Dear Randy Quaid:

I hear Canadian authorities have decided to let you stay in Canada, and, indeed, that Canadian citizenship is now in the works for you. That’s because your wife’s dad was Canadian, so she was able to get her citizenship earlier this month, which means you can now get yours (though I don’t know why I’m telling you these things; I expect you already know).

Anyway, welcome. We’re glad to have you here. Frankly, I’ve always liked you better on screen than your little brother, who’s, well, let’s face it, a bit of a pretty boy (and, let’s face it — you’re not). Giving you refuge is in keeping with our best traditions — ones we seem to have lost touch with lately. And I think you’ll find we’re inclined to give you and Mrs. Quaid, and what some would call your wacky conspiracy theories, the benefit of the doubt.

First of all, if you’re crazy, it’s definitely craziness of the vulpine variety, as your now victorious campaign to stay here shows. But I think you’ll also find we’re more likely to believe you that there’s something fishy going on south of the border, that you might be in danger if you ended up in jail in Santa Barbara, even that there’s such a thing as star whackers. And not just because we’re pretty sure that 90% of Americans carry a gun.

We know that your country — your soon-to-be former country — is pretty messed-up right now, and has been since 9/11. That there’s a big gap down there between official reality and the real thing, and that a lot of people have a stake in making sure that gap isn’t closed. (We have similar gaps up here, but ours don’t matter nearly so much.) For all that we are much more deferential to authority in Canada, we are also less propagandized (at least for now), which means that we will not necessarily believe what we hear on FOX or MSNBC (or TMZ, for that matter). And besides, our longest-serving Prime Minister used to use ESP to communicate with his dead mother, so we’re completely down with the whole “offbeat” thing (which also explains William Shatner).

So welcome to you, Randy Quaid, and also to your resourceful wife, Evi, our prodigal daughter. Now, can I pitch you some movie ideas?

The publication ban on Project Samosa, the RCMP’s latest salvo in the war on terror, has the media scrambling to get unnamed sources and security experts to augment and substitute for accounts of court proceedings. By a happy coincidence for war on terror fans, this allows for far more pants-pissingly terrorfying conjecture than mere straight news would allow.

So far, “sources” have told one security expert, an ex-RCMP and CSIS operative quoted at CTV, that the accused:

1) “would have targeted the Parliament buildings and Montreal’s public transit system with bombs”
2) “that the ringleader went to Afghanistan and to Pakistan to receive training”
3) “some of their suspected accomplices could be in Iran or in Dubai”
4) “were assembling components for one or more bombs and had raised money for al Qaeda and the Taliban”
5) “the ringleader was about to take a trip abroad, maybe to deliver the money himself”

This last is the reported reason for the arrests. After a year of watching them:

“Police say a terror attack was likely still months away when they pounced on the plot, but they moved because they feared the men were about to start sending money to other terrorists in Afghanistan.”

Last I heard, “terrorists” in Afghanistan were already rolling in US tax dollars and drug money, but whatever.

A year ago the Star ran an excellent piece on the media’s relationship with their “sources” in the Arar case when he was the terrorist du jour: Learning from media mistakes in Arar case

Canadian Press journalist Stephen Thorne quoted an official source who linked Arar to “a suspected member of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network.”

Robert Fife, CanWest’s Ottawa bureau chief, “cited an anonymous official who described Arar as a ‘very bad guy’ who had received training at an Al Qaeda base and that intelligence received from Syria had helped the CIA avert an attack on the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.”

Craig Oliver at CTV News was “offered a photograph of Arar training in a camp in Afghanistan” Oliver: “The source wanted me to use the information without showing me the photograph. That was a very solid source . . . This experience has made me more skeptical . . . I knew these people very well.”

Ottawa Citizen‘s Juliet O’Neill was fed a story headlined “Canada’s dossier on Maher Arar: The existence of a group of Ottawa men with alleged ties to Al Qaeda is at the root of why the government opposes an inquiry into the case.”

Even after Arar’s return to Canada, “Robert Fife was once more the vehicle that Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials used to inform the public that they were ’100 per cent sure’ that Arar trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.”

Some of these reporters have since stated they were used and have apologised to Arar; some have not. The point is they were all used to disseminate false information from anonymous government and police sources to the public. Something to bear in mind when “sources” are once again where we will be getting most of our information on this newest batch of alleged terrorists, given it will likely be months if not years before they go to trial.

Hmm. What is this doing on the website of our public broadcaster?

Vancouver protestors fall silent.

The article I have linked to on the CBC site is a product of its agreement with The National Post to jointly cover the Olympics. It appeared in the Post first, and from there was syndicated to the website they have collaboratively created for the games, Vancouver Now.

As a piece of reporting, it is precisely what we expect from The National Post: a commingling of news and political purpose — in this case to deride the Olympic protest movement. It does so using the usual tactics: a snide tone, imputation of motives, loaded language. (The anarchists who broke windows are “thugs” and “the rabble.”) And, of course, contained within the pages of the Post, it’s relatively harmless, as we know this is the sort of thing they do.

But does the CBC really mean, in its turn, to host an article mocking public dissent, not just of the florid kind, but in its genteel, middle-class, let’s-have-a-march-but-keep-it-polite iteration also? Bob Ages, a spokesperson for the Olympic Resistance Network and member of that well-know radical cell, The Council of Canadians, tells the Post‘s reporter/pamphleteer Brian Hutchinson that the ORN has “an agreement not to criticize each other in public. That’s not to say there isn’t internal criticism, but we’re not going to dump on the young people.” This is used to suggest that the protest movement has “unravelled” and is beset by “internal dissent” (the hed on the Post article, which, mercifully, does not make it over to the CBC site).

Is this the CBC’s stance towards the exercise of democratic rights? If so, it places itself in a league with Fox News. If not, is it paying any attention any more to what ends up on its website? Of course, the CBC is just as welcome as any other news organization to host strong comment, as it does. But Hutchinson`s piece wasn`t conceived as comment, and sticking it into the Blogs section of the Vancouver Now site doesn`t make it so.

So, fellow taxpayers, your money is now being used to tell you that the next time you think about getting uppity, you`d better think twice. This probably isn`t what the CBC intends. But it is, I`m afraid, what it is doing.

I love me some bias and hyperbole, which is why I’m such a fan of Fox News.  JUST jokes!  I like my nonsensical news sources to be a little more upfront about their nonsensicalness (all of whom are, I’m sure, rubbing their hands in unfettered glee at this newsy tidbit).  But I may have to start tuning in to ye olde Foxe now that former Governor of Alaska, one-time VP candidate, and all-around soccer-mommy winkster Sarah Palin is gracing the newsdesk.

That’s right, Her Lipstick-Wearing-Pitbullness is returning to the public eye. (Being Alaska’s governor doesn’t count.  They may get our news, but we sure don’t get theirs.)  In a move that hearkens back to her mid-election-run accusations against the great big media meanies, La Palin has stepped down partway through her term as governor due to a barrage of ethics lawsuits that she claims are draining her of “her ability to govern” (by which she means “of teh moneys”), in favor of “serving the public” outside of the political playground.

If Palin can’t handle the heat, it’s probably for the best that she abandon the lonely, frozen ship that is Alaska (if you will pardon a ridiculously mixed metaphor).  And if she’s stepping down as Gov to spend more time with her young son who has Downs Syndrome and her teenage-mama-daughter (and mebbe her other three kids, who are probably just as needy but make for less spectacularly inflammatory headlines), I would have taken that.  Hell, even if that weren’t the truth, it’d sound a thousand times more realistic AND altruistic than her claim that she’s taking this higher-profile, higher-paying, fewer-hours-working job to “serve the public.”  Although, to be fair, I am going to go serve the public by becoming champion of the World Poker Tournament.  Just so we’re transparent about my motives.

She is sure going to serve Fox News’s ratings, anyways.  Senior VP of Programming Bill Shine is quoted as saying “Governor Palin has captivated everyone on both sides of the political spectrum,” which FOR ONCE is totally true, if by “captivated” you mean “amused and annoyed in equal measure.”  I doubt it’ll last, but for now Palin is an attention-getting-magnet.  An entire generation of pop-culture bloggers and late-night talk-show writers will be tuning in regularly to see what fresh inanity they can poke fun at.  If this was an attempt to escape the scrutiny of Alaska, Palin seems to have overlooked the long (ok, at least a year) memory of the news-hounding public.  I’m surprised her own memory doesn’t extend back to that time her new employer outed her for not knowing that Africa is a continent.

But she wasn’t hired for being world-savvy.  Palin may have had a tenuous and mavericky grasp of geography, and when asked what newspapers she reads may have come back with the dubiously true if ambitious reply of “All of them, any of them.”  She may have had only a loose working knowledge, not only of domestic or international policy, but the word “policy” itself.  But no one flung jingoistic phrases like “job creation” and “shoring up the economy” with such verve and fanaticism.

So bring back Joe Sixpack!  Bring back the oddly unsettling winks!  Bring back Tina Fey in her Palin wig!  Let the “fair and balanced” commentating begin!

Susan Boyle went viral for the same reason she did so well on “Britain’s Got Talent.” She . . . er . . . has talent. But she also exploded due to the nature of the viral phenomenon. The more people who saw her, the more vital to one’s pop-culture sensibilities it became to have seen her, and the more people saw her. Other things, such as the SNL short “On a Boat,” are popular because they’re hilarious, but mostly hilarious only because they’re popular. The video for “On a Boat,” with well over a million YouTube views, derives at least part of its humor from the fact that three guys rapping so enthusiastically about something as banal as being “on a boat” has become a legitimate hit.

And in a sense, this just reflects how the dot.com.sphere.net has amplified our basic instincts. Viral videos such as Miss Teen South Carolina’s painfully idiotic take on “U.S. America’s” education system are no more than ramped-up gossip. (Pssst! Did you hear that Miss California hates the gays?.) Our love of scandal (and parody) resulted in the widespread viewing of the “don’t tase me, bro!” guy, as well as its many spoofs.

And of course, there is the inevitable sheep-factor. Since being featured on “Oprah” last week, J&D’s Bacon-Flavored Lip Balm is all over the internet and sales have skyrocketed.

Bacon-Flavored lip balm will be hot for about 20 minutes before everyone realizes that it’s a disgusting idea. While good products get a fair bit of net-play on their own by word of enormous-internet-mouth, lousy products are shunted quickly aside by a bad rep. Social networking and news sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Reddit, Sphinn (ad infinitum) that allow users to display and rate items tend to be self-filtering. Or would be, if they weren’t corrupted.

But they are, and this is where the viral phenomenon gets dicey. Once marketers realized that videos, games, memes, and products pretty well advertised themselves once they got going, companies began throwing a fair bit of energy into trying to force things to go viral. They started “astroturfing” these forums, posting as ostensibly disinterested parties in order to create what appeared to be genuine grass-roots interest. With the anonymity the internet provides, it became all too easy for a company to create fake but believable endorsements.

Or spawn them. In 2006, a book that had clogged the lit-blogosphere with rave reviews was revealed to have encouraged those plaudits with a contest; send us the most readers, win a prize. The book may have been fabulous, but when word of the contest surfaced, suspicion was thrown even on those reviewers who hadn’t heard of the contest. And as fun as it is to be hip with the jive, maybe this is the attitude we need to adopt when things flash into fashion. When shredded jeans and flannel shirts were all the rage (the first time), we looked like idiots because we wanted to, not because some flannel corporation was slipping free button-downs into the cool kids’ lockers. Now those flannel fat-cats are all up on those cool kids, and we need to watch our backs.

It was great for a while to be able to run around the internet like barefoot children, blithely accepting all the reviews of movies and books and dust-busters and teeth whiteners and squash rackets (I hear that the Wilson N145 has an enormous sweet spot) as though they came from trusted friends. Those days are gone the way of the penny candy. I don’t mean to sound conspiracy theorist here, but I’ve become wary of anything virally popular. From now on, I only click over if it’s that video of the fellow doing his happy jig in all those foreign countries.

Wait, that’s brought to me by Stride Gum? Shit.

Which is, of course, all we expect from Stewart. As he pointed out to Cramer, both men are snake-oil salesmen, but “The Daily Show” at least says “snake oil” on the tin. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it is: half an hour of pure entertainment, with a bit of news slipped in to give it structure. Sure, maybe in the old days it managed to lure some celebrities onstage who weren’t aware of the frat boy lurking beneath Stewart’s slick suit (or, before him, Craig Kilborn’s smooth coif). But given the show’s current popularity, anyone who clicks over and doesn’t expect to be treated to coarse humor and the odd racially-dubious joke has obviously been in a prolonged coma.

Cramer, on the other hand, claims in his show’s intro that his job is “not just to entertain you, but to educate you.” On the surface, “Mad Money” appears to be the reverse of “The Daily Show”: hard information made more palatable by Cramer’s hollering, sound effects, and penchant for plastic bulls. In and of itself, that says something about our inability to take in news unless it sparkles and cuts frequently to commercials. But Cramer’s hangdog demeanour on Stewart’s show, some incriminating videos that imply he knew more than he was saying, and his own admission that he took CEOs and reporters at their word without verifying the information, all point one way: the man sacrificed his journalistic integrity for popularity and ratings.

In a bizarre reversal of roles, Jon Stewart ceased cracking wise for a minute, and charged Cramer with the essential seriousness of what he does. Whether or not people should be taking financial advice from a man on TV is a whole other sack of ferrets, but Jim Cramer and the staff of CNBC claim to be experts. So it was about time somebody called them on their performance. Everyone makes a few bad calls from time to time, but it’s clear these pundits haven’t been entirely forthright with their audiences.

By this time we must needs ask, why was it left to a comedian to do it? Some have said Stewart’s out of his league on this one; when he took on Tucker Carlson two years ago, he was commenting on something he knows — TV — but what really does he know about finance? Jeff Zucker, NBC Chief Executive, called his remarks “unfair” and “absurd.” So, fine. But where were the people who should have been waving placards at Cramer and his ilk while their hijinx were going down? Where, for example, was Mr. Zucker’s own MSNBC, which has made a fine art of calling out Fox News and CNN when they mess up? Is the difference that CNBC is a sister network? I smell a conflict of interests.

It’s a crazy world we live in when the “legitimate” authorities are giving us shtick, and the mock-newscaster delivers a scoop. But until real journalists are prepared to do their job, I’m content with Stewart’s snake oil.

And, ok, when you step into the spotlight, you don’t always get to choose your image. I’m sure Jessica Simpson never planned on becoming a cautionary tale against reality TV marriages, or That Girl Who Jinxes Football Players. Jamie-Lynn Spears didn’t get knocked up so that she could be a role model to pregnant teens. “The Hills”‘ Audrina Patridge didn’t accidentally-on-purpose leak nekkid pictures of herself to provide valuable lessons on discretion to “the young girls who look up to [her]” . . . oh, no wait. She totally did.

But while fame and fortune predicate a certain lack of control, surely some things are still sacred. By now, everyone has either seen the photo of Rihanna’s battered face that TMZ allegedly scootched from the LAPD, or they have gone to great and strenuous lengths to avoid it. Shortly after the gossip site watermarked their logo across Rihanna’s puffy eyes and potentially broken nose, the photo was plastered across the front page of papers like the New York Post. Even sites that blathered on about the shame of exposing such a tragedy in this way would sneak the photo in after the jump.

No one, it seems, could keep from snagging a few more site hits at the starlet’s expense. Most were willing to accept the starlet’s silence (especially since it came at the request of police) and allow her a quiet birthday in Barbados, but recent rumors that she’s taken the bastard back have incensed, well, pretty much everyone. The face of Gucci’s fourth annual Campaign to Benefit UNICEF is now being called “the most famous face of domestic abuse” and apparently she has to answer to the world about why she would go back to a man who (allegedly) beats her.

Don’t get me wrong: I am all for being held accountable for your actions, especially if you are living off the fat of public opinion. However, this is obviously a sensitive issue, and obviously a confusing time for such a young woman, and obviously none of our collective business. I doubt that someone as savvy as Rihanna is going to waltz back into a dangerous situation without some frank analysis, but if she wants to see if she and Chris can work things out, who are we to stop her? I am neither her mother nor her manager nor her best friend. Domestic abuse is about as serious as issues go these days, and I’m not saying that Rihanna should simply disregard what happened. But as much as I didn’t have the right to creep my eyes all over her face in a vulnerable moment, I haven’t got the right to stick my nose into her personal affairs like I know what’s what. I don’t. Neither do you. Time to back off.

Perhaps Jolie knows what many other celebs do; a bun in the oven is a great career boost. Or, if you happen not to be famous already, it can catapult you into the limelight. Your pregnancies just have to be qualitatively or quantitatively bizarre.

Take the first pregnant man, for instance. Thomas Beatie was all kinds of inconspicuous before getting knocked up; now he’s big news. Mind you, another man-born-woman (or FTM, or XX-dude, or whatever) named Matt Rice gave birth to a bouncing baby boy almost a decade ago. It’s unclear why this is being ignored. Nevertheless, the title is Beatie’s, despite the fact that once side effects forced him to stop taking testosterone, he essentially became a post-double-mastectomy woman, many of whom also get pregnant.

And now the “first” pregnant man is pregnant again. Beatie and wife Nancy will (assuming all goes well) give birth to a second child almost exactly a year after their daughter was born. I, for one, am thrilled for them. Have all the babies you want, you stable, supportive couple. Just maybe take a year off next time before you sow your seeds. It’s entirely possible that the Beaties have lunged into this second pregnancy so soon after the first due to Thomas’s hormonal situation (he has to lay off the testosterone in order to make the babies). It can’t hurt, however, to cash in on public interest before it grows stale. If the first baby got them on “Oprah,” the second is sure to get them a sit-down with Barbara Walters, and I’ve heard whispers of a TLC special in the offing.

Speaking of bad television, a series of Discovery Health Channel appearances has finally led to a full-time reality show for Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. No family has been more lambasted for exploiting their unusual fecundity than these stars of “17 Kids and Counting.” The couple’s religious beliefs have led them to forgo birth control, a common enough practice among conservative Christians. Less common are double-digit families living off their TV earnings. I’m not saying the Duggars don’t love each of their now-18 babies. I just think they might be caught in a vicious cycle of having the babies to get on the reality show to earn the money to have the babies.

Whether it’s to land another Vanity Fair cover, or to pay for little Joshua James Jim Joe Bob’s wedding, children have become a sort of financial aspirin. It’s totally not my place to question Angelina’s motives, or Thomas Beatie’s, or the Duggars’, but is that going to stop me? Are you kidding? People will judge. The only way out is to stay out of the spotlight, keep your baby bump on the couch, and feed it Doritos.

When my first college boyfriend asserted one lazy Saturday night that hockey needed cheerleaders, I knew then and there that we would not be trawling the aisles 80 years hence, hand in wrinkled hand, looking for a better denture adhesive. Less because of the “cheerleaders” and more because of the “hockey needs.” Hockey does not, in fact, need cheerleaders. Hockey is just fine on its own.

As are the Olympics — or at least they would be if their organizers would leave them alone. Now that all the hoo-haw has died down and we’ve had time to polish our medals, let’s take a moment and reflect on this multi-million dollar, multi-million viewer event and whether it really needed all the Lite-Brite drummers, spurious accusations and, yes, cheerleaders.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the way the Beijing Olympics went down, and there were plenty of things to enjoy. Me, I love a 2008-strong dance troupe. I’m not above enjoying a bit of side-court drama, and I know plenty who will say that there can never be too many pretty girls in bright red thong bikinis. Fine; there can never be too much long Phelpsian torso either.

The difference is that Phelps is an athlete, dammit. And while cheerleading has sometimes been loosely referred to as a “sport,” it is not yet an Olympic sport.

So many of the things we enjoyed, in fact, were distinctly non-Games related, and I’d like to know why. Why all the T&A;? Why the CG’d fireworks? Why all the hyper-reporting about said CG fireworks, or the pretty Chinese voice in the speakers that didn’t come from the pretty Chinese face on the screen? The Olympics have always been loaded with water-polo fist fights and back-alley-attacks on figure skaters and positive drug tests — loads of drug tests — but these scandals largely revolved around the athletes and their ability to perform. This past summer’s offerings seemed to lean more heavily towards the largely irrelevant — the Chinese seeded the clouds beforehand so that it wouldn’t rain on the Opening Ceremonies? Those Commie bastards! — and to distract from a number of truly jaw-dropping performances.

I mean, did you even see Karen Cockburn’s silver-medal-winning performance on the trampoline? Or were you instead caught up in the Chinese-gymnasts-of-questionable-geriatry debacle? I know said scandal actually touches on the athlete’s eligibility (younger gymnast = more compact body + less wisdom borne of age = more willingness to fling said compact body through the air with abandon), but it also takes away from the fact that the Chinese gymnasts were so breathtaking that they made you want to cry.

Serious, try to watch these pint-sized beauties now without thinking, “Cheater.”

Even if they had been proven of age, their performances have been tainted.

I’m not saying we should ignore potential breaches of rules. Nor am I suggesting that we put a budgetary cap on the opening ceremonies. I just wonder if we’ve grown weary of the games themselves — if incredible physical prowess is no longer enough to impress us on its own without the ribbons and trappings.

And I know that even by writing this, by even bringing up these issues, I am quite firmly part of the problem, but I had to get this all off my chest. The Games are coming to Vancouver next. Is there any hope we will escape the scrutiny that plagued Beijing? Not likely. Can we ensure that all scandals are distinctly sports-related? Not a chance. Is there any way we can — lacking the deeply-steeped culture, the seemingly-bottomless funds, or the stupefying manpower — match the opening ceremonies? Crystal ball says no. But if we are in the mood to be bold, we can pare the whole thing down about 80 notches and let the awe-inspiring beauty of the Games themselves shine through.

Thirty-four years old, Debbie has three kids. Earler this year she found a stash of make-up, thong panties, bras, and Cosmopolitan magazines in her tweenie daughter’s closet. “She’s too young for all of those things,” she told me. “I never thought that I should sit down and watch the shows she was watching — and when I did, I was appalled.”

Her daughter’s weekly TV routine consists of “One Tree Hill”, “The Hills”, “Gossip Girl”, and “America’s Next Top Model”.

“I didn’t realize how much adult content was in them,” Debbie said. “I’ve only ever seen commercials for the shows, and they seemed harmless. But then I watched them.”

She also started paying attention to the commercials that aired during her daughter’s favourite shows. “Most of them were for beauty products, or other products too mature for young girls.” Naturally, her daughter aspires to be like the girls on TV, all of whom dress scantily, wear heaps of makeup, and have lots of sex.

Between the shows and the commercials, neither kids nor their parents stand a chance. As advertising executive Barbara A. Martino is quoted as saying on the Media Awareness Network website, “We’re relying on the kid to pester the mom to buy the product, rather than going straight to the mom.” On the same site, James McNeal, author of The Kids Market: Myths and Realities, notes that “Brand marketing must begin with children. Even if a child does not buy the product and will not for many years . . . the marketing must begin in childhood.”

Couple that with cosmetic companies offering lines of makeup for tweens, and clothing companies such as the Gap, Mexx, and La Senza opening stores for kids, and you have a perfect storm of consumerism.

Then there are the commercials for movies. In a 2000 study, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reviewed 44 R-rated films, and found “80 per cent were targeted to children under 17. Marketing plans included TV commercials run during hours when young viewers were most likely to be watching.” The TV networks do the same thing, airing previews for adult programs during youth fare like “Gossip Girl.”

“More emphasis is placed on materialism than education,” Debbie told me a few days later. “I’ve had enough of it in my house.” Her daughter, though, has not taken kindly to the new TV rules at home, which include a strict ban on shows her mom does not approve of.

She does have traces of guilt, however. Not because she’s restricting her daughter’s access to media, but because she’s typical of parents in a culture of limited time. With both mom and dad working and pursuing outside interests (it’s yoga and pilates for Debbie), time with the kids, as well as time spent overseeing what they’re exposed to, is at a premium. “Everyone’s plate is full, and the kids are at home, watching TV.”

Parents cannot be expected to monitor every aspect of their children’s lives, but they can get educated and take action. For more information on media, its impact on kids, and how parents can manage it, check out the Media Awareness Network’s website.

I wonder, though, if we adults aren’t just as susceptible, or if we too got caught as kids. After all, I did just have a 15-minute conversation about the evils of media and makeup, while Debbie and I both touched up our faces.