Harper's version

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

Last night inside a wedding hall in Edwards, Ontario—standing at a lectern in front of decorative vegetables and two Canadian flags—Stephen Harper addressed the faithful. He seemed eager and loose, perhaps more so than one would expect for a man who is, by his own account, beset on all sides. When he was done, someone in the crowd struck up a round of O Canada, which would seem likely to replace that Collective Soul song as the next Conservative campaign theme.

The audio here is not studio quality—I wasn’t plugged in to the soundboard—but should be good enough to give you an idea of what the next election is going to sound like.

The bottom line on last night's US primaries

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 2:26 PM - 0 Comments

Yes, it was notable that in the Delaware senatorial contest insurgent Palin-backed Teapartista Christine O’Donnell beat out the establishment GOP candidate Mike Castle. O’Donnell, a former anti-pornography and anti-masturbation activist, has some problematic and downright bizarre baggage. But now she’s been launched onto the national stage and stands to make a mint in donations after Bush strategist Karl Rove denounced her as nutty and unqualified on Fox News, providing a foretaste of intra-party love not seen since the days of, oh, Obama-Clinton… And speaking of Clinton… in NY state, the pro-pornography insurgent Republican Carl Paladino also won against establishment pick Rick Lazio (despite his own particular  baggage). (Remember when Lazio run against Hillary Clinton and lost voter sympathy by standing too close to her in a debate? Ah, 2000, a more innocent time.) Ross Douthat has an interesting take on the lessons of the GOP results here.

But to me the more significant bottom line of last night’s votes was that a train of urban education reform which had lately been picking up momentum and money , has hit something of a wall. Here in DC, reformist mayor Adrian Fenty lost the Democratic primary to a challenger, Vincent Gray, in large part because of mounting opposition to the reforms led by his schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee. Fenty was a got things done but he rubbed a lot of locals the wrong way.  Rhee, who was head-to-toe overhauling a dramatically under-performing school system, sparked an enormous backlash from the teacher’s union (mass firings of teachers didn’t help her popularity).

Unlcear if Rhee’s reform effort is now over.

(Ben Smith notes that other education reformers lost in NYC races.)

Obama’s  education secretary Arne Duncan was asked about Rhee yesterday:

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High-fructose corn syrup wants a new name

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 2:11 PM - 0 Comments

The Corn Refiners Association, which represents firms that make high-fructose corn syrup, is petitioning the US Food and Drug Administration to start calling it “corn sugar” instead, the New York Times reports. According to the NPD Group, about 58 per cent of Americans are worried high-fructose corn syrup poses a health risk, and scientists have speculated it contributes to obesity by disrupting normal metabolic function. As a result, it’s gotten a bad reputation, even though most experts agree that in terms of health, its effects are the same as regular sugar. The CRA feels that the name is confusing consumers and want to do away with bad associations with the name, which have already led several companies to stop using it. The FDA has six months to respond to the petition.

New York Times

Teneycke quits Quebecor Media

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 1:24 PM - 0 Comments

Quebecor VP Kory Teneycke, the main advocate behind the proposed launch of Sun TV News, has announced his resignation. Teneycke, the former director of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, says he quit because his involvement in Sun TV News would only “inflame” the controversy over the channel, which has otherwise been derided as “Fox News North.” Teneycke will be replaced by Luc Lavoie, a former aide to Brian Mulroney. “Part of leading a team is knowing when your presence is a detriment to its success,” he said, “and while I am intensely passionate about this project, it has never been about a political crusade, and it’s never been about me.” He also noted that his resignation was not over a U.S.-based advocacy group’s request to investigate the persons responsible for “fraudulent” signatures on the group’s online petition to “Stop Fox News North”.

Vancouver Sun

Protest against Quran burning in Kabul turns violent

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 1:21 PM - 0 Comments

A demonstration in Kabul against Florida pastor Terry Jones’s since-abandoned plans to burn the Quran last Saturday turned violent on Wednesday morning. The demonstration left at least 37 police officers and eight Afghans wounded. Analysts say the incident points to how seriously Muslims have reacted to the Quran burning stunt in the US, and how tense relations between Afghanistan and the U.S. are ahead of Saturday’s parliamentary election. It is believed that the Taliban stoked the anger to incite anti-American sentiment. “Some Taliban infiltrated the protest and that’s why it became violent,” said Mohamed Zahir, chief of the Kabul police criminal investigations division. “They were firing on police from neighbouring houses.”

Washington Post

Home sales increase for the first time since March

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 1:18 PM - 0 Comments

The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) reported that home sales rose by 4.1 per cent in August, the first monthly sales increase since March. Ontario and British Columbia enjoyed the most activity. However, CREA predicts sales will likely stay slow. Home prices were stagnant in August at an average of $324,928, the same as last year. But though the number of listings rose 1.9 per cent, that’s still down down 16 per cent from last April’s peak.

Vancouver Sun

The Ultimate Series Finale

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 1:02 PM - 0 Comments

Just a quick filler clip while I’m working on something else: many new shows this TV season will fail, and some of them will go off the air after 13 episodes. But it’s a bet that none of them will end their 13th and last episode like I Married Dora, a 13-episode flop from the late ’80s. It was one of the most unusual eras of U.S. network TV and certainly the era most awash in meta-humour, but even regular viewers of Moonlighting (on the same network) were a little surprised to see this show end like this, with no warning whatsoever:

This seemed to be a thing for ABC shows of the era; Sledge Hammer! ended its first season by blowing up and apparently killing all the characters, and when it unexpectedly came back for a second season, they said it happened before the events of the first season finale.

A prostitution debate, if anyone wants to have it

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 12:57 PM - 0 Comments

Conservative MP Joy Smith explains one part of her push against human trafficking.

Smith’s plan calls for Canada to study ways to adopt a decade-old Swedish policy that considers prostitution violence against the sex trade worker and makes it illegal to buy or attempt to buy sex either on the street or in a business such as a brothel or massage parlour. The policy cut demand for the sex trade and resulted in a significant drop in human trafficking there compared to its European neighbours. Some estimated the amount of prostitution in Sweden plummeted 90 per cent.

Canada’s current laws prohibit solicitation but not the actual purchase of sex. ”Personally, I like the Swedish model and we can adapt many concepts from that model concerning the demand for the sex trade,” said Smith.

Wikipedia has fairly extensive primers on prostitution law in Sweden and Canada.

Ode to the short film

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 11:47 AM - 0 Comments

Watching the shorts at the Toronto International Film Festival is like indulging in fine tapas: the films are like mini-meals, each with a flavour as unique as its filmmaker. Some see shorts as a stepping-stone to big features for neophyte auteurs—think Sarah Polley, who made her 2006 directorial debut with a short and went on to win two Oscar nominations. But they’re also the place where established filmmakers can experiment with new ideas.

Though shorts are sometimes neglected in favour of feature films at the festival, Alex Rogalski, the programmer for Short Cuts Canada, points out that the origins of film are with these compact stories. “From the beginning of filmmaking, people were making short films which later, because of commercial reasons, turned into features,” he says. “I’d rather see a six minute film I think about for 90 minutes than a 90 minute film I think about for six minutes.”

This year, Short Cuts Canada had its highest-ever number of submissions to date (650, and growing every year). Forty films, which range from two minutes to 30, were selected for six programs. Three emerging directors agreed to talk to Macleans.ca about their films and what comes after the short.

The feminist filmmaker: Nadia Litz, best known for her roles in indie films like Monkey Warfare, made her directorial debut at TIFF this year with How to Rid your Lover of a Negative Emotion Caused by You. The black comedy, which is rich in stomach-turning gore, uses blue globs inside the body as a metaphor for the negative emotions that have grown out of a relationship between a woman and her boyfriend. “When you’re with someone, there’s always something about your partner that you want to change or that you wish wasn’t there,” says Litz. “The more you try to get rid of it, the more it actually festers.” The lead character, Sadie, unsuccessfully tries to cut those negative emotions right out of her boyfriend and Litz’s message is one of acceptance. “It’s about taking the bad with the good,” she says.

Litz also takes the feminist approach to her story. “In relationship movies, I find that the woman is quite passive, whereas the male is going through this crisis of who he is,” she says. Sadie, in contrast to the stereotype, is not afraid of wielding a knife and has difficulty expressing herself. “As females, we often get this label that we’re very communicative and in touch with these emotions and feelings when sometimes we aren’t,” Litz says. “I wanted to tell a story about that.” While Litz enjoyed directing even more than acting and hopes for another opportunity behind the camera, she says she doesn’t differentiate between shorts and features. “We were in some type of production for almost four months and we shot for 5 days, which is long for a short film. The process is very similar.”

The unintentional politico: Kevan Funk, 23, wrote and directed A Fine Young Man, using part of his student loans (otherwise earmarked for studies at Emily Carr) to pay for the production. His Cold War-era story focuses on two CIA agents who find their latest recruit in a young American and ask him to join the fight against communism. The writing is witty, and the period film echoes contemporary questions around recruitment for extremist causes. While Funk admits the short is a response to what he’s been reading in the news, “I never set out to make a political film or a film that was politicized.” For him, the film is about belief. “Anytime you have an unquestioned faith or trust in anything, even yourself, it’s a dangerous thing,” he says. “You can really blind yourself.”

After Toronto, Funk hopes the film is accepted at American festivals. He is also ready with a full feature treatment for his short. “I hope this film can be a testament to what we can do. I have a lot of confidence that we can make a feature film out of it.”

The social commentator: In Above the Knee, Greg Atkins tells a delightful story about Jack, a suburban office worker who opts out of his suit-and-tie uniform and puts on a skirt, changing the way his co-workers and his wife perceive him. Atkins, who made the switch from acting to directing, says he was inspired by the women’s clothing that filled his studio (his partner is a women’s wear designer). “I tried on women’s pants at one point, and this idea of the business world and the uniforms in that world and breaking that uniform started stewing in my brain.”

At first, Jack’s change is met with dismay. But soon, the people in his life embrace—even encourage—the atypical behaviour. For Atkins, the short is about more than breaking social norms; he also wanted to comment on the nature of relationships. “You can be with somebody for a long time and it’s scary when they change–a job, new friends, a new hobby. Nobody can know the other wholly but when they’re in your life you have to accept that and be open and accept them.” Though Atkins dreams of doing a feature one day, he says he wants to continue with shorts for now. “I find many features can be cut down into a short. With shorts, you get to explore one or two ideas in a really strong way instead of diluting the idea over the course of two hours.”

A “major industrial corridor” runs through it

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 11:44 AM - 0 Comments

Protests are mounting over proposals from big oil companies to turn narrow highways running through wilderness country in Idaho and Montana into shipping routes for huge oil drum and other equipment bound north to the oil sands of Alberta. One of the routes runs along the Blackfoot River, setting of Norman Maclean’s beloved novel of father-son angst and excellent fly-fishing, A River Runs Through It. “We’re transforming a wild and scenic byway into a major industrial corridor without even telling anybody,” said Laird Lucas, executive director of a group called Advocates for the West. A lawsuit to overturn permits to ship heavy oil development gear along one of the wilderness highways will be heard by the Idaho Supreme Court on Oct. 1.

LA Times

News will never be the same

By John Geddes - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 11:17 AM - 0 Comments

It’s the end of an era. Kory Teneycke is hanging up his battered fedora. The clatter of his trusty Remington manual falls silent. It feels like it was only a few months ago that he was putting his feet up on his desk for the first time as vice-president of business development at Quebecor Media, with the aim of launching its Sun TV News network. Back when a newsman was a newsman.

Then came the glory days. Memories. When you tell these kids nowadays about Teneycke’s epic Twitter war with Margaret Atwood, they don’t understand. That was what we called “hard news and straight talk.” We went to sleep not knowing if Russian jets might swoop down in the night, or at least come somewhere close to Canadian airspace. A kid named Baird was just a transport minister dreaming House leader dreams.

And so we in this crazy business reach for the brown paper bags secreted in the bottom drawers of our desks to raise a toast to one of our own. They don’t make ‘em like him anymore.

Northern nations to profit from global 'havoc’

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 11:12 AM - 0 Comments

It seems John Diefenbaker was just ninety years or so ahead his time when he pronounced, in 1958, “I see a new Canada—a Canada of the North!” A new book by prominent UCLA scientist Laurence Smith predicts the rise of “Northern Rim Countries,” or NORCs, turning Canada into a major power within forty years. Smith’s The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, slated to be released next week, say a grim global environmental outlook will be good for Canada, Scandinavia and the northern U.S. “While wreaking havoc on the environment,” he says, “global warming will liberate a treasure trove of oil, gas, water and other natural resources previously locked in the frozen North, enriching residents and attracting newcomers.” This will happen just as resources in the rest of the world are depleted. Cities that will rise in power and wealth, according to Smith: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Seattle, Calgary, Edmonton, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Ottawa, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Ottawa Citizen

Team Bernier

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 11:08 AM - 0 Comments

Conservative MP Andrew Scheer voices some concerns.

“I think there certainly is a reaction,” said Regina Qu’Appelle MP Andrew Scheer in an interview Tuesday. ”I am hearing — and I have been from the get-go — I have been hearing from a lot of constituents who have a great deal of concern with tax dollars being spent on these types of facilities.”

… Scheer said he had read Bernier’s blog post on the subject and “I thought he made some very good points.”

Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm and Blake Lively on red carpet

By Tom Henheffer - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 10:21 AM - 0 Comments

Ben Affleck’s sophomore film, The Town, is a gritty crime drama about four bank robbers in Charlestown, Massachusetts—a Boston neighbourhood and the world capital for bank and armored car heists. The script is based on the book Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan and tells the story of Doug (Affleck), a professional thief who falls in love with the manager (Rebecca Hall) at a bank hit by his crew. As the FBI, led by special agent Frawley (John Hamm), closes in Affleck’s character realizes he wants out of the game, but he may have already turned down his only chance at redemption. Chris Cooper shows up as Doug’s career-criminal, absentee father. Maclean’s caught the stars as they walked down the red carpet for the film’s premiere at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall.

He’s not just the token black guy

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

CTV/ ISTOCK/ PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN CATTERMOLE

It’s been a tough time for black comedians on TV: Saturday Night Live is only now in talks to add a second regular black cast member, and at the Emmys last week, there were no African-Americans nominated for comic acting. But the winner of the best variety series award, The Daily Show, isn’t going with the trend: writer-performer Wyatt Cenac has become one of the show’s new stars. Cenac, a stand-up comedian and former writer for King of the Hill, joined Jon Stewart’s show in 2008 after an impersonation of Barack Obama got him noticed by the producers. He’s been more fully involved than the “senior black correspondent” Larry Wilmore, who occasionally appears to parody news shows’ obsession with race. As Cenac told Giant magazine, “A lot of shows would say, ‘Let’s just keep you on black issues.’ But here I deal with everything and anything. I think that’s what diversity is about or something.”

As Cenac himself has joked, his hiring had a hint of tokenism: he joined after Wilmore (creator of The Bernie Mac Show) started appearing less often. But though Cenac was brought on to talk about things like Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s n-word rant, he also does bits where he parodies the general stupidity of journalists of any colour. He recently teamed up with token British guy John Oliver to do an instantly famous routine about a Saudi prince who is a shareholder in Fox News. Cenac argued that Fox was “evil” for insinuating that its part-owner has terror ties; Oliver argued for “stupid.” He’s also done weird, dry humour, including an attempt to mediate a debate between people in a Florida senior citizens’ home, and a trip to Sweden to try to prove it was a socialist hellhole.

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On the question of cameras in the House of Commons

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 9:15 AM - 0 Comments

Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities John Baird is seen on the screen of a video camera THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Back, very belatedly, to this. Some months ago, Max Fawcett resurrected the suggestion that the key to civility in the House of Commons is the television camera—specifically that Question Period would benefit from a complete lack of cameras.

The theory goes that our current mess can be traced back to the introduction of television cameras in the late 1970s. That since then the urge to play for the cameras has reduced our democracy to professional wrestling. That before that it was somehow better.

Almost all pining for simpler times is misguided, but even if we accept that this is at least somewhat true—that the presence of cameras has contributed significantly to our present incivility—that we would do away with the cameras has always struck me as a terrible idea and the worst kind of solution. Continue…

Q&A: TransCanada CEO Russ Girling

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Chris Bolin Photography

Few Canadian CEOs have as many headaches as TransCanada Corp.’s Russ Girling these days. His company’s U.S. pipeline expansion plans are under fire from anti-oil sands activists, the Environmental Protection Agency and some prominent Democrats. Presidential approval of the $7-billion project has already been pushed back into 2011, and the dispute will be a hot topic when Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visits Ottawa this week.

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Springsteen talks Dylan, darkness and the “survivor guilt” of fame

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 12:57 AM - 0 Comments

A few minutes before Bruce Springsteen stepped onstage in the 550-seat flagship cinema of the new TIFF Bell Lightbox, a stage hand removed the guitar stand. Which seemed to confirm it wasn’t going to be that kind of show. It was, however, the hottest ticket at the festival: a chance to spend an hour or so in a relatively intimate theatre listening to actor Edward Norton interview the Boss about music, cinema, celebrity and politics. And it seemed as strange for them as it was for us. Springsteen is perfectly at home singing for 20,000 people, and Norton (Primal Fear) can comfortably shape-shift into a psychopath in front of a movie camera. But they were both novices at performing in an onstage interview, which had a certain homespun charm.

As part of TIFF’s Mavericks program, Springsteen’s dialogue with Norton was presented in advance of the world premiere of Thom Zimny’s documentary Promise: The Making of Darkness the Edge of Town. There was a palpable excitement in the air. As TIFF programmer Thom Powers nervously confessed, “I will be able to breathe for the first time in six weeks.” When the Boss hit the stage, there was the expected standing ovation and chants of “Bruuuuuuuce.” But the audience quickly settled down and sat in rapt attention without a single fan outburst. Obeying strict orders, there was no texting, tweeting or cellphone photography. I’ve been driven crazy all week by flickering Blackberries among industry types in screenings. But this was the best-behaved crowd I’d encountered since this film festival began—ironic considering they’d come to see a rock star.

Springsteen and Norton came out dressed almost identically in black shirts, black boots and jeans.  They both seemed a bit awkward at first, joking about their wardrobe. Norton, who explained he and the Boss have been friends for 11 years, went out of his way to act casual. It’s always interesting to see a star play the role of interviewer. I’ve conducted an interview or two in my time, off and on stage, and though it’s not high art, it is an acquired skill, like acting or playing guitar. Norton’s questions were long, rambling and tangential; he tended to answer them by the time he got to the question mark. But at least they were intelligent, and informed by his friendship with Springsteen. He also covered the vital issues:  the creative process, the balance between intuition and craft, the influences, the ambition, the politics—and that pesky vision thing. Springsteen even got to talking about his  children. When Norton suggested that every generation thinks its going to be the first generation of cool parents, Springsteen laughed. “That doesn’t work,” he said. “Why would my kids want to come out and see thousands of people cheer their parents?”

The one thing they didn’t dwell on was the music, which gets plenty of attention in the documentary. Instead, Bruce ruminated on its thematic course, something he struggled with in the insanely laborious recording of Darkness on the Edge of Town, the 1978 album that followed the monstrous success of Born to Run.

“I was afraid of losing myself,” said Springsteen, explaining that one minute he and the  the E-Street band were “a provincial group of guys with no money ” who had never been on an airplane and thought New York was “million miles away.” Then he was a superstar who was, nonetheless, broke, in a legal battle with his manager, and worried about being “gobbled up” by fame. “It’s easy for you to be co-opted,” he said. “The irony of any kind of success is the conversation you’ve struck up is also the one that makes you a bit of a mutant—a mutant in your own neighbourhood. And it leaves you with a good deal of survivor guilt. Nobody knows anybody who has any money—except you.”

Springsteen talked about Darkness on the Edge of Town as his pivotal album, where he set the direction that would set his career. In the early years, “we were all creatures of the radio,” he said, stressing that “records” were his prime influence. But the Boss has a more than  passing affinity with film. The sense of landscape in his songs is archly cinematic, and as he explained, heavily influenced by American film noir. Early in the interview, he referenced Bob Dylan and David Lynch into the same line as he recalled listening getting “the first true picture of my country” when he heard Dylan’s Highway 61 as a teenager—”1960s small-town America was very Lynchian,” he said. “Everything was rumbling. Dylan took all the dark stuff that was rumbling underneath and brought it too the surface.

As Norton noted, Springsteen referenced movies from his first album, with lines like “I could walk like Brando into the sun.” But with success, he was flung into an epic landscape, with the Vietnam war still fresh and  American cinema erupting around him: “Popular pictures were dark, bloody pictures that dealt with the flipside of the American Dream.” During the Born To Run tour, he recalled, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro treated him to a private screening of Taxi Driver. Then he added, as if it had just occured to him, that Jon Landau—the producer taking over his career at the time, was a film critic.

Things got interesting when Norton started asking about wild impulse versus painstaking craft. Springsteen talked about the virtue of craft. “Dylan,” he said, “was very, very conscious; he just wouldn’t talk about it. . . The construction of image, there’s no getting around it. That doesn’t mean it’s inauthentic. Writing and imagining a world, that’s a particular thing. The artists we love, they put their fingerprint on your imagination, and on your heart and your soul. . . I wanted to bring in the full landscape of the country.

Springsteen talked about the massive ambition he had in the 70s. “There was something in the hardness of it, that young naked desire. We wanted people to hear our voices and we set our sights very big. I wanted the pink Cadillac and I wanted the girls, but above all I wanted a purposeful work life.”  Darkness on the Edge of Town, he said, was his attempt to find that. In marathon studio sessions—documented by intimate black-and-white footage in the documentary—he recorded some 70 songs. Slashing all the feel-good numbers, he reduced the album to “the 10 toughest songs I had.” They were “carved meticulously, consciously out of a huge hunk of stone, with a lot of ego and ambition.  That, he said, “was the beginning of a long conversation I had with my fans.”

Norton asked if he ever worried about being overtaken by the next generation of rockers. “If you’re good,” said Springsteen, “you’re always looking over your shoulder. It’s the life, the gun-slinging life.”

So yes, I took notes as I sat in the 5th row, close enough to feel a connection, marvelling at how odd it was to quietly watch the Boss perform musicology on his own career—Uncle Bruce easing into his role as the elder. It was by turns fascinating, inspiring and slightly sad, all this rumination about the meaning of those glory days. Then suddenly it was over. The rock star and the movie star slipped off stage to a few polite shrieks of protest. Later outside the theatre, as I chatted with Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy,  we noticed a stagehand carrying away an unplayed acoustic guitar.

Politically Incorrect With Christine O'Donnell

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 10:39 PM - 0 Comments

Now that Christine O’Donnell, who appeared on various shows in the ’90s as the designated young “Christian Activist” (arguing against masturbation, pornography and so on) has won the Republican Senate primary in Delaware, the question is: which other person from this Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher panel would you like to see run for Senate? My choice is Jasmine Guy.

That’s the TV part of it; now a politics aside: what passes for a GOP establishment is appalled at this result — Bill Kristol, who was largely responsible for Sarah Palin’s rise to fame, dismissed O’Donnell as “No Sarah Palin” (Palin, who endorsed O’Donnell, disagrees). She might win yet, but she is obviously much less likely to win a liberal state like Delaware than the man she beat, Mike Castle. Comparisons to Sharron Angle in Nevada don’t work, as Nevada is a more conservative state.

The GOP base currently believes that it’s more important to vote for ideologically “pure” candidates than moderate but electable candidates like Castle, and though it looks weird in this particular instance, it’s a strategy that’s paid off so far this year by pushing the whole party where the activists want it. Where I think they go wrong is in assuming that the moderate Republicans won’t be on their side: moderates like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins vote with their party whenever they’re really needed (like on health care), and Castle would have been the same — meaning that GOP activists haven’t quite figured out that they’ve won.

Coyne v. Wells on thin ice

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 6:58 PM - 0 Comments

Sassy Cassel and perfect Portman

By Stephanie Findlay - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 5:08 PM - 0 Comments

On Sunday, I was slated to cover a slew of parties, but I got news that afternoon that my grandpa was in critical condition at the hospital. I arrived in Ottawa that evening and spent a few hours hanging out by his bed. He passed just hours later in the early morning. By the Monday evening, I was back in Toronto to cover the Black Swan red carpet. It was a daunting task, but on with the show.

The screening was held at Roy Thompson Hall, the same theatre where The Town red carpet took place. But the mood was much more subdued for Black Swan than for The Town. Maybe fatigue had finally set in among the media. It was also policed with more intensity, with publicists coming by to request that we move our toes back behind the black tape barrier.

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Your hopes, redashed

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

Transport Minister Chuck Strahl says there’ll be no federal funding for the arena in Quebec City without private investment first.

“It really has to be driven by the private sector and so far that hasn’t happened,” Strahl told reporters Tuesday. ”The best way forward for any hockey team is (to) get the private sector involved, let them take the lead on it and let them tell you how they’re going to make this work. Then other levels of government can say, ‘If that’s what you’re going to do, this is how we can contribute.’”

Ivory tower newsflash!

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 4:49 PM - 0 Comments

More women than men earned doctoral degrees in the U.S. for the first time last year, a fact being greeted as the culmination of decades of change in women’s status in academe. Though women have held a nearly three-to-two majority over men in undergraduate and graduate education, doctoral study retained an enduring male majority—until now. But, as the Washington Post points out, women have yet to conquer every corridor of the ivory tower. Men still hold the majority of faculty and administration positions and women earn less than men at every level of academic rank, even though starting salaries for newly minted faculty members are nearly equal.

Washington Post

Don’t drink and hit “send”

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 4:45 PM - 0 Comments

Seventeen-year-old Luke Angel has learned the hard way that nothing good comes of firing off an expletive-filled email while soused. The British teenager has been banned for life from entering the United States after he sent the White House a curse-laden email directed at President Obama. A police spokesperson told a British newspaper that the note was “full of abusive and threatening language.” Officers visited Angel at his home in Bedfordshire, England, during which time the teen admitted to sending the e-mail, although he couldn’t remember what he wrote. “I was drunk,” he told The Sun. “But I think I called Barack Obama a pr—. It was silly—the sort of thing you do when you’re a teenager and have had a few.” The severity of the punishment has yet to dawn on Angel. “I don’t really care,” he said, “but my parents aren’t very happy about it.”

New York Daily News