And how's that coming along?

By Paul Wells - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 1:33 PM - 107 Comments

Sometime this summer or fall, Ignatieff said he also intends to hold a “thinkers’ conference” that will address some of the “big long-term questions” facing the country over the next 25 years, going well beyond the more immediate scope of the campaign platform.

— The Canadian Press, eight weeks ago

The Setting Doesn't Really Matter Much

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 1:25 PM - 5 Comments

Ken Levine’s new post “Your life is not a sitcom,” about people who think that their wacky workplace and co-workers would make a great show, touches on a theme I consider very important: the important thing about a TV show is not the setting or even the individual characters, it’s the relationships between the characters:

Here’s what nobody ever pitches me: a show about a relationship. THE OFFICE is funny because of the relationship between Michael and his employees. It is funnier still because of the relationships among the employees. What they actually manufacture is completely unimportant.

Start with the characters first.

What about the dynamics between them are interesting, fresh, and could sustain stories week after week? And then, what is the best setting to put them in? One that hasn’t been seen before is a plus but not imperative. How many shows and plays and radio series have been set in bars?

That said, there are some areas that are tougher sales than others. Madcap terrorist cells probably won’t fly.

Every TV character is to some extent a known quantity — there are only so many character types to choose from. And the setting, too, is not really that special, no matter how unique and high-concept it might seem. What gives a show its individuality is the way characters interact with each other, how they relate to their environment (the setting) and how they deal with the situations that come their way. A setting and a character, described on their own, are always going to be a lot like every other setting and character; the relationships are where the new stuff happens. The things that make a character “wacky” tend to be the things that make him exactly like every other TV character you’ve seen, but when he makes a choice that another TV character might not have made, or has a relationship with his spouse that isn’t exactly like the relationship of [fill in names of another couple on another show], he becomes something resembling a person.

This is one reason why most successful or semi-successful shows tend to drift away from their original settings, abandoning the high-concept premise for a generic one. 30 Rock started out as a show about a particular kind of workplace, and ended its first season as a show about an almost completely generic workplace; it was pitched as a show about making late-night TV, but it wound up being any workplace where the boss has to deal with inefficient underlings and meddling corporate management. Tina Fey did what most people just dream about: she made a show about the place where she used to work. But that idea couldn’t sustain a show for more than a few episodes, because once you’ve used up all the wacky real-life workplace stories, it’s time to move on to a more generalized setting and more specific relationships. It’s almost like TV is better when the setting and concept are more generic.

Successful TV producers and executives tend to understand that while a high-concept premise or unusual setting might be a good selling point for advertisers or network executives, the concept itself is the least important part. One of my favourite TV executive quotes is from Grant Tinker, who said essentially that he didn’t care about the premise of a show:

Ideas in themselves are never interesting to me. It’s all a matter of execution.

And Bob Boyett, not a quality TV producer but a successful one, said something similar:

Basically, the concept of a show is merely a vehicle to get it launched. What keeps it going is the ability to present characters people want to follow.

In other words, the fact that a show takes place in the craziest office/home/military base/terrorist cell ever is not going to keep it on the air.

Update: I shouldn’t make it sound like there’s absolutely no difference between one premise/setting and another (though I came close to making it sound exactly like that). Different settings do produce different shows, and the setting itself can be a character in the show, like Sunnydale or Mayberry. But when a show depends too heavily on the idea that the uniqueness of the setting is enough to make the concept viable, then it runs into trouble.

Chrétien is one of the "exceptional" 24

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 12:09 PM - 73 Comments

Jean Chrétien’s name will forever be followed by the suffix O.M. Queen Elizabeth II has invited the former Prime Minister to join of the Order of Merit—which only maintains 24 living members and has included such distinguished persons as Florence Nightingale and Winston Churchill. The award was created by King Edward VII in 1902 to honour people “of exceptional distinction in the arts, learning, sciences and other areas such as public service.” It is a personal gift from the Queen, which means her ministers—such as Prime Minister Stephen Harper—have no say in the selection.

The Canadian Press

Nanny has "nothing to hide"

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 12:08 PM - 1 Comment

Grace Rwaramba, former nanny for Michael Jackson’s children, has promised to “reveal all” she knows about the King of Pop’s drug habits to the police. For years, Rwaramba—first hired by Michael in 1991—was privy to the most intimate details of Jackson’s life. In particular, she was well-positioned to observe how Michael’s prescription pill addiction was being fueled by enabling doctors. But last year, Rwaramba was fired—allegedly for fighting with the star about his drug use. She has remained silent since then, but today, she will give a deposition to Los Angeles police who are investigating Jackson’s sudden death.

Rwaramba has not surprisingly been the subject of tabloid headlines, including that she used her position in the Jackson family to enrich herself. Many of those rumours have been fed to news outlets by the Nation of Islam workers who surrounded Jackson in his final years. It was Michael Amir, top aide to Jackson and Nation of Islam member, who fired Rwaramba back in 2008. But the Jackson family is standing by the former babysitter, encouraging her to spend time with the children she used to care for. Rwaramba has insisted that she has “absolutely nothing to hide.”

The Daily Beast

Canada's own Bernie Madoff?

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 11:36 AM - 1 Comment

The search is on in Montreal for some $50 million worth of investments that may have disappeared in a ponzi scheme. At the centre of the alleged fraud is Earl Jones and his company, Earl Jones Consultant and Administration Corp. Jones, who operated out of Montreal’s West Island, is thought to have defrauded dozens out of their savings in a Bernie Madoff-like scheme that paid off old investors with money collected from new ones. (Madoff was sentenced to 150 years behind bars late last month.) So far, three boxes of banking documents have been recovered from Jones’ company and a bankruptcy petition related to the case will be heard in Quebec Court on July 29. The whereabouts of Jones, however, remains unknown, though it’s believed he is in the northeastern U.S.

Montreal Gazette

New carbon super-material is the "strongest in the universe"

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 11:35 AM - 1 Comment

Scientists across the world have become smitten with the new wonder material Graphene. Graphene is pure carbon, one atom thick and conducts electricity 100 times faster than silicon computer chips. Despite being the strongest material known to mankind, it can be bent, folded or rolled up. The Pentagon has invested $22 million in research to make computer equipment with the
material. Touch screens, solar cells, energy storage devices and cell phones are other potential graphene applications. How to make the super-material eluded scientists before, but technological progress over the last three months has enabled scientists to streamline the composition process. “Challenges that looked so daunting just two years ago have suddenly shrunk, if not evaporated,” says Andre Geim, a physicist at the University of Manchester, in the journal Science.

McClatchy

Please, no more minority governments

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 11:03 AM - 2 Comments

A new Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll concludes that more Canadians than ever are showing symptoms of minority-government fatigue. The survey found that 64 per cent of Canadians would prefer a majority government, up 12 per cent from two years ago. Now, the country’s political situation looks poised for a big change. Given four scenarios to choose from—a Liberal majority or minority, or a Conservative majority or minority—the Liberal majority option proved most popular, receiving 30 per cent support. Still, the Conservative party was, overall, more popular than the Liberals. That suggests that, despite continued support for the Conservatives, Canadians may be willing to vote strategically in the next election in order to avoid the fourth straight minority government.

Winnipeg Free Press

When 15-year-old Matthew Robson talks…

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 11:02 AM - 2 Comments

What do investors know about the media habits of young people? Not much, it seems. That’s why a research note written by a presumably pimply 15-year-old intern at Morgan Stanley in London, has set “the city” abuzz. Among his observations: “Teenagers do not use Twitter.”

The Guardian

By popular demand, the latest edition of "What's Tom Flanagan Going On About Now?"

By kadyomalley - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 10:14 AM - 67 Comments

Well, a link to the Globe and Mail’s presentation thereof, at least. ITQ knows she’s not the only one out there who awaits his triweekly politicophilosophical stylings with almost immodestly eager anticipation. In today’s installment, he seems to be urging the Conservatives not to balk in the face of lilylivered nambypambering from the Liberals over their latest round of attack ads, which perform “a public service” by “repeating the words and recounting the deeds of political opponents” – which, he says, is the “most moderate and usually most effective genre of negative campaigning.”  (ITQ is now almost seriously entertaining the thought that the latest anti-Ignatieff ten percenter may actually be a craftily executed viral campaign to sell more copies of Blood and Belonging, but that’s another story.)

He gives an entertaining, if ever so slightly revisionist recap of Liberal attack campaigns of the past — none of which, it’s fair to note, meet the standard he sets for such a campaign serving as a public service, with the exception of a “website full of old quotes from Stephen Harper”, which for some reason only gets mentioned in the penultimate sentence.

He also delivers a sadly too-late tonguelashing to John McCain for his failure to blast the Obama campaign out of the water with ads targeting his ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a strategic misfire that he blames on how much media resonance there was over the Democrats’ terror of the “Republican attack machine”. So really, if the Conservatives do buckle under to anti-attack ad pressure and go soft and cuddly – like a kitty! –  it’ll almost certainly be our fault.

(Oddly, I’ve been told by Conservatives that it is also our fault when parties are forced to go negative, because if we won’t report on all the awful things the other guy has said or done, then they’ll just have to do it for us. For Canadians, that is – as a public service. For some people, it’s always our fault is what I’m gathering here.)

Oh, and he also takes a totally unprovoked potshot at “whiny schoolgirls”, to whom he compares the current crop of cowardly lion Liberals. (Honestly, professor, what did they ever do to you?  Leave the kids alone. )

Anyway, the gist of today’s Flanaganistics: Attack ads? Bring ‘em on. Liberals? Quit carping and fight back, but under Flanagan’s version of Marquess of Queensbury rules, which — as far as ITQ can tell — basically leaves them with nothing. Oh, and never – never –  listen to the media. We’ll only break your heart. Just ask John McCain.

Did missing gold "flow" out of Mint?

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 10:06 AM - 5 Comments

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the missing gold saga at the Royal Canadian Mint is the speculation—some wild, some informed—as to how $15 million worth of it was stolen. The latest theory: someone melted the gold into an acid solution, rendering it immune to metal detectors in place to prevent the theft of precious metals from the Mint. As to the investigation, well, you’ve heard this before, but the Mounties are still investigating. In other words, no one’s holding his breath. Anyway, given the price of your average Hollywood summer blockbuster, $15 million doesn’t seem that bad for a few weeks of intrigue. This may prove to be the heist to end all heists.

Ottawa Citizen

Obesity gender link discovered

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 10:05 AM - 2 Comments

The obesity link stretches from moms to daughters, and fathers to sons, but not necessarily across the gender divide, a new study shows. The study, done by Plymouth’s Peninsula Medical School, looked at 226 families and found that obese moms were 10 times more likely to have obese daughters; fathers, meanwhile, were six times more likely to have obese sons. But children of the opposite sex weren’t affected, leading researchers to suggest the link is behavioural, not genetic: daughters copied their moms’ lifestyles, and sons did the same with their fathers. “It is the reverse of what we have thought and this has fundamental implications for policy,” lead author Prof. Terry Wilkin told the BBC. “We should be targeting the parents and that is not something we have really done to date.” In the study, conducted over a three-year period, 41 per cent of eight-year-old daughters of obese mothers were obese, compared to four per cent of girls with normal-weight mothers, while boys showed no difference. For boys, 18 per cent with obese fathers were obese, while three per cent of those with normal weight fathers were. But there was no difference for girls.

BBC News

You gotta fight for your right to leak

By Paul Wells - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 8:15 AM - 54 Comments

I know you’ll be as surprised as I was — i.e., not in the slightest — to discover it was the Liberals who leaked the latest report from Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, that being the first report he provided to MPs before releasing it to the general public.

Page has argued since he took up this job, barely a year ago, that he must not release his reports to MPs exclusively because that would make it easier for them to use his work as partisan fodder. Page knew from the outset that any independent and empowered observer of the fiscal picture will, eventually, be seen as antagonistic to any government, at least to the most thin-skinned members of that government. He really didn’t want to speed that process along by volunteering to be MPs’ partisan shill. Since it’s part of his mandate to answer questions put by opposition MPs, it would be all too easy for one to ask him a question and then stand up in the House one Question Period and say, “Mr. Speaker, the government is doing so-and-so — and I have here in my hand a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer proving it!!!” And the rest of us wouldn’t be able to judge whether the PBO report actually said such a thing.

Now, it’s possible to argue that that’s too bad, and Page can just lump it. It’s also possible to argue that Page’s institution is valuable and new, and he needs support as he defines his role in a way that will benefit public good instead of Parliament Hill jousting and assorted other baloney. But you really need to be the Michael Ignatieff Liberals to argue both sides, at length, for months on end. Continue…

UPDATED: Oh, Canadians. Why must you confound conventional wisdom like this?

By kadyomalley - Monday, July 13, 2009 at 8:04 AM - 74 Comments

Just when we-the-media-and-friends had finally come to the conclusion that coalition governments were something up with which you totally would not put, we get this from Harris-Decima, via Canadian Press:

Despite the apparent weariness with minority governments, the poll suggested that slightly more Canadians — 45 per cent versus 42 per cent — would support the idea of a coalition government after the next election.

At this point, I really have to wonder: Are you just messing with our heads? Do you want to drive Colleague Potter round the bend?  Because that would just be — mean. We try so hard to understand you, but just when we think we’ve finally got a read on where you stand, we suddenly spot you off in the distance, waving cheerfully.

Also, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings — or at least, bad from the perspective of 42% of you — but the likelihood of any of the parties actually campaigning on an openly pro-coalition ticket is pretty much nil, because at least two of the leaders are privately convinced that they can win all by themselves, and one of them is almost certain to be right.

Continue…

"Thunder" Gatti dead in Brazil; wife is charged

By macleans.ca - Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 1:50 PM - 0 Comments

Saturday morning the body of Canadian former welterweight world champion boxer Arturo “Thunder” Gatti, 37, was a found dead in his room at a Brazilian resort. Police say he was strangled to death with the strap of a purse and had also suffered a head injury. Brazilian police have charged Gatti’s wife, Amanda Rodrigues, 23, of Brazil, with murder. The couple were vacationing in the country with their 1-year-old son.

CTV

CBC

New rules of engagement

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 1:25 PM - 5 Comments

Barack Obama campaigned on a policy of engagement with America’s adversaries, and in his inauguration address offered an “open hand” to countries such as Iran. After his election, he had a certain degree of support in Washington for starting on a new course of diplomacy. But then came the June 12 Iranian election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power under heavy suspicion of fraud. With a crackdown on massive street protests that left at least 17 dead, Obama’s running room for engagement has shrunk. The turmoil in Iran raised the question of whether Obama would only bolster Ahmadinejad’s authority by sitting down with a leader whose legitimacy has been so tarnished. Not to mention how the U.S. government could trust any agreement reached with a regime that its own people accuse of deception, and whether the exercise would only serve to betray the reformers whose struggle for freedom stirred passions around the world.

For now, Obama’s hand remains outstretched—but not for long. He has given Tehran an end-of-the-year deadline to show that diplomacy regarding its nuclear ambitions is getting somewhere. But even long-time supporters are doubting that the overture can work. Continue…

The end of civilization?

By macleans.ca - Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 1:05 PM - 37 Comments

According to the largest-ever single report done on the environment,  “billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse” due to the dramatic effect of climate change. The study focuses on rising food and energy costs, water shortages, social instability—due to migrating populations—organized crime and the recession. And says that without significant sustainable growth, our environmental crisis will lead to social and political instability. The study, State of the Future (2009), includes the work of 2,700 experts and is backed by Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Independent

UPDATED – ITQ Exclusive: Republican for Ignatieff speaks!

By kadyomalley - Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 11:17 AM - 179 Comments

Last week, ITQ sent off an email to the contact address for republicansforignatieff.com, asking if the group’s creator would be willing to take part in a quick Q&A with macleans.ca. This morning, we got a reply. Full text — and ITQ’s comments — after the jump:

Continue…

Guuuuuuuuy, Gerry's "making sense" again. Make him stop!

By kadyomalley - Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 5:55 PM - 24 Comments

Some unsolicited – and likely not particularly welcome, considering the source – advice for PMO on making the best of being forced to deal with the necessary evil that is the press, from a once-big-now-small-C conservative Cassandra, which can pretty much be summed up as follows:  ’Don’t keep doing stupid things’:

[O]ne strategy for dealing with a hostile media is really, really simple– Stop giving reporters free ammunition.

In other words, the Conservatives should stop making it so easy for the media to cast the party in a bad light.

That means when the Prime Minister is taking part in an unfamiliar religious ritual, brief him beforehand on the proper protocol; that means when dealing with a controversial issue such as funding the Gay Pride Parade, have a consistent clear message; that means when you are to appear at a G-8 photo op, show up on time; that means doing simple things like checking your facts before attacking a political opponent.

It’s called “professionalism.”

Meanwhile, Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn details the various staffing snafus that plagued the prime minister during his G8 jaunt, which turned what was supposed to be an easy-peasy smash hit summertime good newsweek for the government into a flying circus of self-inflicted microscandal-management misfires.

What’s especially remarkable, though, is that, in nearly every instance, the series of unfortunate events that overshadowed the PM’s appearance on the world stage could have been shut down cold on day one, had his office not managed to make matters worse:

Continue…

'I'm not sure how much people know about what he's gone on to do'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 9:21 AM - 50 Comments

Elizabeth Renzetti sketches Michael Ignatieff’s return to England this week.

Not many of Mr. Ignatieff’s former London associates would have pictured him on a podium, engaged in partisan debate. “I don’t think anyone foresaw him strutting across the stage of international politics,” said Mr. Loader, who was one of the creators, 20 years ago, of the BBC’s live culture program The Late Show . He hired Mr. Ignatieff as one of the four hosts, and the former academic quickly “became the good-looking intellectual one. He was quite well-known, he had a reputation as something of a cultural polymath.”

'I don't believe any taxes are good taxes'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 10, 2009 at 10:23 PM - 46 Comments

The Prime Minister laments the tyranny of taxes, thanks you for paying them.

Reguly: Where are you going for your holidays this year?

Harper: I’m going to stay in… I usually spend most of my free time at Harrington Lake. The taxpayers provide me with a beautiful cottage and summer property so we… we vacation within the country.

This man is not Michael Ignatieff

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 10, 2009 at 5:40 PM - 11 Comments

Meet Gordon Smith, director at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies. He’s a former deputy minister of foreign affairs and represented this country at meetings of the G8 and G7.

And judging from this interview, he’s the fellow who Stephen Harper was going after when Stephen Harper thought he was going after Michael Ignatieff.

Mr. Smith defends his Canadianness to both CP and the Globe.

More Toronto gay Pride events

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, July 10, 2009 at 5:33 PM - 7 Comments

Part of Toronto Pride was its Gala & Awards ceremony where politicians hobnobbed with who’s who of the gay community.

Toronto Liberal MP Mario Silva.

Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty with drag queens.

Continue…

Michael Jackson: Wanna be endin' something

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 10, 2009 at 5:28 PM - 6 Comments

From the print edition, my piece on the Michael Jackson memorial, which is largely based on the piece I wrote several days earlier for our newsstand-only memorial edition. It’s my attempt to deal with the questions of race, gender and identity that were central to the Jackson riddle, and it closes with a brief attempt to imagine the singer’s last decade on this earth.

Since Coyne's on vacation…

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 10, 2009 at 5:11 PM - 27 Comments

…it falls to me to do the pained, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger gloating he would be doing now if he were on deck:

Understand: there will be no going back from this, for the party or for the country. Whatever the budget’s soothing talk of “temporary” this and “extraordinary” that, and for all its well-mannered charts showing spending obediently returning to its pen, deficits meekly subsiding, multi-billion dollar “investments” repaid in full, we are in fact headed somewhere we have never been before. We are on course towards a massive and permanent increase in the size and scope of government: record spending, sky-high borrowing, and — inevitably — higher taxes…

If everything the budget foretells comes to pass, we might not come out too badly. A $34-billion deficit, after all, is only 2% of GDP, and even four years of deficits, if the budget’s projections hold, would barely budge our debt-to-GDP ratio. But if they do not — if the economy fails to recover on cue; if inflation spikes when it does, and interest rates soon after; if all those billions in new spending, once in place, do not prove so easy to trim back; if the assets the government acquires with all of its borrowed money do not turn out to be worth what they cost — then we will head into the approaching demographic storm loaded down to the gunwhales. It’s a monumental, even reckless gamble…

– A. Columnist, Maclean’s, Jan. 29, 2009

And indeed it is so. Why, in no time at all, a five-year timeline for getting out of deficit has gone from a budget-speech promise to an idea derided by Our Economist Prime Minister as “dumb.”

Recall that a few weeks ago, when Michael Ignatieff was still messing with Harper, he put four double-dare deal-breaker questions/demands/ultimata to the big guy. Only one was about improving EI by assigning Pierre Polilievre and Ryan Sparrow to the file (actually, it wasn’t even about that, though that’s the way the Prime Minister heard it); another was a demand/question/ultimatum that Harper explain how he planned to dig out of these immense deficits.

Now we have our answer. He won’t even bother to try. I believe it was Chantal Hébert who first wrote that, while many Canadian politicians claim to be socially progressive and fiscally conservative, Harper is turning out to be the opposite on both scales.