Women's afternoon TV: RIP

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 23 Comments

REUTERS/Keith Bedford

“When you think of daytime TV,” says Wesley Hyatt, author of The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television, “do you think of anything else besides talk shows, soaps and game shows?” Well, you might have to. The big hit shows that defined afternoon viewing will soon be gone forever. Most game shows bit the dust years ago, and now the other pillars are falling: The Oprah Winfrey Show is airing its final episode on May 25, and soon after, ABC will cancel two of the last soap operas, All My Children and One Life To Live. Hyatt told Maclean’s that shows like these “were dirt cheap to produce and generated enormous profits” in their heyday, but that heyday “ended around 20 years ago.” The afternoon show—providing emotional conversations or soap antics, aimed largely at stay-at-home women—has been huge since the beginning of TV, and on radio before that. Now it may be going the way of variety shows, VCRs and the Liberal party.

Of all the things threatening to tear the daytime world apart, the end of The Oprah Winfrey Show is arguably the most damaging. It means not only the end of a successful show but the end of what Hyatt calls “a pop culture phenomenon, one of the biggest events not just of TV but mass media.” Advertisers on her finale are being charged $1 million per 30-second commercial, the highest rate for a series finale since Everybody Loves Raymond in 2005. And Oprah has the kind of worshipful fan base that’s usually more associated with pop stars than TV celebrities. Tanya Lee, a Toronto woman, got into the news last December by starting an unsuccessful Facebook campaign to bring Oprah to Canada, even trying to get in touch with President Barack Obama: “Canadian Oprah fans,” she says, “I worked very hard on your behalf. Even though it did not work out, at least you know that I failed miserably.”

The only person left who has that kind of power is Judy Sheindlin of Judge Judy, who recently beat Oprah for the title of most-watched daytime personality, and who just signed a new contract to continue through 2015. But Judge Judy was launched in 1996, and no one else has come along who can step in once she leaves. As Hyatt points out, “there have been people proclaimed to be ‘the next Oprah’ going back to the 1990s, such as Ricki Lake. They never turned out that way. As much as I admire Katie Couric,” who is considering doing a daytime talk show after stepping down from CBS News, “she’s not going to be that person.”

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'The greatest threat to Islam'

By Adnan R. Khan - Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 23 Comments

Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images

In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, Pakistanis are gearing up for a fight. But contrary to what many people might think, it’s not in defence of the world’s late King of Terror. In fact, Pakistanis have been remarkably silent about his death. Protests reported in the world’s media have been small—a few hundred diehard extremists ushered onto the streets by Islamic fundamentalist parties, the odd prayer session with a few dozen souls to help guide bin Laden into heaven.

Bin Laden was a hopeless cause to most. “He never really gave Muslims anything to believe in,” says Ali Ibrahim, a shopkeeper in Islamabad. “Except violence. But violence and jihad, where has that gotten us?” Dozens of other Pakistanis who spoke to Maclean’s echo Ibrahim’s sentiments. But what even they admit is that the driving force behind bin Laden’s murderous campaign was valid. “Millions of Muslims believe the U.S. is the greatest threat to Islam,” says Omer Malik, a lawyer in Islamabad. “Osama went about it all wrong, but he did prove to Pakistanis that America is the problem.”

The death of bin Laden has only strengthened that view. In the months leading up to his killing, Pakistanis—many fuelled by Islamic extremism—were already building up a solid foundation of anti-Americanism, premised on a decade of violence (which they blame on the U.S., for bringing it to their doorstep), CIA covert operations inside Pakistan, and a barrage of missile strikes from unmanned drones in the country’s Tribal Areas targeting al-Qaeda-linked militants. Now, the daring, dead-of-night operation carried out by U.S. commandos against bin Laden on May 2, apparently without Pakistani knowledge or consent, has hit at the heart of what many Pakistanis fear: the U.S. is willing—and able—to operate in their country with impunity.

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The decorum question

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 8:52 AM - 7 Comments

Andrew Scheer sounds ready to be a tough(er) Speaker.

“In some ways Canada’s debate in the House of Commons has slipped,” he said, noting he would “call a tighter game” so that those who spend question period “hooting and hollering” while others are trying to speak, for example, are barred from getting up to ask their own questions. ”I think if a Speaker were to establish that type of tone early on in a parliamentary session, then the MPs would adapt. They’d understand ‘O.K., this Speaker’s not going to tolerate behaviour like that’ and I think they will adjust their behaviour accordingly.

Maziar Bahari and Iran's Press TV

By Michael Petrou - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 8:48 PM - 6 Comments

Press TV, an English-language TV station based in London that functions as a propaganda arm of Iran’s foreign ministry, may soon lose its British licence after broadcasting a forced “confession” by Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari while he was jailed in Tehran’s notrious Evin Prison.

Bahari was detained during protests that broke out following rigged presidential elections in June 2009 and falsely accused of spying for the CIA, MI6, and Mossad. He has since been released.

Press TV, meanwhile, regularly reports form Canada. A recent dispatch covered Ottawa’s Tulip Festival.

Obama's gamble on the Middle East

By John Parisella - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 12:42 PM - 92 Comments

After the killing of Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama could have been forgiven for taking a few victory laps and reveling in his bump in the polls. Instead, he chose to deliver a speech on the Arab Spring and closed it by touching on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By all accounts, it was a gamble.

Judging by the meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that followed the speech, it was a needless and unproductive gamble. Potential Republican challengers chastized the president for delivering what they called an anti-Israel speech. Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, however, took a more reflective view, as did Israeli Defense Minister and former PM Ehud Barak, who seemed to welcome Obama’s speech and saw it as a restating of the policy parameters in use since the Clinton Administration. Regardless, the speech delivered on Sunday by Obama at AIPAC (the largest pro-Israel lobby group in the US) had all the makings of a showdown with the U.S. president. Continue…

Photo gallery: Cannes Film Festival

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 12:13 PM - 0 Comments

Here’s a gallery of my photos from 11 days in Cannes, mostly stars at press conferences . . .

Oil and water: Libya's potent mixture

By Ruth Sherlock - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 7 Comments

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

As the Libyan revolution appears to be mired in deadlock in the east, a guerrilla war has sprung up in the deep desert of the south. Home to Libya’s strategic oil and water reserves, this is the crucial forgotten front of the war.

The beautiful expanse of desert around the oasis town of Jalu, held by rebels, lies 225 km south of the front line between Brega and Ajdabiya. Here, the sand dunes have the eerie, silent calm of an abandoned landscape. But on the long, exposed road through the region—the only route north—there are the dangers of an unseen enemy. The area is ringed by forces loyal to Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who have reoccupied many of the nearby oil fields after rebel forces initially seized them. Travelling in small groups, in pickups that hide them from NATO strikes, they launch sabotage and kidnap missions on the roads around the rebel town.

“If you travel in the area there is no guarantee that you won’t meet a Gadhafi man. They roam, maybe 300 cars around, waiting to attack,” says Jalu resident Khaled Qais, 22. Qais was recently stopped on the road by Gadhafi soldiers. “I told them I support Gadhafi, and I raised the green flag. I was terrified.” The soldiers didn’t believe him. He and his three friends were dragged from their car, beaten and thrown into a Gadhafi prison. “I was captured for 21 days,” says Qais.

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Rahm Emanuel—the new sheriff in town

By Erica Alini - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 0 Comments

Chris Helgren/Reuters

Rahm Emanuel’s inauguration as mayor of Chicago said it all. There was the allure of his powerful Washington friends—an impressive parade of attendees that included U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner—and the shadow of the city’s budget deficit of over US$500 million. The ceremony, in fact, took place in the Pritzker Pavilion, part of Millennium Park, an ambitious and over-budget development that symbolizes the city’s struggle to keep costs under control.

For America’s third-largest city, the event was the end of an era, one dominated by the Daley political dynasty, which controlled the mayor’s office from 1955 to 1976 under Richard J. Daley, and from 1989 until last week, under his son Richard M. Daley. The younger Daley is credited with turning Chicago from a manufacturing economy into a business and financial hub. The former mayor, though, also left the city burdened with unprecedented debt.

And while Emanuel worked as a fundraiser in the 1989 electoral campaign that first elected Daley, he spared no criticism of the outgoing administration, and during his first speech called on Chicagoans to “face the truth.” “It is time to take on the challenges that threaten the very future of our city: the quality of our schools, the safety of our streets, the cost and effectiveness of city government, and the urgent need to create and keep the jobs of the future right here in Chicago.” Emanuel’s fame as a relentless bulldog who, as the White House chief of staff, helped President Barack Obama shepherd the Democratic ranks and pass crucial congressional measures, surely helped him capture more than 50 per cent of the vote in February. Nicknamed “Rahmbo,” Emanuel seems to many to be the heavy-hitter needed to take on Chicago’s notoriously tough bureaucrats and unions and to replenish public coffers.

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The Liberals' wake and some parting remarks

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 33 Comments

A new day: Peter Milliken with Ted Hsu

The final humiliation: a cash bar

Last week the Liberals gathered the night before what would be their final caucus meeting with both defeated and elected MPs. One Liberal staffer called the party a “wake”; a Hill security guard predicted it would end early because it was a cash bar. Surviving Toronto Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan arrived with a bandaged hand that will need surgery. “I fell on Wednesday and the government fell on the Friday,” she says. Five weeks campaigning didn’t help: “Even when you break your hand,” said Duncan, “people still want to shake it.” Some days ended with Duncan in excruciating pain. Defeated MP Marlene Jennings arrived with a white cane, announcing that she is now officially vision-impaired. The one person who spoke at the party was surviving MP Ralph Goodale, but no one seemed to be listening; former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff left before Goodale spoke. The Liberals’ only two rookie MPs were there: Sean Casey from Charlottetown and Ted Hsu from Kingston, Ont., which was previously represented by Speaker Peter Milliken. Hsu’s win was a surprise for the Conservatives, who for years said that once Milliken retired they would easily win the riding.

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Iraq butts in

By Claire Ward - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 3 Comments

Sasse/laif/Redux

Just days after hundreds gathered in downtown Baghdad to demand better services and jobs from their government, the Iraqi parliament sat to consider a ban on smoking in many public places. The measure would also force companies to print harsher warning labels, not unlike efforts in many Western countries.

The bill, first introduced and subsequently dropped in 2009, seems to be particularly out of step with the desires of Iraqis, who can buy a pack for just 25 cents. “I don’t think you could overstate how many people smoke in Iraq,” says Jason Whiteley, a 34-year-old soldier from Houston, Texas, who spent a year in Iraq working in governance. “Every 10 metres there’s a fold-out table with people selling cigarettes.” Surely car bombs, regular power outages and widespread unemployment are more pressing.“The Iraqi hierarchy of needs hasn’t yet reached the point where they are talking about luxury regulations like this,” Whiteley told Maclean’s. “It seems like a bit of a reach that it’s an Iraqi idea. It smells a little bit colonial, to be honest.”

De Niro's jury turns 'The Tree of Life' into a Golden Palm

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 4:35 PM - 1 Comment

Freshly bearded jury president Robert De Niro talks to the press after the Cannes awards ceremony/photo: Brian D. Johnson

Robert De Niro’s Cannes jury awarded the Palme d’Or to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life this evening, although the notoriously reclusive director was, predictably, not on hand to accept it. “It was a difficult decision,” said De Niro, who said Malick’s picture had “the size, the importance, the tension that seemed to fit the prize.” He made it clear there was some dissension around the verdict, then hastily added it was not a compromise: “Most of us felt the movie was terrific.” The Tree of Life, which stars Brad Pitt as a strict father raising three sons in 1950s America, grafts a coming-of-age nostalgia piece onto a rapturous epic about the creation of the cosmos. It polarized critics in Cannes more severely than almost any other picture (I liked it).

Other films awarded  included The Artist, a silent romantic comedy in black and white, which took best actor for Jean Dujardin’s wordless performance as a silent film star whose career is ruined by talkies; and Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, which won best actress for Kristen Dunst’s role as depressed bride coming terms with the imminent annihilation of the planet. In accepting her award, Dunst alluded to the controversy that dominated the final days of the festival, saying, “Wow! What a week it’s been.”  She thanked the festival for “allowing our film still to be in competition” after Lars Von Trier was exiled for his inflammatory Nazi comments. De Niro said the decision to ban Von Trier from the festival had no influence on the jury’s decisions, or at least his own views about the film. And he trivialized the festival’s decision to ban Von Trier: “There was some little punishment for the director,” De Niro muttered. “He had to go away or something.”

'Drive' director Nicolas Winding Refn (left) with Ryan Gosling / photo BDJ

Meanwhile, Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn won best director for Drive, starring Canada’s Ryan Gosling. It’s a smart, stylish, ultra-violent action art film. (This is an auteur who cites Texas Chainsaw Massacre as his favorite movie of all time.) Refn thanked Gosling generating the project and commissioning him—a relationship they’ve compared to Lee Marvin getting John Boormann to make Point Blank.  Gosling told the press: “I’ve always wanted to make an action movie or a superhero movie, but I’m happy I did this film.” He added that he and Gosling will team up again next year in a remake of Logan’s Run. “Next time we’ll do a real Hollywood movie. Let’s get into bed with [producer] Joel Silver, because that’s the ultimate bang.” Look out. A new action hero is on the loose, and he’s Canadian.

Belgium's Dardenne brothers, who shared the Grand Jury Prize with Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan / photo BDJ

Two films shared the second place Grand Jury Prize: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, an agonizingly slow drama by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and The Kid With A Bike, another neo-realist gem by Belgium’s Dardenne brothers, previous Palme d’Or winners.  The third place Jury Prize went to actor-director Maïwenn Le Besco for Poliss, a raucous drama set in a police youth protection unit investigating pedophile crimes. Running to the stage on stilettos, she gave a breathless speech so endless and tearful and over the top it sounded like she was trying to achieve orgasm, rather than accepting bronze. Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar won the screenplay award for Footnote, his ingenious and strangely thrilling tale of rival father-son Talmudic scholars—one of my favorites. Finally, the Camera d’Or, awarded to best feature debut by a separate jury, went to Les Acacias, by Pablo Gioregellli, an entry in the Critics Week sidebar that managed to escape me.

The most universally loved film that somehow failed to get a prize was Aki Kaurismaki’s Le Havre, a quiet masterpiece that I guess was too modest to impress the jury. It’s also noteworthy that This Must Be the Place—featuring a stunt performance by Sean Penn in full make-up as a retired rock star—came up empty-handed. “I thought Sean Penn was terrific in it,” offered De Niro, who seemed to have settled on “terrific” as the consolation adjective, “but we as a group had to decide.” Whenever De Niro spoke, he hummed and hawed, as if incarnating the jury’s indecision, while affecting so many of his classic shrug/grimaces it looked like he was imitating himself.

Jury member Jude Law / photo: BDJ

When pushed at the press conference, Jude Law, one of the jury members, listed a bunch of other films that were favourably discussed, including Sleeping Beauty, Le Havre, Pater and Papus Habemus. “And the Pedro Almodovar film,” piped up fellow jury member Uma Thurman. Which left just seven of the 20 features in competition unawarded or unmentioned.

The ceremony itself didn’t break from tradition. It’s always an awkward amateurish affair, the glaring exception to a festival that is organized with military precision the rest of the week. The highlight was watching De Niro fracture the French language, with phrases like “Nous avons décidé the best we could” and “J’espère que c’est okay.”

Terrence Malick's producer accept Palme d'Or for 'Tree of Life' in his absence / photo: BDJ

Silence and scandal in the Cannes bubble

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 7:04 AM - 0 Comments

Cannes is a bubble, an opulent bubble of glamour and art that, from the inside, feels like the centre of the cultural universe. It lulls the media horde into fabulous delusion. Faithfully dragging ourselves to the Palais each day at 8 a.m. (to get a good seat), we’ve been assembling as a 2000-plus congregation in the Lumiere cinema, listening to soft jazz and reading the trades as we wait for the lights to go down, trying to remain awake as the  the classic Cannes trailer rolls to the fantasia strains of Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals—a set of red-carpeted steps that rise from an aqua sea, into a sky that turns indigo then black until we’re officially in heaven.

This is life in the bubble. It’s like undergoing mass hypnosis. And as we follow the 11-day program of the official competition, which has it’s own epic narrative, we blog the over-heated triumphs and scandals as if the world hung in the balance—forgetting  that back home all people care about is Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Still, Cannes is a fascinating bubble, a fairy tale cosmos where the usual rules of commercial gravity don’t apply, where directors are more exalted than stars, and where the films light up the zeitgeist.

Even though, on this Victoria Day weekend, I doubt anyone is paying attention,  I feel some reflection is in order while I’m still in the mood. Before the bubble bursts and the red carpet is ripped up. The awards are announced tonight. Best do it now, before Cannes is reduced to a minor sports result.

Overall it was an unusually rich festival. Those hard-core cinephiles who measure the quality of a film by its level of difficulty (for the audience) may have been disappointed. But what made this Cannes competition exceptional was the number of films that bridged the gap between the art house and the audience. The festival premiered several flat-out crowd pleasers with artistic pedigree—from The Artist, a silent black-and-white romcom, to Drive, a customized piece of pulp fiction driven by a mostly silent performance from Ryan Gosling. Even Sean Penn’s half-silent, sotto voce performance as a faded rock legend in This Must Be the Place played to the crowd with its mime-like minimalism.

Silence was à la mode on and off screen. Terrence Malick did not speak a word to the press for the premiere of The Tree of Life, leaving Brad Pitt to do the heavy lifting. Pitt argued, convincingly, that he didn’t see why the architect of a film was also expected to be its real estate agent, selling and explaining his creation. (It goes without saying that stars must do media.) Not everyone was silent, however. As one industry observer quipped, “This festival was the story of the man who wouldn’t talk [Malick] and the Man Who Said Too Much [Lars Von Tier].”

If ever there were an argument for a director keeping his mouth shut, it was the Von Trier scandal, in which Denmark’s auteur provocateur made a string of ill-advised quips about Nazis, Jews and Hitler at a press conference, trigger a furor that hijacked the festival narrative for days. Pedro Almodóvar’s cosmetic surgery thriller, The Skin I Live In, was completely overshadowed because it premiered just before the festival’s board of directors decided to ban Von Trier from the premises. Holed up outside Cannes for the next few days, Von Trier talked to journalists—not about his movie, Melancholia—but about his banishment.

The scandal hurt his movie,  infuriating its distributors and alienating the stars who were ready to promote it (Kirstin Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg). Which is too bad, because despite flaws, Von Trier’s latest work is a powerful, haunting drama. And its image of a ridiculously lavish wedding in a castle by sea overshadowed by a killer planet called Melancholia could be a metaphor for Cannes itself. Depression was certain on the agenda in the films, affecting everyone from the willfully comatose prostitute in Sleeping Beauty to the damaged rock legend played by Sean Penn in This Must Be The Place.

Another prevailing theme was conflict between fathers and sons, notably in The Tree of Life, The Kid With a Bike and Footnote. But perhaps the most startling trend was the strong presence of women. Aside from the fact that four out 20 competition entries were directed by women (compared to none last year), we saw an unusual number of powerhouse performances by women, not to mention a couple of sisterhood spectacles with ensemble female casts—the whores in House of Tolerance and the Arab villagers on strike against their husbands in La Source des femmes.

Who know how the awards will go tonight. I’d like to see Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki win the Palme d’Or for Le Havre. However, I’d be neither surprised nor disappointed if Malick wins for The Tree of Life (unlikely according to the gossip), or if Nicolas Winding Refn wins for Drive. Certainly Drive, which owes something to Taxi Driver, is the film closest to the sensibility of jury president Robert De Niro. If, on the other hand, the jury wants to pick the biggest crowd pleaser, that would be The Artist, another decision I’d happily support. If I had to put money on the Palme d’Or right now, I’d bet on The Artist. It is, in some ways, the most conventional diversion of all the major contenders—ironic given that it’s black-and-white and silent. Best actor should come down to a contest between Ryan Gosling for Drive and Sean Penn for This Must be the Place. Gosling should win. And Tilda Swinton is the overwhelming favorite to win best actress for her harrowing role in We Need to Talk about Kevin.

By the end of the day, we’ll have the results. Stay tuned.

Hey Quebec City, ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

By Philippe Gohier - Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 1:34 PM - 51 Comments

Winnipegers have a mighty comedown ahead of them when they finally see what the Thrashers look like on the ice, but kudos to them for having seemingly landed a reincarnation of the Jets without making fools of themselves in the process. Because that’s an apparently rare way to go about dealing with the NHL. In Quebec City, for instance, the Nordiques saga has officially crossed over to the surreal.

Before we get into this, I should make something clear: those of you who know me may have occasionnally (okay, repeatedly) heard me say people get the government they deserve. And it’s certainly true that I’m a firm believer in the idea. But I can’t for the life of me figure out what my fellow Quebecers could possibly have done to earn the politicians they’ve got.

The latest twist in the sorry Nordiques gong show started earlier this month Continue…

'The Liberals walked away from an opportunity to throw Harper out'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 5:02 PM - 103 Comments

Former NDP MP Tony Martin looks back on his time in Ottawa.

I thought we had a real chance at a progressive government in the fall and winter of 2008-2009 – the coalition. For me, the lowlight was not being able to achieve that. I thought we had a chance to achieve a progressive government that would have allowed us to do a whole bunch of things, including working on the reduction of poverty. The government we have has no interest in doing anything about poverty. The lowlight was we didn’t achieve it and that the Liberals walked away from an opportunity to throw Harper out.

Unmemorable Show, Memorable Episode

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 4:39 PM - 13 Comments

This turned up on YouTube last week; I was (pathetically) a bit proud that I highlighted it on Twitter a few minutes before the show’s writer, Andy Borowitz, tweeted it. It’s that strange type of episode: an unforgettable episode from a forgettable show.

Day By Day was a show created by Borowitz and Gary David Goldberg, and I don’t remember much about it except that it was sort of a reversal of Family Ties: instead of a show about hippie parents raising future yuppies, it was the story of two yuppies who decide to slow down and hippie-ize their lives. Of course the teenage son, played by Christopher Daniel Barnes, was set up as a potential breakout star along the lines of Michael J. Fox, Jason Bateman and Kirk Cameron, but it didn’t take. The best cast members were two pretty but wacky non-family-members with hyphenated names, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Courtney Thorne-Smith, and both of them went on to bigger things than the parents or the son.

Anyway, the show was of no particular interest to me at the time; I watched it occasionally when nothing else was on. But there was this one episode they did called (though I didn’t know the title at the time) “A Very Brady Episode.” The son wishes his life could be more like The Brady Bunch, the show that he turns to as his ideal of what family life should be. He falls asleep and dreams he’s a character on The Brady Bunch, “Chuck Brady” (a shout-out to the missing brother from Happy Days). Most of the Bradys are in the dream, though Eve Plumb once again didn’t show up, and the Brady set was reconstructed. The episode then becomes a mishmash of typical Brady bits – Carol drinking coffee repeatedly, Mike making lame jokes that everyone on the show seems to consider witty, plots that pit two Bradys against each other for some contrived reason – and a nightmarish look at what it would be like for a sane person to live in the Bradyverse.

This was years before The Brady Bunch Movie, which was very similar and even hired Barnes to play Greg; Borowitz didn’t write that movie but someone must have looked at this episode.

I enjoyed that episode so much at the time that when my parents asked me what shows I liked watching, I mentioned Day By Day – but specified that it was only for that one episode; I wasn’t into it at all otherwise, and I don’t think I even watched it more than once again before it was canceled. Later when internet discussion of TV took off, I discovered that many people had the same reaction: they couldn’t remember anything about the show, but they remembered that one episode with the Brady Bunch. The dream sequence is still pretty funny to me, especially the coffee running gag and Maureen McCormick’s delivery of the line “Chuck Brady, this means war!”

Are there any shows you can think of that weren’t very good overall, but produced one episode you can’t seem to get out of your head?

A historical note is that in the late ’80s, after the glut of domestic sitcoms, there was an increased tendency for shows – even conventional family sitcoms like this one – to make fun of sitcom conventions. Not just Married With Children. This Day By Day script is based on the idea that things don’t happen in real life like they do on sappy sitcoms like The Brady Bunch. Growing Pains did that kind of bit all the time (one episode was actually called “The Seavers vs. the Cleavers,” implying that the former are nothing like the latter). It’s a bit hypocritical for these writers to make fun of other shows for being unrealistic and solving problems too easily, but it was something that was in the air at the time after years of un-ironic sitcoms, and that was the atmosphere that gave rise to the two most important half-hour comedies that debuted in 1989: The Simpsons and Seinfeld.

Canada not onboard with Obama’s Mideast peace proposal

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 4:31 PM - 34 Comments

Canada’s Conservative government is refusing to back U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent proposal for a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with Israel. A federal official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the government supports a two-state solution to the conflict, but thinks both sides must agree upon the starting point for negotiations. Earlier today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the notion that Israel would be safe with the 1967 borders, citing different “realities on the ground.” In 1967, Israel expanded its territory by capturing the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip from neighbouring Arab nations.

The Globe and Mail

Ottawa to cancel party subsidies with next budget

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 4:00 PM - 78 Comments

According to a Postmedia News report, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will cut government subsidies to political parties in his upcoming budget. Democratic Reform Minister Tim Uppal says the government was “still finalizing” the details surrounding the program’s cancellation, such as whether parties will be weaned off the subsidies, though an unnamed government official suggested they would be. Political parties currently receive $2 per vote cast in their favour, a program which Prime Minister Stephen Harper campaigned on ending.

National Post

The first major foreign policy challenge of the Baird era

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 3:55 PM - 21 Comments

The Harper government apparently won’t second Barack Obama’s parameters for Middle East negotiations.

The Harper government is refusing to join the United States in calling for a return to 1967 borders as a starting point for Mideast peace, a position that has drawn sharp criticism from Canada’s staunch ally Israel … Pressed by reporters, federal officials said both the Israelis and the Palestinians have to decide on their bottom lines, which the Israelis have said will not include a return to the 1967 border. “If the two parties are of the view that this is a starting point, that is fine for them,” said the federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg appears to have this particular dispute extensively covered.

The post-partisan nation

By Erica Alini - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 3:20 PM - 12 Comments

JJ McCullough argues against a simple left-right political debate

Polls routinely show that the majority of voters in this country do not understand the meanings of even the most basic ideological terms. A 2004 poll, for example, had 50% of the public unable to answer whether the Canadian Alliance was to the left or right of the NDP … People vote for who they think will do the best job in the context of the moment. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that.

Photo gallery: New York International Auto Show

By Zoran Milich - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 2:30 PM - 0 Comments

Randy "Macho Man" Savage dies

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 2:06 PM - 4 Comments

Legendary professional wrestler Randy “Macho Man” Savage has died, TMZ.com reports. Savage was driving his 2009 Jeep Wrangler along a Florida highway at around 9:25 a.m. on Friday morning when he suffered a heart attack and lost control of the vehicle, which swerved across a concrete median and “collided head-on with a tree.” He was transported to Largo Medical Center, where he died from his injuries. Savage’s wife, Lynn, was in the vehicle with him, but suffered “minor injuries” and was treated at a different hospital. Savage, 58, began his career with the WWF in 1985, and was known for his popular catchphrase, “Ooooooh Yeaaaahhhh!”

TMZ.com

'I’m asking my fellow MPs to imagine a Parliament that functions well'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 1:58 PM - 5 Comments

The NDP’s Denise Savoie has officially entered the race to be the next Speaker of the House. From the news release:

“I’m running for Speaker with a singular focus on raising the tone and quality of debate in Parliament, to restore the trust that Canadians deserve to have in their politicians and democratic institutions,” said Savoie.

 As Assistant Deputy Speaker in the last Parliament Savoie launched a number of explicitly non-partisan initiatives aimed at fostering constructive and informed discussion on important topics, including workshops on climate change and the first all-party Parliamentary Arts Caucus. “I’m asking my fellow MPs to imagine a Parliament that functions well – where debate is not focused on scoring points, but rather on creating better, more inclusive public policy,” said Savoie.

As a fluently bilingual Franco-Manitoban who has lived in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and now in British Columbia, Savoie brings a pan-Canadian perspective to the Speaker’s Chair.

Of the seven MPs who are now in the race—Savoie, Andrew Scheer, Lee Richardson, Ed Holder, Barry Devolin, Merv Tweed and Dean Allison—five voted in favour of Michael Chong’s motion on Question Period reform. Mr. Scheer was in the Speaker’s chair at the time of the vote and Mr. Holder’s vote was paired.

Help me unsuck Canada's Internet

By Jesse Brown - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 1:39 PM - 104 Comments

Any way you slice it, the Internet sucks in Canada.

I know, I know—it’s the same Internet everywhere, the Internet knows no boundaries, etc. But work with me here! And consider the evidence:

• Many (most?) of the best commercial sites and services online are blocked to Canadians.

• We haven’t had a single major web startup in Canada, despite the incredible amount of engineering talent that emerges from this country every year (and from the University of Waterloo alone). Continue…

Who is afraid of the Chinese government?

By Andrew Potter - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 12:51 PM - 102 Comments

My column in this week’s Maclean’s magazine (no link yet) is nominally about the contrast between the impotence of shock art in the West versus its all-too-threatening status in China. But mostly it was an excuse to get on the record some facts about the what is, effectively, the kidnapping and detention of the artist Ai Weiwei by the Chinese government.

The government has put forth a  list of reasons for his arrest, including pornography (for this picture), plagiarism, and according to this story in the Guardian today, tax evasion. No one takes these claims seriously; it’s fairly obvious Ai is being persecuted for marrying his art with social activism (especially leading investigations into corruption and a cover-up surrounding the Sichuan earthquake).

Ai’s arrest has raised a great deal of alarm in parts of the West. Among the people or organizations that have expressed public concern and requested his release: The US ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, US state department spokesman Mark Toner, UK foreign secretary William Hague, the EU delegation to China, German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, and French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero. In addition, Anish Kapoor and Salman Rushdie have expressed their solidarity with Ai.

On April 18^th, a group of about 100 members of the Toronto art community took part in the 1001 Chairs demonstration outside the Chinese consulate, and called on the “Prime Minister and our Minister of Foreign Affairs to express concern over the treatment of Ai Weiwei”. To no avail; among those who have said nothing in public: Canada’s ambassador to China David Mulroney, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, departed DFAIT minister Lawrence Cannon, new DFAIT minister John Baird, and Heritage Minister James Moore. Brock professor of political science Charles Burton has posted a few items on his blog about the Ai Weiwei case.

After 43 days without any contact, Ai’s wife was allowed to visit him for 20 minutes on Monday. Her account of his condition does not sound great. As Burton and others have pointed out, this is not an isolated case: a disturbing number of people have disappeared in China since the Tunisian-inspired “Jasmine” revolution  began a few months ago. Also, Hong Kong street artists who have been stenciling in support of Ai have similarly been arrested.

(Props to Marina Galperina of Animal New York for keeping tabs on this. Cross-posted to my Authenticity Hoax blog.)