Turn Off the Music on PUSHING DAISIES

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:05 PM - 7 Comments

I know Pushing Daisies is so sugary-sweet it can cause cavities; and that’s to say nothing of all the pie puns and silly names and the endless repetition of this week’s catchphrase (in the season premiere it was “Betty’s Bees” that got repeated about 300 times). But I like it. I have high tolerance for whimsy, as well as goofball private-eye shows where this week’s mystery somehow reflects back on the inner lives of the main characters. The show it most resembles is Moonlighting – goofy mysteries that allow the main characters to reflect on their personal problems; rapidly-delivered, pun-laden scripts; lavish production values. It hasn’t yet shown an ability to stretch into different kinds of episodes the way Moonlighting did with its Shakespeare and film noir parodies, and it would help if Pushing Daisies would similarly do some episodes that depart from the basic formula. (Yes, I am saying that Pushing Daisies needs more gimmicks. Paradoxical, isn’t it?) Also, this kind of show can burn out really quick. But for now, it’s fun. Even if the character I identify with the most is Emerson, the only person in the cast who operates according to real-world logic and is driven insane because he’s in a world where logic doesn’t apply.

But, and I know I mentioned this last season, they really need to turn down the music. Originally I thought Continue…

Captain Luongo?

By Nancy Macdonald - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:03 PM - 0 Comments

The Vancouver Canucks just became the first franchise in 60 years to name their goalie captain. 

Luongo won’t be allowed to argue calls or wear a ‘C,’ according to the so-called Durnan rule, named for Montreal Canadiens’ Bill Durnan, the last goaltender to serve as captain, in 1947-48. (Durnan left his crease so often to argue calls that opponents protested saying it gave the Habs unscheduled timeouts during strategic points in games, and the league responded with a rule barring goalies.)

Mattias Ohlund will deal with ceremonial aspects of the position, like faceoffs.

Has a nicer ring than captain Sundin, no?

election08: caption challenge #6 (special owen lippert memorial edition)

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 7:05 PM - 69 Comments

On the surface, a piece of cake, right? Stephane Dion at the bedside of some dummy? This is a fat pitch right down the middle and destined for the bleachers of high comedy, right?

Except…

Except that in honour of the Conservative Leader, this caption challenge is restricted to lines of dialogue taken – ie. plagiarized – from the movies, TV or other aspects of popular culture. Make sure the line has been said before. Bonus points if it was said by an Australian.

Winner gets a Barack Obama action figure. All participants get a sense of what it’s like to be Prime Minister of Canada.

BTC: Questions for further discussion

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 6:07 PM - 27 Comments

John, like the rational veteran of Parliament Hill that he is, asks the most rational question of the day. Several more questions that are hopefully almost as rational.

Is the issue here really plagiarism? Or is the issue what that plagiarism says about Stephen Harper’s thinking, judgment and process when faced with the fundamental international matter of the past decade?

Does it really matter less that he was opposition leader at the time? Or should we do the thought experiment and imagine how we might have reacted to this news had he been Prime Minister when he delivered that speech?

And if the counter argument this morning was that whoever wrote the speech has long since moved on, what are we to conclude from the fact that the person who fraudulently crafted one of the most important speeches of Stephen Harper’s political career was still on staff?

So that's that — all wrapped up in a neat little package.

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 5:24 PM - 118 Comments

A former Harper staffer who, as luck would have it, was working in the Conservative war room until this afternoon takes the fall, claiming that he was “pressed for time”, and was “overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech.” Case closed? Well, that depends.

This wasn’t just any speech – it was, at the time, probably one of the most important statements that Stephen Harper, as opposition leader, would make in the House of Commons – and he was lauded for it by supporters, like Tom Flanagan, who called it “eloquent”, and by those on the other side of the aisle, like then-Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham, who called it “thoughtful and powerful” – as well as the press. Portions of it found their way into the op-ed pages of newspapers like the Ottawa Citizen, the National Post and the Toronto Star. It was so well received, in fact, that the Canadian Alliance The Party That No Longer Exists even printed up “thousands of copies” in pamphlet form, according to Flanagan. At no point, we are now to believe, did the then-opposition leader ever confess, publicly or privately, that he wasn’t the sole author — that nearly half of the words that he delivered that day were written by a low-level staffer – one of those underpaid, overworked Hill-ites who toil behind the scenes, unseen, unheard and uncredited.

Continue…

Did someone ask for issues?

By selley - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 4:45 PM - 17 Comments

Sigh.

A prayer for Owen Lippert

By John Geddes - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 4:38 PM - 28 Comments

“We’re going to put an end to the culture of entitlement, and replace it with a culture centered on accountability,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper, April 20, 2006.

But who is accountable for what a member of Parliament says in the House of Commons?

The coalition needs Canada like toast needs Vegemite? Lippert, get in here!

By selley - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 4:18 PM - 27 Comments

Tory spokesman Yaroslav Baran, this morning: “We’re not going to get drawn into which staffer wrote which speech five years ago. This is nothing but desperation from the Liberal campaign, and it’s completely irrelevant to the real concerns of voters in this election.”

Statement by Owen Lippert, this afternoon:

In 2003, I worked in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition.  I was tasked with—and wrote—a speech for the then Leader of the Opposition.  Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech.  Neither my superiors in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition nor the Leader of the Opposition was aware that I had done so.

I apologize to all involved and have resigned my position from the Conservative campaign.

Had this come down the pipe a few minutes later, you would all now be reading my demand for the scalp of just such a sacrificial staffer, or some other semi-plausible explanation for this trans-hemispheric convergence of political oratory. It’s not that I would have believed the explanation, or that I necessarily buy The Lippert Scenario, but rather that the original contention—that this is irrelevant—was just so bloody insulting. It is most definitely relevant if Stephen Harper knowingly aped or spoke from the same third-party talking points as the Australian PM in an effort to involve Canada in what would prove to be a disastrously ill-conceived military operation. The least the Tory war room could do was try to convince us he didn’t. And now they have. Golf clap.

Is It Time For Sitcoms To Go Back to Videotape?

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 4:11 PM - 6 Comments

Yes, it’s another “what’s wrong with the multi-camera sitcom?” post. (Nobody ever gets tired of those, since we TV-analyst types only do 34 of those a day.) This is something I’ve been wondering for a while, as far back as the late ’90s when sitcoms were still popular: why don’t some network sitcoms go back to using videotape?

To explain this quickly: most “story” shows like dramas and comedies are shot on film, or digital formats that look like film. More ephemeral shows that aren’t intended to be re-run forever and around the world — variety shows, news shows, reality — are usually shot on videotape, which is cheaper and has a harder, brighter look. In the early ’70s, Norman Lear made the unusual decision to shoot All in the Family on videotape, partly because the British show it was based on was also shot on tape (the BBC was doing most scenes on tape at that time, using film only for location work), but also because Lear wanted the audience at home to feel as if they were watching the show live with the audience, instead of the more distanced, canned effect of film. For the next 20 years after that, all of Lear’s shows and many other American sitcoms were shot on tape; a few companies preferred film, but the majority of multi-camera sitcoms were done on tape, both in the U.S. and elsewhere (Fawlty Towers, King of Kensington). Because tape was cheaper and easier to edit, there was a lot of pressure on sitcom producers to use tape; Ken Levine tells the story of how the struggling Cheers was asked to experiment with the idea of saving money by switching from film to tape.

Anyway, there were many reasons for producers to dislike tape: as Levine notes, it made sets look fake and tacky (film lighting can make everything look more “real”; on tape, everything looks like a studio set); it looked cheap because it was cheap, and it made a show look disposable. In the ’90s, film became cheaper to edit, an extra camera was added to multi-camera film crews (removing an advantage of tape, which used to have four cameras to the three of filmed shows), and eventually digital technology made it possible to create a film “look” without actually having to use film. All these things together helped to eliminate the use of videotape for network sitcoms. Seinfeld, Frasier, Friends, Raymond, all the big sitcom hits of the mid to late ’90s were on film, and the creators of Frasier would actually get kind of huffy whenever somebody referred to a “taping” of the show — it’s not taped, they insisted, it’s filmed.. Today the only North American sitcoms shot on tape are cable sitcoms for kids, like Hannah Montana, and even those shows have the videotape processed to make them look as much like film as possible (it’s a process that was used for a while in the early ’90s on shows like Blossom, and then as now, it actually made videotaped shows look worse, not better).

With the backstory out of the way, I think the networks might benefit from reconsidering the use of videotape — undisguised, cheap-looking videotape — for sitcoms. Now, nobody is going to watch or not Continue…

BTC: 'There's a lot of turnover'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 3:37 PM - 59 Comments

STATEMENT BY OWEN LIPPERT

OTTAWA – Statement by Owen Lippert:

“Since the beginning of the election campaign, I have been employed by the Conservative Party of Canada at Conservative Campaign Headquarters.

“In 2003, I worked in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition.  I was tasked with – and wrote – a speech for the then Leader of the Opposition.  Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech.  Neither my superiors in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition nor the Leader of the Opposition was aware that I had done so.

“I apologize to all involved and have resigned my position from the Conservative campaign.”

Update. One assumes this (and this) is the same Owen Lippert.

Update II. This can’t possibly be the same Owen Lippert who once wrote a book entitled “Competitive strategies for the protection of intellectual property.” Er, can it?

"It's Australia on line one … something about royalties."

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 3:33 PM - 26 Comments

[...]Stephen responded on 20 March with an eloquent speech in the House of Commons, which, though it did not call for sending Canadian troops to Iraq, supported the US initiative. [...] We printed the speech in pamphlet form and mailed out thousands of copies. As far as I could judge, there was strong support from the grassroots of the party. Stephen also drew from his speech to expound his position in interview and op eds.

-Harper’s Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, Tom Flanagan (2007)

Megapundit: Stanfield, Mondale, Stevenson… Dion?

By selley - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 2:22 PM - 12 Comments

Must-reads: Don Martin on Gerry Ritz; Christie Blatchford on a drug dealer who murdered another drug dealer; Andrew Cohen on Stéphane Dion.

Counting on a miracle
Who will save the Liberals? Michael Ignatieff? Elizabeth May? Um… Gerry Ritz?

Let’s say the Liberals really are road kill on toast, Andrew Cohen proposes in the Ottawa Citizen—that, after the Oct. 14 debacle, they won’t be a legitimate electoral threat for eight more years, give or take. Not a happy prospect for Stéphane Dion, who has every right just now to feel a bit sorry for himself. But how, Cohen wonders, will history judge him? Well, he had the “guts” to fight for Canada in 1995 “when few others of his ilk did,” the guile to spearhead the Clarity Act, the tenacity to stand up to Paul Martin and the “reformer” instincts to advocate real solutions for global warming. Thus, while politically he will be included among the “failures,” he should rightly be positioned at the vanguard of those failures: Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark, Walter Mondale, Adlai Stevenson… Stéphane Dion.

Dion’s decision not to field a candidate in Central Nova also “begs for a chapter in the book on his leadership,” James Travers argues in the Toronto Star. It “infuriated Liberal loyalists,” cast doubt on his “political instincts” and gave an “upstart party” a somewhat undeserved boost in the national consciousness. But it could still “pay Dion a qualified dividend,” Travers argues, by allowing Elizabeth May to drag “the debates away from the tightly scripted Conservative message”—i.e., Dion will destroy us all! Run!—”and back to the policy choices that drew her into politics.” She could hammer away at just how conservative, and thus terrifying, the Tories are. And, in a best-case scenario, she might provoke the new, cuddlier, cashmere-clad Harper into a purple-faced rage in which, we imagine, he’d declare his abiding hatred for the environment and reveal the entirety of his monstrous hidden agenda.

Continue…

Nanonymous sources say … (37/26/20/8/10)

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 2:05 PM - 29 Comments

Conservatives: 37 (+1)

Liberals: 26 (-)

NDP: 20 (-)

Greens: 8 (-1)

Bloc Quebecois: 10 (+1) 

If you need a break from discussion of things-that-rhyme-with-major-schism, curl up with the regional breakdowns here.

BTC: 'An oratory double-threat'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 1:04 PM - 16 Comments

“Like most political leaders Harper rarely writes his own speeches from scratch, and usually just edits off a computer from the early drafts penned by his full-time speechwriters. But the prime minister plugged away at his Saturday speech over several days, pulling out his laptop between campaign stops and putting on the finishing touches as he flew in from Calgary this week.”
—Canadian Press, Sept. 27, 2008

“Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has written his own speech for the Press Gallery Dinner tonight, and he will be ready with his goofy impersonations of Revenue Minister John McCallum and former prime ministers Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien.”
—Globe and Mail, Oct. 22, 2005 

“I’ve been told that Harper writes many of his own speeches, so if this is true, he represents an oratory double-threat (he can write it and he can speak it).”
—Stephen Taylor, Mar. 19, 2005.

No drama, mate

By John Geddes - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 12:53 PM - 9 Comments

Remarks from a Conservative party source, who cannot be named, suggest the party’s borrowings from Australian political allies may continue to present moment. “Steve’s spewin’ about the way this Bob Rae bloke’s having a lend of you,” said the strategist. “Wish he’d rack off. We’d best get back to the financial meltdown thingo, or the whole economy’s going to cark it.”

Howard's Way: We get emails

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 12:02 PM - 86 Comments

From @conservative.ca addresses:

Subject: Dion-Suzuki copying

http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2006/09/stephane_dions_.html

BTC: Live-blogging a briefing

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:49 AM - 34 Comments

Conservative campaign is briefing the media via off-the-record teleconference.

The questions that the “senior Conservative source” so far refuses to answer: Who wrote the speech? Is it plagiarism? Were Mr. Harper or his party briefed by the White House before the speech? Were talking points issued by the White House?

The last two queries were deemed too ridiculous to receive response.

Two reporters have requested that the call be conducted on the record. Both requests have been refused. Continue…

give harper two more years of practice and he'll get it right

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:42 AM - 14 Comments

Urgent Memo
To Conservative Labs
From Campaign HQ

What the hell is going on down there? You guys told us you’d fixed all the bugs in the Emotion Simulator of Cyborg CDF-34298 (“Stephen Harper”).

In 2006, this very same unit sent “its” kids off to school with a firm handshake. A handshake!! That cock-up almost resulted in this whole top-secret organization being exposed.

So we went back to the drawing board. You assured us you’d successfully installed in “Stephen Harper” the new Huggability 3.0 protocols and the full suite of Tenderness facsimiles.

And then it walks “its” daughter to school today in front of all those cameras (the cameras being the sole reason it walked her to school) and – pats her on the shoulder? On the shoulder! Sweet bearded Jesus. Although I suppose we should feel fortunate that its High Five modulator didn’t kick in.

Is there anyone down there Continue…

BTC: What the world needs now is more debate

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:40 AM - 28 Comments

From the Conservative campaign.

OTTAWA – Statement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

“I have asked my campaign to contact the TV networks about the amount of time devoted to the economy during this week’s broadcast debates.

“The United States financial crisis has deepened since the debate format was finalized.  The economy is, understandably, top of mind for most Canadians.  Unfortunately, the current debate format does not devote sufficient time to the economy, the most important issue facing Canada today.

“I have instructed my party to do everything possible to accommodate a format change to ensure these debates focus on the number one issue on the minds of Canadians – the economy – and that the economic discussion take precedence over less urgent issues.”

"A speech from five years, two elections, three Parliaments ago, from a party that no longer exists …"

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:32 AM - 84 Comments

First response from the Little Shop of Hey, Why Don’t We Go Back To Talking About The Carbon Tax? Wasn’t That Fun?:

[...]Conservative spokesman Yaroslav Baran told The Globe and Mail that Mr. Rae’s “attack” is evidence of Liberal desperation.

“This is exactly why the Liberals are in the trouble they’re in, as a party and as a campaign,” Mr. Baran said Tuesday. “They want to focus on a speech from five years, two elections, three Parliaments ago, from a party that no longer exists.

Mr. Baran said the major issue on the minds of Canadians is the economy, and the Liberals should be focusing on that.

Continue…

BTC: Now that he's begging for comparison

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:25 AM - 4 Comments

Here is how our Prime Minister reacted yesterday to the plunging stock market.

And here is how the Australian Prime Minister reacted yesterday to the plunging stock market.

"Capitalism as we know it will be wiped out"

By Jason Kirby - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:16 AM - 8 Comments

Since the economic crisis kicked into high gear this month, many pundits have tried to convey how serious it is by describing it as the worst crisis they’ve ever seen.

Somehow it just means more coming from Stephen Jarislowsky…

“I’ve never lived through something like that,” Stephen Jarislowsky, the 83-year-old chairman of Montreal-based money manager Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., said yesterday after Wachovia Corp. joined Fannie Mae, American International Group Inc. and Washington Mutual Inc. on the list of financial companies to fail in the past month.

…

“I’m more than worried,” said Jarislowsky, who co-founded his firm in 1955 and oversees C$51 billion ($49 billion). “In a market like this, I’m not looking at opportunity. I am looking at preservation of capital. If governments aren’t careful and this mess isn’t solved fast, capitalism as we know it will be wiped out.”

Read the Bloomberg story here.

Damned if you bailout, damned if you don’t

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:15 AM - 2 Comments

Last week, the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan was universally panned as a horribly-bad, no-good idea. This morning, with that safety net yanked out from under the economy, criticism has swung to the U.S. Congress for its failure to approve the awful deal.  This is a no-win situation if there ever was one. 

One thing is painfully clear now: there really is no easy way out of this mess. The bailout may be a bad idea, but the alternative isn’t pretty either (if yesterday’s market free-fall was any indication). So here’s a question: what is the best case scenario? I tend to agree with this one, from the economists’ blog Marginal Revolution: “The American economy is in recession for two years and unemployment does not rise above eight or nine percent.”

Howard's way: Ancient history lessons

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:06 AM - 33 Comments

The day’s Conservative rebuttal talking point seems to be that it is trivial and condescending of the Liberals to dig up “five-year-old speeches.” The great thing about the statute of political limitations is that it’s so flexible.