Tag Archives: National Post

Morsi Code: Egyptian President’s bile easy to decipher

16 Wednesday Jan 2013

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The National Post published an article in today’s paper with three year-old quotes from Mohammad Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was democratically elected to the Presidency of Egypt—as if how he got into power has any bearing on the man himself. During the Egyptian Presidential race, many here and there called Morsi a “moderate,” and many still do. Perhaps seeing how grim the situation could become some ignored all the painfully obvious evidence pointing the other way. Suggesting that the Muslim Brotherhood was really a gang of Islamic fundamentalists there to impose Shariah law was considered not just misinformed, but uncouth. Why add unnecessary negativity to the stirring promise of the Arab Spring?

Here are Morsi’s own words from three years ago: “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.” Notice his subversion of the phrase “never forget,” probably unintentional, but maybe not. He throws in a comrade cadence too. He goes on. The article states Egyptian children must “feed on hatred,” adding, “Who is our enemy? The Zionists. Who occupies our land? The Zionists. Who hates us? The Zionists. Who destroys our land? The Zionists.” Western defenders of Morsi, if such a thing is currently conceivable, will now point to some time he uttered an uplifting humanistic message. Such paltry, pathetic apologies happen all the time. In effect, it allows a politician to whitewash any abominable speech, or even straight up war crimes, by cancelling it out with a cheery platitude. Simple! But it’s impossible to simultaneously believe in peace with your neighbours when you identify them as enemies to be warred upon ceaselessly. Unless you think Morsi was just lying to placate the rabid part of his base (which is admittedly conceivable but very unlikely, and very much reprehensible still), there is no question about his real feelings towards Jews. That such an obvious statement needs to be made points to discouraging gullibility. Hopefully these loathsome comments change that.

But in case there was any ambiguity left, Morsi continued by harking back to traditional anti-Semitic themes, Zionists as “bloodsuckers” who attack Palestinians, and Jews as not the descendants of Abraham and Sarah but of “apes and pigs.” Well, sorry to break the mood but he is half correct. I am reminded of perhaps my favourite Tolstoy humour from Anna Karenin: “Oblonsky was fond of a pleasant joke, and sometimes liked to perplex a simple-minded man by observing that if you’re going to be proud of your ancestry, why stop at Prince Rurik and repudiate your oldest ancestor—the ape?” To say nothing else about him, Morsi is a simple-minded man who apparently doesn’t go for evolution, believing instead that he came literally from Hagar, not an ape. So Jews as descendant of apes, yes, like everybody, but, glatt kosher, Jews are most certainly not the descendants of pigs. Those anti-Israel people who wax philosophical, rightly pointing out how criticizing Israel isn’t necessarily synonymous with anti-Semitism, often forget how frequently, and in what prominent places, it is.

The Obama administration’s reaction was “blistering.” Not only do they “completely reject ” Morsi’s statements, but, in their opinion, “it’s counter to the goals of peace.” How clairvoyant. And yet, as self-evident as the American response seems there isn’t much else that can be done or said for now. The vapid response is unavoidable. America can’t intervene militarily, and calling Morsi out isn’t productive. It may not be currently politically expedient for Morsi to act on his real feelings, but at the very least these unambiguously deplorable statements should eliminate even the most naïve hopes that he is at heart anything but a despicable anti-Semitic warmonger, whatever token peace talk he might have once uttered notwithstanding.

(Sure enough, shortly after completing this article I read the latest follow up: Morsi’s comments were taken out of context. While inevitably the US and Egyptian spokespeople scrambled to diffuse the situation, no comforting other context was offered. In case the claim that his speech was taken from an address in response to “Israeli aggression against Gaza” doesn’t fully assuage you, Morsi assured [the reporters] “of his respect for all monolithic religions, freedom of belief and practicing religions.”

Overzealous parking police

10 Thursday May 2012

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While it is hard to fault someone for carrying out their chief function, there is a disproportionate amount of police force devoted to procuring money from people whose only crime is turning off their cars and walking away. When you think about it, it’s odd that we can freely drive on public roads anywhere and for any length of time, but must hand over money the second we desist.

There are different classes of parking infractions, but none of them constitute an egregious moral breech. Of course, I am not against paying for parking and punishing those who don’t pay, but it’s a question of how tightly it’s enforced. The ebb and flow of a hockey game requires the invisible presence of a ref who skilfully balances the ratio of infractions to called-penalties. Parking your car in Toronto feels like playing in a hockey game where the ref blows the whistle on every single tiny hook and hold, real or imagined.

I don’t use “imagined” loosely. I’ve heard of enough instances where someone received a ticket after paying to park. Keep in mind the parallel to hockey doesn’t really exist: refs have to make key split-second decisions during an impossibly fast game, while the parking police leisurely observe dormant vehicles. While the incompetence, or perhaps malevolence, involved in ticketing someone who has paid for parking isn’t standard, it is baffling and inexcusable. If brushing off fulminating heckles is an inevitable part of the ref’s job, we owe parking police a backlog of abuse.

That people who pay for parking shouldn’t suffer an additional charge is obvious, but it used to be possible to leave the car for a minute without receiving a guaranteed ticket. This should still be possible…risky, but possible. The equilibrium is currently too far askew.  Parking police are ubiquitous. If we adjust to the current  pressure and everyone always pays for parking, the parking police will actually be out of a job, truly a paradoxical revenge. Unless, of course, they ticket those who have paid! The fault isn’t with the individual ticketers…they’re just following orders. They are required by the city to issue a minimum amount of tickets. Parking tickets must constitute a substantial stream of income and budgets are dependent on these dollars, so parking infractions need to be found, whether they’re really there or not. I hope the parking police’s distant cousin, the police, hunt terrorists, drug dealers and rapists as vigilantly and effectively as parked cars are hunted. 

There’s a lesser-known but pervasive parking evil that is quite simply an open racket perpetrated by the city. For six months of the year my street, like numerous others downtown, requires drivers (who have already paid the city for an overnight parking permit) to alternate every two weeks what side of the road they park on. Before midnight it’s on the left, after midnight it’s on the right. Without fail, the next morning there is a parking police ticketing a procession of cars whose owners were guilty of simply forgetting what day it is.

My roommate’s working life as a bar manager makes him especially vulnerable to succumbing to this trivial law. He can’t move his car before he goes to work in the afternoon because then he’s liable to get a ticket for moving it too early. It’s understandable that when he returns from a ten hour bartending shift at 3-4am he doesn’t always have the presence of mind to recall that it’s precisely the month’s halfway point. No mens rea! He is a hard worker, not a nefarious parker to be punished. It was a legal park when he parked, but in this surreal Daliesque world where the law is tied to melting clocks, such is justice. It has cost him literally hundreds of dollars. 

What does the city accomplish by demanding drivers play a veritable game of parking hopscotch? This has nothing to do with snow removal, as the law is not in effect during winter. If it’s to do with street cleaning, why is it essential the way is cleared for them to clean first thing in the morning when they have two weeks to clean? Anyone who doubts this is purely a money grab is adorable. If there is a reason it must be this way, I am all ears.

Otherwise, this deplorable bylaw should be removed immediately and the city should retroactively compensate my unfortunate roommate. That would be a nice gesture. Of course, anyone who believes the city will do the honourable thing and consciously change the law so as to make less money is living inside a Dali canvas.

Imbecilic atheists

23 Monday Apr 2012

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My last article wherein I put forward some thoughts on my atheism shouldn’t suggest that I feel solidarity with atheists everywhere. Like anybody, atheists are not immune from stupidity and boorish behaviour.

Today’s National Post reports the story of Ashu Solo, a member of Saskatoon’s cultural diversity and race relations committee. Solo was at a dinner appreciating volunteers like himself when a city councillor made him feel “like a second class citizen,” and “excluded.” The councillor’s offence? Saying a prayer which included “jesus” and the word “amen.” Solo says municipal officers should not use their offices to “perform religious bigotry” or to “impose their beliefs on others.”

Solo is a fortunate moron. Fortunate because, in another era, Spanish inquisitors made atheists actually feel like second-class citizens. The torture Solo suffered, hearing gracious appreciation before a meal he was to eat for free, was infinitely milder than crucifixion. He is a moron for believing multiculturalism to be simply everyone behaving like him. When someone’s religious freedom is infringed (and they’re not seeking the religious freedom to kill infidels), it’s no longer a multicultural world. Multiculturalism is a careful balancing of diverse beliefs, not a wholesale expunging of them. Does this really need to be said?

I don’t pray because I am an atheist, but praying is not illegal; we are guaranteed freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Solo is the one in breach here, and he owes an apology. I couldn’t care less that he’s an atheist and so am I: for a member of a city’s cultural diversity and race relations committee to be in such an ugly breach of a basic human right is inexcusable. When idiots undertake noble endeavours, and human rights and cultural diversity people are frequently noble idiots, the results are ugly. The term “religious bigotry” loses all meaning when it’s associated with such irreproachable behaviour.

Solo is awaiting an apology from the Mayor and a promise there won’t be any more prayers at city events, or else he will go to the Human Rights Commission. Used this way, as it normally is, the HRC is just a tool for self-righteous fascists to impose their narrow mind on others. Freedom of religion is rightly one of the cornerstones of Western law. Solo has no case.

Randy Donauer, the alleged religious bigot, says he was surprised when Solo felt excluded, and never meant him any harm. His surprise is understandable. After all, Donauer never imposed his religion on Solo, he just imposed a prayer on some food. It’s a shame that the blameless Donauer will have his reputation besmirched. Being accused of a human rights transgression, even if wholly innocent, never does any good.

I hope his career as a councillor isn’t adversely affected by Solo in any way. Even though it would be understandable, I hope Donauer doesn’t bend before the HRC and issue an apology. He has nothing to apologize for. For being offended without cause, for airing his baseless grievances and threats so publicly, and for putting what seems like a good man through unnecessary hoops, I hope Solo comes out of this looking like the boor he is.

I hope we Canadians arrive at a collective understanding of multiculturalism  more sophisticated than this. Imbeciles should think twice, or at least once, before issuing threats and serious accusations, and it’s a shame there’s a climate that so freely encourages overly sensitive people to vent before the country whenever their feelings are hurt, however ridiculous their feelings are. To be sure, this is a better problem than having actual human rights abuses, obviously, and recourse for an actual abuse is a wonderful thing. But absurd spectacles like this deserve scorn and condemnation nonetheless.

There are tickets issued for pulling fire alarms without cause. In Solo’s case, an apology and an admission that he is a stupid boor would suffice.

Olympian prostitutes, London 2012

02 Monday Apr 2012

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As London prepares for the Olympics–where the world forgets international conflict and enjoys for a brief moment the pure spirit and high ideals of sportsmanship–British authorities should have a plan in place for their hookers. Today’s National Post describes the difficulty of the situation.

BC researchers found that stepped-up police effort during the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 had the adverse effect of separating hookers from their usual places of work, exposing them to more violence and disease than usual. To redress this, a potential plan for this year’s Olympics might include the creation of brothels that operate parallel to the sporting events this summer, says a nameless author of a new study on “the sex trade and the 2010 Olympics.” No mention yet on whether the brothels will be physically located within the athletes village proper, or perhaps whether they’ll go one inclusive step further and make prostitution a new Olympic event. There is room in this Olympics, after all, since the IOC dropped women’s baseball. It’s clear what organizers think is more popular.

There are two separate forces here: health advocates are concerned for the well being of hookers, while the Olympic committee is more concerned with, hello hello, the optics and public relations. I’m not sure what the law is in the UK, but thankfully at least all parties seem equally unconcerned.

Advocates are trying to develop a strategy based on past mistakes. Apparently, before the Vancouver Olympics the media warned that there would be a “prostitution explosion” expected to descend on Vancouver, and hordes of entrepreneurial-minded sex workers the world over would flock to this veritable Klondike gold rush. None of this happened, however, only incidents of police harassment increased.

This story interests me for a couple reasons. One, it seems Olympic organizers and the media expect that when the world is invited somewhere, the world inevitably wants hookers. Even if this is apparently not true. Personally, I do what I can to welcome and oblige my house guests, but Olympic organizers don’t share my sense of hospitality. Two, hooker showdowns force us to reveal our moral hand.  How do we reconcile Judeo-Christian values with reality? What trumps?

The question I’m interested in isn’t really whether prostitution is good or bad–a worthwhile but more complex issue beyond my scope–but whether abstract moral posturing is more important than harming real people.

Also, Olympic stories tend to be of the uplifting human overcoming the odds, national glory, or stoic acceptance and better-luck-next-year variety. I like that there’s already some sordid down-to-earth muck in the mix, a tangle of thorns to be worked out before the eyes of the world. Deal with that Olympic organizers!

Personhood: should all persons, including dolphin people, legally be persons?

23 Thursday Feb 2012

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The past couple days the National Post has reported that animal rights activists in the States are trying to get dolphins, and other cetaceans, to legally be called “persons” under the law. According to Emory University neuroscientist Lori Marino, “their basic needs are very much like humans–to be able to stay alive, not to be confined, to make choices and travel, and perhaps foremost to engage in social interaction.”

I laughed at this because I can’t hear the words cetacean and Marino without thinking about Ace Ventura, but her quote got me thinking. Doesn’t her criterion apply to every animal? I know dolphins are really smart, but find me an animal that prefers to die, to be confined, and to remain dormant and isolated from its own kind.

Last year I joked that one day, at the current rate magnanimous human persons bestow rights ever outward, owning a dog will be considered vile and archaic. Consider: we order them around, exert dominance by actually keeping them tethered to a chain around their neck in public, we feed them after they perform tricks, and, worst of all, if it suits us, we cut off their balls. One might say that dogs seem happy in human homes, but it’s just centuries of Stockholm syndrome. Domesticated…what a horrible euphemism for slavery.

Is SeaWorld a concentration camp? It used to be a fun place to take your kids. Ahh, the times are changing. Tasha Kheiriddin from the Post insists the problem with bestowing human rights to animals is they cannot possibly enter into the social contract: “an animal bears no responsibility, legal or otherwise, for its actions. You cannot sue a dolphin if it bites you or wrecks your boat.”

If the dolphin manages to acquire personhood under the law, while at the same time managing to avoid all obligations of the social contract, perhaps they really are smarter than humans. If I bite someone or wreck their boat I’m in trouble. Well played, cetacean.

It’s funny to consider that this discussion is taking place while in the States Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney believes corporations are people. By this he must mean that, just like with human people and with cetacean people, it is incorporations’ nature to stay alive, to not be confined, to make choices and travel, and to engage in social interaction. Well, let’s examine: no corporation wants to die, globalisation is anything but confined, decisions are made, business class is even its own travel designation, and corporations do hold social events like family barbecues and golf tournaments. So corporations are persons too. But since corporation people are made up of human people who can comprehend the social contract, they will be made to uphold it: if a corporation bites you or wrecks your boat, you can sue. Corporations are no cetaceans.

But there is a problem: according to the definition of persons that dolphins and companies have successfully met, human people no longer qualify as people. Consider: increasingly humans have become fatally overweight and cancer-prone, remain confined in office cubicles and 500 sq. foot condos, choice remains elusive as our social systems act upon us, we travel albeit on broken public transit systems and inadequate bike lanes, and anyone who’s seen the zombies on their iPhones in public agrees we are no longer a social species.

So there you have it. Dolphins and companies are people, unlike human beings.

Leafs and senators: sens players, fans, and writers are soft

08 Wednesday Feb 2012

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As the Leafs move up in the standings (last night’s aberration notwithstanding) and the Senators continue to show their true colours and lose, it seems each team’s fans are also making a parallel divergence: my last piece about the ACC needing more“fury and balls” was contrasted sharply and hilariously by Ottawa writer Wayne Scanlan in yesterday’s National Post, “who wrote about our rival needing “civility.

Scanlan takes up the cause of a “die-hard” senator fan, and season-ticket holder, who wrote to him saying she was disgusted by the behaviour of ottawa and Toronto fans, “but mostly Toronto fans.” She didn’t feel safe attending games alone, as the corridors were bedlam before and after games. “Thugs and hooligans are ruining senators games.” No. Her senators game was ruined by the senators who couldn’t handle the Leafs relentless speed, crisp and elegant passes, and bar-down snipes. If the halls were an insane asylum it was because the senators were crushed to an insane degree. 5-0! Would any die-hard fan in a rival’s building seriously keep their glee to themselves? Can this woman ask that of us?

And besides, what exactly happened? Thugs and hooligans are those who broke windows and looted stores during the G20. If there was violence at the hockey game it would surely be mentioned somewhere, as no writer excludes the main story from their story. It sounds like this fragile woman was upset Leaf fans were loud before and after trouncing her team. If the senators destroyed the Leafs in the ACC and I had to listen to their fans gloat, and no doubt they would, I’d be in despair too. But I’d blame it on the Leafs. Fans all want to cheer and brag and gloat, but it’s impossible when you lose. So while I understand perfectly well this woman’s misery, I hope she continues to suffer it for years unabated.

This “die-hard fan” should save her disgust for her team. As their losing continues she will need all the reserve she can get.

But why did a writer take up this woman’s cause? He writes, “can both sides of this Battle of Ontario clash please grow up enough to lift this debate to the high school level?” What “debate?” We hate your team, you hate ours. The players debate who is best by playing, and we respond with cheers and boos.

Scanlan is sneaky: he spends the first half of his article praising alfredsson without ever qualifying Leaf fans’ hatred. It’s disingenuous to posture like alfredsson’s booing doesn’t have origins in a catalogue of historical provocations. Yet he uses highly charged words without  ever describing what Leaf fans did wrong.

And, what’s childish is the Sens’ fans desperate grasp at symmetry, who, without a villain to offset all theirs, “mercilessly” boo Lupul, who has never done anything to deserve their ire aside from score goals.

Scanlan speculates that Leaf fans were in payback mode, avenging senator fans “behaving badly” during the all-star fantasy draft. Yes, the relentless booing, however predictable and banal, had to be innocuously redressed in the same terms–by booing back. All standard fare, and anything but surprising. But what really got Leaf fans, and what Scanlan scandalously leaves unacknowledged (omitted?) is the senator fan who suggested during the all-star fantasy draft that Lupul’s team should select Wade Belak, the ex-Leaf who was found dead in a hotel room last summer. This vile, morally indefensible outburst, more than any booing or juvenile “Leafs Suck” video created and screened by the organization, was a new low for senator fans, a group never exactly held in great esteem.

To be sure, that person was an idiot and wasn’t acting as the team’s official representative. No doubt most senator fans, Scanlan included, would distance themselves from this moron. But Scanlan’s plea for increased civility between the teams’ fans shouldn’t leave such an atrocious breach of basic decency unacknowledged. Either this is negligence or bias.

Anyway, to complain about Leaf fans cheering on their team and booing their hated rival is totally futile. Not only is this not news, but, as I argued just before reading this article, hockey arenas are the rabid hockey fan’s should natural habitat, and nobody should be told how to pray in their temple. Also revealing, while the Leafs proudly exalt “truculence, belligerence and a high threshold for pain”, die-hard senator fans submit tear filled letters about the volume of their arena’s corridors causing them high anxiety. Their writers apparently sympathize. 

The last thing I’d like is to relieve senator fans of their misery, but can they lend to us for our home games these detested Leaf fans to teach ours how to act?

That would be civil.

Political language: combing for clichés

06 Friday Jan 2012

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No politician is free of platitudes, but some seem more blatantly devoid of meaning than others.  As someone who cares about the meaning of words, hollow-speak of any kind offends me, and I have a hard time looking past the breathtaking abuse words suffer at the hands of federal politicians publishing in national newspapers.

In today’s National Post, Sheila Copps amply demonstrates that she is just another Liberal lemming, continuing the parties’ predictable script that, adjusted only in the wake of defeat, has been changed in word but not in essence.  But my main contention is her constant violation of Orwell’s rules of good writing.

First, she explains the Latin root of the word “manifesto,” as deriving from manifestus, “clear or readily apparent.” As a political writer and a heavyweight politician running for presidency of the Liberals, such a violation of Orwell’s caution against using foreign language is inadvisable, yet she seems to dwell, soak and luxuriate in it, setting the tone for the horrors to come. Anyway, is there a worse way to begin a piece about evolving to modern times than invoking Latin etymology?

No Liberal today can begin a speech without addressing the parties’ recent demise. Next, a self-righteous assessment of what went wrong is followed in turn by a way forward invariably laden with the same hubris-ridden entitlement that caused their defeat in the first place. Of this, Copps’ is guilty.

A Liberal who believes “we have been dining out for too long on former glories” can’t also write in the same article “the values of our beautiful Canada were shaped by the Liberal party. Canada is a Liberal country.”  These statements are incompatible: she professes to understand that the meal is over, yet she can’t stop stuffing her face.

Here is a prolix sentence trying to assume grandeur by using needlessly puffed-up words: “We must use technology to continually interconnect so that we operate as a unified organization to protect the values of all reasonable Canadians.”

Without changing the meaning, this could read: “We must use technology effectively to connect with Canadians.” Hardly a profound or impressive statement in an age defined by social media, though her assumption that only Liberal Canadians are “reasonable” is typically patronizing, condescending, and more evidence of hubris.

Copps hands out clichés like Halloween candy with the expectation we will eat them up just as readily, but, just like devouring too much candy, consuming her hackneyed speech in one sitting sickens my stomach. The offences bleed one into another. Addressing and redressing each example of brutal writing requires an elephantine effort that’s unnecessary. The point is clear.

Copps ends where she begins, with one final Orwellian violation: “winners never quit and quitters never win.” If it were me, I’d conclude with something lucid and powerful.  This common aphorism is irrelevant and vague. It can mean different things. Does she mean that the Liberals lost last May because the quit? No. Presumably, she means she will work tenaciously to get into power–hardly a unique trait in politics, the natural home and breeding grounds for cut-throat opportunists. She doesn’t say what she means. Unlike her Latin definition of manifestus, her conclusion, and everything else, is anything but “clear or readily apparent.”

Post Script:

Every party and politician is guilty of using similar barbarous language. I oppose it everywhere. I hope to alert my very small, noble readership to the dangers of this pernicious breed of writing, not to denounce Liberals in general, though in this case it’s hard to do one and not the other.  Copps was the unfortunate victim of this entry because I happened to fall upon her article today and the mood struck me.

ORWELL’S 6 RULES OF WRITING:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use a passive voice where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

–From, “Politics and the English Language”

Republican morons: all just different shades of disgrace

28 Monday Nov 2011

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Even staunch Republicans can’t deny that the leaders on offer today have never been more pathetic. They are not merely poor or bad, they are abysmal. It’s beyond embarrassing, and if it were my country I’d be ashamed that such abjectly inadequate people could be taken seriously at all, let alone be poised for a Presidential race.  Such a thing could only take place in an anti-intellectual climate that celebrates stupidity. It’s hard to describe without it sounding like exaggeration. British writer Martin Amis published a terrific collection of his journalism on a cross-section of American topics in the 80s called the Moronic Inferno, a perfect phrase for the climate that enables such monstrously stupid politicians.  We expect left-wing media to attack Republicans, but it should be noted whenever the right does. The Canadian right has stepped forward in this regard.

The National Post did a segment Saturday where eleven writers named their pick for Republican candidates, followed by a brief explanation. They mostly sounded jaded and hopeless, as if they were picking which gun they’d use to shoot themselves in the head.  My two favourite NP writers, George Jonas and Robert Fulford, opted for “none of the above.”  Beyond pessimism, Jonas suggested politicians should be drafted since anyone who believes they possess all it takes to run a country is a lunatic, and should be disqualified on these grounds alone.  Fulford said it’s the worst lineup of potential candidates he’s seen in his lifetime.

This week’s Maclean’s discussed Republicans in an article titled “American Idiots.”  It proposes that perhaps becoming a presidential candidate is no longer solely a political objective, but a financial one. Presidential candidates are assured of fame. Politics is merely branding.  This perspective explains why Herman Cain was so stunningly unprepared to answer basic questions about Libya. Even more revealing was his explanation for the gaffe: “I got all this stuff twirling around in my head.” This should disqualify him off the bat: thinking is a non-negotiable job requirement for the leader of the free world.

The article notes that the New York Times looked at Cain’s calendar of campaign events and found that “19 of the 31 days of October were blank.”  Commentators suggest his campaign is fake, just a publicity stunt masquerading as politics. Maybe this is true, maybe not: what’s the bigger disgrace? For a serious political campaign to be so stunningly amateur as to be mistaken for a joke is pathetic, but is it worse or better than using the most serious office in the country for such shameless pursuit of profit? Instead of work on his campaign, the devastatingly prudent thing to do, Cain promoted his book. This is a scandal! It used to be that if you wanted to gain money, fame and notoriety from the President’s office you didn’t try to become the President. A blowjob sufficed.

But this isn’t a dictator ruthlessly inserting himself.  This is democracy. Pathetically, Cain actually has voluntary support, making Americans complicit. The bigger problem is that Cain is not out of place beside Gingrich, Bachmann, Perry, Palin, and Trump, and too many voters are OK with this.

In Ancient Greece, citizens not only voted for politicians, but could vote to ostracize for ten years any politician who they felt was a threat to the state.  While there’d be no politicians left in Greece today if this were still practiced, it would allow the US to filter politicians who perniciously hijack the political system to get rich. Although, it is shameful that this can’t be entrusted to the voters good sense. But Presidential candidates must all be devoted, capable politicians who know about the world and care about the country. Does this really need to be said? It’s a bizarre, scary world when this statement is not overwhelmingly self-evident, but it cannot be overstated.  This is a race for President of the United States, not high school.

But even ostracizing politicians is a band-aid solution if the climate of stupidity which enables them doesn’t change. Otherwise, a new moron will rise.  Any aspect of culture, media, or even advertising which actively or passively encourages or takes advantage of people’s stupidity is guilty of contributing to fanning the flames of the moronic inferno.  This should not be considered an “elitist” view, a term stupid people use as a shield. And anyway, movies like Dumb and Dumber, intelligence only lacquered in low IQ, aren’t the target of my criticism.  I’m talking about Fox News and everything else that trades the collective IQ of the country for ratings and money. I am not so naive to believe this will ever stop. Indeed, money at all costs is practically the country’s guiding principle.  Perhaps Obama recognized this essential hopelessness and won on a slogan of “hope.”

I fear the media get a kick out of bashing Republicans so much that a part of them is glad they’re there. Bad for politics, good for journalism. But this isn’t funny. This is a deplorable state of affairs that jeopardizes the country, and even the world. Millions of Americans understand this and helplessly watch their country sink into a bog. The focus of concerned, responsible adults should be on rising up; laughter just makes the sinking more enjoyable.

Democracy isn’t inherently good or bad, as Jonas reminds us in an earlier NP article from last week: “democracy is only a method of succession.” It fails without a body of intelligent, discerning and informed citizens. The Maclean’s article suggests that Mitt Romney, “the only serious Republican candidate,” is stuck at 21% support since he fails to make attention grabbing gaffes. He alienates his voters by refusing to behave like a vulgar spectacle on a reality TV show. This is his obstacle.

I was seriously disappointed in American intelligence after the show Arrested Development got cancelled (though intelligent Americans created it), but politics is important.  Countries need more than one plausible political party. The States has only two parties, but one is pathologically immature and obstinately refuses to care about the good of the country. I love the United States. This isn’t disappointing, or funny. This is terrifying.

Inappropriateness on Queens campus…so much can go wrong, and did

24 Thursday Nov 2011

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When I’m in the company of a good trusted friend there are no jokes I can’t make, and I make them, but I have the good sense not to publish them because I don’t have the same trust and understanding from my small group of noble readers (though I’m sure you’re all wonderful people). I’m irreverent, but just because I make a horrible joke doesn’t mean horrible moral behaviour will ensue.  This trust is not extended towards students at Queens University.

Father Raymond J. de Souza writes in today’s National Post about the Queen’s band who, when they’re not performing at football games, sing from their own songbooks “a compilation so explicit, so depraved, so celebratory of promiscuous debauchery” that they were suspended for the rest of the semester. It was too lewd for the National Post. Thankfully, this blog has no such standard of decency.  Choice excerpts:

“The pamphlet contained phrases like ‘I will rape you with a lamp’…’Chew me, screw me, suck me, fuck me, yaaay Queen’s.'”

“Front page titles over the last three years have included ‘mouth raping your little sister since 1905.'”

No doubt performing lyrics that may as well have been written by the Marquis de Sade, while wearing your school’s uniform, was beyond stupid.  What did they expect? But does this mean the students involved are necessarily moral failures who will slip into a depraved abyss without the universities’ intervention? The university thinks so: in addition to their suspension, they are being sent to “human rights and equity training.”

Here’s where things go wrong in the article. De Souza makes a huge leap, putting the pitiful judgement exercised here on par with Yale’s alleged sexual-assault problem. Bad lyrics in bad taste, however bad, is fundamentally different than an act of sexual-assault. Equating them is dangerous. If there is a sexual-assault problem at Queens it must be immediately and thoroughly dealt with, but the article doesn’t say this is happening.  There’s only a tenuous connection: Yale has a rape culture on campus while Queens students are told not to sing about it for recreational amusement. Charges of rape are too important to be invoked without foundation.

What de Souza really condemns is the “hook-up” culture at Queens.  He cites the Yale report, which sounds more than a little totalitarian: “Because the social environment is so open, students seem unsure of how to develop meaningful relationships, set appropriate boundaries, determine their own social values or act in their own best interests, short and long-term” [emphasis mine].

Wow.  Claiming that Queen’s students (young adults, but adults nonetheless) are incapable of maintaining meaningful relationships or acting in their own self-interest is a serious charge that requires more evidence than de Souza offers, and it’s also none of his damn business.  Students are old enough to go into the army: they can manage their personal relationships and determine what’s in their own best interest without anybody’s approval. I’m inherently sceptical of the patronizing attitude that adults can’t live their own lives free of the “exquisitely progressive,” whether it’s an advisory committee or a celibate priest.  Most people don’t have it all figured out at 20 but they grow up OK.

It’s a little rich that de Souza denounces the sexual climate on campus while accompanying the article is a photo of literally six upside down cheerleaders, asses out, legs wrapped around the crotch of a male counterpart who smiles gleefully. It’s a shade away from acrobatic Roman-Greco coitus. Maybe the NP needs equity training too. Lurid. Eye-catching sure,  but I’m offended. Horribly offended.

Is common sense too much to ask in all of this? “University band: don’t sing about raping girls with lamps.”  Equity training, a vague and terrifying term, is just the universities’ empty recourse for publicly demonstrating accountability. Don’t worry donors, we’re on it.  Keep giving us money.  Equity studies doesn’t enhance students’ critical thinking ability the way, say, studying English, history, classics, law, or other extinct university subjects would. That students are busy adults with their own minds and things to do, including school work, doesn’t concern the University as much as reversing their tarnished image…of course, not remotely surprising.

But strangely, the article makes it seem like university students would otherwise be devoted prudes abstaining from all “debauchery” if only the university climate wasn’t so tantalizing. Revelation: students do drugs, drink, and have sex because…wait for it…they can. Many find debauchery more fun than work, and their schedule is permitting. I’ve even heard rumours of sex and drugs in high school. Maybe young students would take up sobriety if they could occupy themselves with a harmless diversion, say by playing with balls during recess. University students don’t have sex because they’re “bombarded by various campaigns for sexual health,” a bombardment which de Souza calls “not the noblest vision of the human prospect.”  Maybe it doesn’t promote true love, but it might spare them from STDs.

If only administrator’s were as concerned with education as they are imposing morals on their adult patrons.  This isn’t grade school!  This doesn’t excuse the band from singing blatantly offensive lyrics while representing the school. Suspensions are in order for the band, but equity training is repulsive.  Maybe students would learn good judgement as a by-product of good education, and exercise reticence instead of singing about raping the mouth of somebody’s sister. It shouldn’t be much to ask.

At least not in public.

Taking the “remember” out of remembrance day

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Statements

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This week, the National Post reported there’s a high school in Ottawa that is forbidding veterans who come to speak to classrooms on remembrance day from bringing any military replica guns with them, something they have done for nineteen years.  Making history “come alive,” as cheesy as it sounds, is hard enough for a teacher, and I can think of no better way than having someone who was there tell stories, gun in hand. If I held the veteran’s rifle and tried to imagine the trenches, I’d feel sheer terror, surely the point of it all. But this year the school changed its policy. “No tanks or guns.”  “There are many students from the school who come from war-torn countries, and when they saw the replica gun, it did upset them.” The article doesn’t say if the committee, made up of school staff, actually received a direct complaint from a student or whether they changed the policy on their own initiative. A history teacher from the school resigned in response–a principled move, if somewhat dramatic.

This story is in line with the times, being as hyper-sensitive as possible to those perceived most vulnerable, though I would bet most schools would strongly criticize this policy. Here, the modern urge to “accommodate” is stronger than the urge to teach history. This is a problem. There are times in my writing where I fear I’m saying something painfully obvious, but this story forces my hand: the teaching of history needs to be the first priority in a history class.

If a student from a “war-torn country” is actually traumatized upon seeing either a replica gun or a real gun that’s disabled, they can leave the class. It’s not exactly the same as seeing the Luftwaffe hover the skies in formation or hearing a nearby bomb explode, but students are only kids and they can be fragile, especially if they have actually escaped war themselves. We need to remember war as vividly as possible to try and ensure it never happens again, but they may need to forget war to go on living a normal life. Fair enough. But this should be done only on a case-by-case basis in the event there’s an actual student with such a severely traumatizing past.

Before anyone is excused, consider that Canadian citizens sacrificed a lot more than a moment’s discomfort, and do still today. This is what the gun in class brings home: it is a gun that could have put a hole in the head of a mother’s child. It should be uncomfortable for everyone. If we forget this, what are we remembering? Over 45,000 Canadians died in WWII alone. Is there another symbol besides the gun that can be brought into class to evoke the horror of war? Short of a replica of “little boy,” no.  Maybe the ubiquitous poppy should be replaced by a gun.

A gun in class does anything but glorify war. What kind of student is urged towards violence after seeing a weapon and hearing all the horror stories first hand from a soldier?  Remembering can’t be a hollow moment of silence, but a meaningful reflection of what people actually did. It should cause revulsion, fear, and wonder that it actually happened. If it’s comfortable, it’s inadequate. It should be horrifying. How can it not be?

Perhaps this symbol of death is even more poignant for being in a classroom, the very last place a gun should ever be. War would be the most fundamentally absurd thing imaginable, if only it could be imagined. I literally can’t imagine hiding behind trenches and shooting at strangers with the understanding that killing them increases my own chance of survival. It’s too absurd.  Seeing and actually holding a realistic gun, gently touching that cold trigger with a curled finger, would bring those points home better than any text book, or even a first hand story told by a brave old man in a uniform.

Lest we forget.