A passel of Michael Coren supporters have arrived at backofthebook to defend his “interview” with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on the SUN “News” Network. (I always keep a small pile of ironic quotation marks handy when I write about SUN TV.) You’ll find them milling in the comments section following Rabbi Boteach’s account of the hostilities, which we published as soon as it landed in our inbox. That was on Thursday, a few hours before the program had even aired. Rabbi Boteach has a very good PR apparatus.

One of the commenters takes us to task for not publishing “the response article by Michael Coren.” Presumably he means Coren’s blog in The Huffington Post, which we didn’t publish because HE WROTE IT FOR THE HUFFINGTON POST. See how that works? Our correspondent might better have taken us to task for publishing the Rabbi’s rebuttal before we’d even seen the buttal. But now that the program has aired, it seems obvious to me he was entirely right to call Coren on his obnoxious remarks and behaviour.

You can decide for yourself . . .

. . . but what I see is Coren tipping headlong into the old Jews control Hollywood thing, while adding a twist new to me: And hence, they use their power to make movies that parody Christians. One wonders what movies he means (and so does the Rabbi, who tries fruitlessly to get an example out of him). And then, like that Italian cruise ship captain, Coren looks up from his lifeboat and realizes it’s not where he’s supposed to be. The cruise ship captain’s response was to claim he fell in accidentally; Coren’s is to explain that he doesn’t mean that Jews actually control Hollywood, just that they’re very influential, and goodness, that’s all to their credit!

Oh please. If he wasn’t implying that they control the place, then how is it he figures they can get their malicious portrayals of good-hearted Jesus-lovers onto the screen? By talking others into slandering Christians for them?

Next day, Coren appeared fearlessly on another SUN News Network show to defend himself.

Hilariously, he makes two claims. One is that Boteach is only trying to sell his book. (By appearing on SUN TV in Canada? That’ll be good for two copies.) The other is that he “doesn’t realize my place in Canada. This will probably backfire.”

His place in Canada. Now, I expect Coren isn’t an anti-semite, but he’s obviously a big self-kidder. Outside of cities where the SUN Newspapers are sold, his profile is roughly that of, say, Adam and Morgan. (Who are Adam and Morgan? Exactly.) Or perhaps he means his place as a defender of Israel, but he isn’t exactly alone in that portfolio either. We’re looking at you, National Post.

Of course, being a defender of Israel doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re philo-semitic. It could just mean that you like heavily militarized, legs akimbo, right-wing governments. One wonders if these friends of Israel would be quite so friendly if a less belligerent administration, like the one Yitzhak Rabin led, and got assassinated for, was in power.

But let’s take Michael Coren’s word for it: he loves the Jews, and they, in turn, all over Canada, hold him in high esteem. Now, could he treat the ones who come on his show as guests, rather than test audiences for his truly strange notions of what they do and do not think?

By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Today I had what was probably the most unpleasant TV interview of my life on Canada’s Sun News Network (national). Interviewed by host Michael Coren about my book Kosher Jesus, I expected to be asked about the book’s content. The interview started that way. But then Coren quickly got to a question that seemed to be bursting from within. You’ll have to see the exact show, airing tonight at 7pm, for complete accuracy, and I am writing this about an hour after.

Coren essentially asked me why Jews depict Christians so negatively. He went on about how much the Catholic Church and Christians in general have done for the Jews of late. Yet the Jews continue to be so unappreciative, always questioning Christian motivation, always finding fault with Christians no matter what.

I asked him to justify his claim that Jews depict Christians negatively. He said something like, “What do you mean? Just look at Hollywood.”

Hollywood? I was confused. Weren’t we just talking about Jewish-Christian relations? Where did Hollywood come in, unless, for Coren, Jews and Hollywood were synonymous.

What was the connection between Hollywood’s depiction of Christians and the Jews, I asked. The show went downhill from there, with the anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jews controlling and influencing Hollywood dominating the interview. I defended my people against this disgusting slur, a tributary of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that the Jews control whole segments of society, in this case the motion picture industry, which they use to negatively depict Christians as a bunch of illiterate and primitive bumpkins.

From there Coren went on to speak about the negative Jewish depiction of Pope Pius XII, which I battled him on further. This was amazing. The Jews were defaming the saintly Pope Pius? For the record, I have written a great deal on Pius XII, the man John Cornwell, a non-Jewish British journalist, famously called Hitler’s Pope in his best-selling 1999 biography of the same name. Pius was the wartime Pope who never once condemned the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews through all the years of the Holocaust and who, after the war, allowed the mass kidnapping of Jewish children who had originally been given by their families to Christians in order to save their lives. Pius advised, in the form of a typewritten directive discovered in a French church archive and dated Oct. 23, 1946, that church authorities not return to their relatives Jewish children who had been baptized. They must remain Christian and should not be returned to Jewish families.

He was the Pope who famously refused, amid unmistakable evidence of thousands of Jews being shipped to slaughter in Nazi concentration camps, to ever speak out against the Holocaust. This followed Pius’ successful efforts to prevent the publication of an encyclical commissioned by his dying predecessor to condemn Nazi anti-Semitism. This is also the Pope who sent Hitler birthday greetings every single year and who refused to excommunicate Hitler or any other top Nazis who were on official Catholic rolls (to give this context, the singer Sinead O’Connor was excommunicated). He ignored the pleas of President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to denounce the Nazis. He later refused to endorse a joint declaration by Britain, U.S and Russia condemning mass murder of Europe’s Jews, claiming that he simply could not condemn “particular” atrocities. The most he ever did was a single pronouncement during the war on the murder “of hundredsof thousands.” By then, of course, there were millions, and he did not mention Hitler, Nazi Germany, or the Jews in the statement. Most infamously, he was silent when the Germans rounded up Rome’s Jews in October 1944 for slaughter. They were being processed for extermination in a military school a few hundred yards from his window in St. Peter’s. An Italian princess, Enza Pignatelli, forced her way into the Pope’s study and warned him about the imminent assault on the city’s Jewish citizens. “You must act immediately,” she cried. “The Germans are arresting the Jews and taking them away. Only you can stop them.” The Pope assured her, “I will do all I can.” He made no protest and nearly all were later gassed in Auschwitz. Curiously, amid the Pope’s inability to find his voice to condemn the extermination of European Jewry, when the Catholic archbishop of Berlin issued a statement mourning Hitler’s death, the Pope did not reprimand him.

Those who have read my writings, and especially those who have read Kosher Jesus, will know that I have unbridled love for my Christian brothers and sisters, a deep respect and affection I have written and spoken about on countless occasions. They will also know that I was given the great pleasure and honor of being greeted by Pope Benedict in Rome in 2010. They will further know that I am invited to address Christian audiences the world over, including in Israel. And I wrote Kosher Jesus in response to the great Christian yearning to discover the Jewishness of Jesus.

But people like Coren who perpetuate the anti-Semitic canard that Jews both control Hollywood and have contempt for Christians are a serious obstruction to the new era of Jewish-Christian brotherhood and rapprochement. It is an absolute lie that Jews have contempt for Christians. It is likewise a lie that Christians are victims of Jewish hostility, as Coren implies. The truth, of course, is that Jews have suffered mightily at the hands of Christianity for nearly two millennium. But thankfully a succession of great Christian men and women in modern times, led by Pope John XXIII, the greatest of all popes, and then by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both outstanding friends of world Jewry, and joined especially by the 80 million born-again Christians in the United States, the vast majority of whom are phenomenal friends of Israel, have reversed this trend and made Catholicism and Christianity stalwart allies and friends of G-d’s chosenpeople.

Denying the past is not going to increase our friendship just as being limited by it will not either. This is a new time for Jews and Christians. Let’s forgo the old animosities, the old prejudices, and especially the old and ugly stereotypes. Michael Coren owes Jewry an apology. If he’s man enough to give it I will overlook his foul treatment of me, both during the interview and after it was over.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek calls “the most famous Rabbi in America,” was the host of TLC’s Shalomin the Home (which won the National Fatherhood Award), was the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium, and received the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. The international best-selling author of 27 books, he has just published Kosher Jesus. He is currently mulling a run for Congress from New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District, running as a Republican. www.shmuleyforcongress.com

Oh dear. What a dilemma eh? I just created my very own Con Klown Hypocrisy Award. But now I can’t seem to decide who is this week’s winner. So please help me out .

Here are the candidates in no particular order:

(1) PHILLIP HINKLE, the 64-year old Republican State Representative from Indiana, who is a well known Christianist anti-gay activist, and the man who got the state to offer an “In God We Trust” licence plate.

But apparently has a thing for teenage boy hookers.

The email exchange is in response to the Craigslist posting in which the young man — who lists his age as 20 in the ad but says he is 18-years old — says, “I need a sugga daddy.”

The young man told The [Indianapolis] Star that they met, but that he tried to leave after the man told him he was a state lawmaker. He said the lawmaker at first told him he could not leave, grabbed him in the rear, exposed himself to the young man and then later gave him an iPad, BlackBerry cellphone and $100 cash to keep quiet.

(2) BRIAN LILLEY, the Sun News columnist, who is always going on about separatists and radical lefties, but is apparently unaware of what’s going on in his own organization.

And the former terrorists they employ.

Brian has every right in the world to denounce radical left-wing fringe elements, real or imagined, in Canadian society. However, he might have taken a look in his backyard before getting all frothy. Had he done so, he’d note that QMI, Sun’s own press agency, which provides much of the content to the Sun chain of papers, regularly publishes the bon mots of one Jacques Lanctôt.

He was one of the driving forces behind the Front de libération de Québec (FLQ) and founder of the FLQ’s ‘Liberation cell’ that was responsible for the kidnapping of British trade secretary James Cross in 1970. He served three years in jail as a result, and went into exile for eight years after his release. Now he writes for the same outfit as Brian Lilley, who for some reason has made no mention of this flagrant infiltration of a known communist, separatist radical into one of the largest media companies in the country. What if the CBC had published the columns of a known communist, separatist radical? You think we’d be hearing the same silence?

(3) GIORGIO MAMMOLITI, Rob Ford’s right hand man gopher goomba. Who when he isn’t stalking lesbians, or smelling out communists on his Facebook page . . . or everywhere . . . is leading the charge to slash spending at City Hall.

Even though Mammy himself is rather partial to golf.

Toronto city hall has seen few more dedicated riders of the municipal gravy train than Mammoliti. In past years he was remarkably free with taxpayer-funded office expenses, once arguing that councillors who didn’t exhaust their expense budget, then $70,000, simply weren’t doing a good job. He even voted against ending councillors’ free golf privileges, resulting in a 22-22 tie which kept that outrageous perk alive.

Gawd. You see what I mean? What a difficult choice eh?

Oh well. I leave it up to you to decide who deserves all the manure they can bag.

And all I will say is Hinkle is in a pinkle. Lilley is so shilly.

And of course, Mammy is Mammy . . .

Oh Mammy, Mammy, I need a sugga daddy. Or a golf club.

Below we reprint our 2007 Western Standard obituary (the publication does still exist, barely, as a rump website), including a sampling of stiffed subscribers’ comments. As one of them notes: “To take someone’s money when you have no intention of providing that service is fraudulent and, in my opinon, immoral.”

Krista Erickson couldn’t have said it better (or, rather, have Kory Teneycke write it for her). By the way, Erickson’s public facebook page is currently home to its own set of pithy comments about her obnoxious behaviour in the now infamous interview with Margie Gillis, including a number that remark on her publically-subsidized tenure at the CBC, and her publically-funded travel with MP boyfriend Lee Richardson.

***

Standard Procedure
First published Oct. 19, 2007

By Frank Moher

I felt some sympathy for Ezra Levant around the shuttering of his Western Standard magazine, until I received this item of boilerplate e-mail:

Dear Western Standard reader,

I’m sorry to report that we’ve had to shut down the print edition of the Western Standard. Despite nearly four valiant years of trying, we were unable to make ends meet financially. I regret that means we will be unable to fulfill our oustanding subscription obligations, and for that I’m very sorry.

I wasn’t a Western Standard subscriber — I received its e-mails because I had registered for its website, in hopes it would provide grist for this blog. As it has. It is to laugh. All those loyal subscribers with their avaricious belief in the free-market, now invited to place their subscriptions where the liberal sun don’t shine. Perfect.

Levant didn’t help matters by telling The Globe and Mail that “the magazine wasn’t purely an economic mission to begin with, but also a moral one.” Apparently that morality doesn’t extend to meeting one’s financial commitments. It’s not easy to find the responses of aggrieved dumped subscribers on the website (which is, so far, still extant), so — as just another of the many public services we provide here at BoB — sans subscription fee, by the way — I’ve posted a few at the end of this message.

Perhaps this experience will help right-wingers get over their fantasy that an endeavour like Western Standard is possible in Canada without government grants. Even $63,366 in postal subsidies from the feds in 2005-06 wasn’t enough to keep it going; what it probably needed to have a shot at survival was assistance from the Canada Magazine Fund. Let me be a bit conciliatory: I’d gladly have had my tax dollars directed to Western Standard in order to be able to continue to read it; it had some good writers, and its comic value was incalculable.

My schadenfreude spent, let me be even more conciliatory. It’s hard to celebrate the loss of a western Canadian magazine that, its title notwithstanding, aimed to have a national circulation and the sway that goes with it. We do still have among us The Report, a monthly out of Edmonton that is the true heir of the old Alberta Report, but it is largely unknown elsewhere. That leaves those of us west of Mississauga to the ministrations of Maclean’s and various other central Canadian colissi. Maclean’s has made some strides in becoming genuinely national since Ken Whyte took over, but Whyte, for all his talents, is too much now a creature of downtown Toronto to really do the job.

There is one ray of hope, digitally-generated, in all this, and that’s the emergence of a handful of online magazines like thetyee.ca, orato.com, and, dare I say? — backofthebook.ca in and around Vancouver. The Tyee is BC-oriented, orato is determinedly internationalist, but they, like we, are at least coming from someplace other than walking distance of Yonge Street.

Wait, there’s one other. Perhaps the death of Western Standard will spell the end of the absurd conflation of conservative and western Canadian interests that began with Bible Bill Aberhart and picked up speed at Ted Byfield’s Alberta Report back in the days when both Whyte and I were working there. Believe it or not, being right wing and, say, Albertan, aren’t necessarily one and the same. As Ezra Levant is currently discovering, the hard way.

Just some of the happy Western Standard subscribers! . . .

“We too have lost out on most of the remainder of our subscription and while I supported this magazine, I understand people complaining about the loss of their money (especially those poor people who renewed in the past month when magazine leadership should have known that this was going to happen).

“I do not perceive their complaining as being selfish or cheap but I view what has happened regarding subscriptions as an ethical issue.

“By accepting someone’s money for a subscription you are entering into a legal agreement to provide a service for that money. To take someone’s money when you have no intention of providing that service is fraudulent and, in my opinon, immoral.”

***

“Three times I have supported getting out the Conservative message; the first time it was buying $1000.00 in Ted Byfield’s enterprise (last I heard the share was worth 1 cent); the second time it was Link Byfield’s BC/Alberta Report magazine (A two year subscription lost when the Magazine went into bankruptcy); now another two year subscription lost as the Western Report folds. I wonder how much those two “Conservative Cruises” contributed to the bankruptcy and were the two Byfields guests or paying passengers?”

***

“One thing, Ezra. I sent $50 to your magazine to help fight the Human Rights case. After that, I subscribed when you sent me an email promising me your book, “The War On Fun”, if I should subscribe. I never received the book after a year, and stalled re-subscribing until I did. I looked at it like a campaign promise broken, which it really was. Since I stalled on re-subscribing until this book promise was resolved, and your magazine folded in the meantime, I saved my money. This was the only blight on an otherwise politically fresh red apple.”

***

“Great magazine, sad to see it go. However, I am a full time student, and unlike most subscribers, I don’t have money to throw around, and I just renewed last month (after a phone call asking me to renew, no less, which makes me wonder if it was a cash grab).”

***

“If the WS still has an Internet presence, then there is still a company carrying on business. It hasn’t gone bankrupt. It is presumably making money off its advertising on the Internet. So why shouldn’t it pay its print subscribers?”

***

And one mildly peeved former columnist, Colby Cosh:

“It has to be admitted that the shutdown was poorly handled from the standpoint of the editorial employees and contributors. I can’t speak for anybody else, but I got the news the same way the public did, from Ezra’s announcement on the Shotgun. I was mere hours away from leaving town for Thanksgiving, and those who depended more heavily on the Standard for their income must have been in the same rather awkward situation. (Cook a bigger turkey, Grandma, I’m out of work!)

“. . . I personally am in arrears for only one issue, and if I never see the final payment that makes me even-steven with the magazine (no one has officially told me it is not in the mail), I will still have been treated more fairly than I was by my longtime employers at Alberta Report, who owed me thousands of dollars in back pay and statutory severance and failed to follow up on repeated verbal promises to send at least some meagre crust. (I’m grateful that the Standard did not attempt some preposterous strategy like converting the magazine to a non-profit while everyone was still employed and then claiming that the old obligations of the for-profit company had been mystically liquidated by the changeover.)”

By Louis Laberge-Côté
Contemporary dancer / choreographer / teacher / arts lover / taxpayer

If by attacking dance artist Margie Gillis on the Canada Live show aired on June 1st, Krista Erickson, anchorwoman for the Sun News Network, intended to publicly insult a well-respected artist on a sensationalist broadcast news channel, she certainly achieved her goal. Of course, Miss Erickson is allowed to have her own opinions and she has the right to express them. But when it comes to journalism, shouldn’t it be somewhat of a moral obligation for the reporter to put aside her personal opinions to look at a situation from different perspectives, gather information from different sources and, obviously, allow her guest to express her point of view? Isn’t it ridiculously unprofessional and profoundly inhumane to invite a woman such as Margie Gillis just to publicly bully her, with no possibility for real discourse, in the name of a few minutes of “great television”?

But behind the obvious lack of respect and consideration, what was most shocking during this interview is that Miss Erickson was clearly more interested in diffusing an extreme anti-arts agenda than honest and truthful information.

If Miss Erickson had done her homework more thoroughly (listing all the grants one specific artist received during the last 13 years, although impressive looking, is certainly not enough to discuss the subject of public arts funding as a whole), she probably would have arrived at different conclusions. Or at least, let’s hope so. She likes numbers, so let’s play her game:

In 2007, The Conference Board estimated that the economic footprint of Canada’s culture sector was $84.6 billion, or 7.4 per cent of Canada’s total real GDP, including direct, indirect, and induced contributions. Culture sector employment exceeded 1.1 million jobs in 2007. And by the way, culture sector workers (including artists) are taxpayers just like any other worker in Canada, something Miss Erickson seems to easily forget. Furthermore, according to The Conference Board, the “Arts and culture industries play a vital role in attracting people, business, and investment, and in distinguishing Canada as a dynamic and exciting place to live and work… The culture sector bridges geographical distances and creates greatly expanded social networks.” (Valuing Culture: Measuring and Understanding Canada’s Creative Economy. 2008.)

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/documents.aspx?did=2671

And this is not hard to believe. Each time an artist like Margie Gillis receives a grant, Canadians are hired: dancers, actors, musicians, composers, rehearsal directors, lighting/costume/set designers, photographers, administrative and marketing staff, to name a few. Rehearsal and performing space are rented. Eventually, posters, flyers, ads and programs are designed, printed and distributed. Many audience members go to a restaurant before or after the performance traveling by car, taxi, or public transportation. Previews and reviews are written in newspapers and magazines. Tourists come to a city or decide to stay longer to see a specific show or exhibition. Touring artists fly and travel all around the world on commercial airlines. The list goes on and on.

In fact, we should consider cultural public funding as a collective investment and certainly not as a “waste”, to use one of Miss Erickson’s favourite terms. According to Canadian Heritage, the federal cultural funding totals “$1.51 billion for the fiscal years from 2010 to 2015”, which amounts to an average of about $300 million a year. (Canadian Heritage – News Releases/ Statements. 2009.)

http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/infocntr/cdm-mc/index-eng.cfm?action=doc&DocIDCd=CJM090829

The Canadian federal budget expenditures totaled $276 billion in 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canadian_federal_budget

Looking at it proportionally, it is easy to see that cultural funding doesn’t represent that much money in the big picture. In fact, wanting to cut these amounts to help the economy is somewhat similar to wanting to cut the toenails of an obese man, just so he could lose some weight. Somewhat ridiculous, don’t you think? Especially since by comparing these numbers with the ones from the Conference Board, we can also see that this “small” collective investment is actually quite a profitable one; the Conference Board estimates that in 2007, the expenses related to culture on all levels of government together (federal, provincial and local) reached $7.9 billion. This $7.9 billion generated $84.6 globally, something we all benefit from, and not only the “cultural elites” as Miss Erickson likes to believe. In fact, respected Danish researcher Bengt-Åke Lundvall clearly demonstrated that countries who do better economically and politically are precisely the ones who deliberately contributed to a “creative and cultural climate”.

But obviously, the cultural sector is about something much greater than the money it generates. The real power of the arts is not material and pretending otherwise is as ridiculous as saying that the car industry is about paying for the groceries of the builders, while ignoring that cars are made for transportation. According to a study published in the British Medical Association’s Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, cultured people are more satisfied with their lives, regardless of how educated or rich they are. Researchers led by Koenraad Cuypers of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology analyzed information collected from 50,797 adults living in Norway’s Nord-Trondelag County. The participants were asked detailed questions about their leisure habits and how they perceived their own state of health and well-being. “After adjusting for relevant confounding factors” — including socio-economic status — “it seemed that cultural participation was independently associated with good health, a low depression score and satisfaction with life”, the study’s authors write.

Is that something a conscientious government should care about? Obviously. Miss Erickson’s assertion on the June 1st edition of The Waste Report that apparently most Conservatives privately think that arts funding is ridiculous, if true, says much more about the Conservative party than about the value of the arts in our society. In fact, most countries financially support their cultural industry in a way or another. And this goes back to the Roman Empire, if not before. Behind the masterworks of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Bach or Mozart, there is a pope or a monarch. Were these works directly profitable from a business sense as they were being created? Probably not. Do these works enrich the lives of many human beings from all around the world since their creation? Of course. I personally cannot imagine a world without the works of Beethoven, Molière or Da Vinci and I am extremely grateful that somebody allowed them to create such beautiful expressions of humanity.

But let’s use a more contemporary example; Cirque du Soleil started from nothing and is now worth around $2 billion. In the early ‘80s, the founders were a few unknown artists living in Baie-Saint-Paul with no rehearsal space. I am pretty sure Miss Erickson would have gladly described them as “walk like an Egyptian” “artsy fartsy” “cultural elites”, to use more of the colourful language she enjoys so much. But luckily, Guy Laliberté didn’t meet with Miss Erickson when he needed public support. He met with Québec Premier René Lévesque who took the time to listen. Thanks to a politician who had faith in culture, this little circus with no audience at the time became a highly successful international enterprise. But this didn’t happen in one day. It took many years of research, development, and trial and error which were at first not profitable.

Contemporary interpretive dance is not a commercial art form. In many cases such as Margie Gillis’, it is an intimate, personal journey, not meant to be shared in front of a huge audience, making profits more difficult to achieve. Does this mean this work shouldn’t be created? Certainly not. Artists like Margie inspire and enlighten many people on a very deep emotional, spiritual and intellectual level and act as ambassadors all over the world. They push and define the limits of imagination, research, difference, individuality, identity, language, humanity, compassion, criticism, connection, understanding, and beauty. Again, the fact that Miss Erickson cannot relate to any of it certainly says far more about her than the work itself. In fact, many artistic movements and creators were at first not appreciated by their contemporaries. For the longest time, jazz music had a very limited audience. Artists such as Van Gogh and Stravinsky, whose work is greatly appreciated nowadays, had very difficult beginnings. Many of the things we can enjoy today as “normal entertainment” would have been completely misunderstood just a hundred years ago. And that’s normal, as this is how humanity evolves. Should we stop artistic evolution just because it requires effort and personal exploration to fully appreciate it, especially knowing that this pattern (avant-garde works not being mainstream) has existed for centuries? Obviously no.

And of course, this pattern also exists in other fields. Take science for example. There is practical science which has clear direct function. And there is leading-edge research, which doesn’t necessarily have immediate results. But leading-edge research is the reason why diabetes treatments, X-rays and supersonic planes exist today. I don’t understand why artists are being publicly described as spoiled elitists when the government also supports the pharmaceutical industry, high-caliber sports or higher education. Everything is financed by the state. And everybody benefits from it. When an athlete competes on an international level, we’re all winners. When an artist like Margie Gillis presents her work internationally, the effect is the same.

I will conclude all this by quoting Laurent Simon who said, “The world that is coming scares the traditionalists, since its models are less controllable than the analysis of an economy centered around the classical schemes of production and return”. It is very saddening to see that this fear now results in aggressive, partisan and close-minded “journalism” on Canadian television. Let’s just hope that the world of tomorrow will be more respectful, wise, compassionate and, as opposed to Miss Erickson, willing to allocate a portion of the taxpayer money towards world peace.

“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde

I would like to thank Nova Bhattacharya, Michael Caldwell, Alexandre Chartrand, Pierre Duhamel, Jean-Philippe Joubert, Simon Jodoin, Tara Gonder, Catherine Lalonde, Graham McKelvie, Nathalie Petrowski, Brian Solomon, Jean-Jacques Stréliski and William Yong who were all a great inspiration and help as I was writing this. And of course, heartfelt thanks to Margie Gillis for being such an incredible example of wisdom, kindness and strength to all of us.

In the meantime, what can you do?
1. Do not watch Sun TV and avoid visiting their website as they receive money from their sponsors each time you do so. But of course, this is inevitable if you want to see the interview mentioned earlier (http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/971454253001) or send them your complaints (http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/about-sun.html).
2. Write to your MP about extreme political propaganda and misrepresentation in the media.
3. Send your complaints to the CRTC (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/INFO_SHT/G8.HTM). Complaints need to be filed within 4 weeks following the broadcast, so be fast!
4. Ask your cable TV provider to remove SunTV from your bundle.
5. Learn your statistics, numbers, quotes and facts about the importance and the benefits of the arts in our society. Be prepared for heated discussions.
6. Remind people that artists are taxpayers too.
7. Share this letter or any other relevant information with as many people as you can.
8. Support the arts proudly and let the people around you know how important and enriching it is to do so.
9. Stay gracious, open, creative and compassionate. Example is the best teacher.

Please watch this inspirational interview with paleontologist Donald C. Johanson about what makes us humans: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150175212469795&oid=95578378591&comments

Uh oh. Talk about poking our privacy. The bitter nerd Stephen Harper has been caught with his pants down reading our Facebook pages. And looking like a creeper.

From The Vancouver Sun: “Prime Minister Stephen Harper is suddenly on the defensive for running a closed and ‘unCanadian’ campaign after two university students were ejected from one of his rallies because they had posted a Facebook picture of themselves with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.”

An Amerikan.

Iggy: “I just think when you get to a situation where people can’t come to a public meeting in Canada and get thrown out by two heavies because they have a Facebook friend from another party, you’re in a bad place. You’re in a very unCanadian place.”

Or just have a Great Chicken Leader.

It’s absurd to suggest that the same man who needs protection from reporters and politically curious young women is fit to handle further economic crises, wars in Libya and Afghanistan, and the ever-present risk of natural disaster, major accident, or terrorist attack on Canadian soil. If you want to sell the Prime Minister’s strong leadership, avoiding unforced errors like these is a good place to start.

And look who came flying to his defence. Looking like a chicken, and shitting like a Pigeon.

“‘Today, Michael Ignatieff called Prime Minister Stephen Harper un-Canadian. Michael Ignatieff is hardly on solid ground on this issue,’ said [Conservative MP John] Baird, who then launched into the familiar Conservative talking points about Ignatieff’s patriotism, or lack thereof, in their view.”

The gay guy who services serves the homophobes. Talk about a credibility gap, eh?

But of course Ignatieff is absolutely right. This sinister Facebook totalitarianism came straight from Amerika.

From the diseased mind of George Bush’s flying monkey Karl Rove.

He created a data base that allowed the Republicans to know what Americans were thinking, neighbourhood after neighbourhood, block after block.

From the moment they came to power Harper’s AmeriCons did the same thing, gathering masses of information on every Canadian, so they could tailor their dirty wedge issues accordingly.

They read our blogs and facebook pages, they monitor chatrooms, they try to find out who we are, where we work, and whether we have any weaknesses they can use against us. It’s the greatest invasion of privacy in the history of this country, and in the hands of these totalitarian thugs, it’s a mortal threat to our democracy.

The good news? If they were hoping to win over the youth vote they can forget about that now. Lying about an i-pod tax is bad enough.

But creeping our Facebook pages is totally not done. And Great Chicken Leader is about to find that out the hard way.

You know, when the Cons are defeated there will have to be a massive police investigation to find out what this un-Canadian regime has been up to without our knowledge.

But while the cops go after the Cons.

I’m going after the database eh?

Like this guy did . . .

 
Golly. Do you think I could get John Baird to sing “Stephen . . . Stephen . . . give me your answer do

“I’m half crazy over my love for YOUUUUUuuuuuuuuu . . . .”

Nah. That would be TOO good.

Hey kids. Now you have NO excuse. Defeat those sinister AmeriCons.

Before they creep you out . . .

Montreal Simon

Gawd. What an awful day. Work was hell. It was rainy and slushy. The brand new rink is melting. And then when I made it home on all fours and put on the TV, there was Stephen Harper having a chummy chat with Peter Mansbridge.

Great Ugly himself squatting on a chair, with his legs spread wide apart like he was about to give birth. Blowing smoke out of both ends.

Asked by Mansbridge what his “gut feeling” was on whether there will be a federal election in 2011, the prime minister insisted the Conservatives would be ready if the opposition parties trigger one.

“My gut tells me I don’t know,” Harper said. “It’s 50/50. We take the threats from the opposition very seriously. I don’t think it’s in the country’s interest, I don’t think it makes any sense to have one right now, but if we’re forced into one, we’ll be ready.”

Claiming he doesn’t want an election, he’s not interested in partisan politics, he just wants to make us rich, if that nasty coalition would let him. And of course he’s just a nice guy who loves hockey.

When in fact he wants an election and his precious majority so bad he can bite it. He’s just squatted over Canada and dumped a steamy load of some of the most disgusting attack ads this country has ever seen.

Where the leader of the Opposition is portrayed as a sinister foreigner.

Who hates Canada.

Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe are portrayed as traitors.

Plotting to destroy this country.

The only people getting richer in Harper’s Canada are the rich.

According to Toronto research agency Investor Economics, the richest 3.8 per cent of Canadian households controlled 66.6 per cent of all financial wealth (not counting real estate) by 2009, up from 60.6 per cent in 2005 just before the Conservatives came to power.

The federal government is being bled white even as an aging population prepares to swamp existing services.

And of course Stephen Harper is NOT a nice guy, he’s a power hungry right-wing ideologue who is leading us to a very dark place to satisfy his inner demons.

Gosh. It seems so obvious to me eh? But then I remembered what Lawrence Martin wrote on Tuesday.

With the release of the ads, Mr. Harper appears to be sticking with the tactics that helped get him here. He’s banking on the notion that, in the end, Canadians really don’t care whether their prime minister has any class or not.

And I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of country we are becoming? Are we being dumbed down or numbed into bovine complacency? Have five years of this foul regime ground down our values so much, that nothing shocks us anymore?

Or is it, as James Travers suggests, that the country itself is changing?

Federal politicians no longer debate the broad questions of justice, climate change or foreign policy. Instead, they dispute the details of law and order, ethical oil and how long to extend the Afghan mission.

And then I was forced to consider whether in that kind of Canada Stephen Harper COULD fool enough people to get his majority. And finish off what remains of this country.

Because in the Kingdom of the Dumb and the Numb ANYTHING is possible.

And then I felt dizzy. Like that other Simon in the Lord of the Flies did, when he stared at the pig’s head . . .

And realized the monster was US.

Oh boy. I’ll be back. We WILL win. Those ugly Cons WILL be defeated.

But right now I feel I’m drowning . . .

By Alison@Creekside

For want of just eight more votes, Bill C-440 — the war resisters bill to give protection to US Iraq war deserters — went down to defeat on Wednesday 136 to 143.

The following 18 Libs expedited that defeat by going awol on the vote:

Michael Ignatieff, Jean-Claude D’Amours, Ruby Dhalla, Kirsty Duncan, Marc Garneau, Albina Guarnieri, Dominic LeBlanc, Keith Martin, John McCallum, Brian Murphy, Anthony Rota, Judy Sgro, Michelle Simson, Frank Valeriote, Joe Volpe, Bryon Wilfert, and Lise Zarac, with Lib Alan Tonks voting with the Cons against it.

Special mention goes out to Lib Frank Valeriote who was there at 6:25 pm for the Criminal Acts Records vote five minutes before the vote on the war resisters bill, and who was on his feet again at 6:42 making a speech in favour of “revitalizing parliamentary proceedings through reforming question period” five minutes after it. Yet somehow Frank went awol in the middle.

Good job, Frank. You really want to “revitalize parliamentary proceedings”? Try showing the fuck up for what were once called liberal values. It was a Liberal bill.

Also present on Wednesday for the Criminal Acts vote but MIA five minutes later for the war resisters bill were Libs Kirsty Duncan, Brian Murphy, Judy Sgro, Joe Volpe, and Lise Zarac.

L-Girl at We Move to Canada has worked fiercely on behalf of US war resisters. She cites a letter written on Sept. 19 from a former head of the Immigration and Refugee Board to Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. In it, Peter Shormer criticizes the following July 22 CIC directive concerning war resisters who claim refugee status in Canada:

“Military deserters from other countries have sought refugee protection in Canada. Desertion from the Canadian military is a serious criminal offence.

Therefore these deserters may also be serious criminals and therefore inadmissible to Canada.”

What utterly bizarre logic. As per Shormer’s letter to Kenney, the CIC directive goes on to specifically target US war resisters for exclusion from Canada by meddling in what should be independent case reviews by the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Luckily for Kenney and the Cons and the US war on terra, this time the Leader of the Opposition and 17 more Liberals had their back.

If 2009 was The Year When All Those Famous People Died, 2010 is shaping up to be The Year of Chronic Grave-Robbing (where the “grave” is metaphorical and the “robbing” is more like “exploiting”).

Mind-bogglingly unsubtle fame-whore and living manga doll Tila Tequila (who is famous solely for throwing herself repeatedly and frantically into the public eye) made no secret of her epic grief when her fiancee Casey Johnson passed away in January, which was Actually Really Sad. However,  Tila didn’t allow her overwhelming sorrow to halt her manic twittering, mud-slinging, and spotlight-hogging, and now that the buzz has died down she is poking the hornet’s nest once more by crying “Fetus!”

And I’m no one to throw sunshine at someone else’s grief parade, but now Tequila is all, This baby, that I am totally not lying about brewing currently (even though I have in the past lied about just such a thing, and with far less reason), this baby was supposed to be my baby with Casey, who I know I only knew for like, three weeks, but who I TOTALLY LOVED, and was totally sad about . . . and also still am.  *smiles to camera, slips nip*  Also, I will totally not tell you who the father is, but it is someone “known” and in the “Entertainment Industry” and I will continue to drop hints until your attention wanes, at which point I will probably just tell you.

And while I want to feel for La Tequila and her (probably non-existent) child, when I hear things like this (admittedly paraphrased) monologue, any kernel of sympathy I may have had dries up into . . . something that is drier than a kernel, anyways.  Coal?

Tila can perhaps be forgiven, since she is only being exactly what the industry has rewarded her for being.  Closer on the spectrum to Actual Doucheyness is Brittany Murphy’s husband, Simon Monjack.  Monjack is suing Warner Brothers for dropping his wife from the film Happy Feet, claiming that losing the gig is what caused Murphy’s heart attack in December (not, you know, drugs, or being really really skinny) and suing WB for wrongful death.  Because they should have known this would do her in?  Because they are responsible for her health and well-being?

Leaving aside the fact that Murphy’s death (like Johnson’s) was Actually Really Sad, as well as the fact that Murphy had not yet signed a contract for the cartoon and could therefore not technically be fired, this is pure crazy talk.  Hollywood can no more be responsible for the fate of the stars it chooses not to employ than I can be for the fate of all the cheeseburgers I choose not to eat.  This completely non-sense-making law suit is either a grief-crazed man lashing out, or a thinly-disguised money grab.

Either way, it has to stop.  It is one (admittedly despicable) thing for ambulance chasers and paparazzi to use public tragedy for their own ends.  They, at least, are up front about their motivation.  It is another thing entirely for loved ones of the Famous Dead to cash in on their affection.  Their grief is understandable; their shameless self-serving is reprehensible.

In our last episode, I said I’d tell you what I found out about why my review of What the Furies Bring disappeared from The National Post website a day after being put up. My little investigation provides a tonic insight into what happens when journalists find themselves on the receiving end of an interview.

First, I phoned up Mark Medley, co-editor of the Post‘s online books section. Medley had earlier e-mailed me that he was looking into the matter. Now that I was calling as a reporter, though, he didn’t want to say what he’d found out. Hm.

So then I phoned up Duncan Clark, “Executive Editor, Digital.” If anyone would know why an article went poof on the Post‘s website, it’d be the Executive Editor, Digital, right? But Mr. Clark said he knew nothing of the matter and that he’d pass my number on to those who might. Something told me, however, that I wouldn’t be getting a call back from those who might.

So then I called up a third individual who, it turned out, did know what had happened but would only tell me off the record. So, of course, I can’t tell you what this individual said. I will say, though, that my prognostication skills, as demonstrated in that previous post, are pretty damn good.

You have to wonder what it is about 9/11 that puts the Post into such a dither. I have previously written about the inertia that keeps newsrooms firmly locked in groupthink. And yet all over the world, millions of people are now speculating about what really led to that day, and what really happened. And not just on internet fringe sites, but increasingly in the mainstream press and TV (see here and here and here and here), and in academic articles such as the one I cited. Truthiness isn’t just for Truthers anymore.

For the Post, however, the matter must remain fixed and dry, because . . . because why? Because otherwise it might have to look into the matter? Because corporations dislike uncertainty? Because they’ve been told to toe the line? Because other newspaper people might laugh at them?

Of course, the Post might say that they simply have high standards for certitude. According to that scholarly article, there’s only a 1% chance that the sort of extraordinary stock trading that went on prior to 9/11 could have occurred randomly. But hey, 1% is 1%. “Beyond reasonable doubt” may be good enough for the court system, but not for the Post! Mind you, this is a paper that regularly publishes articles sceptical of global warming, also in the face of official explanations, and based on quite a bit less evidence than I can offer about those stock trades. But ya choose yer conspiracy theories. And besides, most of those were opinion pieces.

Oh, wait, so was mine.

And that’s what really makes what the Post did scuzzy, not to mention a bit dumb. The books section of a newspaper has traditionally been the place for a trade in ideas — ideas that originate between covers, and ideas that are offered in response. It is not just a place to remark on prose styles; it is, much of the time, a place for debate. Or should be. The appropriate response to my piece, from both a journalistic and business point-of-view, would have been to leave it on the site and let the festivities begin. Let some readers damn me, let others comment in support — think of all those page views! Let its columnists go after me, run an op-ed dissociating itself; whatever. The Books section would never have been livelier.

Instead, it chose the Delete key. If this is the way the Post intends to toddle into the prismatic future created by the internet, in which there is no one “truth,” and control of information is an anachronism, it truly is doomed, and deserves to be.