Also, why can't our politicians behave more seriously?
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 0 Comments
The Globe and Post this morning publish competing investigations of the Prime Minister’s recent decision to change eyewear. Mind you, they were both beaten to this story by the Star, which looked into this subject more than two weeks ago.
The Globe reports that the change is due to dry eyes. But they don’t fully explain why the Prime Minister’s eyes are in fact dry—Allergies? Stress? Climate change? Constant crying over the expected failure of C-391? Heightened seething toward his political adversaries?
Hopefully one or both of the national television networks will pick up and advance the story.
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Hollywood's new heroine: the skank
By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
New teen comedies from young male directors are ‘feminist filmmaking’
Adam Taylor
In Easy A, a new high school comedy, Emma Stone stars as Olive, a sharp-witted, kind-hearted 17-year-old who cultivates a reputation as the school slut even though she’s a virgin. In a bizarre twist on a girl protecting her honour, she takes to wearing satin bustiers emblazoned with a red “A”—inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, which, conveniently, she’s studying in school. It all starts with a fib to her best friend about a wild weekend tryst that never happened. Then, as an act of charity, she fakes drunken sex with a gay friend—which involves a charade of torrid screaming behind a bedroom door at a party—to immunize him against homophobia. “I always thought pretending to lose my virginity would be a little more special,” she sighs. But as Olive is branded a tramp, she turns the stigma into a mark of empowerment, waging a one-woman culture war against the school’s Cross Your Heart Club of Christian prudes. “If they want me to be a dirty skank, fine!” she says. “I’ll be the dirtiest skank they’ve ever seen.”
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A Word You Could Say on TV in 1955
By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 10:34 AM - 0 Comments
Via Terry Teachout, I found this clip of Noël Coward’s 1955 TV special “Together With Music” (with Mary Martin). The thing that surprised me was that he was able to sing the word “sluts” on national U.S. TV in the ’50s — a word you couldn’t even say in the movies at the time. It turns out the sponsor and the network wanted him to rewrite the song, but he refused, saying that he had been an arbiter of good taste all his life and that he was the perfect judge of what was and was not vulgar: “Look at that,” he said, pointing at a line of Ford cars that had been brought onto the stage to advertise the sponsor’s product, “that’s vulgar.”
I don’t know how the song went over with ’50s audiences, not because of the naughty (for the time) word but because it was written in the ’40s as a parody of a Latin dance craze that had pretty much dried up by 1955. But I find it interesting that censorship on ’50s television — particualrly live TV from New York — was not as strict as it became in the late ’50s and the ’60s. Broadcast TV censorship in the U.S. seems to go through ups and downs, rather than always rising or always falling.
One verse he did change, of his own volition, was a topical verse from the original ’40s version:
She said with most refreshing candour
That she thought Carmen Miranda
Was subversive propaganda
And should rapidly be shot,
And that she didn’t care a jot
If people quoted her or not.(“Candour” and “Miranda” rhyme because he’s English and doesn’t pronounce the final “r.”)
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Bill Gates on what’s wrong with public schools
By Kenneth Whyte - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 10:17 AM - 0 Comments
Including the huge textbooks, and why bad teachers have to go
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW TOLSON
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest men, is also one of the world’s leading philanthropists. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is perhaps best known for fighting poverty and disease in the developing world, but its main domestic focus is on education. Gates appears in the new documentary Waiting for “Superman,” which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. A powerful indictment of the U.S. education system, it features educators running the innovative Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools, and follows families desperate to get their children into high-performing charter schools. (Often controversial, charter schools receive some public money but do not follow the same rules or curriculum as public schools.) Gates believes the quality of teachers is of critical importance, and calls for a system of evaluation to reward the best, and get rid of the worst. He talked to Maclean’s editor-in-chief Kenneth Whyte in Toronto.
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Notable use of adjective
By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 10:16 AM - 0 Comments
Transport Minister Chuck Strahl, responding yesterday to a question about the proposed arena for Quebec City.
Mr. Speaker, of course many Canadians are proud sports fans. They support their sports team wherever they happen to be in all regions of this country and that is great to see. It brings not only cultural opportunities but also economic opportunities across the country.
These initiatives are primarily led by private sector interests. In the case of the NHL, these are wealthy owners along with wealthy hockey players who bring us a lot of fun, but they need to take the lead on this and we look forward to any leadership they might show in the private sector as we move forward with this kind of initiative.
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The recurring question that haunts pro-lifers
By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 8:53 AM - 0 Comments
Libertyville Abortion Demonstration: still my favourite YouTube video of all time. No scripted comedy will ever make me laugh as hard as the monkey-puzzle looks on the faces of anti-abortion protesters when the filmmaker hits them with the question “If abortions should be illegal, what punishment should be imposed on the women who have them?” Most if not all of the interviewees are experienced at making nuisances of themselves in the name of a grand moral cause; none, clearly, are similarly experienced at unassisted moral reflection. I will never understand how the interviewee who answers the question “It’s kinda between a woman and her God” and the one who says “I leave that to society to decide” managed not to blush to death. Most certainly they didn’t skulk off home and leave the patients of that clinic alone.
At Slate.com yesterday, William Saletan updated the comedy of the pro-life double standard with a dark twist, pointing out that the State of Virginia defines dilation-and-extraction abortions as felony infanticide but exempts from prosecution the women who order, pay for, and benefit from such procedures. The law in question was the work of Governor Bob McDonell, who has refused executive clemency to a condemned murderess in an analogous situation.
Although [Teresa] Lewis didn’t pull the trigger, the governor observed, she “paid for the firearms” and “intentionally left a rear door to their home unlocked” so that her co-conspirators could commit the murders. For this, she will die.
Like other conservatives, McDonnell believes that the taking of human life, even by proxy, must be gravely punished. And like other abortion opponents, he claims that the right to life “applies to every American—born and unborn.” Yet every day, thousands of women do to their fetuses what Lewis did to her stepson. They pay to get rid of an unwanted life, and they provide access to the victim. What punishment does McDonnell propose for these women? Absolutely nothing.
Saletan does not raise the question, as he might have, why abortionists should be charged with infanticide rather than homicide. Surely this rather blunts the “message” the law is intended to convey? Indeed, one might ask how, if gametes are entitled to the full protection of the law the moment they are joined, our noble Christian forefathers ever arrived at such a concept as “infanticide”, which introduces one of those odious distinctions between life and life.
The technical answer is that, in traditional Christian civilizations which happily hanged swine thieves and counterfeiters, experience taught the magistrates that babies were sometimes discarded or destroyed by frantic, unbalanced postpartum women seeking to conceal evidence of sexual misconduct. (History’s joke on pro-lifers is that the law, in a more theocratic era, was obviously more concerned with policing that “misconduct” than it was with the life of any infant—much less a fetus.) In such an environment, “pray for the poor distracted women rather than punishing them” was really a strong argument—much stronger than it could possibly be in our libertine, egalitarian age.
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The Commons: Picking up wherever it was we left off
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 6:40 PM - 0 Comments
The Scene. It will no doubt shock you to learn that there remain profound disagreements between the major political parties as to the future direction and management of the country. What’s more, it seems still that when the members of these parties are placed in close proximity and offered the opportunity to speak publicly, they regularly refer to each other in loud tones and critical terms.
Thankfully, everyone is agreed that something should be done to make things somehow better. If only everyone else would agree to act differently than they do.
And thankfully, for however long we wait for this conundrum to resolve itself, there will still apparently be Tony Clement to amuse us. Continue…
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Speaking for the victims
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 6:15 PM - 0 Comments
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, in QP this afternoon. “Mr. Speaker, in fact, we are listening to victims. And victims want dangerous, repeat criminals in prison. They want safe streets. They don’t want the dangerous criminals on the streets. And they want laws that target the criminals. They don’t believe that the long-gun registry targets criminals. In fact, it targets law-abiding hunters and farms and sportspeople right across this country. It’s not a law we need in Canada.”
National Victims of Crime Ombudsman Sue O’Sullivan, about an hour later. “In the few short weeks since my appointment, I have had the opportunity to begin an important dialogue with national victims’ groups on a number of issues, including the long-gun registry,” explained Ms. O’Sullivan. “Though there is no consensus, the majority of victims’ groups we have spoken to have made it clear: Canada should maintain its long-gun registry.”
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Top 9 worst moments of TIFF
By Stephanie Findlay and Tom Henheffer - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 5:19 PM - 0 Comments
Spacey, Portman and a movie that makes you faint all make the list
0Top 9 worst moments of TIFF
Good film, bad screening
Cave of Forgotten Dreams is the bold and beautiful new documentary from Werner Herzog that was almost cut off at the knees because of technical glitches at its premiere. The 3D projector was poorly calibrated, making the film difficult to watch, the camera froze at the beginning, and then the entire film shut down for about 10 minutes right at the climax. The documentary was moving enough that most critics didn't seem to mind.
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Right-wing Swedish party wins seats in parliament for first time
By macleans.ca - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 5:05 PM - 0 Comments
Sweden Democrats win 20 of the 349 seats
After Sweden’s general election on Sunday, a right-wing, anti-immigration party has captured 20 of the 349 seats seats. It is the first time that the party, the Sweden Democrats, has ever won seats in parliament and means that the governing coalition of Green and centre-left Social Democrats do not have an overall majority. Though the ruling parties say they stand united,
the Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt says that he will not form a coalition with the far right party. The Sweden Democrat’s success is largely attributed to anti-immigrant sentiment in the country. -
Thank you Jaffer: new regulations for lobbyists
By macleans.ca - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 3:16 PM - 0 Comments
Stockwell Day: Lobbyists must register all government activities in a move for greater transparency
Today, Treasury Board President Stockwell Day announced that lobbyists will face new transparency regulations. The new rules will see lobbyists register when they lobby any member of Parliament, including the opposition’s senior staff in the House of Commons and Senate offices. The Harper government had promised to make changes after former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer approached senior government MPs for federal funding for his private business—Jaffer denies the claim. Previously, lobbyists only needed to report that they lobbied with government ministers, ministers of state and senior bureaucrats. The National Post reported that Day said Canadians expect transparency and that “We want to make sure that message goes through loud and clear, and people understand that members of Parliament and senators are responsible to the citizens of the country, not to special-interest groups.”
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TV Premiere Week: Monday
By Jaime Weinman - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 2:57 PM - 0 Comments
This is the biggest premiere week in some years, because most of the networks except the CW have elected to begin most of their shows around the same time — no more talk of slow rollouts or trying to end the traditional season structure. So lots of shows, new and old, will kick off their seasons this week in an inflation-adjusted Thunderdome: four enter, and at least one doesn’t leave.
We don’t know yet which of these shows will be good, though if a show’s pilot is bad enough (see Outlaw, below) it’s a fair bet that it will never get good. So instead of reviewing pilots, I’m just going to provide some notes on the shows premiering tonight on the “Big Four” networks and what we might expect — or hope — as the season continues.
8:00
NBC: Chuck
ABC: Dancing With the Stars
Fox: House
CBS: How I Met Your MotherIt starts off with an all-returning-shows, all-the-time lineup. Chuck is the only one of these that doesn’t qualify as a hit, so much of the attention will be focused on Continue…
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Bird-huggers vs. tree-huggers
By Andrew Potter - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 2:50 PM - 0 Comments
We can’t build a wind farm because it might imperil Margaret Atwood’s love of spotting a rare fruited warbler
John Alex Maguire/Rex Features/CP
If her recent writing is anything to go by, Margaret Atwood is seriously worried about the future of the human race. In her novels Oryx and Crake and its successor, Year of the Flood, she deals with the apocalyptic themes of runaway technology, the commodification of the body, and environmental devastation. She always describes her work as “speculative fiction” that explores the consequences of social trends that are already underway.
But if her recent environmental activism is any indication, Margaret Atwood appears to think that everything is more or less peachy. At the very least, global warming doesn’t appear to her to be anything worth sacrificing a few birds or a nice view over.
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Look at what you can make with a rice cooker
By Julia McKinnell - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 2:44 PM - 0 Comments
Movie reviewer Roger Ebert shares his enthusiasm for his favourite kitchen appliance
Istock; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute
Shortly before Roger Ebert got sick with the cancer that cost him his ability to speak and eat normally, the once-pudgy movie reviewer lost 100 lb. the old-fashioned way, his friend Yvonne Nienstadt explains in the foreword to his fun-filled new book. Nienstadt, who runs a spa in Mexico, writes that Ebert once confided he was miffed “that most folks thought he lost all that weight because of his illness. I am here to testify that he worked his fanny off by self-discipline and by making profound lifestyle changes.” Cooking low-sodium, low-fat one-pot meals in his rice cooker was one of those changes. The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker includes Ebert’s favourite recipes, as well as charming musings on food and life. “Even though I stopped drinking in 1979 and, for that matter, stopped eating in 2006, I cook for others,” writes Ebert, “partly to make myself useful and mostly because I can have dinner on the table while most people are still spinning their wheels.” His book is for “You, person on a small budget who wants healthy food.”
“First, get the pot,” he instructs readers. “You need the simplest rice cooker made. It comes with two speeds: Cook and Warm. Sometimes Warm is named Hold. Not expensive. Now you’re all set to cook meals for the rest of your life on two square feet of counter space, including an area to do a little slicing and dicing.”
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The battle of ideas
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 1:49 PM - 0 Comments
Glen Pearson, though not a distinterested observer, sets up the central theme of this new session of Parliament thusly.
So, while you’re hearing all the hoopla that political parties and the media fixate on over the weeks ahead, try to consider the “quiet crisis” that is really at play in today’s Ottawa. It’s about your way of life and whether it becomes more private and self-centered, or whether it applies itself to the serious public problems that threaten the collective health of this country, and the planet, at present. Either way, it’s decision time.
If the leaders of the Liberal and Conservative parties stick to their respective stump speeches there are at least the makings of a grand philosophical battle over the most appropriate role for the state at the start of the second decade of the 21st century.
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Top 10 best moments of TIFF
By Tom Henheffer and Stephanie Findlay - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 1:25 PM - 0 Comments
From Martin Sheen picketing to Woody Allen aging, it was a fest to remember
0Top 10 best moments of TIFF
Torontonian Cocktail
The fest's best drink was a Grey Goose cocktail at the Soho House Club made with vodka, organic cucumber juice and ginger beer. And honourable mention goes to the Roosevelt room for their signature martini with white chocolate and gold flakes on top.
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Atlantic Canada hunkers down for Hurricane Igor
By macleans.ca - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 12:04 PM - 0 Comments
Heavy rains and big waves expected to arrive on the east coast
Though Hurricane Igor has weakened to a Category 1 storm, Atlantic Canada will soon be feeling the remnants of its wrath. Environment Canada posted a tropical storm watch for St. John’s, the Avalon Peninsula and the Burin Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador. Forecasters say heavy rains are expected over the next day or two. However, Igor is not expected to make landfall. “While the centre of Igor is expected to pass well southeast of the Avalon Peninsula later on Tuesday, it is expected to spread heavy rain across central and eastern portions of the province Tuesday morning,” said a statement Monday morning from The Canadian Hurricane Centre. Igor’s rain bands should interact with a trough of low pressure over Newfoundland, causing huge waves up to three metres in height.
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A parliamentarian
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 11:52 AM - 0 Comments
A short note on unfortunate news.
Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde announced last week that she has been diagnosed again with cancer and, as a result, she will not be seeking reelection. Over the last three years of observing Parliament and its players, Ms. Lalonde has distinguished herself in these eyes as a passionate, insistent voice pushing this place to consider difficult matters: euthanasia, the treatment of Afghan detainees, Omar Khadr. Last week she was part of a Public Policy Forum discussion on the role of Parliamentary committees and indeed, whatever her original reason for entering federal politics and whenever an election does bring her time in Ottawa to an end, she will depart as a parliamentarian, a title that should be reserved for those most honourably committed to this institution as a true and valuable forum. The House will be poorer in her absence, but made richer by her time here.
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How the media wound up reporting Pat Burns's death—then retracting it
By macleans.ca - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 11:43 AM - 0 Comments
Anatomy of a screw-up
You may have wondered how the pillars of the Canadian media, from the Toronto Star to CTV, managed to falsely announce in their online editions the demise of Pat Burns, forcing the legendary hockey coach to issue his own variation on the immortal Mark Twain line: “the report of my death was an exaggeration.” Fortunately, when something as fundamental as a man’s life is in question, some in the press feel the need to explain. The story begins, apparently, with a conversation between the Star‘s Damien Cox and Cliff Fletcher, the former Leafs’ GM and an old friend of Burns. From there, Twitter and blog insanity took over, as everyone scrambled to be “first” with news that several reporters had by then heard (how exactly Fletcher got such bad info, however, remains unclear). Cue the recriminations and inter-media bickering.
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"Having a baby is like buying six houses, all at once…"
By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 11:41 AM - 0 Comments
“…Except that you can’t (legally) sell them—and after 13 years they’ll tell you they hate you.”
Fascinating article (“America’s One Child Policy”) in the Weekly Standard on low international fertility rates and the failure of governments around the world to persuade women to have more kids.
And this bit made me laugh out loud, because it’s so true — any discussion about moving up from two kids to three inevitably involves the words “new vehicle”:
“Social changes have affected the fertility rate, too. Some of these changes are small and simple—like the evolution of car-seat laws, which make it difficult to transport more than two children.”
Hey, governments, want people to have more kids to support your aging populations? Invent a sexier minivan.
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The dull roar returns
By macleans.ca - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 11:34 AM - 0 Comments
Parliament is back in session
MPs return to Ottawa today, after an eventful summer, to resume the battle on a number of fronts. Indeed, while much of the talk is about improving and reforming the institution, Parliament may soon be the scene of a number of skirmishes on everything from gun control to immigration, with summer controversies such as the Quebec City arena still lingering as well.
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Is childhood obesity caused by a virus?
By macleans.ca - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments
Virus that causes respiratory infections linked to condition
In a new study published in the journal Pediatrics, experts found that obese children with antibodies specific to a virus known to cause respiratory infections weighed 35 pounds more than those who didn’t have it, the BBC reports. Still, nothing has been proven on this theory, but it’s likely to reignite a controversial debate. Researchers found antibodies to AD36 in 19 of the children, 15 of whom were considered obese. Lead researcher Jeffrey Schwimmer of the University of California school of medicine said, “Many people believe that obesity is one’s own fault or the fault of one’s parents or family. This work helps point out that body weight is more complicated than it’s made out to be. And it is time that we move away from assigning blame in favour of developing a level of understanding that will better support efforts at both prevention and treatment. These data add credence to the concept that an infection can be a cause or contributor to obesity.”
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Today in automotive news
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 11:11 AM - 16 Comments
Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner is presently speaking to reporters on the Hill in front of her Scrap The Registry van.
An hour from now, Michael Ignatieff will take questions while standing in front of the Liberal Express bus.
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The Top 10 films of TIFF
By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 10:48 AM - 0 Comments
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Power to the backbencher
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 20, 2010 at 10:25 AM - 0 Comments
Michael Chong explains some of the historical precedent that informs his proposed QP reforms.
Until the 1980s, members had the right to rise in the House, catch the eye of the Speaker and ask questions of the government, questions that were driven by the concerns they heard from their constituents the previous weekend when they returned home to their ridings.
The changes that stripped members of the right to spontaneously rise, catch the eye of the Speaker to ask a question were introduced by Jeanne Sauvé. Every day, each party submits their list of approved questioners to the Speaker. The Speaker recognizes only those on the list.
