This week has three sketches

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 2:17 PM - 0 Comments

Tuesday. Tomorrow’s problem
Wednesday. That’s enough
Thursday. Post script

Mike Milbury charged with assaulting pee-wee hockey player

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 1:58 PM - 0 Comments

Mike Milbury may go down as the worst general manager of the NHL’s modern era, but if there is any substance to allegations out of Brookline, Mass., his judgment has reached a new low. Milbury, 59, has been charged with assault and battery on a child in connection with an alleged attack last Friday on 12-year-old pee wee hockey player. Police say the assault was both physical and verbal, and that Milbury—currently an analyst on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada—uttered threats. The confrontation allegedly took place just after a game between Milbury’s son’s team, which he coaches, and an opposing team from the Boston area. A melée reportedly erupted on the ice, and Milbury is accused of grabbing, shaking and berating one of the players on the opposing team. If true, the allegations raise questions as to his suitability as an on-air analyst—especially on Hockey Night, a broadcast that plays up its connections to the grassroots of minor hockey.

Boston Herald

Self respect

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 1:16 PM - 0 Comments

The Ottawa Citizen editorial board challenges MPs to save themselves.

Minority or majority, the constant is the lack of honour and civility in Parliament. What hasn’t changed is the reduction of the role of elected members to bit players in hackneyed political theatre. Every MP, of any party, who acquiesces in this must answer for it to his or her constituents.

The holidays should be a time for every MP to consider this problem and how he or she might contribute to a solution when the House reconvenes. The caucus is ultimately the only source of authority for any party in the House of Commons. MPs should demand a greater role in question period than that of heckler and, occasionally, script-reader.

Christopher Hitchens: no heroes, no allies

By Brian Bethune - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 1:10 PM - 0 Comments

Like any polemicist worthy of the name—and in our time no one deserved that honourable title more than Christopher Hitchens, polemicist tutti polemicists, now dead of esophageal cancer at 62—Hitchens was fond of the sound of his own voice. And with good reason: he didn’t just have a lot to say, he said it with wit, supple (and occasionally venomous) prose and utter fearlessness.

From his days as a young militant Trotskyite to his end-of-life position as the Last Man Standing in defence of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hitchens always aimed high, preferring to wield his claymore against targets who were fully able to dish it back. High on the list were: Henry Kissinger (“should have the door shut in his face by every decent person”), Mother Teresa (“a lying, thieving Albanian dwarf, friend of poverty, not poor people”), the royal family (“what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII”), the entire anti-war movement (“some peaceniks clear their throats by saying that, of course, they oppose Saddam Hussein as much as anybody, though not enough to support doing anything about him”) and God, or at least his more fundamentalist adherents. Continue…

Hitchens on C-SPAN in 1993

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 12:49 PM - 0 Comments

My favourite Christopher Hitchens book is probably “For the Sake of Argument,” a collection of sharp, funny and vicious essays on his likes and dislikes, from a period – the early ’90s – where he had a lot to write about. The thing that every Hitchens tribute mentions, rightly, is that you enjoy his writing even when you don’t agree with him, and that was very true of a lot of the essays in this book: the descriptions were specific and apt enough that they conveyed a sense of insight, of a clear-minded way of looking at things, even when you disagreed with the conclusion. And the first Hitchens interview I read was a transcript of his interview with Brian Lamb, after the publication of the book. Back then there were no clips available online, so the transcript was the only way to “see” most of these news shows and interviews. Now we have YouTube, so here is the interview (the first part is embedded here, and the others – in six parts – follow).

Mission: Impossible—Rebooting Cruise, Le Carré and the Cold War

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 12:14 PM - 0 Comments

Paula Patton and Tom Cruise in 'Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol

I came to Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol expecting the worst. Five years have passed since the previous installment, which was so lame it looked like Tom Cruise’s days as super spy Ethan Hunt were numbered. But what a surprise!  Ghost Protocol, the fourth movie in the series, kicks the franchise back to life with a defibrillator thump of adrenaline and a sharp sense of style. There’s a great line in the movie—”Failure for a terrorist is just a rehearsal for success”—which may also apply to producers of  blockbusters. Here they took a gamble that paid off, by handing the reins to Brad Bird, who has made animated hits like Ratatouille and The Incredibles but has not made a live action feature until now. You’d never know it. The action scenes pop and sizzle, with a vertiginous sense of perspective that seems inherited from his animated work. Architecture plays a leading role—from Cruise rappelling off a 123-storey skyscraper in Dubai to dropping through the spiral core of automated parking garage that looks like a car-and-concrete version of the Guggenheim. High tech shades of Vertigo.

Cruise, who handles a lot of his own stunt-work, looks ageless, toned and torqued. He has a strange body, especially when he sprints, his arms jack-knifing to cartoon-like heights. Tom is always the Man Who Tries Too Hard. In this well-oiled machine of a movie he’s one well-oiled machine of a man. He’s so immaculate you can’t help but wonder if Tom Cruise is, in fact, an alien. Or simply a Scientologist. Fortunately, he is surrounded by actual human beings, including two terrific character actors.  His fellow operatives are a haunted analyst (The Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner), a very funny rookie communications whiz (Shaun of the Dead‘s Simon Pegg), and a no-nonsense babe (Paula Patton). Continue…

The Downside of Co-Productions

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 12:13 PM - 0 Comments

The international co-production is becoming a bigger part of movies than at any time probably since the early ’70s, and as previously discussed here, it’s become a major part of Canadian television. But one of downsides of taking on an international partner for a TV show is that if the show is a failure in one country, it could be canceled despite being a success in another country. Bill Brioux says that this is what happened to Combat Hospital, a show produced by Global in partnership with ABC in the U.S. It did well in Canada, but not in the States, and “evidently no major U.S. partner stepped in after ABC walked to help defray the costs of a second season.” Of course, without this kind of partnership, a show like that would be too expensive to make, so this doesn’t mean that it would be better to produce them alone; it’s often not really an option. It just seems to be a fact of life that high viewership isn’t enough to make a show a success; it has to be successful in multiple markets, so that multiple partners can defray its cost. It works the other way too, of course: several U.S. shows this year were sold to international markets and look to do quite well there, like Pan Am, but that’s not enough if the show isn’t successful on its home network.

Week in Pictures: December 12 – 18, 2011

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 11:42 AM - 0 Comments

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Week in Pictures: December 12 – 18, 2011

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Canada's Patrick Chan skates

Canada's Patrick Chan skates during the exhibition gala at the International Skating Union (ISU) Grand Prix of Figure Skating Finals at the Pavillon de la Jeunesse in Quebec City December 11, 2011. REUTERS/Mathieu Belanger

1 of 15 Photos

Next A farmer stops the traffic so his gaggle of geese can cross the road

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Does your city feel dangerous to you?

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Christopher Hitchens, dead at 62

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 10:51 AM - 0 Comments

Polemicist and author Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday after battling oesophageal cancer since the spring of 2010. Armed with a combative style and a fierce wit, Hitchens was known for training his sights on targets as varied as Mother Theresa, Bill Clinton, and religion as a whole. In the last months of his life, Hitchens wrote often about the cancer that would eventually kill him, insisting it had led him to question neither his rabid atheism, nor his penchant for cigarettes and alcohol. Hitchens died at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62.

New York Times

‘We’re good at it’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 10:28 AM - 0 Comments

The polling company behind the phone calls in Irwin Cotler’s riding is now the subject of complaints.

Campaign Research Inc. had not been advised of any complaints as of Thursday afternoon, said principal partner Nick Kouvalis. “We’ve done tens of millions of dials through our call centre and there’s never been any complaint launched against us,” Kouvalis said. “We’re in the business of getting Conservatives elected and ending Liberal careers. We’re good at it.”

Kouvalis said his firm always follows Elections Canada and CRTC rules and denied doing anything wrong in Mount Royal. He said Cotler’s claim that the calls interfered with his work was “a bit rich” because the MP would have spent more time writing speeches about the issue than it would have taken to return calls from constituents about them.

The Hill Times reports that the founder of Campaign Research managed Peter Van Loan’s campaign in 2004.

Rogers and Bell team up for the biggest play in hockey

By Charlie Gillis, Chris Sorensen, and Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Mark Blinch/Reuters

Before the tentative phone calls, the fevered courtship and the awkward consummation of a blockbuster deal, there were breakfasts between Ted and Larry. They lived across the street from each other in ritzy Forest Hill, home to Toronto’s ultra-well-monied. They talked about sports franchises in the way car buffs talk about their favourite set of wheels.

Ted Rogers had bought baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays in 2000 with the idea of boosting his company’s profile in southern Ontario. Larry Tanenbaum was chair of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd., the company that owned the coveted Toronto Maple Leafs and basketball’s Toronto Raptors. So once or twice a year, they noshed beside the Rogers family pool, talking pucks, bats and player salaries over scrambled eggs and orange juice. “Ted couldn’t tell you the latest scores,” recalls Tanenbaum. “He was more interested in the concept of sport as something that brought people together. But for as long as I knew him, he and I talked about the idea of one day hooking up and becoming partners in the Toronto Maple Leafs.”

Chances to buy into the crown jewel of Canadian sports and broadcasting don’t come around very often. For 16 years, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan had watched the value of its interest in MLSE skyrocket, and was in no mood to sell. Moreover, any Rogers bid would surely meet a competing offer by Bell Canada Inc. (BCE), Rogers’ great rival in the cable, phone and wireless business (Rogers also owns Maclean’s). So when Teachers put its 79 per cent stake up for sale last year, the inheritors of Rogers’ corporate mantle quickly signalled their interest. Reports of a pending deal soon surfaced, and the coronation of Rogers Communications Inc. as winner of the MLSE sweepstakes seemed a matter of time.

Continue…

Mohammad Shafia sticks to his story

By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Vincenzo D’Alto

Standing in the witness box, hand on the Quran, Mohammad Shafia promised to “state the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Allah.” And for a few minutes, at least, the accused “honour killer” did exactly that. He told the jury he was born in Kabul, Afghanistan (true), that he is a very wealthy businessman (true), and that he had two wives and seven children (true, until the night one of those wives and three of those children ended up at the bottom of the Rideau Canal).

Dressed in a beige sport coat, his face freshly shaven, the 58-year-old continued to lay out his version of reality: the Shafias were a “liberal family.” He always gave the kids as much money as they wanted, above and beyond their $100-per-month allowance. God—“no one else”—determines when people die. And although he offered plenty of fatherly advice, his doomed daughters were free to choose their own clothes, their own paths, and their own husbands. “I didn’t interfere,” he said. “It was their life.”

Then the questions turned to the wiretaps, those now-infamous rants secretly recorded by police in the days following the funerals.

Continue…

Tim Tebow: he wins in mysterious ways

By Colby Cosh - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Garrett W. Ellwood/Getty Images

The secret to the polite, positive, peppy Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow—an athlete-evangelist who concludes sideline interviews with “Thank you” and tells print reporters to “Have a good day”—is obvious if you study his alliterative name. With his incessant talk of Jesus and his grovelling humility in the face of success, he is clearly a character who escaped from the dusty pages of some old, didactic magazine for children. Somewhere out there in the fiction universe, a mischievous, unkempt Will Webow is giving hotfoots and skipping church and mopily wondering where his straitlaced doppelgänger can possibly have gone.

Double Heisman Trophy winner Tebow, drafted by Denver in 2009 amid jeers from experts, took over the offence from Kyle Orton at halftime on Oct. 9. The Broncos were 1-3 in the standings and trailing their AFC West rivals San Diego 23-10 on the scoreboard. Tebow completed just four of 10 passes, but kept it close, passing for a touchdown and running for another. The Chargers eked out a 29-24 win, and Denver fans, then still as divided as professional critics were about Tebow’s unorthodox throwing technique, chanted his name appreciatively. The desperate Broncos, figuring they might as well see what they really had in their wild-throwing, fast-scrambling, bull-bodied talent, named him the starter.

And the magic began. Two weeks later, after a Denver bye, Tebow mounted a clumsy, near-disgraceful performance against Miami for 57 minutes, falling behind 15-0. No NFL team had ever come back from such a deficit, but Tebow’s Broncos won, 18-15, in overtime. He trampled the Oakland Raiders 38-24 alongside running back Willis McGahee the next week. Then he beat the Kansas City Chiefs 17-10 at formidable Arrowhead Stadium with another late comeback; his final passing stats were a feeble 2-for-8. Same story four days later against the New York Jets, and then the week after, against Miami.

Continue…

The best kind of Parliament

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Irwin Cotler rose during Question Period yesterday with a humble proposal.

Mr. Speaker, the government has used or abused free speech with respect to justifying what has been characterized as reprehensible actions, but it has limited free speech with regard to the frequency of in camera committees. May I, in the spirit of the Christmas season, suggest to the government that it reverse priorities, namely that it ceases and desists from reprehensible actions and protects free speech and parliamentary democracy?

In response, government House leader Peter Van Loan made the case against legislatures. Continue…

Quebecers: the new racists!

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 8:36 PM - 0 Comments

As a general rule, academic papers don’t generate much buzz beyond the academics who read them and the parents of the people who write them. It seems Concordia University is trying its mightiest to reverse this disturbing trend, though, by sending out a press release chock full of (race) bait. “New racism in ‘reasonable accommodation’”, it reads. “Smoldering since the Quiet Revolution? Concordia study traces how politicians and media have pitted immigrants against ‘Québécois values.’” Oh, and this helps: the paper is written by a dude named Wong—a surname loaded with meaning ever since Jan Wong, then a Globe and Mail reporter, interrupted an entirely serviceable account of the Dawson College shooting to blame all such mass killings in Quebec on Bill 101. And this Alan Wong blames the media and politicians for appealing to Quebecers’ collective inner xenophobe. And the report is published in the Global Media Journal, which is sponsored and hosted by Purdue University. So: we have a paper from an English university in Quebec, in which a non-Francophone waxes academically on the purported racist tendencies of Quebecers, and publishes the whole exercise in an American journal. As colleague Paul Wells likes to say, what could possibly go wrong?

Continue…

The Commons: Post script

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 6:26 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Nycole Turmel aimed for summation. The Conservatives have a lot of explaining to do this holiday season, she said, proceeding to list a few particular concerns.

After she’d finished, the Prime Minister stood and ignored her entirely. ”Mr. Speaker,” he said, “especially at this time of year, we all appreciate the chance to be Canadian.”

And why are we all so particularly appreciative this year?

“One reason is that our government and our country have a very good record in job creation and economic growth compared to other major developed countries,” Mr. Harper explained. “That’s the target of this government and we intend to continue to target the economy, growth and job creation.”

Later, one of Mr. Harper’s lieutenants would describe the government’s omnibus crime bill as a “gift” to all Canadians. (You were probably hoping for an iPad, but imagine all the fun your kids will have on Christmas day when they’re sentencing each other to mandatory minimums.) Continue…

REVIEW: When I Fell From the Sky: The True Story of One Woman’s Miraculous Survival

By Joanne Latimer - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

At the age of 17, Koepcke took a 60-minute flight in Peru with her mother, from Lima to Pucallpa for Christmas. The final destination was Panguana, a research station in the Peruvian jungle where Juliane lived, on and off, with her zoologist parents. The plane hit a thunderstorm and cracked into pieces, sending Juliane into a 10,000-foot descent, still strapped into her seat, separated from everything and everyone else. She survived, miraculously, then spent 11 days inching toward civilization, undetected by rescue planes. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the air disaster that made Juliane—as even strangers call her—a famous sole survivor.

When I Fell From the Sky breaks her silence about it. “If I had been a pure city child, I never would have made it back to life,” she says, crediting her parents for teaching her about the dangers of the rainforest. Her account of the 11-day trek is enthralling. In shock and suffering from injuries, she made it to a river’s edge without her eyeglasses, wearing just a minidress and one sandal. It was rainy season, so there was no fruit to eat. She was either freezing or boiling, set upon by bugs. She contended with stingrays, snakes, king vultures and caimans. Eventually, local woodcutters found her and mistook her for a water goddess. Brought to safety, she became an international icon of hope.

Unhappy with her portrayal in early interviews, Juliane refused most media requests until 1998, when Werner Herzog did a documentary about her accident. The film worked like therapy and freed Juliane from her “protective shield.” Yet readers still sense she would rather take the details to her grave. There’s only one thing that would make her write this book: drawing attention to Panguana, her parents’ nature reserve, and her goal of preserving it from encroaching civilization. If she has to peddle the details of her past to get everyone’s attention, so be it. She has been through worse.

A visit from St. Nicholas

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 3:37 PM - 0 Comments

Rodger Cuzner’s second annual Christmas poem, read to the House of Commons shortly before Question Period this afternoon.

Twas the week before Christmas and all over the Hill
The humbuggish Tories were imposing their will.
The stockings in Muskoka were stuffed to the brim
But life for First Nations remained woefully grim.

And at the North Pole, Santa’s problems abound
There was much work to do but no workers around.
How can we do Christmas with no reindeer or elves?
The sleigh is a wreck, there’s no toys on the shelves.

Costs have just spiraled, the elves threaten strike
They won’t work this Christmas without a pay hike.
Tory payroll taxes have taken their toll
Now unemployed elves populate the North Pole.

Federal money for deer feed and vets
Has just been re-profiled for big jails and jets.
Heartbroken children would spring from their beds
For the first Christmas ever shut down by the feds.

No presents for Christmas, Tories felt the frustration
So they saddled the elves with back-to-work legislation.
No reindeer or sleigh to fly our roof-topper?
No problem; just send in a Cormorant chopper.

The moral I share: Tories lack rhyme or reason
Nonetheless, all the best for a great Christmas season!

In other news, Parliament is looking for a new poet laureate.

Toward Canada-Europe trade. Incoming flack.

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 2:22 PM - 0 Comments

Breakfast at an Ottawa hotel this morning with an official from a European Union member country, who summoned the scribes to explain his country’s view on the euro crisis. We listened politely and then Simpson asked about Canada-Europe trade talks. This European fellow was surprisingly chipper. (If you’re coming late to the Canada-EU trade talks, start here for a stroll through my blog and column archives on the topic.)

Here’s what our breakfast host said:

Talks have progressed since 2009, and are in the home stretch, with hope for a signed agreement in 2012 (Stephen Harper promised such a deal for 2012 during a Halifax campaign stop during the 2011 campaign). All the hard decisions have been put off to now, and now all the hard decisions are being made. A few will probably go to direct political negotiation between Harper and whoever will be in charge of Europe when the file gets kicked up to their level. But for now, it’s still officials in negotiating teams from both sides of the Atlantic, and here are the (entirely predictable) sticking points: Continue…

Bestsellers – Week of December 12th, 2011

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 1:09 PM - 0 Comments

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Taking part in a demonstration of fine European hospitality

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 12:35 PM - 0 Comments

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation wants the Defence Minister to explain his choice of accommodations in Europe.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay charged taxpayers $2,904 for a two-night stay at the luxurious Bayerischer Hof when he went to a security conference in Munich, Germany in February of 2010. MacKay arrived in Munich after attending an informal meeting of NATO defence ministers in Turkey, where he billed taxpayers $2,310 for a three-night stay at Istanbul’s Ceylon Intercontinental Hotel. At $1,452 and $770 a night respectively, these room tabs go far beyond what most taxpayers would consider reasonable.

In Munich, MacKay’s staff stayed at the Munich Park Hilton, an eight-minute cab ride away, for $239 a night. In Istanbul, MacKay’s staff stayed in the same hotel, but paid  $276 per night.

The Softest Sell

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 12:09 PM - 0 Comments

Despite the poor video quality, this fall promo from 1974 interests me because it may be one of the most diffident promos a network has released for one of its own new shows. Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers may be the most obscure series ever created by James L. Brooks in his prime; it was one of two new shows he and Allan Burns launched in fall 1974 (the other was Rhoda), meaning he had three shows at once where his laugh could be heard screwing up the soundtrack. Brooks and Burns had used Sand on a Mary Tyler Moore when they couldn’t get Bob Newhart, and Brooks later used him on a Taxi, and they obviously liked him a lot and wanted to give him his own show, but not a lot of people really knew exactly who he was. So CBS’s segment for their fall promo package, taking off from the cinéma vérité style that was popular on TV at the time, decided to meet this head-on by doing mock-documentary about how nobody knew who he was, and having Sand himself be sheepishly unable to explain why we should know who he was. It was a decent stab at a soft-sell marketing strategy, and if the show had been a hit, it would have been a good promo; since it flopped, it just looks awkward. (It was a good show, as you would expect from the people involved, and it would be a good thing to check out if it ever becomes available in any form – DVDs obviously won’t happen, but I could see obscure shows being dumped on the streaming market someday to provide cheap content. That’s probably the best hope for seeing them again, anyway.)

Golden Globes shine on ‘The Artist,’ Gosling and Clooney

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 12:02 PM - 0 Comments

Ryan Gosling (in a scene from 'The Ides of March') will compete with 'Ides' director George Clooney, nominated for 'The Descendants'

The Golden Globes nominations were unveiled this morning, and The Artist—France’s silent black-and-white valentine to retro Hollywood—continues to charm its way down the long road to the Oscars by topping the Globes with six nominations. The Descendants and The Help are tied for second place with four nominations apiece. Both George Clooney and Canada’s Ryan Gosling are golden. Clooney snagged three nominations, as best dramatic actor for Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, plus best director and screenplay for The Ides of March.  Gosling was nominated in the comic acting category for Crazy, Stupid Love, and in the dramatic acting category for  Ides, which has him going head to head against with Clooney. Unlike the Oscars, the Globes break down the best picture and acting categories into dramas and comedies-or-musicals, which allows the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) to better spread the wealth. But the rationale is often wonky. The Descendants, a quirky mix of comedy and drama, is classified as drama, presumably because someone dies; My Life With Marilyn was considered a comedy-or-musical, but though it’s got a couple of tunes, it’s not a musical, and despite some laughs, it’s much less of a comedy than The Descendants. Go figure.

The Globes gave a boost both to The Ides of March and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which have been ignored by most of the critics’ awards. Tattoo‘s cyberpunk heroine, Rooney Mara, hacked her way into a heavyweight actress slate,  competing with Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady), Viola Davis (The Help), Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs).

The most notable snub was ignoring Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, which won the Palme D’Or in Cannes and has been honoured by several critics’ groups, including the Toronto Film Critics Association. However, its star, Brad Pitt, was nominated for Moneyball in the dramatic acting category, along with Clooney, Gosling, Michael Fassbender (Shame) and Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar). Honouring DiCaprio instead of Take Shelter‘s Michael Shannon underscores the HFPA’s tacky pedigree as a gang of junket whores who never saw a superstar they didn’t like. (If you think that’s too harsh, Ricky Gervais has said much worse things about the HFPA, yet they’ve hired him back to host the Globes, which adds a curious S&M kink to the junket whore role.) Continue…