Don’t count Obama out just yet

By John Parisella - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 2:19 PM - 0 Comments

At this time next year, American voters will be choosing a president. Current polls suggest a tight election, with President Obama trailing in some crucial swing states. But a year in politics is an eternity.

The Obama people are banking on the appeal of stability. “Don’t compare me with the Almighty,” Obama said in a recent speech, “compare me to the alternative.” The current crop of Republican presidential candidates has indeed been getting mixed reviews ahead of the primaries. Mitt Romney and Herman Cain may be leading the polls, but neither is showing much traction with independent voters. Many of the leading contenders have shown they are vulnerable—Romney fails to generate enthusiasm, Rick Perry has lost his early momentum, and Cain is mired in scandal. Continue…

Fantasies and Franchises

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

The future of the hour-long TV drama might be glimpsed in NBC’s consideration of two shows from Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies). One is an hour-long version of The Munsters, a project that has been in development for a long time, but seems to have inspired new interest because of the fantasy and monster boom on U.S. TV. And the other is a Hannibal Lecter TV series. Both of these ideas are based on existing properties, and they show how a lot of expensive new shows may be developed in the future: the former is from NBC/Universal’s own catalogue, and the latter is an international co-production that will be sold internationally before it airs (if it airs). The Firm is another new NBC show that is being produced along the international co-pro model: produced by a transnational company, filmed in Canada, and financed jointly by NBC and its international distributors. It’s possible that in an increasingly internationalized TV market – and with the need to get shows onto as many platforms as possible – co-productions will eventually become a bigger part of U.S. TV, as they already are in Canada and elsewhere.

These projects are not the most promising in the world, at least in description, though The Munsters sounds like a more promising idea than Hannibal. NBC obviously is interested in Hannibal because their current president, Robert Greenblatt, had a big success with Dexter when he was at Showtime, and Dexter is a show that is widely watched and respected within the industry (it must be; it keeps getting nominated for the Emmy even though it hasn’t been very good in some time). Dexter is sort of an executive’s ideal of what an edgy cable show should be: a dark, violent show about an anti-hero, but one without a particularly strong creator or showrunner voice, so the network needn’t grovel to a Matt Weiner to keep the show going. (The Walking Dead is another example of this type of show: based on an existing property, and a show where the showrunners are interchangeable.) NBC obviously wants its own version of that, an anti-hero show based on a character from books. But not only is Hannibal Lecter not really a network character, he’s so familiar that he doesn’t even have the novelty value Dexter had.

A Munsters reboot is more interesting because it seems to fit in more with Fuller’s specialties – creating a stylized, slightly twee world – and doing it as an hour-long show with more continuity would at least sidestep some of the comparisons to the original. Of course, a lot of the continuity would probably wind up being based on things no one could possibly care about (like explaining why Herman and Lily produced werewolf offspring), but if they can get the right cast, it could work.

An answer, of sorts

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 12:37 PM - 0 Comments

The Liberals have persisted these last several weeks in asking the government side to cancel an increase in EI premiums scheduled for next year. The government side has persisted in ignoring these questions.

Today though, the Finance Minister will apparently announce that the planned increase will be halved.

Canadians take positive view of Occupy

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 12:34 PM - 0 Comments

Most Canadians who are aware of the Occupy Wall Street movement view it positively, according to a new Nanos Research poll conducted for The Globe and Mail and La Presse. The survey found that 58 per cent of respondents who knew about the protests have a favourable or somewhat favourable opinion of them. The poll may indicate that Canadians are increasingly worried about job prospects and savings plans amid Canada’s slowing economy, pollster Nik Nanos told the Globe and Mail.

The Globe and Mail

Ottawa to scale back EI premium increase

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 12:17 PM - 0 Comments

The federal government is resizing an increase of employment insurance premiums scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2012, reflecting mounting concern in Ottawa about rising unemployment. Under the government’s original plan, announced last fall by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, EI payroll premiums would have risen by 10 cents per $100 of insurable earnings for employees and 14 cents for employers, the Globe and Mail reports. Today, though, Flaherty is expected to announce that the increase will be kept at the same level of the one that took effect on Jan. 1, 2011, or five cents for employees and seven cents for employers.

The Globe and Mail

Carney delivers first speech since FSB appointment

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 11:54 AM - 0 Comments

In his first public address since becoming chairman of the Financial Stability Board, Bank of Canada’s Mark Carney said the euro zone is headed for what’s likely to be at least a brief recessionary period, the Globe and Mail reports. The depth of the downturn, and the extent to which it will affect growth elsewhere in the world will depend on how Europe’s bank decide to beef up their balance sheets and steps taken by central banks to increase liquidity, he told the audience at the British Chamber of Commerce.

The Globe and Mail

Privacy’s not dead

By Jennifer Stoddart - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 11:39 AM - 0 Comments

As Can teens escape embarrassment on Facebook? duly noted, it’s indeed very difficult for me or anyone over 30 to truly relate to the reality of today’s tweens, teens and young adults.

After all, I wasn’t raised in a world of texts, tweets, wall postings, status updates and smartphone-shot pictures and videos that can be uploaded and shared with multitudes in under a minute—by you, or of you by someone else. The same goes for most of the people who work in our office. That’s why my Office has done classroom presentations, and engaged a panel of teens from across Canada to advise on our youth outreach efforts. I’m happy to say that we’ve learned a lot. Continue…

Berlusconi no longer has parliamentary majority

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appears to no longer have a majority in the lower house of parliament, a development that could lead to a crisis of government, the Wall Street Journal reports. Berlusconi’s governing coalition mustered only 308 votes, in the 630-member chamber, on Tuesday during a vote on a routine budget bill. The measure was passed, but only because 321 lawmakers abstained from voting. Berlusconi is now expected to hold talks with President Giorgio Napolitano, Italy’s head of state, about whether he should step down.

The Wall Street Journal

From the magazine

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 10:59 AM - 0 Comments

In the current print edition there are a couple thousands words on four of the youngest NDP MPs: Matthew Dube, Charmaine Borg, Mylene Freeman and Lauren Liu. (The video above seems to have been recorded by a CBC interviewer the day after Ms. Borg was elected.)

At one point in the process I had a bracketed note that I ended up deleting which ventured that it was nice to hear more laughter (easy and at no one else’s expense) on the Hill because this place could use more joy. That’s maybe a bit too earnest for print, but I’d probably stand by the general idea if asked now.

Here, for the sake of comparison, is how a reporter from the McGill Daily saw it when he came to visit.

U.S. opens special review on Keystone pipeline

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 10:57 AM - 0 Comments

The U.S. State Department’s inspector general will review the department’s evaluation of a proposed $7 billion pipeline to transport oil sands from western Canada to Texas, Reuters reports. The announcement came after 13 Democratic lawmakers and one independent expressed concern that a company the State Department hired to investigate the potential environmental impact of the project had financial ties to TransCanada, the proponent of the Keystone XL pipeline. The State Department’s “special review” could push the final decision on the line into 2012 or later.

Reuters

‘More rhetoric than reality’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 10:39 AM - 0 Comments

Steve Sullivan, the former victims ombudsman, reviews the government’s crime legislation.

In the hundreds of pages of would-be law, I found only a few that deal with victims. Among those are several provisions that enhance the rights of victims in the corrections and parole system. These are important provisions, but were first introduced in 2005 by the Liberal government of Paul Martin.

The provisions to toughen sentencing for sex offenders will be welcomed by most. Few of us lose sleep over child-sex offenders spending more time in prison. But some of the reforms will toughen the sentences for low-risk offenders, with low rates of recividism. They won’t make children safer, but will cost five times more than what is being invested in Child Advocacy Centres that support abused children.

Saskatchewan re-elects incumbent premier and party in landslide

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 10:35 AM - 0 Comments

Saskatchewan handed Premier Brad Wall and his right-leaning Saskatchewan Party a record-setting triumph on Monday. Though the victory was expected, the results at the ballot box beat even SaskParty internal polls, with 49 of 58 ridings and 64 per cent of the electorate voting to re-elect the incumbent premier and his party. Support for the NDP, meanwhile, sunk to historic lows, with the party winning only nine seats and 32 per cent of the popular vote. Saskatchewan NDP leader Dwain Lingenfelter resigned on Monday after losing his own seat, the StarPhoenix reports.

The Globe and Mail

The StarPhoenix

Is this the best we can do?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Chris Plecash asks various political players to consider the laments of Lowell Murray.

Ultimately, said Sen. Murray, due process has eroded. “It is what makes our electoral democracy work, our parliamentary democracy work, our system of governance work. You must respect due process.”

“I think there’s been a sort of acquiescence over the years that it’s just the way things go,” David Christopherson said. “What we’re hearing from Senator Murray and others is that it’s time that we stop and gave this whole system a good shake. Is this the best democracy that we can provide for Canadians?”

When tyrants and clueless starlets meet

By Emma Teitel - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

The announcement this month that Global Philanthropy Group, a celebrity-focused advisory firm, is teaming up with Human Rights Watch to help celebs choose which foreign heads of state they should do private shows for comes just in time. It seems that the number of apparently clueless headliners hurrying to perform for tyrants and dictators has reached epic proportions. Strangely, though, while three dictators have fallen since the Arab Spring began late last year, their favourite stars have not. Mariah Carey and Nelly Furtado are among those who have sung and danced for the devil (members of the Gadhafi family in this case) and suffered few social consequences. Beyoncé Knowles—another pop star on the dead dictator’s payroll—claims she had no idea that Moammar Gadhafi’s son Hannibal picked up the $2-million tab on her 2010 New Year’s Eve performance in St. Barts (you’d think if the name Gadhafi didn’t raise any red flags, the name Hannibal might), and both Carey and Furtado have apologized publicly for their performances, donating millions to charity in compensation for the hefty sums given to them by the Gadhafis.

But besides a slap on the wrist from entertainment blogs and human rights activists, these stars have gotten off largely scot-free. Our collective attitude toward them seems to be, “Who cares that Mariah Carey sang We Belong Together to a murderous dictator? She just had twins!” And who cares, likewise, if Hilary Swank took $1.5 million from Chechen President Ramzan A. Kadyrov to celebrate his 35th birthday party this month, during which she addressed a packed Grozny auditorium in a backless gown and gushed over Chechnya’s beautiful architecture (“I pay a lot of attention to details!”)? The gown and the architecture are clearly the important details—not that the president’s hobbies (besides presumably watching Boys Don’t Cry) included quashing political dissent via torture and assassination, and eradicating women’s rights.

Continue…

Obama the hawk

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

Barack Obama used U.S. air power to prevent a massacre and facilitate the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. He sent a team of Navy SEALS to conduct a secret surgical strike in Pakistan that took out Osama bin Laden, America’s public enemy number one. He sent a Predator drone armed with Hellfire missiles to assassinate an American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, whose extremist preaching was linked to several attempted terrorist attacks against the U.S. All three objectives were achieved without invasion, occupation, or the loss of American lives.

The last decade was dominated by the Bush administration’s “shock and awe” display of U.S. military might, a swagger that descended into a “long war” of occupation and nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq that left thousands of Americans dead and wounded, and cost upward of a trillion dollars. But cold, calculating and nimble, Obama has turned a new page on the projection of American power. His emphasis on technology, intelligence, and leaning on allies is leaving a smaller and less costly U.S. military footprint on the globe, but one that is proving to be just as lethal to its adversaries.

In his first days as President, Obama ordered interrogation techniques cleaned up and the prison at Guantánamo Bay to be closed within a year. Congress objected, and Guantánamo has remained open, but the President has added zero detainees to the inmate population. Indeed, he’s barely taken any prisoners—instead, he has presided over many more drone strikes against terrorist suspects than George W. Bush. He is not waterboarding enemy prisoners who have been removed from the battlefield; he is killing them where they stand. (The administration denies frequent accusations that it is killing militants when capturing them would have been feasible.)

Continue…

Another way the House is made irrelevant

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

If, as variously reported, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivers the fall economic and fiscal update to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce today, it will be the third-straight fall he has delivered the update to an audience other than the House of Commons. Last year it was the Mississauga Chinese Business Association who enjoyed Mr. Flaherty’s presence, two years ago it was the Victoria Chamber of Commerce.

Granted, the last time Mr. Flaherty did deliver the update in the House, what he had to say nearly brought about his government’s defeat.

Don’t we all need a cool alien sidekick?

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images, iStock; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

Dear Scientists:

Many of you have chosen to devote your lives to preventing disease and curing illness. Enough with the selfishness already.

The time has come for you to join together, buckle down and deliver on the innovation that humanity really wants—namely, the kind we see in science fiction movies.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s great and everything that some of you are toiling to rid our planet of the scourge of malaria. But FYI, I still can’t order up a burrito supreme from a replicator and eat it in my hovercar.

Here are the things we’d like now, please.

Continue…

A cooling on the right

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

In the lead-up to last month’s Swiss elections, most observers expected two long-term trends to continue. On the one hand, support for the anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party, or SVP, was projected to climb, as it had for more than 20 years. On the other, the traditional power brokers in the Swiss centre were expected to again lose ground, continuing a steady erosion of their support. But a funny thing happened on the way to the ballot box: Swiss voters didn’t reject the SVP, but they did cool to its message. The party lost more than three per cent of its popular vote from 2007, shedding eight parliamentary seats in the process. A cluster of new centrist parties, including a group of breakaway moderates from the SVP, picked up much of the slack.

The Swiss vote “is part of a larger trend,” believes Mario Canseco, vice-president at Angus Reid Public Opinion. Support for anti-immigrant parties soared in Europe following the economic crash in 2008. Much of that ardour has now cooled, Canseco says. Europe’s extreme right is far from dead—the SVP remains Switzerland’s largest single party, for example. But if the Swiss vote does reflect a move away from the European instinct to tar outsiders for internal problems, it could be a very good sign indeed.

Danger zone: satire ahead

By Alex Ballingall - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:05 AM - 0 Comments

Youtube

The Beygairat Brigade, or Shameless Brigade, has struck a chord among disillusioned Pakistanis. The band from Lahore recently uploaded a video to YouTube for a satirical song called Aalu Anday, named after a frequently served potato and egg curry. It’s highly critical of the state, implying it offers the people the same corruption and lack of accountability day after day. The video closes with band member Ali Aftaab Saeed holding a placard that reads: “If you want a bullet through my head, like this song.” It has more than 200,000 views on YouTube. “We really wanted to become a voice of the silent majority, which never gets to say what they really want to say,” Saeed told Public Radio International’s The World.

It’s the latest iteration of Pakistani satire to gain attention of late. The government recently banned a play called Burqavaganza, which is critical of the burka as well as bureaucratic secrecy. According to the New York Times, the Ministry of Culture said the play “pollutes young minds.” One wonders what the Beygairat Brigade thinks of that.

A changing of the guard at the NDP

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photo by Blair Gable

At ten to eight on a Wednesday morning, he is aboard one of Parliament Hill’s small green buses, on his way to the first meeting of the day, the weekly gathering of the NDP’s Quebec MPs. He is wearing a suit and he’s carrying a coffee and a Danish. Around him there are other men. Men in suits on the way to meetings of their own. Only they are all twice his age.

After this meeting there’s another meeting—the weekly gathering of the official Opposition caucus. Then a walk back to his office, down the Hill to the Justice Building beside the Supreme Court. Then back up the Hill for lunch with a reporter in Centre Block’s ornate restaurant. Then a meeting of the all-party arts caucus. Then question period. Then a meeting of the standing committee on public accounts to hear testimony from the interim auditor general. Then dinner at the NDP’s weekly pub night. Then a meeting of the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association. Then back to the pub, where he won’t look particularly out of place among the hordes of young staff who quietly keep Ottawa running.

Continue…

Kyle James Knox

By Cynthia Reynolds - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Julia Minamata

Kyle James Knox was born in Stouffville, Ont., on Nov. 12, 1986, to Kent and Sherry Knox, the first of three children. His father owned Knox Insulation and Roofing, a family business that Kyle’s grandfather began in 1974. His mother ran the household, raising the three children, including Kendall, born in 1988, and Hanna, born in 1990.

As a toddler, Kyle would get his mother to tie his old rocking-horse patterned baby blanket around his shoulders as a cape. Wearing a Batman T-shirt, he would then zigzag around the house, calling himself Kyle “Batman” Knox. Outside, he liked to create make-believe construction sites in a green turtle-shaped sandbox, warning his sisters not to mess up his sand piles. They didn’t. They preferred to follow, rather than antagonize, their brother. “Everything he did was fun, so we wanted to do it, too,” says Kendall, who chose hockey over ballet when she was four, in order to be with her brother.

Growing up on Musselman’s Lake, the kids spent much of their time in the water with neighbourhood friends and cousins. In the summer they swam and fished; in the winter they skated and played hockey. Kyle also spent time tinkering in the shed, where he had his own workbench and tools. He would often join his father on jobs, soaking up his hands-on expertise. When he was 12, his parents bought him his first BMX bike—before he rode it, he took it completely apart. “He wanted to ‘soup it up,’ he said, so it would ride better,” Kendall recalls. “He was always trying to make things faster and stronger.” It was around this time that the kids got into motorized sports.

Continue…

REVIEW: On Canaan’s Side

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 7:00 AM - 0 Comments

How corrosive is grief, 89-year-old Lilly Bere asks at the outset of Barry’s beautiful, elegiac new novel: “Could it be seen in an X-ray? Is it like a rust, a rheum around the heart?” If anyone has cause to ask, it’s Lilly, as she writes her amazing life story in the 17 days after her grandson Bill’s suicide. Lilly’s life, writ against the history of the 20th century, is crammed with loss of staggering proportion. But the death of the young man she raised from age two proves the final, unbearable burden on her heart.

Her life began with loss, with her mother’s death in Wicklow, Ireland. It continued as her Catholic father, head of police under the British regime, became an “enemy of the new Ireland.” Her beloved brother Willie’s death in the Great War set off events forcing Lilly’s lifelong exile from her homeland and family. America brought hope, often dashed. She loved and lost two men in stunning circumstances, worked as a domestic, raised a son, baked a pie for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and saw wars destroy those she loved.

A lesser writer would have made melodrama. But Barry, whose ability to craft heart-stopping moments is given full flight here, has created a riveting, unsentimental portrait reminiscent of James Agee’s Knoxville: Summer 1915 and James Joyce’s short stories. But Lilly is an original—humble, pragmatic, empathetic and thoroughly Irish with her qualified negatives: “It hadn’t been good news,” she writes, recalling the latest devastation.

As Lilly plays the film reel of her life, it’s “nonsense things, the deepest most important things” that remain—a happy roller-coaster ride, her son Ed’s first word, Bill’s faded blue shorts, sitting on a beach looking at a “strange map of blue veins on my upper legs, a map to nowhere.” She’s a “grateful relic” for what she was given, if not what was taken. “The devil only comes into good things,” she concludes, with an optimism that makes one smile and weep.

REVIEW: Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 7:00 AM - 0 Comments

Pauline Kael was fond of the ecstatic superlative. So here’s one for her: there hasn’t been a more famous and influential film critic before or since—with the possible exception of her former acolyte Roger Ebert, who wrote at her death, in 2001, that she “had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades.” A queen bee in a boys’ club of film nerds, she sexed up a dry métier, embracing the sting of iconoclasm in films and as a critic. She was at the New Yorker from 1968 to 1991, but her star rose and fell with ’70s American cinema, as she heralded landmarks like M.A.S.H., Last Tango in Paris, Nashville and Taxi Driver. It was not just her opinions that stuck, but the feeling-out-loud performance art of her prose, which made everything personal. She was the new wave’s answer to the new journalism.

Brian Kellow’s richly detailed biography cements Kael’s stature but is no puff piece. He portrays her as a diva with a reckless grasp of ethics and “a Magellan complex”—she had to be the first to discover a director. Kael would cultivate friendships with the likes of Woody Allen, Sam Peckinpah, Robert Altman and Paul Schrader, only to turn on them later. And some of the critics she mentored, the “Paulettes,” would turn on her with Kael-like cruelty, notably James Wolcott. Kellow delves into Kael’s personal life, up to a point. (The serf-like way she treated her daughter, who typed up all her reviews, has a Joan Crawford ring to it.) Kael never wrote her own memoir, letting her 13 books of reviews and essays sum up her life. But this biography—which doubles as a vivid prism of American cinema—enlarges her voice with the panoramic context and sharp focus she prized in her own work.

Election night in Saskatchewan

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 7, 2011 at 10:13 PM - 0 Comments

Early returns give the Saskatchewan Party 49 or 50 of the province’s 58 seats.

That would be the biggest win in a Saskatchewan election since the NDP won 55 of 66 seats in 1991. Nine (or ten) would be the lowest New Democrat total since 1982.