So, Lindsay Blackett was just performing a public service when, at the Banff World Television Festival, he called Canadian TV “shit”? Apparently so. As the Alberta Minister of Culture and Community Spirit told the Calgary Herald earlier this week, his intention was to create “a national discussion” about Canadian TV’s crapitude. But I have a better idea: let’s have a national discussion about Lindsay Blackett instead.

Blackett seems like a smart guy — at least that’s the impression I got when he was about the only bright light among a number of dimbulbs at a forum in Calgary back in February. But, like almost all politicians, he knows not a lot about the arts. And why would he? As his official bio tells us, before being elected to the Alberta Legislature in 2008, he was “Technical Sales Representative for Arrow Electronics, Calgary, 2000 to 2008, General Sales Manager for Future Electronics, Seattle, 1994 to 2000, and Product Specialist for Future Electronics, Montreal, 1994 to 1995.” He did attend Carleton University in the bachelor of arts program but, perhaps significantly, his bio doesn’t say if he graduated.

But fine, we don’t expect our politicians to be Pablo Picassos, not even the ones responsible for the arts. But does Blackett really think he kicked off a serious discussion about Canadian television with his remarks? Of course some Canadian shows are shit; I mentioned a few right here. And some are terrific; so what? That’s the way it always is in creative industries. Uncertainty is certain. A good script is poorly produced. A mediocre one somehow clicks in production. There are a million ways that things can go wrong — or right. Artists accept that as a professional hazard. Why can’t politicians?

Mind you, the fact that Blackett wants to throw money at the problem is a refreshing variation on the usual theme of conservative distaste for the arts. Under fire for his remarks, he announced that Alberta would soon announce guidelines for a new $20 million Media Fund, including $880,000 to get more “quality scripts” written. And I say, you spend that money, Mr. Minister; for the sake of my buddies in Alberta, you spend away. But don’t expect it to make creativity any more solid state. Crap TV shows will still get made; great TV shows will still get made. There will simply be more of both.

By the way, Liberal MLA and Culture Critic Laurie Blakeman’s response was superb. “If the minister of health said our doctors and nurses were crap, that minister would be fired,” she said. “If the minister of education said our teachers were crap, that minister would be fired. If the minister of energy said that the oilsands were crap, you can bet that minister would be sitting on the backbenches faster than the minister of culture and community spirit can think of something stupid to say. And that’s pretty fast.” I once acted in a play with Blakeman, back when both of us were students in the theatre department at the U of A. But I have to say, fine actress though she is, I’m really glad she ended up in the Legislature.

But don’t expect Blackett to be going anywhere anytime soon. Remarks like his still play well in many of Calgary’s living rooms, despite the fact that it has one of the liveliest arts scenes in the country. He’s just proven he’s one of the boys. And that’s gold for the Conservatives in Alberta — and votes in the ballot box.

Follow-up: Video of Blackett’s remarks and the ensuing discussion has now appeared on youtube:

Either the media gods have been listening to my pleas or there’s a refreshing new trend in advertising these days.

Over the last few months, TV commercials have not only been advertising products and services, but have been encouraging something a little more surprising: gender equality. Amazing!

I first noticed it when Jason Alexander, more famously known as the rotund George Costanza on “Seinfeld,” joined the cast of Jenny Craig. Traditionally, diet and weight loss commercials have featured female spokespersons, while exercise equipment and work out programs tended to feature men (Tony Little, Tony Horton, Billy Blanks . . . need I go on?). You might well suppose that women are expected to eat less or take a magic pill to slim down, while men are expected to pump iron (or whatever the current gadget is) to bulk up. Left out of this advertising equation is the fact that plenty of men out there need to slim down, and plenty of women want to tone as well as trim.

 
Remember Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod from the BodyBreak ads? They had it right, promoting a healthy diet and exercise for both men and women.

 
The Corona beer ads have raised their game too. In last year’s edition, we saw a couple sitting on a beach as a woman in a bikini walked by. The man made no attempt to disguise his ogling, and his partner calmly squirted him with a lime.

 
This year, Corona has changed sides.

 
A muscular man strolls by in front of the sunbathing couple, and this time the woman gawks. A battle ensues in which, while she is distracted, he shakes her beer bottle, but the point is made: women look also. Thanks Corona!

Then there’s my favourite of the moment, Old Spice’s “I’m on a horse” man.

 
Too many romance novels, soap operas, and chick flicks leave too many women dreaming of the man Old Spice is poking fun at — strong, sexy, manly and sensitive, nurturing, and emotional. The ridiculousness of Old Spice’s perfect man illuminates, at least for me, the unfair pressure placed on men to be all things to all women. And instead of using a sexy woman to sell a man body wash (Axe), Old Spice uses a sexy man, making fun of the perfect man, to sell men’s body wash to women. I love it!

Advertising has a long way to go before I’ll give it a thumbs up for representing the genders equally and realistically, but I’m enjoying the direction it’s taking.

The show hasn’t reached my time zone yet, but by all Twitter accounts Betty White is killing it on “Saturday Night Live” tonight. But all this amazement that she can still do the job is a bit misplaced, no? For one thing, she’s only 88-years old. My buddy Antony Holland, whom some of you will know as the farting grandfather in National Lampoon’s Thanksgiving Family Reunion (though he’d probably prefer I mentioned his recent performance as King Lear) just turned 90, and he’s still doing the acting deed. And on stage too, which is a heckuva lot harder.

As for White, she first appeared on TV in 1939, three months after graduating from Beverly Hills High. If that isn’t a formula for killing it on “SNL” 71 years later, I’ll eat my “Golden Girls” Signed Pilot Episode TV Script. She was on “Live with Regis and Kelly” earlier this week claiming to be terrified about the whole thing, but that’s just a very canny performer warming up the house — not so much lowering expectations as raising the “Aww, isn’t she cute?” factor, which will make it all the funnier when she says “shit” and they beep her.

Of course, it was White’s Superbowl ad . . .

 
. . . that gave her cachet with a generation of viewers who didn’t know her from “The Golden Girls,” or “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” before that, or “Password” before that. I expect that’s what she meant when the president of her fan club (as quoted in that CNN article above) told her “When you’re hot you’re hot” and she replied “When you’re old, you’re old.” Not “I don’t know if I can do this” but “Stick around long enough, honey, and they’ll applaud you for getting up in the morning.”

Still, we should be grateful she’s not only still getting up in the morning, but heading down to the TV studio. I also expect the outsized reaction to her appearance on “SNL” has to do with the fact that she brings more skillz to the job than most of the hosts. Seventy-one years on camera will do that for you.

And yet, and yet . . . I found a live feed of the show while I was writing this, and even I find myself thinking: “Cool. She can still read the cue cards.” Call it the “We all love our grannies” syndrome. Good for Betty White for taking advantage of it. Canny. Not cute. Canny.

Dear Kate Gosselin:

What a long, twisty road you have travelled! I first met you when the smiling, laughing faces of your sextuplets caught my eye as I channel-surfed one lazy afternoon. I confess, I fell in love with your children and spent many afternoons looking in on your family.

But I’m glad I stopped when things began to deteriorate. I wanted to see smiling children, not feuding parents and the mess of divorce. It was ugly, Kate, ugly. And all captured on TV and in magazines and tabloids.

Now, as the faces of your children fade from the airwaves and headlines, and they return to what I hope to be a normal, happy childhood, and your ex-husband, John, evaporates from memory, you remain.

You can be seen on solo appearances on talk shows, in interviews, are a steady author of sentimental and autobiographical books, and most recently, a participant on “Dancing with the Stars.” I’ve caught a few episodes of DWTS and your new-found hair-do. I’ve seen you rage, seen you pout, seen you struggle through the dance steps. And I’m hoping that tonight, now that you’ve been voted out, will be the last time I see you cry.

Go home, Kate. Stop pleading with viewers, trying to convince them you are a loving, devoted mother, and go home and be that woman. You don’t have to be a celebrity mom to be a good provider for your family. You don’t have to be constantly in the media to provide for your kids. Be a present mom, a constant mom in the lives of your munchkins, and maybe we’ll see you later. Later.

And if you don’t want to disappear from view entirely, let the tabloids capture photos of you, smiling, with your smiling kids, on a fun-filled family outing. You know, maybe with your hair pulled up in a pony-tail, relaxed and blissfully unaware that there are cameras pointed at you because you’re too busy interacting with the “Plus 8″ in your life.

Yours truly,

Jodi

As it becomes increasingly clear that the official explanation of 9/11 is insupportable and won’t stand the test of time, I thought it might be apropos to establish a media “Honour” and “Dishonour” roll, recording those news organizations who have or haven’t done their job in reporting the story. The idea here is that, 10 or 15 years from now, when the great majority of people have cottoned-on to the fact that the government lied — just as the great majority now realize that about the Kennedy assassination — we’ll be able to look back and see which of them maintained the best traditions of journalism, and which were compliant or complicit.

This list is pretty much off the top of my head, and certainly subject to change, persuasion, and the wisdom of crowds. In other words, if you have suggestions for additions and subtractions, or moving an organization from one list to the other, let me know via the comments form. Please explain your reasons, and provide links to back them up when you can. Note that organizations can appear on both lists, and that individual columnists are excluded, as an organization may well maintain a columnist it disagrees with. We’re looking for institutional responsibility here. The exception is columnists like Alexander Cockburn, who also have senior editorial responsibility, and thus are the institution, or part of it. Maybe I’ll start a category for just-columnists down the road.

As well, the fact that a newspaper or magazine or network is big and mainstream, and possibly even corporate-owned, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be recognized when it does something right.

“Doing the job” is defined here as not swallowing the government line wholesale, remaining sceptical, reporting new evidence as it emerges, and investigating the facts where warranted. Or at least some of the above. “Dishonour” means credulity in the face of government explanations, ignoring or actively suppressing contrary evidence, deriding debate, failing to correct information that has been proven false, and various other forms of pernicious and/or bush-league behaviour.

So here’s the list for starters:

The 9/11 Media Honour Roll:

A Channel (Victoria, BC)
Report on Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth press conference

The British Broadcasting Corporation
The Power of Nightmares

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Fifth Estate, “The Unofficial Story”
Sunday Special Edition, “9/11: Facing the Fallout”

Channel One Russia
Showing of documentary Zero, followed by debate

The Copenhagen Post
Article on scientific study of nanothermite found in WTC residue

“Democracy Now!”
9/11 debate (Many Truthers regard Amy Goodman as a “left gatekeeper” — but she did run this debate.)

The Japan Times
Article on 9/11 Diet member Yukihisa Fujita

KBDI, Colorado Public Television
Showing of 9/11 Press for Truth and 9/11 Blueprint for Truth

KMPH FOX 26 (Fresno, Calif.)
Interview with Richard Gage

La Télé Libre
Interview with Cynthia McKinney and Niels Harrit

Maclean’s
“Hijacking the Truth on 9/11″

RT
Various programs and reports

TV2 News (Denmark)
Interview with Danish Scientist Niels Harrit

Vanity Fair
Article on Loose Change

The Washington Times
“Explosive News”

Zoomer Radio (Toronto)
Interview with author of A Guide to 9/11 Whistleblowers

The 9/11 Media Dishonour Roll:

ABC News
Nightline, “Inside a 9/11 ‘Truther’ Convention”

British Broadcasting Corporation
“9/11: The Conspiracy Files”

Counterpunch
“The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts”

Daily Kos
“The Conspiracists”

The Huffington Post
Editor’s Note

The National Post
“A theory that just won’t die”
From back ofthebook.ca: “On being disappeared by the National Post”
From back ofthebook.ca: “Part II: On being disappeared by the National Post”

Popular Mechanics
“Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report” (Much of the info in this early piece has since been disproven, but PM has never run a correction.)

The Washington Post
“A leading Japanese politician espouses a 9/11 fantasy”

TBS? TBS? All over Canada, Conan O’Brien fans are asking: What the hell is TBS?

And how the hell are we going to watch Conan?

A quick check shows that the cable network to which O’Brien today declared allegiance — Turner Broadcasting System — is nowhere available in Canada; no, not on cable or satellite, or even by interdimensional delivery using wormholes. Of course, the assumption had been that he would go to Fox, and that, along with much of North America, we would get our Conan fix by actually watching Fox after 11 pm (a heretofore unthinkable idea). But that plan was apparently scuppered by scheduling problems.

So instead it will be FBS — er, TBT — er — what the hell is it? Of course, this may be the start of the first truly successful cross-platform program, for which TV delivery is just one of many options. Conan’s audience is already just as likely to watch him on their notebooks or iPads, given the option, as on the tube. But for Canadians, even that may not be a possibility; geo-bounding already keeps us from watching much American (and, for that matter, British) broadcasting. Tried watching “The Family Guy” on hulu.com, or “Dr. Who” on the BBC iPlayer, lately?

It’s entirely possible — likely, even — that a Canadian broadcaster will buy the program and solve our predicament. And there’s always torrenting, or ATDHE.net. But as of this moment, the announcement completes our marginalization from the pop-culture cool-kids club.

Why, Coco? Why?

Proposition: Ostensible tweenstress Miley Cyrus is, in fact, an aging dowager.

While her bio and her boobs say she’s still well shy of 20, Miley Cyrus’s actions have all the quiet desperation of a washed-up starlet three times her age.  The navel-exposing Myspaced photos “leaked” in 2008 are the closest to a sex-tape Hannah Montana could get without getting her blond-wigged ass fired.   And while her Disney persona is still too intact for her to have been technically “pole dancing” at the Teen Choice Awards, she was in fact dancing with a pole, giving salacious-headline-writers a way to kill time.  She’ll also be cameoing in the upcoming Sex and the City 2 movie, sure to win the approbation of desperate housewives and edgy gam-gams alike. 

And let us not forget this get-up, from this year’s Oscars:

That is a support under-garment, a very sparkly, very formal Mother of the Groom skirt in Old-Lady-Beige, and Jamie-Lee Curtis’s hair from that scene in True Lies where she tries to be a sexy stripper. In 1994.

La Cyrus is finally taking the last step towards cat-ladydom: getting her own place.  While other 17-year olds are slamming doors, sneaking out of windows and sullenly refusing dinner, Miley will be lounging parentless in her “really Zen” and “so chill” new home, burning incense and trying to convince the kids that she’s still hip.  “My religion is love, so my door is always open,” she says, as the last of her youth goes up in patchouli-smelling smoke.

Books are shit nowadays, and I blame you. 

You may not have made the book deal with “Jersey Shore”’s bronzed illiterates Ronnie and J-Woww (I wish that was a typo), but you will probably read it.  And even if you bypass what is sure to be the most gloriously misspelled Gym-Tan-Laundry manifesto, you watch the show.  And if you don’t watch “Jersey Shore” then you watch “The Hills,” which makes you directly responsible both for Lauren Conrad’s fame and her New York Times bestseller L.A. Candy.  (It also makes you responsible for Speidi, but I think we all have to take the hit on that one.)

And, fine, if both these shows fall out of your sphere of influence, then you at least know who Paris Hilton is, and, since her erstwhile fame rested solely on people knowing who she is, and her 2004 bestseller Confessions of an Heiress relied solely on that fame, you share the blame for that, too.

This is not a new infection, this shilling book deals to anyone with a known face, and it makes fiscal sense.  “Jersey Shore” already has an audience, and even if half of that audience (ostensibly) watches the show ironically, they will probably buy the book ironically too.  But e-books and the internet have already bitten a hunk out of the publishing industry, and it is bleeding out.  Fewer and fewer book contracts are being given out each year, and the more of them that go to People Whose Names Your 11-Year-Old Niece Knows, the fewer there will be for People Who Can Write Worth A Damn.

So I’m throwing down a gauntlet: put away the hard-covered fame-whoring.  I can’t not know who these people are, and I have no problem with watching deliciously trashy TV, but I won’t reward them for scribbling rubbish just because they can.  I don’t want to wake up in a world where Never Fall In Love At the Jersey Shore wins the Booker because there wasn’t enough space for Wolf Hall to exist.

Let’s play CanWest Idol! — in which we decide who should get to buy the bankrupt media company’s assets.

The finalists for the TV operation appear to be just two: Shaw Communications and Catalyst Capital. The former is the Alberta-based cable company; the latter is the front-organization for Leonard Asper and New York investment firm Goldman Sachs.

Simon Cowell says: Really? These are the choices? A hardware company run by a cowboy and the same people who drove CanWest into the ground in the first place? No wonder I’m quitting this show.

We say: That’s a little harsh, Simon. Besides, we know cowboys, and Jim Shaw is no cowboy. As for the Aspers, it’s true that letting them reassume control would be like putting Joseph Hazelwood back at the helm of the Exxon Valdez, but, y’know, their convergence strategy showed foresight and may just work yet, once the economy is out of the pooper.

On the other hand, they’re in large measure responsible for the pathetic state of Canadian specialty channels, so we say stick with the decision to give it to Shaw. Given all his mouthing off about the horribleness of Canadian programming, we’d like to see Jimbo try to do better. And who knows? Maybe he will.

In the print category, the known finalists are BC newspaper publisher David “No Relation to Conrad” Black, Vancouver-based Glacier Media, Inc., a consortium led by current National Post executive Paul Godfrey, and — guess who? — the Aspers.

Simon says: The Aspers again? Let me see: if the bank foreclosed on my home and put it on the market, and I tried to buy it back, promising that this time I’d really, really pay the mortgage, what do you think the bank might say to me? As for the rest: Who are these nobodies?

We say: Well, actually Simon, one of them has been running CanWest’s flagship newspaper for awhile now. But there’s the problem. The CanWest newspapers need a total reboot, and, plainly, neither Godfrey nor the Aspers are the people to do it. After Conrad Black sold the Post to Izzy Asper and Asper (eventually) fired Ken Whyte, the Post became a shadow of its former, robust self and remains so today. It needs reinventing. As for the others in the chain, particularly the big city papers like The Calgary Herald and The Ottawa Citizen, they are still beset by the poisonous atmosphere created by Black’s union-busting and the Aspers’ predilection for censorship — most famously reflected in their firing of Russell Mills, publisher of the Citizen, after the paper called for the resignation of Jean Chretien, and continuing today with their suppression of news and commentary contrary to Israel’s interests. Again, a housecleaning is in order.

That leaves the other Black (David) and Glacier Media. We confess to having known nothing of the latter until we visited their website, but we can confidently say that any company that can’t produce a better website has no business running a national news organization. David Black, on the other hand, has quietly built up a very solid chain of newspapers, some big, mostly small, in both western Canada and the States, most of which also have sophisticated online editions. Black Press has run into its own charges of meddling, but Black himself is known as a hands-off publisher with no particular political agenda. Wouldn’t that be refreshing?

Not that the Bank of Nova Scotia and other creditors are going to spend a lot of time considering who’ll create the best product, and help renew Canadian media. They just wantz their money. If they did, though, Shaw and Black would walk away the winners. Cue the balloons.

I didn’t think I had a home team in the TV broadcasters vs. TV distributors battle that has been thrust at us in recent months. Seemed like one set of mega-rich corporations pounding on another to see who’ll get to remain the fattest longest.

The nut of the dispute, in case your TV is broken or you’ve somehow otherwise missed the bajillion ads run by both sides, is that the networks — CTV, Global, CBC — want the cable and satellite companies — Shaw, Rogers, Bell — to fork over some of the revenue they earn from carrying local stations. The networks claim this is the only way to save local news — which is as shameless a ploy as the old “buy this magazine or we’ll shoot this dog” strategy — while the cable guys claim they’d have to start charging customers more –conveniently forgetting that they could just suck it up and absorb the cost themselves (rather than, say, once again hiking pay to their top five executives by 28%).

A pox on both of them, thought I.

But then Shaw Cable began running an ad pointing out that they also create a lot of local content. This is true. In fact, in small-to-smaller communities like the one I live in (we’re talking the central Vancouver Island area), Shaw’s community programming offers the only consistent coverage of local events. Vancouver stations certainly don’t give a crap about us, and the ones out of Victoria, while they make an effort to look our way, are necessarily more focused on Victorians.

So it may be what we have here is an urban vs. rural (or at least not-so-urban) battle. My local broadcaster is the cable company.

Still, let’s say the CRTC, which is refereeing the fracas, decides that the network affiliates should be allowed to negotiate fees-for-carriage. Fine. Whatever. Before they do, though, the private networks should have to go the NHL route and agree to a cap on how much they can shell out for American programming (just as NHL owners agreed to a cap on what they pay for players). Because if the broadcasting business is in trouble, even as distributors continue to prosper, it’s not just because of the pressures placed on them by new technology and a lousy economy. It’s also because they can’t control themselves when it comes to bidding for whatever shiny new show the U.S. networks dangle before them.

As The Toronto Star’s always excellent Bill Brioux noted yesterday, CTV, Global, and CityTV (which is owned by Rogers and so has stood out the fight) spend over $700 million on U.S. TV shows each year. That’s more than 10 times what they spend on Canadian entertainment programming and, according to Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, more than double what they spent in the mid-90s.

For its part, the CBC won’t say what it spends on American programming, claiming that’s “competitive information,”, but we know it’s a lot less than its private confreres. So that’s where we set the cap: whatever the CBC’s spending in the States (somebody can make them tell us, can’t they?), the private broadcasters can spend too. If they want their fee-for-carriage, not to mention the $200-million per year they already get from the public purse, that’s the quid pro quo.

Then — who knows? — they might even discover they don’t need to tap the cable guys to save local news, now that they’re not spending millions to acquire the rights to “Desperate Housewives.” Note that this approach doesn’t tell them what they have to do, as that of Canada’s indie producers would. The Canadian Film and Television Production Association wants the CRTC to impose a minimum spending requirement for Canadian programming on the networks. But that’s precisely the sort of quota-setting Canadians detest: watch Con-Con or we’ll shoot this dog. No, just tell the broadcasters what they can’t do, as good policemen always have, and then let them figure out the rest.

Then, if they still need new money to keep local programs on the air, give it to them. Something tells me they won’t, though something else tells me they’ll take it anyway. But at least fewer public bucks will be going to Hollywood producers to help them buy new jacuzzis.