the Return of John Galliano

22 Thursday Sep 2011

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The current issue of Maclean’s reports that garish John Galliano, the high-profile anti-Semite and former fashion designer/icon, might be poised for a “resurrection.”  Cue the Rocky music, our hero’s returning.  A Parisian court found him guilty of “public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity,”  a verdict that didn’t exactly require enhanced interrogation techniques to arrive at since Galliano was filmed professing his love for Hitler, and plaintiff Geraldine Bloch described separate occasions where Galliano remarked on her “dirty Jewish face.”  Possibly, just possibly, she had remnants of lunch on her Jewish face, but in case you were about to give Galliano the benefit of the doubt consider he called her a “‘dirty whore’ at least a thousand times” in a 45 minute rant.”  Even accounting for exaggeration that’s 22 times a minute, rounding down.  Thankfully for John, Paris has no law forbidding issuing insults based on sexual proclivity.  In any case, the judge let him off light: this incident will appear on his record (should somebody forget) and he only has to pay about an $8000 suspended sentence, meaning he pays nothing unless he offends again in the next five years.  He escaped a $30,000 fine and six month jail time, the maximum punishment for his offence.  The presiding judge noted the “values of respect and tolerance which the defendant generally adheres to,” of course notwithstanding his rapid- fire misogyny and drunken Jew bashing.

To be sure, I don’t agree that there ought to be a law forbidding saying what he said, as odious as it is.  It was obviously a detestable opinion, but it was not a call to violence. Of course the court of public opinion screwed him way harder by effectively dropping him from his high profile jobs, so the verdict in real court was irrelevant.  Whether the law should exist or not is a fair but separate question, but it does exist and he was undeniably very guilty.

Too often celebrities are expected to be good people, and when they publicly screw up the public is disappointed they weren’t better role models for the kids and pathetic adults who should know better.  People should be admired for their talents, but talented people shouldn’t be expected to be particularly virtuous.  Their talent has nothing to do with their morals.  I don’t like Wagner’s music, but unlike Woody Allen it doesn’t give me the urge to conquer Poland.  There’s a separation for me.  Likewise, I still enjoy listening to Thriller, and freely admit I hear the music and mute the sounds of protesting children.  So as disturbing as Galliano’s comments were, as long as he can put together a dress I can’t really blame Kate Moss for wearing his at her wedding.  Though the standing ovation Galliano garnered after Moss’s father thanked him seems excessively polite for my taste.

As of now, Galliano’s lawyer said his client’s mood is “serene, relieved and pleased this is all behind him.”  But some people have longer memories. Unfortunately the article failed to drudge up his most vile comments.  For the next five years, Galliano will make sure there’s no video camera around before he tells a woman, “I love Hitler and people like you would be dead.  Your mothers, your fathers would all be fucking gassed.”

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.”

Toronto’s Latest Snafu: Fords Frontin’ on the Waterfront

09 Friday Sep 2011

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Depending on your perspective, the Mayor Fords are modern day Medicis, visionaries about to lavish our city’s waterfront in historical splendour, or their corruption and short-sightedness will replace moderate gains with an irreversible blight.  I just want trees and sand, but their plans are larger.

In Wednesday’s issue of the National Post, Natalie Alcoba relays the highlights of the redesigned Ford waterfront: a sports complex in a decommissioned power plant, high-rises, hotels, a “retail-leisure town centre destination” (which is apparently not a mall), an “ice palace” (skating rink), a monorail, and for good measure a Ferris wheel. Oh, and an extended parkland/harbour jutting into Lake Ontario made from the earth burrowed under the Eglinton LRT.  “This is an opportunity for Canada and Toronto to redefine a 21st century waterfront for the world,” said Eric Kuhne, the architect who drew the initial sketches. And he should know–no slouch, he’s completed major waterfront designs on five continents. Perhaps only in this modern, Google age rife with plagiarism redefining our world constitutes installing Dubai’s harbour, London’s “Eye”, and Springfield’s monorail. “This is a plan that will create jobs,” Doug Ford said in response to the old plan that was to emerge from the ground of its own volition.

Kelly McParland knocked the current (previous?) route of development in Thursday’s National Post: “in a decade of existence it has spent $900 million on what still strikes the untrained eye as a dusty stretch of parking lots, industrial sites, and kitschy tourist outlets.” Fords say the 25 years allotted to this development is too slow, they can do theirs in 10.  What’s not to like? To hear the National Post, we should have started building yesterday.

Well, others have seen more than McParland’s “untrained eye.”  Edward Keenan of the Grid attributes the slow pace of development to the fact that the environmental assessment, required by law, was just recently completed.  It took years and cost $19 million.  A new plan will require another lengthy, costly assessment.  That’s bad, but Keenan gets to hotter stuff: “research by York University professor Robert MacDermid shows a link between one developer who owns a 50-year lease on Port Lands property discussed in the plan and $30,000 in donations to Rob Ford’s mayoral campaign.”  Corruption! Insider deals! Sexy.  Ford’s freely admit they don’t have money, and to fund this thing they’d need to borrow against the increased land value.  In other words, Toronto would sell undeveloped land to a private firm at low rates before the development takes place. Keenan estimates the losses could be in the billions and compares it to selling off the Distillery District before it became the Distillery.

Enzo Dimatteo of Now, the city’s most rabid Ford basher, is dubious, to put it politely.  Dimatteo reports that Doug Ford sat in on the recorded meeting of the Toronto Port Lands Company board where the decision was made to sole-source preliminary drawings for the revised plan.  Taking Now seriously isn’t easy.  This alleged “paper” has such low esteem for truth that the “pictures,” even the covers, are merely photo shopped assaults, and for this I wrote them saying I don’t even trust the veracity of their concert listings.  But they’re far from alone in finding something shady.

Rob Mackenzie of the Toronto Standard pointed out that Fords failed to consult with the councillor under whose land it lies, and that they hired Kuhne three months ago even though developing that land is in another agency’s mandate, Waterfront Toronto.  Mackenzie cites more abuses of procedure and voices doubts about the project’s practicality.  In stark contrast, David Dick-Agnew, also from the Toronto Standard, invokes comparisons of New York’s Central Park and Paris’ Champs Elysees.  Sure…New York and Paris will be obsolete when Fords are done. The Globe and Mail’s John Loring mentions an additional quarter billion needed to naturalize the mouth of the Don River to prepare a flood plain in the event of a hurricane the magnitude of Hazel. Keep the sober calculation coming.

Under the polarizing reign of the Fords, the shocking and bizarre appear inexhaustible. Just how good or horrible this gets, or even whether it’s legal, remains to be seen, but it’s doubtful their plan will materialize in full. Despite the talk of Ferris wheels and ice palaces, the Fords are immune to both fun and culture. This is about high rises and shopping. If something needs to be sacrificed for this plan to work…

In any case, expressed in only his characteristic, lucid terms, Rob is determined for a showdown: “…We’re going to go out, we’re going to consult, but this is step one…It’s a proven fact, we’re moving the ball down field; we’re getting things done and we’re going to make this just like a gold mine.”

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.

The Layton Letter…not really a huge deal

29 Monday Aug 2011

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Given the public outpouring, it’s obvious great sadness accompanied Jack Layton’s death.  It really sounds like we lost a person who, despite being a politician, was a human being. No small accomplishment.  Most were surprised at the scale of public grieving, and the responses to his letter to the country in print have ranged from callous scepticism (Blatchford, National Post) to raving sentimental nonsense (Klein, Now).  So what to make of this letter?

The left never tire of the mantra, “everything is political,” yet Layton boosters took umbrage with any notion that the death scored political points (read Blatchford’s 2355 comments, linked above).  But why should it be surprising, or insulting, that Layton would use such a poignant moment to further the cause to which he devoted his entire life?  Having the composure and stoicism to produce such a letter (even if, according to Blatchford, it was “crafted” with party president Brian Topp, chief of staff Anne McGrath, and Olivia Chow, who presumably weren’t just there for grammar) was the sensible thing for an astute politician like Layton, and just because it helped his party doesn’t mean he was insincere. Nobody denies the letter obviously benefited the party, so why waste the opportunity?  It’s a commendable political and personal move. To assume this letter was written without consideration of its effect on the country is hopelessly naive.  Does anyone really doubt Layton could imagine the effect it would (rightly) have on the country? That opinion seems to doubt Layton’s intelligence and political acumen, and fails to recognize the admirable truth that the man was devoted enough to give his final moment to the party.

Let’s look at what Now called one of “the most remarkable political speech ever” (Pericles’ Funeral Oration being a close second).  Sandwiched between an inspiring, hopeful message for Canadians, and those suffering cancer, are directions for the party and pragmatic messages for caucus members, Quebecers, and the youth.  It’s touching, as he knew it would be, but when a politician talks about politics it can’t be taken as only personal. Layton obviously wanted to inspire Canadians while helping his party.  Success.

And is the letter’s content even remotely surprising?  It would be shocking if he suddenly made a candid statement diverging from his lifelong  positions. That would be historic, but the letter echoed the platitudes and sentiments he spoke in life.  No surprises here.  The letter didn’t add anything to his story, it was just a ghost authored overview.

Layton’s death is tragic, and it’s easy to see people loved him.  Even those who detest his policies frequently have affinity for the man himself.  Stories published in the Grid, CBC, and others from Now (there were 7 features on Layton last issue) describe an artistic, convivial man most at home in community meetings and drinking while talking politics in pubs. These stories paint a full picture of a fun, engaging person with character devoted to his cause he believed in (for better or worse).  He showed tremendous courage facing a horrible disease.  This letter should have little bearing on his legacy. He did enough in life.  Let his enthusiasm and his spirit in the flesh be remembered, not his talking points.

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?