Newsmakers 2012: Down and out

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, December 21, 2012 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

DARRYL DYCK/CP

Fairest of the fair

Jenna Talackova may have failed to win the Miss Universe crown, but she inspired transgendered people with her battle to compete. The Vancouverite, who had sex-change surgery at 19, was disqualified because she was not a “naturally born” woman, as per pageant rules. She threatened to sue before contest owner Donald Trump intervened on the basis that she was a legally recognized female in Canada (surely Trump’s most sensible public statement all year). Talackova went on to win Miss Congeniality.

Bo who?

Watch in 2013 for the erasure of Bo Xilai from the official history of the Chinese Communist Party. The former party chief in Chongqing was seen as a potential president before his wife, Gu Kailai, was implicated last spring in the murder of a British businessman and the family’s corrupt dealings were exposed for all in China to see. Now, with Gu convicted, Bo facing bribery charges and with public anger over corruption on the rise in China, the party is denying he had much influence to begin with.

Hoof-in-mouth disease

Conservative MP Rob Anders, a reliable contender for space on this page in past years, outdid himself in 2012 by claiming that NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair “helped hasten” Jack Layton’s death. The Calgary MP, known for sleeping in the Commons and for dismissing Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, told a reporter that Mulcair implicitly pressured the cancer-stricken Layton to relinquish the NDP leadership in the run-up to the 2011 election—a theory the Prime Minister’s Office quickly disavowed. Anders wound up grovelling to Layton’s widow, Olivia Chow. But his apologies weren’t enough for some. One Calgary man started an online petition to have Anders removed from the Tory caucus. Continue…

Jenna Talackova: Born to be queen

By Emma Teitel - Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 4:12 PM - 0 Comments

iPhoto/CP

There was a time, not so long ago, when Donald Trump demanded that Barack Obama surrender his birth certificate to the world to unequivocally prove his American citizenship. Now Trump, the co-sponsor of the Miss Universe pageant along with NBC, is being prevailed upon to produce a credential of his own—call it his little apprentice—to prove his bona fides as a Mister. The woman asking to see the proof in question is Gloria Allred, the celebrity feminist lawyer representing the only transgendered contestant in this year’s Miss Universe Canada competition: 23-year-old Jenna (nee Walter) Talackova of Vancouver. Last month Talackova was removed from the competition when organizers were informed that she failed to meet the “natural born woman” criterion in the pageant rulebook.  Gloria Allred’s response was swift and simple: if Talackova had to show “hers” to qualify for the pageant, the Donald, as competition sponsor, should have to show “his” in the spirit of fair play.

Lucky for us, nobody showed anything. And Canadian law—which recognizes Talackova as an official female—melted Trump’s icy heart (the same one that has coldly quashed entrepreneurial dreams on television for the past eight years) long enough for him to re-instate the 23-year-old into the competition. The law, that is, and possibly an online petition drafted by Change.org, the social activism website which recently brought you campaigns like “Let Ernie and Bert get married on Sesame Street,” “Starbucks: stop using bugs to colour your strawberry-flavoured drinks,” and the somewhat lesser-known Canadian campaign, “Canadian government: address the Aeronautics Act, which may ban trans people from flying.”

Continue…