Stop whispering, start shouting

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 9:01 AM - 18 Comments

Susan Delacourt considers yesterday’s disturbance in the House.

I was initially taken aback by the demonstration today — thinking “you can’t do that” in the Commons. But I’m thinking that they’ve done us a favour.

There is no more respect among rivals in the Commons. There is no advantage for any politician to demonstrate respect or show civility or act as part of the institution … So why wouldn’t members of the public, in the public galleries, decide to join in the  mayhem? The point of parliamentary privilege is that it has to be earned. Rather than punish the protesters, I think I’d argue that all the participants in the Commons have lost their privileges, because the foundation of respect is gone.

Eleven candles

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 12:23 AM - 40 Comments

We gathered a year ago at a pub off King St. that Jake Richler used to like, though it never did much for me. This wasn’t the league-sanctioned National Post 10th-anniversary party, which had taken place a few days earlier and, everyone said, had been as lame as Asper parties always are; this one was samizdat, and the jumble of current Posties (Steve Meurice, Gary Clement) and alumni (Uncles, Eckler, Onstad, Cooperman, Coyne, Whytes Murray and Ken) was happier and more celebratory than I think most of us had feared. This didn’t feel like a wake, in other words, even though we produced and pinned to the wall a life-sized photo of Mordecai Richler (so he wouldn’t miss the party) and even though Martin Newland and Kirk Lapointe sent telegrams (well, emails) of reminiscence from their distant perches, also duly pinned to the wall beside Mordecai.

All of this was a year ago. I’m sure nobody in the room expected the paper would last another year.

Oct. 27 — Tuesday — marks the 11th anniversary of a Canadian newspaper. Every day it comes out is a feat. The vultures are circling, but what else is new. Happy birthday.

CBC's stand-up act

By Paul Wells - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 11:50 PM - 49 Comments

It needs to be said that the stem-to-gudgeon relaunch of CBC news today — radio, cable network, flagship newscast, website — shows a hearty re-dedication to the proposition that news matters, and that the public broadcaster should be putting news at the centre of its mission, that should be applauded. Last spring, while mocking the Globe‘s publisher, I took a one-paragraph detour to claim, based on then-ambient rumours, that Don Newman’s show might not be replaced and that the Corp was therefore “trying to decide whether the number of hours of dedicated political coverage in a day should be one or zero, instead of, say, three or six.” Well, things evolved: now pretty much the whole day at Newsworld Network is about breaking news, with an emphasis on politics that reaches its summit with a two-hour dinnertime politics orgy on Evan Solomon’s palatial set.

(The Globe, meanwhile, is a more substantial paper, on most days, than it was before Phil Crawley switched editors. And the Toronto Star is re-energized, very much in line with its traditions dating back more than half a century, under Mike Cooke’s stewardship. And we’re doing our thing at Maclean’s, and Steve Maich has started to transform Canadian Business, and La Presse assuredly will survive its current troubles. Against impossible odds, and even taking the Canwest capsizing into account, I think much of Canada’s media landscape actually looks brighter today than a year ago. I anticipate many furious rebuttals to this paragraph in the comments.) Continue…

Thou dost protest (IV)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 11:09 PM - 7 Comments

In case you were wondering what it’s like to be a true shoe-leather reporter on the Hill, David Akin has uploaded audio of the protest as heard from the press gallery, him running up a stairwell after the protesters and then the RCMP politely asking him to go elsewhere.

Interview with Iranian Kurdish guerilla leader

By Michael Petrou - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 9:51 PM - 0 Comments

Courtesy of the Jamestown Foundation.

Thou dost protest (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 9:40 PM - 13 Comments

An enterprising videographer attempts to connect the dots between today’s protest and the NDP.

Elsewhere, the CBC has put together some of the relevant footage from today’s excitement.

Iran's stolen election: the human rights fallout

By Michael Petrou - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 9:33 PM - 2 Comments

The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center has released its latest report.

Chequegate and the Ethics Commish

By Andrew Potter - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 8:43 PM - 6 Comments

…the very fact that Chequegate is an ethical matter is precisely why it doesn’t really fall under the mandate of the ethics commissioner.

Link.

Note that calls to Mary Dawson’s office went unreturned. FWIW, I’m actually very curious to see if Dawson finds Gerald Keddy in violation of the Conflict of Interest Code for MPs. And I’m willing to admit that I’m probably being naive in hoping that her office could be anything other than a political instrument.

Design for Obama is super, man

By Andrew Potter - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 8:28 PM - 8 Comments

A year or so ago, a group of graphic designers asked themselves how they could best use their skills and talents to help Barack Obama. The solution was “Design for Obama”, which is just an elliptical way of saying, “propaganda”. I’d guess that no president in history has been given the full Warhol the way Obama has, from the infamous Shep Fairey HOPE poster to the racist Russian Obama ice cream.

Anyway, the Design for Obama project is going to be a book from Taschen. Meanwhile, you can check out the website for all the submissions, or just dig this image I snapped in an alley just off the Bowery a while ago:

The marriage of institutions

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 8:27 PM - 0 Comments

The Dominion Institute and The Historica Foundation of Canada merged to create Canada’s largest history and citizenship organization: The Historica-Dominion Institute. A reception was held in the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse in Toronto. Below is board member Rick Mercer.

Continue…

Chuck Klosterman Doesn't Know What a Laugh Track Is

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 6:34 PM - 8 Comments

One of my pet peeves, as a sitcom fan, is the inaccurate use of the term “laugh track.” A laugh track is laughter added to a show to simulate the effect of a live audience, even though it was shot without one. It is not the sound of actual people in the audience laughing at the material as it is filmed. And yet you constantly hear people talking about studio audience laughter as if it’s exactly the same thing as laughter added in post-production. Worse, you hear people criticizing the “laugh tracks” on shows whose entire style, rhythm and timing are influenced by the decision to shoot with an audience, and would clearly be very different if there were no audience present (and therefore no laughter) on the soundtrack. Then you get people who tell us that show X would be better if they would stop using such fake-sounding laughs, when the laughing is real and the actors are obviously reacting to it.

What I’m getting at is that Chuck Klosterman, who spent an entire interview pontificating about the meaning of “laugh tracks” when he clearly has no idea what a laugh track actually is, has become a pet peeve of mine. (“What took you so long?” I hear you say.)

What’s especially phony and silly about all this anti-laughter talk is that you never hear the same principles applied to stand-up comedy, or The Daily Show. (The earliest episodes of The Daily Show didn’t use an audience, and no one misses those days.) Everyone knows why stand-ups need to work in front of an audience, that their timing would not be the same without the audience. Yet people will not only prefer sitcoms without audiences or laugh tracks (that’s fine) but talk as if a sitcom done with an audience is completely indistinguishable from one without an audience, to the point that you’ll hear people say things like “I wish I could see Seinfeld without the laugh track.”

As a sort of antidote to this attitude, here’s an excerpt from a NewsRadio DVD commentary, where creator Paul Simms and writer Josh Lieb (who ran the show in its ill-fated final season) answer a question about whether they would still do the show in front of an audience. Simms is the first guy to speak; Lieb, who now writes for The Daily Show and is the author of that book with the long title, is the high-voiced guy who says “it’s very hard for a single-camera show to make me laugh.” I don’t think, though, that their comments are meant to exclude any particular type of show; Simms came from The Larry Sanders Show and has worked on Flight of the Conchords. The point is simply that the choice of shooting style is not some kind of pointless affectation, and the show would not be the same if you took away the “laugh track” (which is not a laugh track).

One more thing: one point that’s often made against the use of the studio audience is that movie comedies don’t need an audience to be funnier. But of course, they do: movie comedies are screened in front of audiences, and if the audience doesn’t laugh at a scene, it gets cut or changed. TV shows don’t have time to be pre-tested like that, so the audience is there to inform the actors and producers. They might change a joke if the audience doesn’t laugh, they might change their timing to suit the audience, or they might huddle and realize what kind of jokes need to be de-emphasized in the next episode. But the instant-feedback element is one reason why multi-camera, studio-audience shows tend to have more big belly laughs than their single-camera counterparts. (The most successful and enduring single-camera shows are often the ones that will forego “hard” jokes in favour of smaller moments and a pleasant atmosphere: Leave It To Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, M*A*S*H and The Office are examples of shows that aren’t usually out to compete with I Love Lucy in the slapstick-jokes department, and instead are going for something more realistic and down-to-earth than you can get with multi-camera.)

The Commons: Unsophisticated debate will not be tolerated in this place

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 6:25 PM - 40 Comments

The Scene. Ralph Goodale stood and the Conservatives, obviously quite eager to hear and consider his particular concern this day, were yapping and squawking before he’d so much as spoken a clause.

“Mr. Speaker, survey after survey about the H1N1 vaccine show a dangerous trend. Only half of Canadians are planning to get vaccinated. That is down from two-thirds in July. Too many people do not think it is safe, do not think it is necessary. That is a communications failure that could put lives at risk,” Mr. Goodale posited. “How does the Prime Minister justify an advertising tsunami of $100 million for partisan Conservative propaganda, but only a pittance for crucial information about vaccinations?”

The Prime Minister, alas, was not present. In his place, Tony Clement took a turn.

“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “the honourable Minister of Health is doing an excellent job in communicating to Canadians about the H1N1 flu situation.

“She has said that the vaccine would be available to every Canadian who needs and wants one,” Mr. Clement reported on behalf of Leona Aglukkaq, seated perhaps 20 feet to his right. “Not only is the Minister of Health urging Canadians to get the vaccine but the Chief Public Health Officer is doing so as well. This is the best way to protect our health and the health of our loved ones. Despite the fearmongering on the other side, we are focused on protecting the health and safety of every Canadian.”

To better convey this fearmongering, the Industry Minister wiggled his fingers in the general direction of the opposition side. Continue…

Battle of the bands

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 5:46 PM - 2 Comments

Jack Layton busks in Toronto to raise money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

Obama condemns suicide attacks in Iraq

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 5:39 PM - 1 Comment

US President Barack Obama has condemned this weekend’s suicide bomb attacks in Iraq as “hateful and destructive.” Sunday’s double bombing in Baghdad killed 132 people and injured more than 520. The attacks near the Ministry of Justice were the worst Iraq has seen in more than two years. In his statement at the White House, Obama said he had spoken with Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki and offered his sympathies and support. “These bombings serve no purpose other than the murder of innocent men, women and children,” Obama said. “They only reveal the hateful and destructive agenda of those who would deny the Iraqi people the future that they deserve.” Iraqi PM Maliki has said al-Qaeda and followers of former president Saddam Hussein are behind the violence.

BBC News

Thou dost protest (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 5:25 PM - 17 Comments

CBC’s new politics show—Evan Solomon’s Power & Politics—is debuting now with a bloody faced protester claiming rough treatment. Further details and reaction from Canadian Press, the CBC, Globe, Star, Gargoyle and Canwest.

Ottawa: Parole is a privilege, not a right

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 4:24 PM - 11 Comments

On Monday, the government introduced legislation aimed at reforming Canada’s parole system, making it harder for prisoners to get out of jail early. The effort is aimed at “fixing the problem of early parole” in Canada, says Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan. “Canadians are surprised to learn that unless the National Parole Board has reasonable grounds to believe these offenders will commit a violent offence, not another offence, but a violent offence once released, they must automatically release those prisoners into the community.” Van Loan points out that many prisoners in Canada are granted full parole after only one-third of their sentence is complete. That, he insists, is “a problem.” “The commitment I am announcing will move us one step closer to a system of earned parole in which release is a privilege, granted only to those who have shown they are committed to rehabilitation rather than a right granted to every criminal.”

The Gazette

Imaginative fiction

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 3:46 PM - 9 Comments

Elizabeth May was joined in the visitor’s gallery today by author William Deverell. Here is the publisher’s synopsis of Deverell’s latest book.

In bestselling Deverell’s latest hilarious mystery, Arthur Beauchamp moves to Ottawa, and all hell breaks loose.

Arthur Beauchamp has followed his wife, the leader and first elected member of the Green Party, to Ottawa. But he hates it there: the cold, the politics, and his place in his wife’s shadow. So when a delegation of government officials from Bhashyistan is blown sky high on Bronson Avenue and the shares of a Calgary-based oil company promptly drop like a stone, Arthur is only too happy to jump to the defence of the missing suspected assassin.

How do you feel about the federal Conservatives' "tough on crime" agenda?

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 3:43 PM - 52 Comments

Thou dost protest

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 3:28 PM - 36 Comments

More on this in a bit, but here is the news.

A loud protest in the visitors gallery of the House of Commons led to several arrests and the brief shutdown of question period on Monday. About 200 protesters chanted slogans to support Bill C-311, an NDP private member’s bill on climate change. The protesters yelled, “I say 311, you say ‘sign it.’”

NDP house leader Libby Davies seems not to have minded the disruption. Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth dismisses the young people as “thugs.”

Second-rate citizens

By Anna Porter - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 3:20 PM - 48 Comments

On Aug. 25, 2006, an ethnic Hungarian student named Hedvig Malina was severely beaten and robbed in the city of Nitra, Slovakia, after she spoke Hungarian on her cellphone. “Slovakia without parasites” was written on her clothes when she first reported her injuries to authorities. A two-week-long police investigation ended without charges, while at the same time the minister of the interior stepped in front of TV cameras to announce that Malina’s claims were baseless and accused her of making up the whole incident. In May 2007, Malina was indicted for perjury. Amid cries of outrage and charges of political interference, Malina appealed her case at the Constitutional Court. And in 2008, she took her case to the European Court of Human Rights.

On Sept. 12, 2009, ignoring the laws about presumptions of innocence, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, a former stalwart of the pre-’89 Communist party who now heads the Smer (Direction) party, accused Hedvig Malina of inflicting her own injuries in order to create an anti-Slovak atmosphere. (Oddly enough, from 1994 till 2000, Fico represented Slovakia at the European Court of Human Rights, a fact that says as much about that judicial body as it does about the task of monitoring human rights offences by member states.) But Fico’s comment should come as no surprise—the bad blood goes back centuries. The Hungarian monarchy ruled the Slovaks for a millenium until the end of the First World War, while the Hungarian minority that was left in what became Czechoslovakia suffered discrimination throughout the last century. “We are victims of an accident of history,” says one Hungarian member of the Slovak parliament. “For about 1,000 years, until 1919, this was all part of the kingdom of Hungary, and since then Slovaks have been seeking new ways to deal with that fact.” Continue…

'Support Ed!' says Alberta Tory bigwig

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 2:53 PM - 1 Comment

In the mythology of recent Alberta Tory power bids, particularly in Calgary, Ed Stelmach and Ted Morton stole the Progressive Conservative leadership from Jim Dinning, a Calgary business community insider and a former MLA who for a time served as Ralph Klein’s provincial treasurer. Now Dinning, who went to ground after losing that race in 2006, has publicly declared his support for embattled Premier Stelmach ahead of a leadership review vote at the party’s AGM on Nov. 7 that some disgruntled party members see as a chance to bump the chief. Dinning was rumoured to be open to a draft should Stelmach stumble; that rumour now appears to have been put to rest.

Calgary Herald

Ricky Gervais To Host Golden Globes, Oscars Officially Dull?

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 2:51 PM - 0 Comments

I heard lots of people saying over the past few months that Ricky Gervais should host the Academy Awards. He’s funny, he’s quick-witted, he’s likable, he appeals to American and non-American viewers, and he’s actually done movies; who could be a more perfect choice? Well, it turns out he is going to host a movie awards show — the other one, the Golden Globes. The announcement is a bit of rare good news for NBC, which is broadcasting the Globes.

The other interesting thing here is the question of whether he was ever under consideration to host the Oscars, or if that was just internet wishful thinking. It does, though, seem to cement the idea that the Globes are more fun to watch than the Oscars; people have noticed in recent years that the Golden Globes show usually has better clothes and more relaxed, funny stars (not just because they can drink, but because the pressure to win is not as overwhelming). And now they’ve grabbed the host who seemed like a great Oscar choice, a host who furthermore has the kind of hip credentials that the un-hip Globes don’t usually possess. If they do it right, it could be a festival of self-deprecation, Gervais making affectionate fun of himself and show business, while the stars also poke a bit of fun at themselves. This is what separates the Golden Globes from the Oscars; everybody takes those seriously, even the ones who pretend not to.

Libya shuts its doors to Canadians

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 2:33 PM - 7 Comments

Libya’s looniest leader, Moammar Gadhafi, has struck again—at Canadians, this time. “Brother leader,” as he is known in his country, has reportedly told officials to reject visa applications from Canadian citizens. The move is apparently payback over Gadhafi’s cancelled visit to Newfoundland last month. The Libyan president opted not to drop in after Stephen Harper announced his intention to chastise Gadhafi for the hero’s welcome he gave the Lockerbie bomber in August. On Monday, an assistant to foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon said “there is no proof Gadhafi has issued that order at all.” But the issue is expected to be raised in the House of Commons on Monday. Critics charge that if Canadians continue to be denied visas, companies that do business in Libya will be adversely affected. Cannon apparently discussed the allegations last week, when he visited Tripoli; his assistant says that Canada and Libya “are working towards a positive resolution on the matter.”

CBC News

Wes Anderson sells out to McDonald’s

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 26, 2009 at 2:26 PM - 0 Comments

Filmmaker Wes Anderson has tarnished his auteur cred by allowing characters from his new movie, “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” based on the Roald Dahl novel, to appear on McDonald’s Happy Meals’ cartons, the Guardian alleges. “Inside you will find a plastic figure, modeled on one of the film’s characters, which will be only slightly less pleasing to the taste buds than the food it is helping to sell,” the paper snipes before upholding the “commendable example of Disney/Pixar, which stopped dealing with fast-food chains after the glaring contradiction of having McDonald’s plugging ‘Cars,’ that homage to small-town values.” Anderson, whose credits include “Bottle Rocket” and “The Royal Tenenbaums,” is accused of “getting into bed with McDonald’s, and using his work to lure young children into destructive eating habits.” And making matters even worse, “the organic, pastoral quality of the film itself, and the value it places on environmental harmony” renders the tie-in “even more misjudged.”

The Guardian