The secret to electoral success: Jetpacks!

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 9 Comments

Sometimes you’ve got to feel for Stephen Harper. Consider his changing-the-national-anthem fiasco: the guy finally takes a shot at appealing to women and what does he get? Glares, insults and mockery. It’s his high school Sadie Hawkins dance all over again.

But Harper brought it on himself. The Prime Minister set aside two long months to “recalibrate” his agenda and still he failed to embrace the word that would ignite his electoral prospects—the one word that would rally the people of Canada to his cause and assure him of the majority he so desperately seeks.

Jetpacks.

Do the math, people. For years now, the PM has been mired in the mid-30s in polls. But political scientists unanimously agree that pledging to commit our nation’s resources to the development of a National Jetpack Program would win the votes of 100 per cent of Canadian men who are me.

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Free speech and propaganda

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 10:38 AM - 53 Comments

Buried in a Liberal motion yesterday was a proposal that the House direct “its Board of Internal Economy to take all necessary steps to end immediately the wasteful practice of Members sending mass mailings, known as ‘ten-percenters,’ into ridings other than their own, which could represent another saving to taxpayers of more than $10 million.”

The resulting debate starts here and, later, resumes here. The gist would seem to be that the government side opposes the motion on an assertion of free speech, while the NDP would like the program to continue with some kind of rule against negative content.

Out of the jar and into the shot glass

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 10:06 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by Liz Sullivan

Earlier this month, Toronto chef and restaurateur Brock Shepherd boldly joined the cocktail vanguard: he put a $5 “pickle-back shot” on the menu at Burger Bar & Tequila Tavern in Toronto’s Kensington Market. The mixologist had noticed growing chatter about the Jameson-whiskey shot chased by a pickle-brine shooter on food blogs—which ramped up last month after Justin Timberlake tipped a bartender who made him one US$100. Shepherd, who drank pickle juice as a boy, was intrigued, and concocted his own version with Jim Beam bourbon. “If you like hard liquor, it cleanses the palate in an interesting way,” he says.

Some might scoff that the pickle-booze combination is as old as getting pickled itself. But the craving Shepherd is tapping into is of a more recent vintage—made official last week in the New York Observer. “Pickles are the new macaroons,” proclaimed style savant and famed Barneys’ window stager Simon Doonan, referring to the tiny pastel-coloured meringue sandwiches from Ladurée in Paris, which have become as knocked-off as Vuitton bags. The “trendiest and chicest” label in pickles, Doonan noted, is McClure’s, a family-run firm with plants in Brooklyn and Detroit whose piquant product costs $17.50 a jar at Williams-Sonoma.

McClure’s co-owner Bob McClure confirms the explosion in interest among higher-end consumers on the lookout for something new and unique: “Anyone can show up [at a dinner party] with a bottle of wine,” he says. “But taking a jar of local garlic dills shows you’re connected to community.”

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How to act after your heart attack

By Julia McKinnell - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 10:05 AM - 24 Comments

Chris Rogers/Corbis

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams would be wise to say as little as possible about his heart surgery and recovery, according to advice in a new book on how to cope with the emotional after-effects of heart surgery through an “eight-step Cardiac Comeback Plan.”

“One day I was strong. The next day I was weak. One day my colleagues looked up to me. The next day they seemed to see me as weak and ‘damaged,’ ” writes Dr. Marc Wallack in Back to Life After a Heart Crisis. Wallack is a New York surgical oncologist who had a quadruple bypass. “Only tell people about your heart disease on a need-to-know basis,” he advises. “You do not need people talking about you while you are trying to recover. You do not need people using the details of your illness for their own personal gain.”

Before going into the hospital, pack the following, he suggests: slip-on shoes, bathrobe, baseball cap and sunglasses. “After being indoors that long, the glare of the sun can be uncomfortable, and you don’t need anything else to make you uncomfortable during that long, hard walk from the hospital door to your waiting car. You might also want to bring a puffy jacket, such as a ski jacket.” The jacket isn’t for warmth, “but to protect your tender incision area and prevent other people from getting too close to you.”

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Our steamy bodice-ripper wedding

By Cathy Gulli - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 10:04 AM - 6 Comments

Photograph by Maria Teijeiro/Getty Images

“What if they turn you into a crazy drug dealer and I’m a manic depressive transvestite?” That was Anne Miller’s initial question to her husband, Michael Davoli, when they were contacted by a publisher about starring in a new genre of romance novel—one based on real couples. “You don’t know what to do when strangers say, ‘Let us tell a fictionalized version of your story, please,’ ” says Miller. “You have to think the worst.”

The couple, who live in Albany, N.Y., was discovered by HCI Books, which publishes inspirational non-fiction titles such as the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, after their wedding appeared in the New York Times’ “Vows” section. HCI was starting a line of “reality-based romance” books—a unique literary venture. The first three novels, marketed under the banner “Vows: Life Romanticized,” will launch in October. They’ll be penned by bestselling authors, who between them have published more than 150 romance novels: Alison Kent (A Long, Hard Ride), Julie Leto (Stripped), and Judith Arnold (Barefoot in the Grass). Miller and Davoli’s story should capture readers, says HCI editorial director Michele Matrisciani, because it has the elements of a juicy romance: “The conflict, drama, love, quirkiness, personality.”

It’s also rich in innuendo-laced encounters. Before they started dating, Davoli considered renting an apartment in Miller’s building. They ran into each other in the lobby, and Miller offered to “watch his dog if he moved in,” she recalls. Davoli took the place above hers. When he got locked out one night, Davoli knocked on Miller’s door for help. “So I picked his lock,” she says, “and after that we went on our first official date.” They fell in love—buoyed by their enthusiasm for sports. “Going upstairs to watch the game” became code for “something else.”

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The courageous politician

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 10:03 AM - 38 Comments

From an EKOS poll on emotion, intelligence and politics.

Which of the following emotions would you most like to see in a politician?

Courage 34%
Empathy 23%
Compassion, Caring 21%
Hope, Optimism 18%

Is baldness a sign of health?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 10:02 AM - 3 Comments

According to researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine, bald men might be at a health advantage: in a study of 2,000 men aged 40 to 47, they found that men who go bald by 30 appear to be at lower risk of prostate cancer, the BBC reports. They credited this to high levels of testosterone, the male sex hormone, in those who go bald earlier. In the study, half of the men had prostate cancer. Researchers looked at the rate of tumours in those who said their hair had thinned by age 30, versus those who didn’t. Men who started going bald on the top of their heads and had receding hairlines had a 29 to 45 per cent reduction in the rate of prostate cancer, they found, suggesting that high levels of testosterone could be protective against the disease. By age 30, about 25 to 30 per cent of men have some baldness, with half of all men suffering significant hair loss by age 50.

BBC

A pox on Fox

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 5 Comments

How powerful has Fox News become in America? Strong enough, says Howell Raines, the former executive editor of the New York Times, that the channel’s “lies” and “disinformation” are turning Americans against health-care reform; powerful enough that journalists in competing media are running scared, worried that speaking out against the network might limit their career prospects. “[Fox News CEO Roger] Ailes and his video ferrets have intimidated center-right and center-left journalists into suppressing conclusions—whether on health-care reform or other issues—they once would have stated as demonstrably proven by their reporting,” charges Raines in Sunday’s Washington Post. “I try not to believe that this kid-gloves handling amounts to self-censorship, but it’s hard to ignore the evidence. News Corp., with 64,000 employees worldwide, receives the tender treatment accorded a future employer.”

Washington Post

Sarah Palin is unstoppable

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 196 Comments

Photograph by Sally Ryan/The New York Times/ Redux

John McCain thought he needed to spring one more surprise on America.

In August 2008, his presidential campaign against Barack Obama was listing badly. Some of this was his fault. But after eight years of George W. Bush, anyone representing the Republican party came with a lot of baggage. McCain needed to choose a candidate for vice-president who underlined his reputation as a maverick within the party and who was untainted by close ties to the previous administration. The stakes were high. As John Heilemann and Mark Halperin write in Game Change, their book about the campaign, “If McCain’s running mate selection didn’t fundamentally alter the dynamics of the race, it was lights out.”

McCain’s original plan was to partner with Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic nominee for vice-president. McCain hoped such a choice would prove his bipartisan credentials, steal thunder from his opponents, and back-foot the press­—allowing his campaign to regain some momentum. But when word of the Lieberman plan leaked, much of the Republican party rebelled, and McCain was forced to scramble. “We need to have a transformative, electrifying moment in this campaign,” McCain strategist Steve Schmidt said. No one on the short list of alternative candidates could deliver this. Schmidt suggested a new option: Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

There wasn’t time to vet Palin properly, or to probe her thoughts on foreign and domestic policy. Picking Palin was a Hail Mary pass in the dying seconds of a championship game. But McCain met and liked her. She was confident and calm. She wasn’t afraid to burn bridges and upset people, even in the Republican party. She was an outsider, like him. Steve Schmidt told McCain choosing Palin could hurt him. But a safer candidate, he said, wouldn’t help. It would be better to go for the win and lose big than to tiptoe to a narrow defeat. “High risk, high reward,” another one of McCain’s advisers cautioned. “You shouldn’t have told me that,” McCain replied. “I’ve been a risk taker all my life.”

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Caption challenge: and the winner is

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 5:43 AM - 14 Comments

UPDATE: In a close race, it’s danby that emerges victorious. Do I have your email address, danby? I think I do. But if I don’t, please send it to me at scott.feschuk@macleans.rogers.com. And congratulations. (Meanwhile, I’m usually not one who respects the views of others – or the terms of most restraining orders – but I too have been growing a tad weary of the challenges. I think we’ll suspend them, at least for now, as a weekly feature – and hold the occasional challenge as the mood suits and hilarious photography allows.)

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I wouldn’t call this our most successful caption challenge ever.  We had some funny-peculiar entries but not a lot of funny-ha-ha entries. I’ve narrowed it down to three finalists. Vote for your favourite – the winner gets an Amazon.ca gift certificate, just in time for Continue…

The Commons: Wait and see

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 5:23 PM - 73 Comments

The Scene. Bob Rae stood, with a number of papers in his right hand, and attempted to square what the Prime Minister seemed to say last week about the mandate of Justice Frank Iacobucci with what the government actually announced about Mr. Iacobucci’s mandate this weekend. Suffice it to say, Mr. Rae found the latter quite lacking.

John Baird was sent up to read from the script. “Mr. Speaker, here is what the Prime Minister did say in this place last week. He said that he had requested Justice Frank Iacobucci to undertake an independent, comprehensive and proper review of all the redacted documents related to Taliban prisoners. Justice Iacobucci will look at all the relevant documents going back not just to this government but even to the previous government,” Mr. Baird reported. “He will report on the proposed redactions, how they genuinely relate to information that would be injurious to Canada’s national security, national defence or international interests. We should have confidence in a man of this gentleman’s esteem.”

For all intents and purposes, this line of inquiry was thus concluded. Still, the opposition kept on. Continue…

Making the Transition: Episodic to Serial

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 5:03 PM - 1 Comment

There’s been some discussion of whether Fringe, whose “mythology” episodes are consistently better than its stand-alone plots, should drop the procedural format and just become a full-time serial. Though I still think shows should go wherever they need to go for the stories that work the best, I’m not completely sure this would work for Fringe, if only because the procedural stuff is so baked into the premise, and because the impact of the mythology stuff may in actually derive from the fact that it’s spaced out, rather than taking centre stage every week. But let’s assume that the show decides to do what it does best and turns into a serial — how does it do that? It’s somewhat tricky, because what makes the show a procedural is that the characters are people who solve crimes for a living, and their lives are therefore bound up with the elements of a crime procedural; the serialized stuff is directly related to the procedural stuff. Lost could mostly abandon stand-alones early on without a lot of trouble because the characters don’t currently have jobs. (Or do they?) But Fringe can’t just make its characters stop solving crimes.

If a show wants to become more of a serial, it needs to make the transition appear seamless; it has to avoid the Dollhouse problem where the first half of the season is mostly stand-alone assignments and the second half becomes one big soap opera. This is particularly true with a show like Fringe that is at least fairly successful and doesn’t want to drive away the viewers it’s already accumulated. So what does it need to do?

Without getting into the position of suggesting future storylines, I would say that the easiest way for a show to make this kind of transition is to push the “cases” — the mysteries that are solved through the use of a pre-set crime-solving procedure — further into the background of the episodes they appear in. A show like this builds most episodes out of two types of material: the case of the week, and the ongoing storyline. The two frequently overlap, but in a self-contained episode, the case usually gets more screen time, or at least gets more of the key spots in the episode (the climax is the climax of the case, not the suggestion that there might be some secret to be revealed five months from now). As a show moves toward more of a pure serial, it doesn’t eliminate the cases, but it can give them gradually less time per episode, or place the procedural story beats at less crucial points in the episode. When this is done, the identity of an episode is muddled. Instead of remembering it as the episode about the mysterious purple people eaters and whether they ate people or only purple people, we remember it as the episode where Jenny and Johnny finally made plans to kiss next month, during sweeps. And as this goes on, the audience starts to accept that the individual cases are not the most important part of a given episode, and the writers can push the cases still further into the background, or do whole episodes — and finally, whole blocks of episodes — without them.

We’ve seen this sort of thing happen even with shows that didn’t become full-fledged serials, like when Moonlighting kept de-emphasizing the mysteries (never their strongest suit anyway) more and more until, by the time they did the three-part arc about the characters sleeping together, it was basically a romantic comedy/soap where the characters happened to get in a funny car chase once in a while. That show never actually dropped the case-of-the-week format, and Fringe doesn’t have to either. But Fringe can, if that is the right thing to do — and I’m not totally convinced it is, as I said — create a situation where the audience doesn’t perceive the case of the week as the key fact about most episodes.

Also: I’ve talked before about shows that shouldn’t have decided in advance that they were going to be heavily serialized, but with Fringe you can sort of see the same thing happening from the other direction. The creators talked constantly, before it began, about how the show was going to have stand-alone episodes and allow new viewers to jump in and all that, as if this was some sort of experiment. Which, for these creators, it sort of was; not that they’d never done it before (the Sam Raimi shows weren’t exactly heavily-serialized), just that they hadn’t done it in a while. When creators decide in advance that the show must have X number of self-contained episodes, and talk it up in the press, that could be a sign that they would prefer to go in the other direction but something is stopping them — in this case, a combination of network pressure and self-imposed pressure.

Gold medal history

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 2:44 PM - 6 Comments

At last: Gold! Brian McKeever, the visually impaired cross-country skier from Alberta, has earned Canada its first-ever Paralympic gold on home soil. McKeever finished his gold-medal 20-kilometre race 40.9 seconds ahead of the silver medallist: Nikolay Polukhin of Russia. He raced with his older brother, Robin McKeever, who competes as his guide. Eager fans gathered around the finish line at Whistler’s Paralympic Park on Monday to cheer on the Canadian; they were, however, asked to remain silent so that the athletes could listen to their guides.

Toronto Star

Don't hold your breath

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 12:38 PM - 58 Comments

Anonymous senior Conservatives are apparently agitating for Helena Guergis to be swiftly dispatched to the furthest reaches of the government backbenches. Make of this what you will.

Keep in mind that, if memory serves, no minister in the Harper government has been outright fired or banished. Michael Chong resigned as minister of intergovernmental affairs in opposition to the Quebecois motion. Maxime Bernier resigned after misplacing his briefs. Various ministers perceived to be underperforming (Gordon O’Connor, Rona Ambrose, Lisa Raitt) have been moved to less-prominent portfolios, but only in the context of a cabinet shuffle. No one, if I recall correctly, has ever been outright and unambiguously fired.

Diabetes treatments may be harmful

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 12:25 PM - 2 Comments

Three treatments to prevent heart attacks among people with Type 2 diabetes, and those on the verge of developing it, don’t seem to help—in fact, in new studies, they were shown to be ineffective or harmful, the New York Times reports. So far, the only proven ways to reduce the risk of a heart attack among those with Type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes are avoiding cigarettes, and taking medication to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Even so, Type 2 diabetics will be at a risk equivalent to a non-diabetic person who’s already suffered from a heart attack. To address this, doctors began to look at new strategies, including lowering blood pressure to a normal range, raising levels of good cholesterol and lowering levels of bad ones, and controlling upswings in blood sugar after eating. In one large U.S. study, experts looked at whether getting high blood pressure down to normal levels would protect diabetics from heart disease. Half of the study’s 4,773 participants took drugs to get their blood pressure down to 120 or below, while the others had a goal of less than 140. But lower blood pressure didn’t prevent heart attacks or cardiovascular deaths, and those with lower blood pressure were more likely to have side effects from drugs. In another study, which involved 9,300 patients at high risk for diabetes due to high blood sugar, patients were given the drug nateglinide, which enhances insulin secretion, and a blood pressure drug. Neither reduced heart attack risk. “It’s hard to make a case for a public health recommendation,” Dr. Daniel Einhorn, president-elect of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a benefit in an individual case.”

New York Times

The software of democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 12:01 PM - 17 Comments

Mark Kingwell’s essay on political civility, to which I referred last week, is now online.

It is sometimes said that literacy is the software of democracy. Let’s be more accurate, and more demanding. The real software of democracy is not bare literacy, which permits and even enjoys all manner of rhetorical nonsense and short-sighted demagoguery. It is political literacy, the ability to engage in critical dialogue with ideas both agreeable and disagreeable, interests that align with ours and those that do not. We need to learn this skill, run it, and revise it constantly by repeated engagements. We must be prepared to sacrifice something we value, for the sake of the larger good. That is, finally, the only thing I or anyone could mean by “civility.”

American Idol: the beautiful, but not too beautiful

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 11:03 AM - 6 Comments

Herein, the seventh in a semi-regular series chronicling the ninth season of American Idol. You can read the first installment here, the second installment here, the third installment here, the fourth installment here, the fifth installment here and the sixth installment here.

The last two weeks of American Idol competition have been, at best, weird and disappointing. Where once it seemed we had the makings of a uniquely great season, we may now be faced with one of the worst in Idol‘s nine years. Though no one will remember much of any of this if the winner goes on to even a moderate level of stardom.

To review, the frontrunner (Katie Stevens) imploded, but has somehow avoided elimination. An unlikely pop star (Lilly Scott) emerged as the most self-assured contestant, only to be inexplicably cut. A candidate who didn’t make the final 24 (Tim Urban), but was brought back when another contestant was disqualified, is now among the final 12. A glass blowing apprentice who admires Courtney Love (Siobhan Magnus) is now the leading female. The leading male, and perhaps the current overall favourite, is a massive human being (Michael Lynche) who would appear better suited to the NFL draft combine.

With the final 24 now cut in half, it’s entirely debatable whether the dozen that remain are collectively as talented and interesting as the dozen that are gone. So maybe now is as good a time as any to ask an important question: Is it possible to be too good-looking?

The question must be asked because of the continued presence of Casey James, a 27-year-old blues singer from Fort Worth, Texas, who was first celebrated this season for taking off his shirt at the behest of judge Kara DioGuardi. He is blessed of curly golden locks, blue eyes and a southern twang. He somehow maintains a constant two-day growth of whiskers and scruff without appearing lazy or homeless. He is vaguely reminiscent of the late-90s Matthew McConaughey (before McConaughey stopped trying). He is, by most accepted definitions, a good-looking man.

He can also, for the most part, sing: not quite brilliantly, but well enough that he entirely deserves to have made it this far. And yet, while necessary, his ability to sing will not necessarily determine his fate. All things being equal, if he ultimately wins, it will be, in large part, because he’s so good looking. If he is eventually eliminated, it will be, in at least some way, because he’s so good looking.

Conventional wisdom has it that the better looking you are, the more likely you are to “succeed” in life—or at least the easier it is thought to be for you to find what would generally be considered success. But it is maybe not quite so simple if your life is public life.

Consider politics. Attractive politicians—especially attractive female politicians—are often quickly celebrated for their potential, only to disappoint or otherwise fail. Sometimes, granted, the beautiful in politics are too quickly promoted or advanced to positions of prominence they are not yet prepared to handle. Some though may simply be doomed by their attractiveness and the expectation that attractiveness creates. The good-looking candidate is almost implicitly expected to be as eloquent or adept as they are attractive: the better looking they are, the more likely their other attributes are to pale in comparison.

Take, for instance, Sarah Palin. In a study released last year, participants who were asked to first consider Palin’s physical appearance were subsequently less likely to consider her competent. The study did not draw a straight line between attractiveness and perceived ability, but did suggest that a focus on physical appearance—objectification, essentially—ultimately limits a woman’s ability to be taken seriously otherwise.

This does not necessarily have anything to do with American Idol. But as much as Idol is about pop music, entertainment and celebrity, it is a political exercise: a test of one’s ability to appeal widely and motivate support from the public at large. It is not quite the same as succeeding in music or movies, pursuits in which the best-looking are often the most successful. Idol contestants don’t need to be admired or lusted after so much as they need to be endearing. They need a narrative. They need you to want them to succeed. And it is maybe not coincidence that none of the previous winners were overbearingly beautiful. Idol hasn’t anointed an ugly winner, but it also hasn’t elected an underwear model.

Casey James could, conceivably, have a career in underwear modelling. And in an uneven, inconsistent competition, he is, on the strength of a decent voice and identifiable style, a legitimate contender. As Kara DioGuardi noted recently, he would seem, “on paper,” to have everything going for him. But that might not be enough. Or, more specifically, that might be too much.

Last Beothuk buried under St. John's road?

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 10:47 AM - 3 Comments

The legend of Shawnadithit, the last member of the Beothuk Indians, is well known to Newfoundlanders. All of it, that is, except the location of the young woman’s remains. She died of tuberculosis in a naval hospital on June 6, 1829, and was thought to be buried in a cemetery also run by the Royal Navy (an early landmark erected at an Anglican church in St. John’s is thought to be wrong). Now, following an excavation to lay connectors to a new sewage plant in St. John’s, archaeologists think they’ve at long last located that old naval cemetery, and thus Shawnadithit’s grave. The bad news? She’s probably interred beneath Southside Road, a paved thoroughfare sandwiched between Highway 2 and the Waterford River. Even if found, her remains would not be complete: Shawnadithit’s head was sent to a physicians’ college in London, and was thought to have been lost during the Blitz of the Second World War.

The Telegram

Any Questions? Paul Wells live chat

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 10:24 AM - 12 Comments

Click here to join the live chat with Paul Wells

Head of the household

By Rachel Mendleson - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 14 Comments

Photograph by Yvonne Berg

The past few years have been difficult for Brian and Karen Rae. After working at K Tool & Die for more than a decade, Brian, 62, was laid off from the Oakville, Ont., plant, which made parts for the auto industry, in December 2008. At the time, Brian, who had been a toolmaker for 38 years, was earning about $58,000—a decent salary, he says, but not enough to live comfortably. “You can’t make it on one family income anymore.” As such, Karen has long worked full-time at Zellers, where she earns less than $20,000 a year assisting customers in the men’s department. The importance of her job has been “brought to the forefront” since he lost his, says Brian, along with the fact that surviving on it alone is impossible. While he completes a government-funded course in home renovation (he gave up on toolmaking after distributing 100 resumés to no avail), they’ve had to dip into their RRSPs. “It’s been a bit of a struggle to keep up with everything,” he says.

As Ottawa celebrates the country’s official return to economic growth, the Raes are not the only ones for whom recovery remains an abstract notion. Dubbed the “man-cession” or “he-session” for the way in which it snuffed out male-dominated manufacturing jobs, the downturn has dramatically altered the dynamic of many working class families. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, men suffered 76 per cent of the overall job losses; Statistics Canada numbers show that in 2009, male employment levels dipped by a total of 249,000 over the previous year, compared to a decline of 28,000 for women.

The reality today is that a middle class existence, more often than not, means a two-income family, with more women assuming the role of primary breadwinner than ever before. But a stubborn fact, buried under decades of gender equality and diversity training, has resurfaced: despite comprising more than half the workforce and outpacing the educational achievements of men, women still make less. What’s happened since the recession, says Barb Byers, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress, “is the men have looked [at what their wives are earning] and said, ‘Wait a minute, these are really crappy jobs. You can’t feed a family on this.’ ” It’s a reality that, when combined with the downturn and the shrinking middle class, is wreaking havoc on family finances.

Continue…

Karzai relents—but only a little—on election watchdog

By John Geddes - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 8:57 AM - 1 Comment

Faced with an international backlash, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is easing off somewhat on his highly controversial bid to take control of the watchdog agency that investigates complaints about cheating in Afghanistan’s elections.

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Queen of the world!

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 8:45 AM - 5 Comments

Photography by Alex J. Berliner/Beimages/Keystone

Barbra Streisand couldn’t contain herself. It was obvious she’d been tapped to present the Oscar for Best Director because it was expected to go to a woman for the first time in history. Even before opening the envelope, she couldn’t resist gloating at the prospect, adding as a tacky afterthought that the prize might also go to the first African-American ever to win it (Precious director Lee Daniels). Then, revealing that Kathryn Bigelow had won for The Hurt Locker, Streisand placed her hand over her heart, as if heralding the dawn of a new age, and declared: “The time has come!”

That the Academy has taken such a long time—82 years—to honour a female director makes this landmark as much an embarrassment as a triumph. And there’s no small irony in the fact that the first woman to crack Oscar’s glass ceiling prefers not to brand herself a feminist filmmaker, even if she is one. Unlike the only other women ever nominated for Best Director—Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola—Bigelow makes movies that don’t promote a feminist, or even a feminine, sensibility. She specializes in action movies populated by cowboy heroes—a gang of iconic bikers (The Loveless), a clan of vampire road warriors (Near Dark), a surfing FBI agent (Point Break), a nuclear submarine captain (K-19: The Widowmaker), and a bomb squad daredevil (The Hurt Locker). Her sole action heroine, played by Jamie Lee Curtis in Blue Steel, is a rookie cop with a gun fetish who seems to have erased her gender.

Pundits had a field day with the David-and-Goliath showdown between the soft-spoken Bigelow and her often bombastic ex-husband, Avatar director James Cameron. To drive home this Hollywood fable, the six-foot, 58-year-old athletic beauty was seated conspicuously in front of the 55-year-old Cameron at the Oscars, looking many years younger—like the trophy wife who got away, and was now about to take the trophies. But this convenient fiction is as far-fetched as the notion of her as a feminist torchbearer. Bigelow, who is now dating The Hurt Locker’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal, 36, seems to be on excellent terms with her ex. They never expressed a discourteous word about each other during the awards campaign. And on the red carpet, Cameron cheerfully predicted she would carry the day.

Continue…

'We have to be consistent'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 8:09 AM - 45 Comments

Maxime Bernier delivered a speech to the Manning conference this weekend on conservatism and Quebec. The prepared text is here.

Conservative policies don’t need to be watered down to appeal to a substantial portion of Quebec voters. On the contrary, as I said to a Calgary audience recently, I believe that to succeed, we have to be consistent, to defend our principles openly, with passion and with conviction.

What conservative principles need in Quebec is to be sold with a particular attention to Quebec’s specific political culture, just as they are tailored to be attractive to an English-speaking audience. They have to be crafted as a way to solve the problems of all of Canada, including Quebec, and not as a reaction from one region against another. If we succeed in doing this, conservatism has a brilliant future in this country.

Rob Silver considers the implications.

Politics of fear

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, March 15, 2010 at 6:00 AM - 187 Comments

Photograph by Chris Wattie/Reuters

This Parliament began, a little more than a year ago, with a short-lived attempt at forming a coalition government. In its place has emerged something much more enduring: a coalition non-government. The government pretends to govern, and the opposition pretends to oppose it, and both sides seem quite content with their appointed roles. Because everyone’s too afraid to do anything else. Fear is the order of the day in today’s Parliament, and it has paralyzed the place.

I had thought, and written, that the return of Parliament, after all the controversy over prorogation, would see “a ferocious battle of narratives” between a government determined to use the dual occasion of the Throne Speech and budget to shift the agenda on to its preferred ground of the economy, and an opposition equally determined to keep the heat on the government over its handling of the Afghan detainees file, and its refusal to hand over the documents Parliament had demanded in this regard.

Boy, was I wrong. When the proposal to change the wording of O Canada first excited controversy, conspiracy theorists saw it as an attempt to distract public attention from the rest of the government’s agenda. There are several flaws with this theory, but chief among them is the notion that there exists some sort of “agenda” to be distracted from. It’s difficult to say, of course: Throne Speeches are notoriously enigmatic documents. But what had appeared at first blush to be signs of a revival of economic conservatism has not survived closer scrutiny.

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