When We Watched CHUCK, It Was Moider

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 4:17 PM - 3 Comments

I didn’t even like Hart to Hart all that much (like most Aaron Spelling shows, it didn’t have enough humour, a big flaw in a concept that calls for lightness of touch), but Chuck‘s decision to do a Hart To Hart homage in an upcoming episode is still awesome.

It’s mildly ironic that in a time when theme songs are once again endangered — to the point that the Emmys are considering eliminating the award for best theme — shows can still get away with having a full-length parody main title. Chuck‘s fake Hart to Hart intro is not as long as the original, but it’s longer than the show’s actual intro.

One other thing about theme songs is that they’re sometimes changed after the pilot episode (sometimes the pilot’s theme is permanent, but sometimes it’s just a placeholder, and sometimes it’s tossed out and replaced). Hart to Hart is an example of that, because the pilot episode began with a light, Mancini-esque theme that attempted to convey the Thin Man quality of the concept. When it went to series, Aaron Spelling brought in his house composer, Mark Snow — best known now for the X-Files theme and his improvised lyrics, “The X-Files is a show/With music by Mark Snow” — to provide a pulsating action-adventure theme with a disco beat, to announce that this show wasn’t going to have any namby-pamby elegance to it.

This week has four sketches

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 4:13 PM - 0 Comments

Our weekly look back at all we saw and heard.

Monday. The meaning of courage
Tuesday. Finally, a straight answer
Wednesday. ‘I’m sorry if there’s been any confusion’
Thursday. Shakespeare’s worst play

This is why we can't have nice things

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 2:46 PM - 96 Comments

Alex Himelfarb considers what we want, what we’ve got and what we need.

Politicians and their professional advisors learn quickly that we don’t much like our leaders to bring us bad news. Bad news is bad politics. They learn too that it can be political suicide to propose more taxes or to stand up for public servants or to defend the human rights of those we don’t much like. They learn that playing to our growing distrust of government is easier than rebuilding that trust. And federal leaders learn very quickly the risks of taking on issues that create jurisdictional friction or regional conflicts. Politicians need to win if they are to govern and they either learn what it takes to win or they disappear.

And so we get the politics we deserve, or is this, more accurately, the politics we have learned to want? Leadership matters, preferences and priorities are learned; if our leaders are not saying much about poverty or climate change surely that will have an impact on how much we think about those issues. The trivialization of politics – the avoidance of tough issues, the preoccupation with polls and often brutal tactics, the pandering – is self-perpetuating.

Secret spaceship flies

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 2:45 PM - 4 Comments

A small white and black plane resembling a miniature, unmanned version of the space shuttle was launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral last night. The U.S. Air Force has revealed very little about the nature of the flight or how long the ship (which is about 30 ft long and 10 ft tall) will remain in space, only explaining that it will be testing navigation, guidance, thermal protections and autonomous operation in orbit, re-entry and landing. It’s widely believed the craft is being used to test new weapons systems. In
a statement on Thursday, the Air Force stated only that “this launch helps ensure that our warfighters will be provided the capabilities they need in the future.” The secretive X-37B program is thought to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Wall Street Journal

Repeat anything enough it starts to seem true

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 2:03 PM - 87 Comments

By the time the last Liberal leader was disposed of, his full name was Stephane Dion Notaleader. The Conservatives have attempted to do the same with Mr. Notaleader’s successor—first it was Just Visiting, until that was neatly turned into an attack on immigrants and expats, now it’s Just In It For Himself.

And so now, perhaps having taken the last few years to observe the effectiveness of this phenomenon, the Liberals have finally decided to respond in kind. At Wednesday’s QP there were 12 references to a Conservative “culture of deceit.” At Thursday’s session there were 14 references. This morning there were a dozen.

And all of this has quite upset Tom Lukiwski, the parliamentary secretary to the government’s house leader, who rose with the following point of order after QP on Thursday. Continue…

Clegg: is he good for the Canucks?

By Colby Cosh - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 1:56 PM - 34 Comments

You’ve probably heard about the startling eleventh-hour rise in the polls that Britain’s Liberal Democrats have enjoyed since their leader Nick Clegg, a reformed skirt-chaser and unreformed atheist, leapt out of the tall grass to win an Apr. 15 televised election debate. It’s time Canadians started contemplating the domestic impact of a strong Lib-Dem performance in the May 6 vote.

Lately you can find individual UK polls that have the three major parties in almost every order except for those that have the ruling Labour Party at the top. Conservative leader David Cameron, until recently a heavy favourite to win the election and capture a majority, suddenly finds himself confronted with the possibility of a historic, 1964-Phillies-esque collapse down the stretch. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been reduced to near-irrelevance on the hustings—but because of his Labour Party’s regional strength, his party is likely to control more seats than the Liberal Democrats even if Labour finishes third in the vote.

Punters at UK gambling site Betfair are currently forecasting better-than-even odds (57%) of a hung Parliament and a reasonable chance (fractional odds: 7-to-1) of someone other than Brown or Cameron becoming Prime Minister. Under such chaotic circumstances it is entirely possible that “someone other than Brown or Cameron” could end up being a coalition leader other than Clegg himself. And the price of the exotic “two elections in 2010″ prop bet has soared, implying a 27% chance of a quickie second vote. Also, dogs and cats have been spotted living together in Scunthorpe.

The Clegg boomlet may not end up changing anything in the long run. But even though the UK parties map awkwardly onto ours, it would appear to have relevance to Canada on at least a couple of fronts. The Lib-Dem moment is the very same one of which the New Democrats have been dreaming since the Winnipeg Declaration, and of which they caught a brief glimpse in ’88; to wit, voters finally get tired of the choice between Coke and Pepsi and start getting curious about Dr. Pepper.

I went to rabble.ca expecting to find a lot of excitement about this. More fool me. The online left is far too busy tilting at Zionist windmills and trying to win the All-Canada Summarize Chomsky Competition to pay any heed to the model for our democracy. But a strong electoral performance by Clegg would provide data for a future debate about the fate and usefulness of a social-democratic party that no longer believes in socialism—and one that, given the excess weight given to labour unions in its leadership balloting, arguably isn’t all that strong on democracy either. Recall that the “Democrat” half the Liberal-Democrat DNA derives from light-pink Labourites who got tired of trade-union bullying and wanted to build a non-militant home for the Left. Thatcher crushed the unions, Labour became neoliberal, and thirty years zipped by, but somehow the Lib Dems have recovered a raison d’être.

It seems highly speculative to imagine that such a thing could ever happen to the NDP. (I’m not aware that there exists some brand of “awareness of one’s own irrelevance” fairy-dust that can be sprinkled on NDP supporters.) Of more immediate concern to Canada is the possibility that a strong Lib-Dem result could a) create pressure for the adoption of proportional representation in the UK and b) bring about the conditions for its immediate adoption as the price of Liberal-Democrat participation in a governing coalition. If the three UK parties were each to get the exact same numbers of votes on May 6, with the regionally distorted riding-by-riding distribution remaining about the same, the seat distribution in the Commons would end up being roughly LAB 300-CON 200-LIB 100.

I don’t think there is necessarily a major ethical problem with this, particularly since what it practically amounts to is giving Scotland and Wales something more like an equal say in British government and protecting them from being demographically overrun. Only a crazed extremist for “democracy” in the strictest technical meaning of the term would argue that Scotland and Wales should have influence on Parliament not one iota greater than their nose count. The effect of “first past the post” in current British politics is much the same as that of the U.S.A. giving equal representation to the states in the Senate, and, by extension, giving smaller states a disproportionate say in the Electoral College.

Still, this election may provide a tough, maybe destructive test of tolerance for that arrangement—particularly in the light of ever-louder murmurs of English nationalism and English awareness of the West Lothian Question. (The existence of Welsh and Scottish assemblies considerably weakens the argument that Parliament can never revise constitutional arrangements in a manner contrary to the interests of Wales and Scotland, and the argument isn’t totally decisive anyway.) A fiasco for first-past-the-post would be bad news for its future here; its abandonment in the UK as part of a power-sharing deal would make us stick out like a sore thumb. Even pro-FPTPers can’t deny that.

This is the city I live in now

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 1:08 PM - 105 Comments

A month after the CBC hired Stephen Harper’s former director of communications and a CBC reporter was breathlessly reported to be the designated traveller for a Conservative MP, the national broadcaster has astutely been identified by the Conservative party as a major force in the liberal media conspiracy and the pollster who is central to this conspiracy has been made to go on the national airwaves and explain to that former director of communications which politicians he’s donated money to in the past. And so the pollster has now formally and publicly apologized for thoughts offered to a Globe and Mail columnist.

Archie Comics to introduce gay character

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 12:36 PM - 20 Comments

Archie comics, which publishes the adventures of the world’s oldest teenagers, will finally see the first gay character added to the mix. In a story from Veronica # 202, Veronica Lodge will be attracted to a hunky new guy named Kevin, not realizing that he’s attracted to men rather than women. The artist and writer, Dan Parent, says that the company wanted to introduce more “diverse characters” into its world, and that no big deal will be made of the story or the characters’ reactions “the characters just accept it, and that’s it.” Parent has also written a story where Archie has a romance with the company’s first black character, Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats. But none of this clears up the big issue: why are two sexy girls chasing after a boy with a waffle on the side of his head?

Newsarama.com

Archie Comics Is Happy And Gay

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 12:26 PM - 7 Comments

I’ve been asked what I think about Archie Comics’ decision to introduce a gay character. I have to admit that though I am an unabashed Archie Comics buff, my buffery is mostly about the ’50s and ’60s stuff, by the likes of series creator Bob Montana. I don’t follow their recent stuff very much. The company’s art is probably better now than it’s been in a while (except, ironically, their senior artist, Stan Goldberg), but they’ve placed so many restrictions on what they can do and the kind of jokes they can make that it’s impossible for them to be as funny as the “classic” stories of the ’40s through the ’70s (and even the ’80s if Samm Schwartz was wielding the pencil). In fact, that’s one good reason for the company to go in for long soapy story arcs like Archie getting married: since Betty can’t be an insane murderess, and characters can’t take recreational drugs or go into prostitution, then six-page comedy stories aren’t easy to do.

Which is the nice thing about the introduction of this character, that the decision was made not to make it a very special “event” story, but simply bring him in as a traditional comedy twist in a traditional comedy story (girl likes guy, doesn’t realize he’s gay). Obviously, like most of what this company does nowadays, it’s partly done for the sake of getting news coverage — and as you see, it’s working. Archie has belatedly adopted some of the techniques of DC and Marvel: headline-grabbing announcements, big story arcs (including imaginary ones). But it’s also a fairly important step considering that this is just about the only remaining non-superhero comic company. They’re the last “mainstream” U.S. comics that are regularly sold to people who are not comics buffs, and to girls as well as boys, so for them to admit the obvious — that some people are attracted to the same sex, or that people of different races sometimes date each other, is a pretty big deal.

The other question people are asking is “wait, what about Jughead?” Having Jughead be so involved in the story may be their way of saying, no, Jughead’s not gay. And you know what? He’s probably not. Like Sheldon Cooper, he’s asexual.

The most closeted character in Riverdale is probably Reggie, a classic over-compensator whose obsession with Archie frequently turns into an open man-crush. (I can’t find it online, but there’s a story where Reggie becomes attracted to Archie in drag.) And Betty seems to think there’s some tension between her and Veronica:

I should also note that there are rampant signs that the company may already have a bisexual character, Melody, who seems open to the possibilities with both of her friends, Josie and Pepper (progress aside, I never liked Valerie much; bring back Pepper!)

Finally, though this isn’t directly related to the post, it is related to Katie Engelhart’s story from last week’s issue: I should note that this company won’t really have shaken off its past until it deals with the issue of Jughead’s unsavory political affiliations.

Sunken oil rig off Louisiana coast isn't leaking

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 12:11 PM - 2 Comments

The U.S. coast guard is allaying fears a sunken oil drilling rig off the Louisiana coast might be leaking. The rig, roughly 80 kilometres off the coast, was devastated by an explosion on Tuesday, eventually collapsing on Thursday. But while there is a significant amount of oil on the surface, Mike O’Berry, a senior chief petty officer with the coast guard, says robots show there are no leaks happening under water. Meanwhile, rescue efforts are still underway to recover 11 rig workers who are still missing since Tuesday’s explosion. More than 100 workers escaped the accident, which critically injured four.

CBC News

Live long and prosper

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 12:10 PM - 1 Comment

Leonard Nimoy has decided to retire. And this time the 79-year-old actor is serious when he says he’s done with Mr. Spock. In last year’s Star Trek movie, he played an older version of Spock while Zachary Quinto played a younger version. “I want to get off the stage. Also, I don’t think it would be fair to Zachary Quinto,” he says. “He’s a terrific actor, he looks the part, and it’s time to give him some space. And I’m very flattered the character will continue.” Nimoy went further, stating that his recently wrapped scenes in the TV show Fringe are the end. “I’ve been doing this professionally for 60 years,” he says with a laugh. “I love the idea of going out on a positive note. I’ve had a great, great time.”

Toronto Sun

Performance enhancing indeed

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 11:32 AM - 1 Comment

Athletes who test positive for performance enhancing, or illegal drugs have long had less-than-convincing excuses. Ben Johnson speculated that someone spiked the sarsaparilla-and-ginseng energy drink he took before his 1988 race in Seoul. Petr Korda the Czech tennis player who tested positive for steroids at Wimbledon in 1998, claimed he had eaten too much nandrolone-fattened veal. Last year, another tennis player, Frenchman Richard Gasquet, had a doping ban overturned when he convinced a panel that the cocaine found in his system came from a woman he kissed in a Miami nightclub. But now, we have a new champion apologist, ladies and gentleman: LaShawn Merritt, the 400m champion at the Beijing Olympics who recently tested positive steroid precursor. The US track star is blaming it all on a “male enhancement product” hawked on late-night infomercials. Memo to athletes: Stay away from ExtenZe.

San Francisco Chronicle

North Korea halts cross-border visits to mountain resort

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 11:29 AM - 0 Comments

Tensions are mounting between North and South Korea after North Korean officials shut down cross-border visits to the Mount Kumgang resort and seized South Korean-owned assets at the site. The move follows accusations by South Korea that its northern neighbour was behind the sinking of a warship last month. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday she hoped “there is no talk of war, there is no action or miscalculation that could provoke a response that might lead to conflict” and urged North Korea to return to the six-party talks aimed at halting its nuclear program. However, a statement by a North Korean state agency suggested “the situation has reached such an extreme phase that it is at the crossroads of a war or peace.”

Ottawa Citizen

Toilet paper caper

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 11:28 AM - 7 Comments

Ever wonder what happens to the crisp, white office paper you use at work to print out silly pics of your co-workers’ faces Photoshopped on onto Lady Gaga’s body? Well, it used to go to North American recycling plants where it was made into pillowy-soft toilet paper. But the Chinese have recently entered the market for office wastepaper with a vengeance, carting the stuff back to the Middle Kingdom by container ship for the benefit of Sino posteriors. Which leaves us Westerners shelling out more for the soft stuff. Or resorting to lower grade paper that, at bottom, is not so nice.

Wired

Michael Pataki and TV Character Acting

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 11:02 AM - 5 Comments

The veteran TV character actor Michael Pataki died last week, which wasn’t covered much in the press despite his long career and his presence in just about every television show ever made by anyone. (Variety printed the only obituary, but it’s behind a paywall.) That’s because he was one of those actors who worked consistently, but rarely played regular roles, and never had a regular spot in a hit show. (One of his shows as a regular was Friends and Lovers, MTM’s attempt to do for comedian Paul Sand what they’d already done for Bob Newhart. That didn’t work out.) He appeared on many hit shows, but in one-shot guest roles: as a Klingon in Star Trek‘s “The Trouble With Tribbles,” as the evil drag racer who competed against the Fonz and Pinky Tuscadero, as King Tut’s henchman on Batman, to a perp who gets taken down by Lee Marvin on M Squad, because nobody messes with Lee Marvin. He also went into voice work, most famously as George Liquor on Ren and Stimpy; John Kricfalusi has posted a tribute to him. He was, in other words, a “hey, it’s that guy!” actor with a great “hey, it’s that guy!” résumé.

It reminds me of something I’ve noticed lately, which is that the number of professional guest actors — the pool of men and women who do guest roles on many different shows, and build a reputation largely based on their guest shots — seems to be shrinking. Nowadays when a show has a big guest part, they’ll either give it to someone who is genuinely well-known, maybe even someone visiting from another show (Dana Delany on Castle, to give one recent example) or someone without a long list of guest-starring credits. There are a few guys left over from the golden age of character acting, like Sam Anderson, and a few guys who still make a good living that way, like Stephen Root (though even he often gets brought in for multiple episodes, as he did on 24 and West Wing). But shows — particularly dramas — have larger regular casts than they used to, and they often fill supporting slots with “hey, it’s that guy!” actors rather than complete unknowns, e.g. all the veteran character actors who were regulars on Deadwood. That takes them out of contention for a lot of guest shots. And I think there’s a sense now that an actor who has made any kind of name should be signed up as a regular, or at least more than one episode. Which is good for the actors, but means that you don’t always get to see one guy build up a huge, diverse body of work on television.

Anyway, even a “hey, it’s that guy!” usually has a signature guest role, something he’s remembered for even by people who don’t remember his name. For Pataki, it’s “Trouble With Tribbles,” because he was the first actor to speak the fake Klingon language. For me, it’s his role in WKRP in Cincinnati as a Russian defector whose main knowledge of U.S. culture comes from Elton John’s then-recent Russian tour. The episode also had Sam Anderson in it, meaning it’s like a “Hey, It’s That Guy!” festival.

Rahim & Patrick's Don't Pay a Cent Event

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 10:57 AM - 79 Comments

Let’s assume everyone’s telling the truth. Rahim Jaffer and his partner, Patrick Glémaud, never got paid for their activities. They were simply making inquiries about the terms and conditions on which certain types of government grants might be available to certain companies. The companies in question never hired them to act as lobbyists. And nobody got a dime of government money. How do we make sense of this?

Why would Jaffer and Glémaud work for free? Were they actively lobbying, or just researching? Did they break any laws? Or is this all just a misunderstanding?

Let me try one theory out. It’s just a theory, I stress. But it might explain what was going on here. Suppose what Jaffer and Glemaud were working was a kind of disguised contingency fee scheme. To wit: You charge no fees in the initial, exploratory, “pre-lobbying” phase, when you’re probing to see whether there’s any takers on the government side. You don’t register as a lobbyist, because you don’t have to: so long as no money changes hands, under the law there’s no requirement to register — one of the loopholes Democracy Watch’s Duff Conacher complains of. Then, once you’ve got some prospect of success, you register, start the meter, and collect your fees.

As Glémaud explained to the committee:

“If there was an interest then there would be a request to submit a detailed business plan with all the details of the project. And that would be viewed as the actual grant or contribution agreement application, and that’s when lobbying would start. We didn’t get to that stage.”

“Our understanding is if we were in a position to be at that stage, then I would have to decide for myself to register as a lobbyist.”

There’s no explicit contingency arrangement, you understand. But the clients are taking far less risk than if they were paying you to make cold calls. The fees don’t start until you’ve got at least a nibble.

The beauty of it is that if it all blows up, everyone can deny everything, truthfully. We weren’t charging any fees, says Rahim. We weren’t paying any, says his supposed client and fellow lobbyist, Joe Jordan. We were just making inquiries, says Glémaud. We never even hired them to do that, says Jordan.

I wonder how common this is. Contingency fees are illegal, as is unregistered (paid) lobbying. But this wasn’t a contingency fee agreement, and they didn’t have to register: whether or not it was lobbying, they weren’t getting paid. It’s possible, in other words, that everything that went on here was within the law. Which may be an argument for changing the law.

This Week: Good news/ Bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 8:30 AM - 2 Comments

J. Scott Applewhite/ AP

Face of the week
PUMPED UP: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden rallies female student athletes at George Washington University in Washington

J. Scott Applewhite/ AP

A week in the life of Gordon Campbell
His party lags badly in the polls, with almost half of B.C. voters leaning toward the NDP. Yet Campbell marches on. Friday he said he’d miss a Surrey Sikh parade with radical undertones. Sunday he learned he’d receive the Canadian Olympic Order for his support of the Vancouver Games. Monday—way up in northeast B.C.—he announced plans for a 900-megawatt dam project on the Peace River. Tuesday he opened a new Pixar studio in Gastown. Sounds like a last lap to us.

GOOD NEWS

Rain or shine
Neither the soupy fog in St. John’s nor the ash from an Icelandic volcano could derail the Juno Awards. Despite early fears of transportation chaos, the awards show came off a success (and we can’t help but feel heartened that K’Naan, who performed his inspirational Wavin’ Flag, was a big winner). Fears the volcanic ash would shutter the airport did prompt several Tory MPs to jump on special, late-night flights after the show, leaving their Liberal counterparts fuming they missed leaving town early. But given the choice between a return to Ottawa and another night celebrating on George Street, we think we’d take the latter.

The rights stuff
The head of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission has a solution to concerns that human rights proceedings have become a kangaroo court. Let the real courts take over. Last week, David Arnot said he’d prefer to abolish the province’s human rights tribunal and give the job of hearing complaints to the Court of Queen’s Bench. Arnot argues human rights law has become so complex it requires the attention of real judges. Such a move would also provide a clearer separation of powers between the commission and the adjudication of cases. It’s a step in the right direction. Human rights tribunals were never supposed to be courts—just conciliators. Could common sense soon emerge as a basic human right in Canada?

A fearless leader
At a speech given in the Congo, attended by the country’s president and military leaders, Governor General Michaëlle Jean spoke out against wartime use of rape as a weapon must not go unpunished. Jean continues to be a fearless and passionate representative of this country, even as she nears the end of her term and fascination attends the question of her replacement. That interest is a credit to her work and populist appeal. The downside? Internet sites are suggesting candidates like Leonard Cohen and William Shatner. As the Queen’s representative? Please.

The kids are alright
Two Winnipeg teachers who performed a routine closely resembling a lap dance at a school pep rally are out of work. One resigned, the other’s contract won’t be renewed. “It was disturbing,” one teen student said of the dance, viewed by millions on YouTube. We long for the days when teachers were dignified—even intimidating—rather than trying to be hip. It’s gratifying the students knew inappropriate behaviour when they saw it. Maybe good taste is inborn and stays intact, no matter what they see at school.

BAD NEWS

Bawdy politic

Saskatchewan Party MLA Serge LeClerc, a former gangland criminal who found God in jail and became a motivational speaker, has come under increasing scrutiny. One NDP member said LeClerc gave him the finger and menaced him outside the legislature. On Friday, the CBC said it received a package containing a recording of a man who sounds like LeClerc discussing recent cocaine use and sex with a man. Though he’d secured his party’s riding nomination and had pursued the process into April, LeClerc—who denies everything—quit caucus, and says he’d planned to leave politics all along. The premier has sent the allegations to police. Whatever comes of this, it’s a regrettable spectacle.

Out of control
Toyota paid a US$16.4-million fine to U.S. safety regulators to settle complaints over sticky accelerator pedals. That should have marked the end of the recall nightmare for the world’s top automaker. Yet the problems keep coming. Toyota was forced to stop selling one of its Lexus SUVs over a report the truck can lose control in high-speed cornering. Worse, a simmering internal dispute between the Toyoda family and company executives went public as the two sides traded blame. It once looked like Toyota’s good name was being unfairly tarnished. Now, we’re not so sure.

Pew says: Pee-u!
Republicans and Democrats can’t play nice. On Saturday, President Barack Obama accused Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of launching a “cynical and deceptive” attack against a measure designed to tame Wall Street. Not exactly bipartisan. For its part, the GOP is using the very real issue of America’s faulty financial system to score points. So goes U.S. politics these days, and Americans are understandably perturbed. A Pew Research Center survey says just 22 per cent believe they can trust Washington “almost always or most of the time”—a historic low; almost a third think the government is a threat to personal freedom.

Out of their tree
A British court fined a hotel $3,100 after health and safety investigators found the owners had failed to carry out a “risk assessment” on the dangers of sawing a tree branch with a ladder leaning against it. Peter Aspinall, the 63-year-old handyman, fell 14 feet after sawing through the branch. The hotel had pleaded guilty to the breaches, and Aspinall is now pursuing a civil suit. Still, the hotel’s solicitor expressed disappointment that “common sense did not prevail” in the ruling. “It is an unusual accident,” he said. “Laurel and Hardy do that sort of thing.”

Hey look: What this week was all about, maybe

By Paul Wells - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 8:26 AM - 22 Comments

From the print edition, my new column, at double-ish the regular length, shakes the Guergis-Jaffer spectacle until some different perspectives pop out.

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 1 Comment

Those guys in green
It was Denis Lemieux, the crazed goalie in the old-school hockey movie Slap Shot, who described the penalty box experience best: “Two minutes by yourself. You feel shame, you know. And then you go free.” In Vancouver’s GM Place, the cost of an infraction against the Canucks also includes the unwanted antic companionship of Sully and Force, two spandex-clad Green Men. The two anonymous local college students dance, play-fight and otherwise annoy the opposition from their seats behind the penalty box. “You’ve got to get in their heads,” says Sully. Their antics aren’t sanctioned by the team, the greenies stress. Their tickets are donated by a local roofing company.

Olympic outtakes
John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee, eased toward unemployment Friday by offering a sold-out crowd at the local board of trade an inside look at the Games. He told of a panicked phone call from David Atkins, the Australian producer of the opening ceremonies. Rick Hansen was to climb a steep ramp in his wheelchair to deliver the torch to those lighting the cauldron. Atkins got in a chair for a trial run and failed miserably. “I’m incredibly fit,” he said. “Rick Hansen will never get up that ramp.” Furlong replied: “I’m not phoning Rick Hansen to say he can’t do anything.” Hansen went to B.C. Place at 2 a.m. for a secret trial run. “Up he went the first go,” Furlong says of the man who rolled 40,000 km around the world for spinal cord research. Expect that anecdote to make the book Furlong wants to write before he starts job hunting in earnest.

Continue…

Guergis, Bernier, and the PM's secrets

By Paul Wells - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 7:19 AM - 331 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/ CP

Every act tips its author’s hand, and with Helena Guergis’s departure from cabinet we are beginning to understand what it takes for Stephen Harper to remove a minister.
In these matters it will never do to set the bar too high. Harper did not invent the dud minister, and a rule of thumb established by a long line of his predecessors holds that undue haste in firing a minister for garden-variety offences—simple incompetence, inertia or unflagging incuriosity (breathe easy, Lawrence Cannon)—sets unhelpful precedents.

But twice Harper has reached the end of his rope with a minister. First Maxime Bernier left cabinet, now Helena Guergis has. In each case the last straw was similar. Weeks of public controversy didn’t do it. Harper greeted the revelation that Bernier’s girlfriend Julie Couillard was a biker moll with public protestations that mere gossip couldn’t be germane to Bernier’s worth.

Continue…

Tonight in all that and still more

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 12:35 AM - 25 Comments

Ms. Guergis seems interested in being the Conservative candidate for Simcoe-Grey whenever the next election occurs. The director of a solar power company, and a former Liberal MP, says he was “shocked” to learn his company was the subject of a proposal submitted to the government by Mr. Jaffer’s company. The private investigator tells the Canadian Press that the RCMP told him that it has commenced an investigation. The RCMP won’t say if it has actually done so. An observer wonders if there might be some holes in the Lobbying Act that need tending to. The ethics commissioner says she can’t investigate unless she has “some information that goes to whatever the hell the problem was.” And Mr. Jaffer’s business partner produces the documentation that was requested and, in the process, suggests that perhaps racism had something to do with the reception he and Mr. Jaffer received at the government operations committee the other day. Or at least that some people who watched the committee proceedings told him that perhaps racism had something to do with it.

You say what now, honourable Senator representing Rigaud?

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 7:47 PM - 20 Comments

TSN’s Michael Landsberg laughs through the pain.

Conflict-of-interest-free Canadian Senator Jacques Demers tells the kind of joke my dad makes when he’s four Cuba Libres into some family wedding. That is to say, off-colour, cringe-inducing and completely harmless. A few differences: my dad isn’t a senator (yet); Demers was presumably sober, and; he did it on live television. Let the smarmy outrage start… now.

The Commons: Shakespeare’s worst play

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 6:23 PM - 56 Comments

The Scene. Bob Rae stood and commenced to separate the knowns from the unknowns.

“We now know that there were several meetings between Mr. Jaffer and his partner with the parliamentary secretary. We know that Mr. Jaffer had dinner with the minister. We know there were proposals made worth at least $800 million that were not only discussed, but were considered directly by the department and that there were answers from the department for the proposals,” he said.

He held his hands in front of him and brought them close together, as if to put this all in a metaphorical box for presentation to the Prime Minister.

“I have a very simple question for the Prime Minister,” he said. “If all of this does not amount to lobbying and does not amount to special access for those who are friends of and close to the Conservative Party, what exactly would the Prime Minister—”

Alas, he had spent so much time reviewing just one-tenth of this story that his time had run out.

No matter, the Prime Minister was in no mood for gifts anyway. He wanted only to be clear. Absolutely clear. Continue…

Week in Pictures: April 16th – 21st 2010

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 6:11 PM - 0 Comments