Going up against Hitler, with a stutter

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 0 Comments

he film’s screenwriter overcame his own childhood stutter after hearing recordings of King George VI’s wartime broadcasts | Alliance Atlantis

No movie this year seems more assured of Oscar recognition than The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth as a monarch struggling to overcome his stammer. It does, after all, have the full set of attributes that define Oscar pedigree—stocked with Brit thespians, it’s a period film that is about royalty and presents an inspirational true story of an underdog overcoming a disability. The movie is also a proven crowd-pleaser, having won the Toronto International Film Festival’s audience award, a predictor of Academy success. It doesn’t hurt that the engagement of William and Kate has thrown British royalty back into the spotlight.

Although Hollywood’s timing is not that prescient, some cynics have even suggested that The King’s Speech was tailor-made for an Oscar coronation, which U.K. director Tom Hooper finds outrageous. “It makes me laugh to read in the press that this film obeyed some recipe for success,” he said by phone from Los Angeles last week. “When we were financing it, I can promise you, it didn’t seem obvious to people at the time.” Asking an audience to watch a lead actor stammer his way through an entire movie does, in fact, seem like a risky proposition. “There were so many pitfalls,” says Hooper. “It could have been comedic in the wrong way. It could have been so painful as to be unwatchable. It could have been so slow that at the end of 100 minutes, you’d be only three scenes in.”

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Pass the salt

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 3 Comments

Paul Sakuma/AP

In a bid to lure health-conscious consumers—more inclined to eat at home during the recession—Campbell Soup Co. has been touting efforts to cut salt from its prepared soups. (In one commercial, a factory employee is buried waist-deep in it.) Despite this much-publicized campaign, U.S. soup sales fell five per cent in the company’s latest quarter, prompting chief executive officer Douglas Conant to tell reporters it will now focus on creating some “taste adventure” instead.

Campbell Soup isn’t the only one that’s tried to cut back on sodium: Hostess Brands and Heinz signed on to the U.S. National Salt Reduction Initiative, which aims to reduce salt intake by 20 per cent over five years. Even so, as salt levels decrease, sales can, too. Maybe we like some of our soups salty—or maybe, coming out of the recession, a lot of people have simply had enough of eating canned soup.

Pretty in pink

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 0 Comments

Rebecca Cook/Reuters; Steve Granitz/WireImage/Getty Images; Danny Lawson/WPA Pool/Getty Images

In dark economic times, hemlines rise—a prospect that strikes terror in the hearts of women of a certain age who must, as a condition of continued employment, submit to being photographed wearing the latest fashions. So thank goodness for pink, one of this year’s standout colours, and mercifully available in dignified lengths. Pink has symbolic implications—girlish charm, an innocence regarding a string of box-office bombs—and looks good on just about everyone.

Little wonder, then, that it roared back from the nursery to fashion’s forefront, in hues ranging from blush to mauve to hey-are-you-sure-that’s-pink-because-it-looks-like-red-to-me. A mere dozen years after Gwyneth Paltrow’s ill-fitting pale pink number at the Oscars, the colour is again considered respectable, even on the world stage: both the Queen and Laureen Harper stepped out in it, and Michelle Obama wore pink so many different times and in so many different shades that it surely qualifies as her new favourite colour.

Pink has become, if not quite the new black, legitimate for evening wear as well as for casual Fridays. Capable of glamour yet decidedly proper, pink telegraphs, in perfectly ladylike tones, that the bloom is not off this particular rose. Not this year, anyway.

The PQ, the NDP and Resistance

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 2:58 PM - 23 Comments

The Gazette’s Don Macpherson (or D Mac, as I never call him) has a nice read today about the connections between the Parti Québécois and the Reseau Résistance du Québecois, a proto-separatist group that does things like protest the Queen and Paul McCartney and such.

Anyway, the RRQ recently sent out a series of letter to contributors to the Liberal Party of Quebec—specifically, those who contributed the maximum amount ($3000). The letter is printed à-la-FLQ Manifesto, gun slinging Patriote watermark and all, and contains some threatening language.

I’ll let Don tell the rest:

It informs you that your name and address have been posted on a website identifying you as someone who last year contributed the legal maximum of $3,000 to the Quebec Liberal Party.

It declares you “a target” for anybody who wants the Charest government either to hold a public inquiry into the construction industry and political financing or resign.

It is only when the government has done so that the website will be closed and “you will find peace again.”

Cripes.

Don also talks about how the RRQ always seems to be doing the PQ’s dirty work. “To my knowledge, the only mainstream parties in Canada willing to associate with extremists such as the RRQ are the PQ and its federal ally, the Bloc Québécois.”

I would humbly add another name to that list: the New Democratic Party. Tom Mulcair, the NDP’s lone MP in Quebec, made a lot of noise denouncing Bill 103, the language law that ‘fixes’ Quebec’s law on English schooling. Like the PQ and Bloc, Mulcair claimed the law allowed backdoor access to English school for those who could pay for private school for a few years. And, like the PQ and the Bloc, the NDP was a sponsor of an anti-Bill 103 concert this fall—along with the RRQ. (See bottom right of the poster, below)

Strange bedfellows, eh?

Fighting terrorism in the aisles

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 2:51 PM - 10 Comments

Wal-Mart is teaming up with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to send a message to people across America: “If you see something suspicious in the parking lot or in the store, say something immediately,” says Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in a video promoting the partnership. At least 200 Wal-Mart stores are rolling out security announcements—videos of Napolitano imploring citizens to report suspicious activity—this week. TV screens featuring Napolitano will be stationed at select checkout lanes. By the end of the month, some 588 stores in 27 states will be participating in the program.

MSNBC

Fightin' words

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 0 Comments

Steve Jobs; Jon Stewart; TTC; Officer Bubbles; Taylor Momsen | Steve Russell/Toronto Star/Getstock; Robert Galbraith/Reuters; Leigh Vogel/Danny Martindale/FilmMagic/Getty Images; Jason Wieler

Conan vs. Leno
The Conan O’Brien-Jay Leno feud began in earnest on Jan. 7, with NBC’s announcement that it intended to give Leno an 11:35 p.m. show and move O’Brien’s Tonight Show to 12:05 a.m. The world gaped at what followed: O’Brien’s public rejection of the deal, his prolonged Viking-funeral farewell from Tonight, the tag-team mockery of Leno by late-night rivals Letterman and Kimmel, O’Brien’s exile from TV, his return, and, inevitably, a book (Bill Carter’s The War for Late Night) about the whole fracas.

Steve Jobs vs. Jim Balsillie
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie tussled over the future of mobile devices under the looming shadow of Google’s Android operating system. Jobs boasted that the iPhone was beating RIM’s BlackBerry and declared RIM’s PlayBook tablet “DOA.” Balsillie countered with a volley aimed at Apple’s most notorious weakness: “We know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of websites that use Flash.”

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Extremism in the schools

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 20 Comments

Getty Images

An investigation into more than 40 part-time Muslim schools and clubs in the U.K. has uncovered some startling revelations about the radical nature of the curriculum being taught. Materials obtained by the BBC include textbooks that detail the application of sharia law, such as how to chop off a person’s hands and feet if they are caught stealing, along with whether the best punishment for homosexuals who engage in sexual activities is for them to be stoned, burned or thrown off a cliff. Other materials ask children to list the “reprehensible” traits of Jewish people and note that non-believers will end up in “hellfire” when they die.

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Catalonia's orgasmic politics

By Erica Alini - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 14 Comments

Still from Spanish election orgasm commercial

“Votar és un plaer” (voting is a pleasure) reads the sign at the end of an electoral campaign ad by the Young Socialists in Catalonia, a group within Spain’s Socialist Party. It’s such a pleasure, apparently, that it ends in orgasm. The video, in fact, features a young woman becoming progressively aroused as she approaches the ballot box—and reaching climax upon slipping in her vote. The aim was to “show how important it is that all young people in Catalonia go to the polls,” the authors of the clip, released ahead of this month’s regional elections, told El País newspaper.

Unsurprisingly, the ad caused a stir among Spanish politicians on both the right and the left, who called it “crude,” “misleading,” and an “attack on the dignity of women.”  But many among the Spanish public were unfazed. “References to sex, as is logical, sell,” quipped El País in a separate article. And the Young Socialists’ video isn’t the first message in this campaign to use erotica to turn on the voting. Another candidate, Montse Nebrera, who heads her own party, went on camera wrapped in just a towel: “If we were seeking a media sensation I would take it off,” she said, “but we don’t think everything should be politics.”

Together at last

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 4 Comments

Illustration by Adam Cholewa

Vince Vaughn and Kyla Weber
The 39-year-old Wedding Crashers star shed his Hollywood swinger reputation by marrying a 31-year-old former Calgary realtor in Chicago in January. The couple, now expecting their first child, met through mutual friends in 2008 and quickly became fixtures at Chicago Black Hawks games before Vaughn sealed the deal with a US$125,000-ring.

The NHL and Stan Lee
The legendary creator of Spider-Man, Iron Man and X-Men, joined forces with the National Hockey League in October to form Guardian Media Entertainment LLC,  a platform for 30 “Guardians,” one for each NHL team. The project, to be unveiled in January, isn’t set in the world of hockey but “organically and authentically incorporates various NHL elements.” Climb down Spider-Man, Slapshot-Man is coming.

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Smartphone subterfuge

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 4 Comments

Getty Images

Faced with an eroding market share and middling reviews for its latest BlackBerry devices, some tech watchers are wondering whether Canada’s Research in Motion is on its way to becoming an industry “dinosaur.” But RIM still has a lot to offer, and nobody knows this better than archrival Apple. The Cupertino, Calif.-based maker of iPods, iPhones and iPads has, according to Dow Jones, hired away five high-level RIM employees over the past year and a half—all of whom worked in RIM’s enterprise unit, which caters to corporate clients, RIM’s bread and butter. Apple has had a tough time getting a foothold with the pinstriped crowd, although that may be starting to change now that Bank of America and Citigroup are reportedly allowing staff to use iPhones at work.

But don’t feel too bad for RIM. Last year, it hired Don Lindsay, formerly of Apple and Microsoft, to be its new vice-president of user experience, and it’s probably not a coincidence that RIM’s latest operating system is much smoother and more intuitive as a result. And, speaking of dinosaurs, RIM also managed to lure rock band U2 away from Apple’s marketing department in 2009—a score, especially if it’s middle-aged lawyers and investment bankers you’re trying to appeal to.

A blow to the caste system

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 2 Comments

Economic progress in the state of Bihar counted for more than Kumar’s lower caste | Aftab Alam Siddiqui/AP

In the Indian state of Bihar (pop. 80 million), voters chose growth and development over traditional caste-based politics in this month’s election. Nitish Kumar, the lower-caste chief minister first elected in 2005, got an even stronger mandate when his Janata Dal-United (JD-U) party and its allies earned more than four-fifths of the state’s 243 seats. His main competitor, Lalu Prasad Yadav, got just 22 seats.

Yadav and his wife had taken turns running Bihar from 1990 to 2005, and were always re-elected despite little economic progress. Amberish Diwanji of Rediff.com documented how they stayed in power: “Sir, we vote as per our caste, nothing else,” a high-caste man told the journalist in 2005. “Lalu Yadav is a rascal, he has done nothing, but as a Yadav, I have to vote for his party.” Not this time. Kumar has built schools, distributed bicycles, cut down on bribery, and built roads that attract investment. Travel times have been halved and economic growth is now the highest in India at over 11 per cent. Kumar’s victory is proof that jobs can trump tradition.

Shell embedded in Nigerian government: cable

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:07 PM - 3 Comments

A newly surfaced U.S. diplomatic cable suggests that oil giant Shell has inserted staff into all of the main ministries in the Nigerian government. In a memo from October 2009, U.S. ambassador Robin Renee Sanders relates a conversation with Ann Pickard, Shell’s former vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa, in which Pickard said that Shell had seconded people to relevant Nigerian government ministries and therefore had “access to everything that was being done in those ministries.” “Shell claims to have nothing to do with Nigerian politics,” said Ben Amunwa of the London-based oil watchdog Platform. “In reality, Shell works deep inside the system, and has long exploited political channels in Nigeria to its own advantage.” Nigeria has vigorously denied the claim. Levi Ajuonoma, spokesman for the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, said: “This cable is the mere interpretation of one individual. It is absolutely untrue, an absolute falsehood and utterly misleading.” Pickard intended to share intelligence with the U.S. regarding militant activity and business competition in the contested Niger Delta, the Guardian reports, but she appeared reluctant to open up because she suspected that the U.S. government was “leaky.”

The Guardian

WikiLeaks

Number of working moms has doubled since 1976

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:06 PM - 3 Comments

A new study by Statistics Canada shows that, in 2009, 72.9 per cent of women with children under the age of 16 living at home were employed. That number is twice the rate of 39.1 per cent recorded in 1976. Meantime, the number of working moms with children under the age of three has grown even faster: in 2009, it was 64.4 per cent, compared to 27.6 per cent in 1976. The study also showed that while more women are working than in 1976, they are comparatively less represented in the work force than their male counterparts: 58.3 per cent of working-age females are currently employed, compared to 65.2 per cent of men.

Parent Central

Auditor General to investigate lump sum payments for veterans

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:05 PM - 6 Comments

Auditor General Sheila Fraser will look into the New Veterans Charter and the lump-sum disability payments that mean less money for veterans but savings of up to $40 million dollars a year for the government. Liberal Senator Percy Downe had pressed the office for an audit, saying, “I’m concerned this became a cost-saving exercise rather than a service to veterans.” Fraser says her office will have a report ready by the fall of 2012. The audit comes after the Conservative government has faced mounting criticism that they are shortchanging veterans benefits.

Ottawa Citizen

And suddenly Ottawa disappears up its own rear-end

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:04 PM - 89 Comments

While the Commons spends the day debating a Liberal motion calling on the House to defend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms against the attacks of Julian Fantino, an anonymous senior Liberal laments the unilingual nature of the Prime Minister’s rock show and a Conservative backbencher enthuses as follows.

PM Harper rocktastick at CPC Christmas Party (Stones, The Who, The Guess Who)–tonight, Iggy rumoured to read poetry at Lib Xmas Party!!!

Contraception champions

By Erica Alini - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland

When Pope Benedict XVI departed from previous Church doctrine two weeks ago by saying condoms are acceptable in certain cases, Catholic-dominated Ireland was so distracted by news it might need an economic bailout that it barely noticed. There was a time, though, when a Vatican softening on the contraception veto would have made the top headline in Irish newspapers. A time when, in Ireland, things like condoms, pills and diaphragms were not just taboo, but outright illegal, according to a 1935 law forbidding the import and sale of contraceptives. In the 1970s, Irish feminists would challenge their government’s anti-birth control policies by staging protests like massive condom-buying expeditions to Northern Ireland, where contraception devices were legal. But this was still an Ireland where taking on the Catholic Church was socially daring and politically suicidal.

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Mitchel Raphael on politicians and drugs, plus the metalhead MP

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 7 Comments

A Tory’s take on the drug war
NDP MP Libby Davies spearheaded, and MPs from all parties co-hosted, what was billed as an Expert Panel on Drug Policy Reform. All panellists agreed the war on drugs has been a huge disaster and a waste of money. Portuguese Ambassador Pedro Moitinho de Almeida spoke of his country’s success with decriminalizing drugs. Conservative MP and host Scott Reid noted that Prohibition killed his great-grandfather, who drank alcohol that was distilled improperly. Reid also remarked on the similar effects cocaine and caffeine have on the brain, yet with caffeine we “developed commercial products, regulations and a free environment.” Reid confessed he’s never taken illegal drugs or even smoked tobacco. (He does, however, host an annual beer tasting party, one of the most popular events on the Hill.) He declared he was “perplexed” by “hypocrites who used cocaine themselves, like Barack Obama, and then [allow] someone else to go to prison for life” for doing the same thing. Reid’s guest Pierre Lemieux, an economist with the Université du Québec en Outaouais, stressed that casualties of the drug war include civil liberties: the state now has licence to invade citizens’ privacy. This, Lemieux said in his speech, is inconsistent with a free society. He added that as governments continue to go bankrupt, the time may be ripe to end the wasteful war on drugs. This meeting took place as the Conservatives push on with Bill S-10, which toughens drug sentencing rules.

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Christmas, through a comedian's dark lens

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Stand-up comic Lewis Black sneaks something truly shocking into his rant on Christmas—honesty about his own loneliness | Librado Romero/The New York Times

I’M DREAMING OF A BLACK CHRISTMAS
Lewis Black

For Black, a stand-up comedian who’s carved out a healthy chunk of fame with his angry rants, Christmas might seem an odd choice of topic for his third book of humour. Odder still for a Jewish comic who’s not overly sentimental about the holiday season: “we Jews [at Christmastime] . . . are like the spectators who stand outside the fence and watch those idiots who have chosen to run with the bulls.”

Not to worry, though; Black offers a thorough explanation of how the book came to be (mainly due to needling by his editor, whom he calls “a crack dealer for my self-esteem”). He also includes a cautionary note for those to whom Christmas is sacred: Black Christmas will offer little in the way of holiday cheer and is unlikely to make them “s–t fruitcakes and gingerbread men.” His book, he warns, is “for the rest of us.”

Then he gets down to work, doing what Lewis Black fans expect. He rails against such injustices as kids at seaside resorts (“Why is he screaming? Is the perfection that surrounds him not enough?”), the earthquake in Haiti (“a hideous cosmic joke”), and the tree erected every holiday season in Manhattan (“the hooker at Rockefeller Center”). The funniest material in the book—an account of a USO Holiday Tour in the Middle East with Robin Williams, Lance Armstrong and Kid Rock—is unfortunately tacked on in an appendix.

But among all the wisecracking, Black sneaks in something truly shocking: honesty. As he takes us through how he’s spent his last 10 Christmases—writing cheques to charity and consuming copious food and drink at the homes of two of his closest friends—he opens up about a topic most comics won’t touch with a 10-foot candy cane: loneliness. Black, 62, with a disastrous marriage far behind him (there was DNA testing involved, which revealed that he had been cuckolded), admits that being alone at Christmas “pounds relentlessly on my psyche.” But he’s done the baby math generally reserved for women of a certain age, and knows a family isn’t likely in the cards. By book’s end, he makes a sort of peace with his life, and has a renewed appreciation for his friends. Peace and gratitude. Sounds like a bit of the Christmas spirit.
- Jen Cutts

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Second life

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Jennifer Grey, Fidel Castro, Betty White | Alberto E. Rodriguez/Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photo/Getty Images

ELIOT SPITZER
Spitzer’s political career collapsed in 2008 when he resigned the governorship of New York after a prostitution scandal. But even bad publicity was good publicity for the struggling CNN, which seized on his name value and hired him to co-host a show with columnist Kathleen Parker. Parker Spitzer debuted to terrible ratings, but that’s CNN’s disgrace, not Spitzer’s.

GORDON LIGHTFOOT
When a media outlet reported that singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot had died, there was an outpouring of grief on blogs and Twitter. It turned out that the report was based on a hoax; when reached for comment, Lightfoot said that he was “quite surprised to hear it” and that his death had caused his music to be played much more often on the radio.

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S LIBRARY BOOK
In 1789, George Washington took out the book The Law of Nations from the New York Society Library and never returned it. In 2010, after the library confirmed the book was still missing, the caretakers of Washington’s home sent over “a copy of the same edition” to replace it. But they said nothing about paying 221 years’ worth of overdue fees.

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Queens in waiting

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Canadians think corruption is on the rise: survey

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 11:59 AM - 8 Comments

A new survey by Transparency International reports that Canadians are increasingly worried about corruption in North America and Europe and feel Ottawa isn’t doing enough to stop it. The organization’s 2010 Global Corruption Barometer—which claims to be the only world-wide public opinion survey on corruption—shows that 73 per cent of Europeans and 67 per cent of North Americans polled think corruption has worsened in the last three years. One in four reported paying a bribe in the last 12 months. Seven out of 10, however, said they would report corruption if they encountered it.

Canadian Business Journal

Transparency International

Secret lobbying campaign precedes cigarette label decision

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 11:56 AM - 39 Comments

CBC News is reporting that tobacco executives and lobbyists, many of whom have close ties to the Conservative party, spoke with government ministries, policy advisors and the Prime Minister’s Office a total of 82 times in the lead up the sudden scrapping of Health Canada’s plan to expand warning labels on cigarette packages. The expanded program would have increased the size of warning labels containing graphic images and require a 1-800 quit line to adorn all tobacco products. The program even had a launch date, May 31, which is World No Tobacco Day. However, in September, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq abruptly canned the campaign, announcing the government would instead focus on countering the trade in contraband cigarettes. It is not known why the government made this decision, or the exact nature of communications between Conservative officials and lobbyists, although it’s believed most of the conversations revolved around stopping the illegal sale of cigarettes. “I think it would be a shock to Canadians if lobbying was actually behind the decision to delay these warnings,” said Dave Hammond, a University of Waterloo professor who consulted on the tobacco warning labels for Health Canada. “(Lobbyists) use contraband as a blunt weapon to try and beat down anything else that might be effective.”

CBC News

Islamic convert tried to blow up Maryland military centre

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 11:52 AM - 6 Comments

A 21-year-old construction worker from Baltimore, MD was arrested Wednesday for allegedly trying to blow up a U.S. military recruitment centre in nearby Catonsville. Antonio Martinez, who had recently converted to Islam and had began calling himself Muhammad Hussain, posted his desire to commit violent jihad on Facebook. On Wednesday, he tried to dial a cell-phone that he believed would blow up an SUV-bomb at the recruitment centre. It was a dummy supplied by the FBI. His case mirrors the recently thwarted plot in Portland, Oregon where a 19-year-old American was arrested using a dummy car bomb. In a Facebook posting from Oct. 14 Martinez wrote that “it was his dream to be among the ranks of the mujahedeen” and that “all he thinks about is jihad,” reports the LA Times. The investigation began Oct. 8 when an FBI informant noticed suspicious Facebook postings and the two struck up a conversation. He then told his the FBI agent of his desire to attack “anything military” and to shoot U.S. Soldiers. If convicted, he faces life in prison.

L.A. Times

The enduring impatience of New Democrats

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 11:42 AM - 31 Comments

Jack Layton calls out Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe.

One year after Parliament voted to demand documents relating to the torture of Afghan detainees, Jack Layton is calling on his opposition counterparts to cancel their failed disclosure deal with the Harper government and insist on a public inquiry instead.

“Stephen Harper has done everything in his power to hide what his government knew about the treatment of Afghan detainees. Now he’s doing it again, but with help from the Liberals and the Bloc,” said Layton at a press conference today. “Mr. Ignatieff, Mr. Duceppe, end this charade today and join us in holding Mr. Harper accountable.”