What we're talking about when we talk about Harvard
By Erica Alini - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - 59 Comments
Following yesterday’s Boston Globe story, Mark Leccese considers how Harvard has been used as a political slur.
But ponder this: If Ignatieff had been a professor at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, would the ad have been as powerful? No way. In politics — heck, in daily life — “Harvard” is a code word for “not like us.”
Remember how George H.W. Bush (Yale, Class of 1948) used “Harvard” to pound his opponent in the 1988 president election, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis? In a speech on Houston on June 10, 1988, the Boston Globe reported, Bush stirred up with crowd with “When I wanted to learn the ways of the world, I didn’t go to the Kennedy School, I came to Texas,” and “Gov. Dukakis, his foreign policy views born in Harvard Yard’s boutique, would cut the muscle of our defense.”
The Harper Conservatives were quite fond of this stuff.
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Maclean's Interview: Christopher Buckley
By Kenneth Whyte - Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 10:25 AM - 0 Comments
The novelist talks with Kenneth Whyte about growing up Buckley, losing his parents, and facing down the right
Q:Your father was a leader of a conservative movement in America for 50 years, publisher of National Review, host of Firing Line for 30-some years, a social force in New York and America, a writer of spy novels, a father and a family man. How would you rank these things in importance to him?
A: You mean what was most important to him in his career? Probably National Review, the magazine that he founded in 1955. That was his most important single endeavour, because it made conservatism respectable again at a time when it had been in pretty precipitous decline.
Q: And among the other accomplishments where does father and family man belong?
A: He was devoted in both those departments but he was also a great man—in the literal sense of that term—and that takes time, so it becomes a sort of a complex equation. He was away a lot and so he wasn’t always available. But that’s a trade-off you make. My mother, my Canadian mother, was a devoted wife to him and made his home really quite spectacular, and they were very much on the social scene, and she gave him a dose of glamour. Which is funny when you consider that she always used to call herself a simple girl from the backwoods of British Columbia.
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Key things that New Guy needs to know. By George.
By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 12 Comments
I was wrong to repeatedly state Osama can run but not hide. Good hider, it turns out.
On Jan. 20, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. Later that day, another quiet ritual will unfold as Obama arrives at the White House to find a welcome letter from George W. Bush on the Oval Office desk.
Dear New Guy:
So this morning’s newspaper tells me it’s time to move out. Also, that Marmaduke has got himself into another spot of mischief. Ha ha. Will that dog ever learn? Doesn’t look like it, but I’ll keep you up to date.
Anyway, they tell me it’s a tradition for the outcoming president to leave a letter of advice for the ingoing president. All I got from Clinton was an annotated stack of Hustler, but fine.
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Bush’s last-ditch effort to go green
By Emily Burke - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments
Bush has protected more ocean territory than anyone in history
In one of his final acts as president, George W. Bush surprised the world with an unexpected green streak. Last week he announced he will turn huge tracts of the Pacific Ocean into protected conservation areas by designating them as national monuments. When you include earlier such declarations, Bush will have protected more of the world’s oceans than any other person in history.
The newly protected areas span a total of more than 500,000 sq. km in three separate regions. They include the coral reefs of Rose Atoll near American Samoa, an isolated archipelago southwest of Hawaii called the Line Islands, and the Mariana Trench near Guam, which is the deepest submerged canyon in the world. The regions are home to an impressive variety of wildlife, including sharks, rare whales, birds and giant clams. “For marine life and seabirds, these places will be sanctuaries to grow and thrive,” Bush’s administration wrote in a release.
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BTC: Optimism alert
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 3:51 PM - 17 Comments
From the Globe’s Adam Radwanski.
“As it sinks in that minority parliaments are more than just a blip on the radar, Canadians may start looking for someone to navigate them with some semblance of magnanimity and a willingness to engage those with different perspectives. Mr. Dion — a poor communicator lacking in charisma — was clearly not the one to sell a new way of doing politics. But a more gifted politician may just find an audience.”
In this regard, that Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae have apparently negotiated some sort of non-aggression pact is probably to be applauded. Of course, that two competing politicians would now have to negotiate such an agreement and that it would then be applauded as rare cause for hope is altogether depressing.
But let’s say Adam, among others, is right and there’s a burgeoning desire among the population at large for something better than what we have. And let’s assume that, while it took the most disastrous presidency in half a century to get America to demand change and we seem to be approximately four years behind them at this point (our election just past was, in all sorts of ways, a re-running of the U.S. election in 2004), we can get there without something vaguely cataclysmic.
Is that even remotely possible without at least a minor revolution in the way we (in the occupational sense) cover politics in this country? Or, put another way, wouldn’t that change be a lot more likely if we went ahead and dramatically overhauled the way we cover politics in this country? Continue…
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Brad Pitt is neglected by the media while the Coens cop to their 'inner knucklehead'
By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 7:32 PM - 3 Comments
The press conference this morning for the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading was almost as strange as a Coen brothers movie. It was roomful of studio-selected journalists, rather than an all-access TIFF press conference, so that may account for the unusual decorum. There were still about 50 of us there. Brad Pitt walked into the room as if he owned, looking very dapper in a silver vest, joshing and joking with the assembled media. He sat on a stage beside the Coen brothers, with Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich sitting at either end. And guess what? With perhaps the biggest movie star on the planet sitting up there, available, most of the questions were directed at the two nerdy siblings who made the movie. There was not a single personal question about Angelina and the twins, never mind Jennifer Aniston, whose concurrent presence at TIFF has fostered all manner of speculative nonsense in the media about a Brad-Jennifer reunion. The closest anyone came was a query about the possibility of Brad and Angelina working together again, to which Brad quipped, “Angie and I are working together every day, I can guarantee it.”
The Coens maintained their reputation for not saying anything of substance when questioned by journalists. But they at least tried to explain it’s not because they’re patronizing snobs, but because Continue…
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BTC: Say goodnight, Boo Boo
By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 26, 2008 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments
(This post will be updated below. Last updated at 2:40am.)
The popular guess among the dozen or so reporters gathered in the foyer had Maxime Bernier as good as gone. Only one member of the press gallery foresaw something less interesting to come. And, to be fair, on most matters of Hill anticipation, he probably would’ve been guessing right.
But here came the Prime Minister, walking a bit slow and looking a bit glum. (Were those tears in his eyes?) A small gaggle of Conservative MPs lurked in the shadows, apparently unaware of what was to come. So too loitered a few opposition members, the House having just voted on some matter or another. And, surely, as the Prime Minister arrived at the mic stand, those reporters nominated to ask questions—two English, two French—prayed their Bernier-centric preparations would prove worthwhile.
And so they did. Bernier had resigned. Something about leaving some top secret documents where they shouldn’t have been left. A very grave error, the Prime Minister said. “A failure to uphold accepted standards on government documents,” he explained, managing to make it seem Mr. Bernier had merely failed to fill out the proper form in registering for some health insurance. Continue…
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Weekend Notes (Vol. 1, No. 18)
By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, May 18, 2008 at 3:00 AM - 0 Comments
The Prime Minister’s second answer on Thursday included this meditation on patriotism. “Whenever this government announces something for the men and women of the forces, the Liberals always attack it. They always complain. Canadians know their attitude and that is why they elected a government to be for the Canadian Forces.”
The same day, Rick Fuschi, Conservative candidate in 2006 for Windsor-Tecumseh, posted these thoughts on one of our Forces’ more decorated veterans. “Romeo Dallaire is a Liberal soldier. That’s similar to jumbo shrimp. Before he became confused about right and wrong, he was best known for having had emotional difficulty after witnessing wholesale slaughter in Rwanda, and becoming confused about the required action. The height of his confusion was becoming a Liberal senator. Now he is doing his best to confuse the rest of us about the definition of ‘enemy.’” Continue…
