The RCMP and Montreal police ignored cybercrime while demanding new powers to fight cybercrime

By Jesse Brown - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 5:29 PM - 20 Comments

Canadian cops claim they need new “lawful access” laws to deal with online crime. But the case of Dennis “David Mabus” Markuze shows that when it comes to the Internet, our police are reluctant to use the powers they already have.

Markuze has allegedly been spamming atheists and scientists with online abuse and death threats for over 15 years. Here’s one example among thousands:Lots of people say lots of offensive—even illegal—things online, but Markuze lent his comments a chilling credibility when he showed up in person to an atheist event in Montreal in October 2010. One attendee snapped this now infamous picture: Continue…

The Big Re-Brand

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 5:13 PM - 0 Comments

I’ve been working my way through the final episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold (some of them have yet to air in North America), confirming my feelings about this show: I really enjoyed it, even though it didn’t always have the resources to do what it was trying to do. The animation budget it was working with didn’t always allow the visuals to match the epically entertaining comics that inspired it. Still, the series was almost always enjoyable because of the sheer fun everyone was having with the material, and because of the obvious respect and love for often-disrespected works. It was, as I’ve said in the past, pretty audacious of producer James Tucker to launch this kind of Batman series at a time when so many people were used to thinking of dark Batman as the only authentic Batman. The show was able to go to dark places when it wanted, something that actually became a plot point in the somewhat too-meta-for-its-own-good finale. But what set it apart was that it didn’t condescend to the goofy Batman.

The tone of the series is often what I would call non-parodic parody: it reconstructs the style of these older comics, winks at them or encourages us to stand outside and giggle at the silliness, but it usually deals in homage and pastiche rather than out-and-out parody. (Sort of like a song may incorporate elements of older styles, and nod to the fact that these styles are anachronistic, but still not cross the line that divides pastiche and parody.) An episode that features many tributes to ridiculous Silver Age Superman stories, including many re-creations old covers where Superman acts like a jerk, was obviously inspired by the Superdickery.com website. They even come as close to using the term as they can without getting censored. But it still seems to stop short of outright spoof.

Perhaps the most daring example of this non-parodic tendency was a teaser that was done as a Space Ghost cartoon. Making fun of Space Ghost is the heritage of Cartoon Network original programming; it started with taking a character who had been rerun on the network once too often and just making vicious fun of him. The Cartoon Network style has been to take old Hanna-Barbera characters, or parodies of them, and put them through things they’d never have done in the bad old cartoons. But the Batman: TBATB short completely turned this around, playing Space Ghost almost totally straight – really, the only joke in the segment is how faithful it is in style to the old Space Ghost cartoons, right down to the sound effects and the fact that nobody can use a sentence without saying the character’s name. (Though there’s also an implied contrast between Batman, a strong silent hero, and the H-B heroes and villains, who simply can’t do anything without announcing it first.) They even brought back the original voice actor, Gary Owens, who was replaced on Space Ghost Coast To Coast because they didn’t want to pay for him. It’s the most non-ironic treatment of an old H-B cartoon I’ve seen in years. That itself may be some kind of meta-irony, but it fits with the show’s belief that making fun of goofy old cartoons and comics is old hat, and it’s more fun to pay tribute to them.

It will be interesting to see what kind of Batman series Warner comes up with next. One thing about the company’s recent Continue…

Le bon Jack

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 4:14 PM - 1 Comment

Photo by Jessica Darmanin

I had only two close encounters with Jack Layton. The first was back in late 2002 or early 2003, when he and some members of McGill’s NDP club came into Café Santropol, where I was waiting tables. I can’t quite remember whether he’d already won the NDP leadership or whether he was still campaigning for it. Either way, I knew who he was and was glad when he ended up sitting in my section.

When I got to his table, I nervously introduced myself to “Mr. Layton,” at which point he quickly corrected me, asking that I call him “Jack.” For the next 10 or 15 minutes, I ignored every other table in the restaurant and chatted with Jack—about poverty, federalism, my job, the NDP in Quebec. He knew he had his work cut out for him in la belle province, but he exuded optimism, so much so I figured he’d never actually looked up his party’s dreadful numbers in the province. Continue…

Kids, Mockumentaries and TV

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 4:10 PM - 5 Comments

Since I said in a previous post that there should be more broadcast TV shows about kids or with large numbers of kids in the cast, I have to say that this sounds like a good idea. Not the one about growing up in the ’80s from the Breaking In creator. There are so many ’80s shows still regularly in reruns that a show set in the ’80s still seems like a drab idea. (That ’70s show came along when ’70s pop culture had mostly vanished except as nostalgia. The ’80s are almost there, but not quite.) No, I’m talking about the other one, by Will Gluck, which “presents the life lessons of elementary school as seen through the lens of an Office like documentary.” Though the ’80s comedy too is about a child, or the creator’s experiences as a child, so there is some indication that the networks are making a serious effort to look for this kind of project.

A show about kids is what a network needs, and the mockumentary format, as I’ve said many times, has the best track record of any single-camera format. (Plus the amount of freedom it gives you in the editing room is perfect for working with kids, whose performances often need to be carefully “assembled” from the best takes.) Deadline says ABC and NBC are the only ones bidding for this idea, but I wonder why Fox doesn’t do this – if not this particular idea (which might not be good), then something like it. Fox has had some of its biggest successes with kids, as I said before, and they haven’t really done a pure mockumentary comedy despite heavily influencing its U.S. form with Arrested Development.

Also, speaking of the Breaking In guy: have you noticed that Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva has written more about Breaking In than virtually any other show? I know Fox has gone back and forth on whether to cancel it or not, but it seems like there’s a Breaking In mention at Deadline, and hope for it, every other week. My un-educated guess is that someone from Sony is aggressively pushing it to reporters, trying to pressure Fox into bringing it back.

Also, for all I know, the ’80s throwback show might be a huge hit, and I can refer back to this post and note how wrong I was. For now, though, I feel like despite Hot Tub Time Machine, ’80s nostalgia on TV tends to wind up more like Glory Daze, That ’80s Show, and even Freaks & Geeks (a brilliant ’80s throwback show – I feel ashamed even mentioning it in the company of these others – but viewers didn’t want to re-live the ’80s the way Wonder Years viewers had wanted to re-live the ’60s).

Update: As noted by Anthony Strand in comments, I left out Everybody Hates Chris, which took place in the ’80s and managed a reasonably long run, as well as being one of the last mainstream network sitcoms that was told from a kid’s point of view. And I liked Everybody Hates Chris, so I shouldn’t have omitted it. More importantly, if a tale of growing up in the ’80s can work for Chris Rock, why not the creator of Deadline’s favourite show, Breaking In?

Clarence Thomas, Winner

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 4:00 PM - 3 Comments

I find Clarence Thomas to be one of the more interesting figures on the U.S. Supreme Court, though I personally am not sympathetic to his views. I devoured this long article on Thomas by Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker. The article talks a lot about his views, and his wife Ginni’s conversion to open, public political activism in the great Santelli-fueled freakout of 2009. (He plausibly argues that Ginni’s bizarre call to Anita Hill, asking her to Continue…

A radical new rabies treatment

By Emma Teitel - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 1:43 PM - 2 Comments

Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/Zuma/Corbis

On Sept. 12, 2004, 15-year-old Jeanna Giese bent down to pick up a wounded bat in her hometown of Fond du Lac, Wis. When the creature bit her left index finger, she treated the cut like any other (with hydrogen peroxide) and carried on with her life. But a month later, Giese was struck with double vision, slurred speech, and a fever of 102° F. Doctors tested her for several infections but each result came back negative. Finally, her mother recalled the bat bite and doctors filled in the blank: Jeanna had rabies—a viral infection that causes acute encephalitis and is almost always fatal when victims do not receive a vaccine of immunoglobulin immediately after infection.

But Rodney Willoughby Jr., a 55-year-old physician at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, would challenge that notion with a radical therapy called the “Milwaukee protocol,” and Giese would become the first-known person to survive a rabies infection without receiving an inoculation. “We decided to use a strategy,” explains Willoughby, “where we would support the patient for a natural immune response to clear the infection.” Willoughby wanted to see if Giese’s immune system could, under the right conditions, overcome rabies on its own. He sedated Jeanna, inducing a coma (Willoughby has since moved to a lighter sedation), and put her on a number of antiviral drugs, believing that a dormant brain would keep her alive longer and allow the body to marshal its defences more effectively. “One in five rabies patients die of heart stoppage in the first week of treatment,” says Willoughby, “and if you sedate the brain then the brain can’t [stop the heart].” Jeanna suffered some brain damage from the sedation, but the treatment worked: her brain slept while her body fought off the disease, says Willoughby. “All we do,” he adds, referring to the most recent guidelines of his protocol, “is essentially provide you with a breathing tube and give you a couple medicines to keep you out of trouble. Then we let your immune system do what it has to do.” Willougby called his treatment the Milwaukee protocol after the city where the first treatment took place, and has made it accessible online for doctors around the world. Giese, now 21, graduated from Lakeland College in May, with a degree in biology.

In the last seven years, five other patients, from Qatar to Peru, have survived rabies after undergoing the Milwaukee protocol. The most recent success story is Precious Reynolds, an 11-year-old from northern California, who beat the infection in July. Precious attends a rural public school in Willow Creek, Calif., where the teachers and students regularly fed and played with feral cats. “It turns out Precious was the queen of the hill,” says Willoughby, who was in contact with the girl’s doctor throughout her treatment. “She handled the cats the most. That was probably the cause of exposure.”

Precious is currently recovering rapidly from the virus, says Willoughby, showing no signs of brain damage from the sedation. But not every protocol-aided survivor has been so lucky. Some suffer from “locked-in syndrome,” a condition of almost complete physical paralysis (some patients can move only an eyelid) resulting from the sedation. It’s this kind of outcome that has kept Willoughby’s innovation on the medical periphery. In fact, in many parts of the world, his methods are vehemently discouraged. “In Asia and elsewhere,” says Thiravat Hemachudha, a Thai neurologist and rabies expert, “we strongly recommend not to apply this to any of our patients.” Hemachudha argues that heavy sedation is unnecessary and dangerous—a criticism Willoughby says he is all too familiar with. “We are regularly pummelled at scientific meetings,” he says. “Critics say that our survivors are natural survivors, and would have lived even if we hadn’t done the protocol.” Another common criticism is that the method prolongs suffering and offers false hope. To date, the protocol has been used on approximately 38 patients, six of whom have survived.

Worldwide, 50,000 people die of rabies each year, a figure that makes the protocol’s success rate unimpressive to its critics. But it’s a start, argues Willoughby, especially considering the dearth of spontaneous recoveries without it. He is also quick to note that the professors he trained under in medical school were some of the first doctors to try to treat childhood leukemia—an undertaking regarded at the time with similar disdain. Like rabies, explains Willoughby, childhood cancers were once believed to be 100 per cent fatal, and not worth treating. “But they didn’t buy that,” he says of his professors. “Now, 40 years later, it’s 80 per cent survival at five years.” It seems—unlike many of his contemporaries—that Willoughby is more invested in the science of possibility than sheer probability. Or as he likes to put it, “Better six survivors than none at all.”

How free is Al Jazeera?

By Richard Warnica - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 1:30 PM - 7 Comments

On Aug. 4, Al Jazeera aired a documentary about protests and government brutality in Bahrain. The hour-long piece, filmed undercover, was billed as the only witness to the Arab revolution “forgotten by the West.” It featured footage of massive street demonstrations by the Gulf kingdom’s Shia majority, interviews with protesters beaten, shot and threatened with rape by security forces, and included revelations about the government’s use of state TV and Facebook to name, shame and hunt down demonstrators.

Continue…

Video: Jack Layton’s post-election speech

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 1:22 PM - 0 Comments

Newsmakers: August 11-18, 2011

By Colby Cosh, Richard Warnica and Alex Ballingall - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 1:05 PM - 0 Comments

Will Campbell/CP

Putin’s dive bombs

For a certain set, the phrase “jumping the shark” has come to represent the moment when a cultural product passes beyond relevance—usually by means of a desperate or deliberate stunt. “Finding the urn” may soon be the political equivalent. Last week, Vladimir Putin “discovered” ancient Greek urns during a Black Sea dive. The Russian prime minister, a novice diver, made his find in front of media at a depth of six metres in an area well picked over by archaeologists. Russian state television, on hand for the raising of the urns, praised the discovery, which came to “everyone’s utter surprise,” said Russia Today. But independent media have been a tad more skeptical. Putin’s devotion to the photo op is well-known: whether he’s shooting tigers, fishing topless or piloting a helicopter, the cameras are never far behind. But as he gears up for another possible presidential run, one wonders if the urn scoop wasn’t a photo op too far. Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, meanwhile, said he would consider accepting the post of prime minister—but only if he likes the incoming president’s agenda. The owner of the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, who got his business start in the ’80s selling stonewashed jeans, provoked scorn in Russia recently by suggesting the country abandon the ruble in favour of the euro. No word yet on his archaeological skills.

Runaway cow

A race is on between hunters and animal rights activists in Bavaria. A cow named Yvonne, who in May broke through an electric fence, earned a price on her head when a police car almost hit her after she roamed onto a highway. Officials said she had to be captured, dead or alive, and sent two hunters to track her down. An animal sanctuary caught wind of the hunt and dispatched volunteers to find her—armed, in their case, with tranquilizer guns. Last week, the German tabloid Bild announced a US$14,000 reward for Yvonne, and a Swiss “animal communicator” has agreed to help with the dragnet. A handsome bull named Ernst—described as the “George Clooney of breeding bulls” by a local animal sanctuary—has also been corralled into action.

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Jack Layton 1950 – 2011 (Some pics)

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 1:03 PM - 0 Comments

Here are just some of the pics I took of Layton over the years.

Continue…

Good news, bad news: August 11-18, 2011

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Good news

Serena Williams celebrates winning the Rogers Cup. (Reuters/Peter Jones)

Military pride

Forty-three years after Canada adopted the ugliest of bureaucratic names for its military services, Ottawa has reversed itself. Now, Land Forces Command will once again be called the Canadian Army; the Royal Canadian Navy replaces Maritime Command; and Air Command returns to the Royal Canadian Air Force. While some opponents call the royal names divisive, the Canadian Forces calls them an “important and recognizable” part of our military heritage. But let’s hope it doesn’t put a crimp in the military’s budget: that’s a lot of letterhead to replace.

The oracle has spoken

Warren Buffett says it’s time to stop coddling billionaires. In an opinion piece this week, the famous investor argues ultra-wealthy Americans like himself should pay income tax at the same rate as the middle class. “People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off,” he wrote. It’s a useful counterpoint to anti-tax conservatives like U.S. presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who said recently that making the rich pay income taxes kills investment. Shared sacrifice, both in spending cuts and higher taxes, are needed to get the U.S. economy back on track.

Continue…

Jack Layton’s letter to Canadians

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 12:25 PM - 13 Comments

Jack Layton’s family has now released the letter he wrote to be released in the event that he passed away.

Video: Jack Layton through the years

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 12:24 PM - 1 Comment

Footage courtesy of CityNews

Notes on Jack’s velvet switchblade

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

I was watching RDI coverage of Jack Layton’s passing this morning, and it was more than just heartening to hear Gilles Duceppe say a few kind words about the man. The former Bloc Québécois leader spoke of how he and Layton crossed paths in the parliamentary gym room, and how he was always impressed by Layton’s drive and grinny optimism. It was familiar because Duceppe spun a similar tale throughout the Bloc’s spring campaign—how he and Layton were practically drinking buddies, how they didn’t see eye to eye on Quebec but were  ideological doppelgangers otherwise—and it reminded me: wow. Duceppe is a guy who had a virtual monopoly of virtue over Quebec for upwards of two decades and whose jaundiced view of Ottawa (and the rest of the country) essentially set the political agenda for the province. As a sovereignist, his Québécois credentials were untouchable—or so it seemed, until little ol’ Jack came around.

And that was that for Duceppe. With his smile and his cane and his bons mots flowing out of his mouth in joual-inflected French, Layton threw Duceppe into unfamiliar territory. All of a sudden, and for the first time in his career, Duceppe had an adversary who couldn’t be made into a boogeyman—a man who was indestructably nice. Duceppe played catch up for the rest of the campaign, and on election day Jack as pleasant as ever slipped the knife into the Bloc, doing in one of the most dominant political forces in the province’s history. It was the only possible way to do in the party: with a smile.

You wonder who in the NDP could possibly continue Jack’s legacy of cheery political ferocity.

Canadian Forces to build stealth snowmobile

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 11:51 AM - 4 Comments

Canada’s Department of National Defence posted a public tender in Ottawa for the development of a “stealth snowmobile for covert military operations in Canada’s Arctic,” the Toronto Star reports. The federal government has put aside $550,000 to build a prototype of the hybrid-electric snowmobile that would give Canadian soldiers the ability to traverse frozen landscapes in complete silence. The government document says gas-powered engines are too loud for missions that may require covertness, and the snowmobile prototype must be built with a special “silent mode.” The document does not include details regarding any covert missions that require discrete snow vehicles.

The Toronto Star

Infighting spreads among Quebec separatists

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 11:46 AM - 0 Comments

The Parti Québécois was struggling to contain infighting among Quebec sovereigntists this weekend, when a new separatist rival group—Un Nouveau Mouvement pour le Québec—held its first meeting. Three former PQ MNAs—Pierre Curzi, Lisette Lapointe and Jean-Martin Aussant—attended the new group’s day-long colloquium in Montreal on Sunday, where the PQ’s go-slow approach to holding a referendum came under serious attack. Critics of the new organization argue that it risks splitting the sovereigntist vote.

CBC News

“Informal” ceasefire with Israel reached: Hamas

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 11:12 AM - 0 Comments

After five days of violence, a senior Hamas official says the Palestinian militant group has reached an informal ceasefire with Israel. The latest fighting began when militants crossed into southern Israel Thursday near the resort city of Eilat and killed eight Israelis. Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, says an “informal, implicit agreement” has been reached. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman declined to comment on the accord, but Israeli military officials say rocket fire on Israel has decreased by more than three quarters since the apparent agreement.

Bloomberg Businessweek

Harper delays Arctic trip after deadly crash

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 11:08 AM - 4 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has delayed plans for his sixth annual Arctic visit in the wake of a deadly plane crash in Nunavut. Twelve people were killed Saturday when a First Air jetliner crashed two kilometres short of the runway at Resolute Bay Airport. Three people survived the wreck; military rescue workers are being praised for their quick response. Harper had planned a two-day stop in Resolute, a small town on an island north of the Northwest Passage. Instead, the PM now plans a shorter stopover starting Tuesday. Harper is being urged to tweak his northern strategy—researchers are calling for more of a research focus and French officials argue that Canada is falling behind the Russians in Northern shipping.

CBC

Postmedia

Huge twister rips through Goderich, kills one

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 10:58 AM - 2 Comments

A deadly tornado tore through Goderich, Ont., on Sunday night, leveling houses, trashing business and killing one man. Environment Canada called the F2- or F3-level twister the worst to hit Ontario since 1996. At least 61 people were injured and likely millions of dollars in property damaged as winds up to 300 km/h whipped through the town of 8,000. Pictures from the city centre posted on Facebook show smashed cars, toppled trees and blown-out store fronts. On Monday morning, Premier Dalton McGuinty activated Ontario’s emergency disaster plan.

Globe and Mail

Facebook

Jack Layton: “We’re gonna build a new movement, right across this country”

By Paul Wells - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 10:49 AM - 21 Comments

At the beginning of 2003 there were only 14 MPs in the federal New Democratic Party caucus and only two of them supported Jack Layton for the party’s leadership. Those two, Libby Davies and Svend Robinson, were not notorious for representing the party’s deeply pragmatic wing. New Democrats who actually had some experience in Ottawa and actually wanted to continue the party’s stubborn climb back from the historic beat-down it took in 1993 were much likelier to support Bill Blaikie, the hale Winnipegger who represented experience and continuity. Blaikie’s camp also included Gary Doer, one of only two NDP premiers in the country at the time.

Layton made a lot of New Democrats nervous. He came from Toronto city politics. He was friendly with Liberals and his father had been a Progressive Conservative MP, betraying the sort of heterodoxy that makes partisans of any ideological party wary. He offered a long shot at growth in big cities, at the potential cost of support in the NDP’s few remaining bastions — the prairie West and Alexa McDonough’s Nova Scotia. But by 2003 most New Democrats were willing to take that risk on Layton. “We’ve gone from 44 to 14 MPs and our values are under siege,” Layton’s campaign website said. “Something has to change.” Weary New Democrats heeded that message. Layton’s support was mostly outside the caucus, but it included two former party leaders, Ed Broadbent and Alexa McDonough. In the end the new Layton base was big enough to beat Blaikie and everyone else en route to a first-ballot victory at the Toronto leadership convention.

At first, all Layton seemed to offer was unbounded optimism in a party that too often seemed down in the dumps. “Canadians must rise up,” he told a crowd at Carleton University several days before he won the leadership. “We’re gonna build a movement, right across this country, and it’s very exciting.”

And then, the day after he won the new gig, a perceptive insight, one that would serve him for the rest of his life: “It’s whether we elect parliamentarians to bicker or build that will be the defining issue of our time. And we say, let’s build.”

So he built. Continue…

Rebels seize Libyan capital

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 10:28 AM - 0 Comments

Libyan opposition fighters gained control overnight of much of Tripoli, bringing a likely end to Moammar Gadhafi’s 42-year reign, Al Jazeera reports. Sporadic clashes have nevertheless erupted around the Libyan leader’s compound as loyalists resist the rebel advance. Gaddafi’s current location is unknown; he has publicly vowed never to surrender, acknowledging that anti-government forces were moving into the city and predicting it would become another Baghdad. Al Jazeera correspondent Zeina Khodr said that the people of Tripoli “have set up checkpoints, are searching cars and looking for possible Gaddafi supporters,” worried there may be sleeper cells in the capital. Celebrations broke out in the city as the rebel leadership moved into Tripoli. U.S. President Barack Obama has called on Gaddafi to relinquish his power, Reuters reports, and has called on the Transitional National Council rebels to take control after Gaddafi leaves.

Al Jazeera

Reuters

Jack Layton succumbs to cancer

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 10:13 AM - 0 Comments

Jack Layton, leader of the Opposition in Parliament, died early this morning of cancer at the age of 61. Layton became head of the NDP in 2003 after a long career in municipal and national politics. He was a major voice on the Toronto City Council in the 1980s. In the ’90s, he suffered a number of political setbacks, including unsuccessful runs for the Mayor of Toronto and for the House of Commons, but continued to gain prominence on the city council and as the president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. His election as leader of the NDP vaulted him over several sitting MPs; a year after he took over the party, he finally won a seat in Parliament, in the Toronto-Danforth riding. Using his outsider status to his advantage, Layton built the NDP into a more potent political force, culminating in his and the party’s greatest triumph in 2010, when the NDP won the most seats in its history and became the Official Opposition for the first time. But Layton’s greatest triumph was followed almost immediately by tragedy. Though he had battled prostate cancer the year before, in July 2011 he announced that he was once again fighting cancer (the nature of which was not disclosed) and that he was stepping down from the NDP leadership to concentrate on his treatment. Today his family issued a statement that Layton “passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family and loved ones.” Layton is survived by his wife Olivia Chow, an NDP member of Parliament, and his children, Sarah and Michael Layton.

CBC News

Jack Layton 1950-2011

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 9:03 AM - 11 Comments

A statement issued this morning by the family of NDP leader Jack Layton.

We deeply regret to inform you that The Honourable Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, passed away at 4:45 am today, Monday August 22. He passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family and loved ones. Details of Mr. Layton’s funeral arrangements will be forthcoming.

9:11am. Bob Rae, Carolyn Bennett, Hedy Fry, Wayne Easter, Cathy McLeod, Keith Martin and Governor General David Johnston are among those paying their respects.

9:23am. John Geddes explored Jack Layton’s life and times for this Maclean’s cover story last June. We wrote about his new fight with cancer for this cover story earlier this month.

9:28am. Condolences from Rodger Cuzner, Lewis Cardinal, Colin Carrie, Mike Sullivan and John McCallum.

9:36am. NDP deputy leader Libby Davies talks to reporters in St. John’s.

“He was a great Canadian. He gave his life to this country. His commitment to social justice and equality and a better Canada in the world and at home and I think that’s how people saw him,” Davies told reporters. “They saw him as someone who deeply, deeply cared for people. And they saw that in the campaign and all his work. They saw the courage that he had. He faced cancer and he kept on working, doing his job, because he felt so strongly about what he believed in, so I think people think of him as a great Canadian and we think of him as a great leader, in a political sense but (also) in a personal sense.”

9:43am. More on the life of Jack Layton from the CBC, Toronto Star and Canadian Press.

He was a believer. He made that clear in the first sentences of “Speaking Out Louder:” ”Politics matters. Ideas matter. Democracy matters, because all of us need to be able to make a difference.”

9:54am. Mr. Layton’s Facebook page has become a makeshift memorial.

9:59am. Greg Fingas marks the NDP leader’s passing.

After spending a decade laying the foundation, Jack Layton has tragically died before getting to complete the house that so many said couldn’t be built. For now, there’s little to do but to offer condolences and grieve the loss of a great Canadian and friend. But hopefully Layton’s inspiration will only encourage us to finish what he started.

10:01am. A statement from the Prime Minister. Continue…

Conan, Vol. II

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 4:40 PM - 3 Comments

A couple of follow-up points to my previous post about Conan and Conan, and his under-performance at TBS:

- There’s always a temptation, when a talk show isn’t doing as well as expected, to talk about the format being outdated and the need to do more to attract younger viewers who aren’t used to it. Conan is an example of why that may not be the right point of view to take. It’s a very traditional talk show, which has frustrated fans who expected him to use his new platform to re-invent the format. (“Team CoCo” fans who didn’t regularly watch his NBC shows, but thrilled to the edge-of-your-seat wildness of his last Tonight shows, were hoping that he could sustain that style for a whole series every night. Even if it could be done, that wasn’t what he was trying to do.) He’s having trouble with people in their ’30s and ’40s and older. He might be doing better if more of his core young audience were watching live instead of watching clips on their new-fangled phones, but that’s not his biggest problem. The traditional talk show format seems to be fine for young viewers if, as with Conan, the host is someone they like.

- I wonder if O’Brien’s basically non-topical style of humour is a problem for him as a late-night anchor, as opposed to the follow-up show (Late Night) where he was most successful. As you know, every late night talk show follows a fairly rigid formula – it has to, because without formula you can’t turn out an episode every night. Because we sort of know what kind of things the host will do, there has to be something else to tempt us, the prospect of seeing or hearing something we didn’t hear last time. And one of the things that changes, apart from the identity of the guests, is the actual news in the world that day. Many people watch a talk show to hear the host crack wise about the day’s news.

News junkies watch The Daily Show to hear what Jon will say about the day’s events or the coverage thereof. And believe it or not, Jay Leno was the most popular late-night host for similar reasons. His core audience liked topical humour; according to The War For Late Night, affiliate stations thought Leno was a good fit with their local broadcasts because people would watch the news, and then stick around to hear Leno make jokes about the stories the local news had just covered. His jokes are very bland – much like local news often is. But there’s an audience for bland topical jokes, and he filled it.

When Leno was replaced by O’Brien, Letterman (again according to The War For Late Night) increased his number of political jokes and the length of his monologue; though his political humour has more of an edge to it than Leno’s, and he’s accordingly seen as more of a partisan figure, Letterman did attract some of the Leno viewers who wanted to hear monologue jokes about the day’s headlines. And he knew that these viewers didn’t like O’Brien: O’Brien does topical jokes, but he’s not that interested in them. O’Brien is an absurdist comedian who likes comedy for its own sake, and he’s at his best with more timeless material, not same-day jokes.

That kind of material is, when it works, late night at its most creative and fun. But it seems to work best at 12:30. (In Canada, of course, we get Conan at 12, but that doesn’t do him any good on his own network, where he starts at 11.) O’Brien, Fallon, Ferguson, and the father of them all, NBC-era Letterman. They’re crazy and cheeky and silly, while the 11:00-11-30 show is always more “grown-up” and sober and ripped from the headlines. It may be that to do an 11 o’clock talk show, a host needs to convey some feeling that he (or she – it’ll happen someday, I hope) is the place to go to make sense of the day’s events. Whereas the 12:30 show is where you go when you’re tired of things making sense, and want a little bit of nonsense.

If this is true, then it doesn’t augur well for how Jimmy Fallon will do if he ever takes over The Tonight Show, but on the other hand Fallon is more malleable than O’Brien, and a Fallon Tonight Show might be very different from what he’s doing now (much as Letterman’s Late Show is very different from Late Night).