ACCORDING TO A Facebook post of his estranged son, Nathan, Fred Phelps Sr, the founder of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, is dying. There’s an undeniable aesthetic appeal in the prospect of Mr. Phelps soon meeting his Maker, but this indulgence presumes far more than I can manage. My own view, if you care to know, is that Phelps will die and dissolve and remain forever in a condition of no condition whatsoever.
MY WRITING FALLS into several categories. There’s the paid, professional writing I do for others, on a range of topics. There are historical pieces, obituaries and profiles of famous people and places. There are meditative or reflective articles, what are sometimes called “human interest stories,” concerning parenting or ageing or travel, and so on. Then there are my political and polemical works, digging into a position and attacking an idea or a public official. Today, we’re going to consider this final category, and the charge it invariably engenders, from a small minority of readers, that I’m impolite, judgemental, arrogant and mean.
This essay is an apology for rudeness in the old sense of the term apology – an account, explanation and defence.
TODAY I LOOKED UP the word bullying in the English As It Is Actually Used Dictionary:
Bullying, vbl. n. [bʊlɪɪŋ]: A word that by 2014 was being used by some adults to describe what all the adults were doing to all the other adults, everywhere.
On any day in any news source, there are articles about adult bullying, as well as commentaries and anecdotes and calls to put an end to it, wherever it happens, which according to some people is everywhere.
IF YOU HAVEN’T yet heard of Sheryl Sandberg’s Ban Bossy campaign, here is a video, and below is a brief overview of the Facebook COO’s effort, in which she is joined by Condoleeza Rice, Beyoncé, Jennifer Garner, Diane von Furstenberg and Jane Lynch:
When a little boy asserts himself, he’s called a “leader.” Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded “bossy.” Words like bossy send a message: don’t raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys—a trend that continues into adulthood. Together we can encourage girls to lead.
Pledge to Ban Bossy.
HERE’S A USEFUL piece of reporting for your consideration. It was written by Renata D’Aliesio and published in the March 13, 2014 edition of the Globe and Mail, under the headline “Ford knew of football coach’s criminal past, court documents show”:
Rob Ford penned a character reference for his assistant football coach’s sentencing for dangerous driving and assaulting a police officer, court documents reveal, marking at least the third time he has written a letter of support for a convict while in public office. The letter, composed on behalf of Payman Aboodowleh in 2009, confirms Mr. Ford knew of the volunteer coach’s violent history when he invited him to work with high-school athletes. As with his other letters, Mr. Ford’s acclamation of Mr. Aboodowleh was written on official City of Toronto stationery, sparking concern from a veteran Ontario Court judge who questioned whether the then-councillor may have misused his position of authority.
WHEN I LOOK over my life, I see failures. You’ve heard the sayings: “success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm” (Winston Churchill), “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” (Thomas Edison), “we are all failures – at least the best of us are” (J.M. Barrie). The only alternative to failure is to not try, and once you’ve made that decision you’ve placed your chances of success in the realm of absolute certainty, at zero percent.
THE QUEBEC ELECTION campaign became a bit more interesting this week with the entry of Pierre Karl Péladeau, of Quebecor Inc., Quebecor Media Inc. and Sun Media Corporation. Mr. Péladeau is well-known as the owner of a global telecommunications empire that includes many assets, both within and without Quebec. Now he wishes to be known, goodness knows why, as an aspiring Parti Québécois politician. He’s considered an aggressive and iron-fisted businessman, and no one doubts the nature of his new ambition, to become the President of the Nation of Quebec, as well as the king of Quebec media.
SOME DAY the world’s going to end. No one knows the someday, nor the somehows. That hasn’t prevented speculation. For as long as there’ve been human brains able to theorize, there have been theories.
• Week of 09.03.2014
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WHAT’S TRENDY and current and cool? What’s everyone watching and doing and talking and thinking and listening to right now. Do you know, and do you care?
MONTREAL DIRECTOR Jean-Marc Vallée first got my attention with the excellent French-language film C.R.A.Z.Y.. Now he’s taken his notoriety to a new level, with Dallas Buyers Club, written by Craig Borten and starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto.
A TOPIC CAN BE both vast and yet reducible to the most simple of terms. Here’s an example: a writer is a person who does things with words. Whether her goal is to inform, deceive, terrify, entertain, charm, persuade or seduce, a writer will have to do it with words. A reader, also, has nothing but words from which to cultivate the pictures, emotions and experiences which are ‘in’ the text. A writer’s voice is a big topic, but the topic does indeed rest upon these objects called words. And words alone.
THERE ARE SEVERAL dates you could propose as the birthday of the compact disc. Among them is March 1, 1983, the day the CD was launched in Japan and North America as a successor music storage format to the cassette tape and the long-playing vinyl record, whatever those are.
Here are some remarkable CD facts.
THE BLUE DOT MEME alludes to the February 7 Kainai High School ceremony which marked the education agreement-in-principle between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Shawn Atleo. As people came through a door, they were given a sticker to wear – either blue (not invited guest) or yellow (invited). The not-invited were seated in a separate room, where they watched the ceremony on a monitor.
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 