Blanche got an initial investment of $600,000 and brought in $34.7 million; TIFF received $800,000 in grants this year and brought in $27 million in tourism from out of town visitors.  There’s no need to exhaust similar stats, the trend is clear: even accounting for exaggeration and faulty methods, the return is irresistible.  So why is it being resisted? Are these numbers that wrong?

As an innate sceptic, I find a return this crazy hard to swallow whole, but the graph is pretty compelling. Though admittedly I’m not an economics major, in my humble opinion it behooves our mayor to receive millions of dollars, especially when he’s searching desperately for every penny.  I know if I had millions of dollars coming at me on condition I suffer some art, I’d oblige. Hell, for millions I’d do all kinds of unmentionable things. But what I can’t ever imagine is being too poor to buy beers after refusing to be paid handsomely to watch Leaf games.  Is it possible our mayor hates art more than he loves money?

Unless the Grid’s numbers are a severe misrepresentation, the mayor is under heavy obligation to explain why a cherished and lucrative revenue stream is being cut while the belt is tightened all over the city.

Unqualified Teachers Abound

01 Saturday Oct 2011

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Margaret Wente wrote a commendable opinion piece in the Globe and Mail (“Too Many Teacher’s Can’t Do Math, Let Alone Teach It,” September 29) bemoaning the alarming number of math teachers who are uncomfortable doing math themselves.  She blames the paltry amount of math courses needed to become qualified as a math teacher and the OISE pedagogy (the most influential teacher’s college in the country) that fails to prioritize education in favour of, “social justice and global inequality.” Wente is correct on both points.

Personally, I was shocked when I got accepted to OISE because I didn’t think I had sufficient History courses when I applied. (English was my primary teachable, which I majored in, but I thought I was at least one short for my secondary teachable).  I suspect I was accepted solely on the basis of the equity/racism essay I wrote in my application, as they’re the only school that required one and they’re the only school I got accepted to.  In other words, OISE had the magnanimity to look past my lack of requirements and see only my contrived essay I wrote to satisfy their predictable view of multiculturalism.  That school was a nightmare.  It turns out I shouldn’t have joined a club that would have me as a member.

OISE fails to recognize that setting unqualified teachers upon a country of innocent students is itself a social injustice. Wente describes the frustration of University professors from around the country who report that the math skills of students studying to become math teachers are “generally abysmal.”  This is obviously a crucial problem, but it’s compounded because the teacher training programs you’d expect to be concerned are more concerned with politics than education.  It’s like the police protesting a lawless society by encouraging rioters to find the biggest, most expensive TV to steal.

To be sure, a teacher is a part time social worker; they spend a huge chunk of time with kids who have real issues.  Teaching poor children who don’t eat breakfast, or who are abused by their parents, or bullied is extremely hard work, and there’s no shortages of other issues. But if you are so concerned with politics and society, become a politician.  What’s needed is concrete steps to help educate kids who suffer from inequalities, not constantly railing against them in some abstract way while failing to teach kids to read and write because the teachers don’t know how to themselves.

Every teacher’s college should subscribe to the following statement: “If you don’t know squat about what you teach it doesn’t matter how sympathetic you are to the plight of your students.” Any institution who disagrees with this final statement, in word or in action, has blood on its hands.

The Liberation of Chickens From Today’s Free-Range

30 Friday Sep 2011

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The literature and the images on PETA’s website about the deplorable way chickens suffer are beyond disturbing. The depraved details need not be retold: suffice it to say, it should come as no shock to learn Heinrich Himmler was once a chicken farmer. But today, even lucky chickens under the best conditions have a dull existence idling on a free range under the heavy surveillance of their executioner. Comparatively, free range is good, but we all know there’s more to life than mobility. Chickens need more. There’s a new, upscale market of pampered chickens waiting to be exploited.

In the future, allowing chickens merely free range outside will be considered a moral violation. Chickens will receive more and more perks until finally progressives will only buy eggs produced by chickens that have been on guided tours throughout Europe. This is undoubtedly more humane than any free range. How do you keep ‘em down on the farm after seeing Paree? Making nests and bathing in dust, those splendours of the free range, doesn’t hold up to gazing dreamily at the Tuscan countryside. Only after such pampering is the chicken ready for execution.  Eating what we kill is humane, so long as it’s taken to Italy first.  A dozen eggs will cost only $45.

This will change when progressives complain that only rich chickens who win the genetic lottery enjoy the privilege of travel. Meanwhile, lower class chickens languish in squalid, free-range ghettoes. Thankfully, they’ll point out, a full life does not require a huge purse.

These progressives will buy chickens that have been spiritually nurtured by enlightened farmers in ways that are inherently accessible. Each chicken will be personally named and fed by hand. If they’re lonely, farmers will curl up and cuddle. Paperback editions of world classics can commonly be found for under $5. Like children, chickens will love being read to. Movie projectors will screen classic cinema on the side of barns. Even if the deeper meaning is less than fully grasped, chickens will feel cared for. In other words, conscious consumerism will expand the definition of free range to include nurturing the chicken’s mind, body and soul. This is a free range.

Then, after farmers have ensured that every chicken has had a pleasant life on the road to self-actualization, they’ll kill them in their sleep and sell their bodies.