• Week of 09.06.2013
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TEN YEARS AGO, in 2003, an acquaintance of mine named Elaina Martin created Westfest. This free-of-charge Ottawa street music festival first took place on June 12, 2004, the year that Jane Sibbery was the headlining act. Elaina was then, as she would remain, what is generally termed a force. Every June since, with the help of local businesses and community volunteers, she has steered the festival to harbour. One of the highlights of my time in Ottawa was performing at Westfest 2010, on a bill with Sloan, a memory which came to the surface as the festival once again took to the stage on Thursday June 6, 2013.
• Week of 01.06.2013
How to Get Rob Ford to Call You a Racist | Henry Morgentaler | Town in Northern Ireland Turns into Virtual Potemkin Village Ahead of G8 | The Zombie Plan for Middle East Peace | Recommended Article: How the Rob Ford Crack Scandal Could Save Toronto | Game: “The Puffster” | The 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee | Nigeria Lawmakers Pass Bill Banning Gay Marriage | 32 Killed in Iraq Attacks as May Toll Crosses 600
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I WAS NEVER an enthusiast of Frank magazine, but no one living in Ottawa at the height of its notoriety — from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s — could entirely ignore it. By the time of its demise it had sunk, in my view, to the mental and moral level of a frothy mob. Good satire is a matter of discernment, knowing just who to attack and on what foundation. An example is condensed in the brilliant coinage The Puffster, Geoff Heinricks’ name for the journalist-turned-trough-feeder Mike Duffy. In the ’90s, he was the subject of an ongoing satirical campaign which culminated in a defamation lawsuit (a common occurrence at Frank) later settled out of court. “Puffster” economically and comprehensively summed up the self-regarding Duffy, capturing in one word his swollen ego together with his lack of moral and intellectual gravity.
AS I WRITE this it is impossible to say whether the drama surrounding Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s alleged new high constitutes an actual new low, but drama does seem to be the word of the moment. Exactly one year ago I moved to this city, and in the time since I have witnessed the restless strut and fret of local municipal politics, the principal player of the stage forever availing himself to fresh tales full of sound and fury.
• Week of 26.05.2013 —
The Woolwich Attack | Rob Ford Denies Being an Addict | Orthodox Christian Priests Organize LGBT Attack in Georgia | Ai Weiwei Releases Metal Song | Judge Orders Lesbian Couple to Split, Citing Texas “Morality Clause” | Game: “Finish the Headline” | Using Honeybees to Find Land Mines | Driver Hits Cyclist and is Caught After Tweeting About It | 3-D Printing of Body Parts
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• Week of 19.05.2013 — Is Rob Ford’s New Low His New High? | A Lashing For Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | Retired NFL Players Endure A Lifetime Of Hurt | Kim Jong Un Knows Turf | Drunk Man Cuts Off His Penis, Flushes It Down The Toilet | Hot In Japan: Human Doll Cloning | The Canadian Senate’s Growing Independent Party | Building the Starship Enterprise
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• Week of 12.05.2013 — Apply Now to Live on Mars | Nazi-Themed Wagner Opera Now Cancelled | Air Force One is For Sale | Pakistan Election | Liberia Journalists Protest with Black Front Pages | Iron Man Publicity Stunt Fail | QUIZ TIME: 4th Grade South Carolina Science | 10,000 Dissidents Detained in Eritrea | The Cardinal Sean O’Malley Boycott
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• Week of 05.05.2013 — Bangladesh Factory Fires | Syria | Left vs. Right: The Roundtable Goes Into the Weeds | Guns and Children | Canada Can’t Account for $3.1 Billion in Anti-Terror Expenditures | Søren Kierkegaard’s 200th Birthday | Cannibalism in Jamestown | Toronto Pastors Fleece Their Flock | Job Listing: Professional Porn Identifier
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IT WAS ONLY eight days after the March 25, 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and Rose Schneiderman was in no mood for playing nice. Addressing her (mostly) middle-class audience of Women’s Trade Union League supporters, she said:
I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.
HANS KÜNG, in his book Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View, records the satirical line about the late-Renaissance pope Julius II — the Warrior Pope — in which the commissioner of Michelangelo’s infamous Sistine Chapel ceiling inserts the keys to his treasure vault into the locks barring entrance to heaven’s gate and is thereby denied.
ON SATURDAY, April 13, 2013, I chatted with Shelagh Rogers about the work of truth and reconciliation, books, and her years at the CBC. An excerpt of this discussion appears in The Roundtable episode 38. Here, for your enjoyment, is the entire interview.
AMONG THE GOOD Riddances this past week were exhibitions of ill grace from British citizens not yet born in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher captured the office of Prime Minister. It happens that 1979 is a year I recall vividly — from the retreat of Pol Pot to the televised campaign ads of former California governor, Ronald Reagan, boasting (ironically, as it would turn out) his reduction of the public debt, to the Iranian hostage crisis. To remember the flavour of those days is to begin the accounting of Thatcher’s political successes.
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 