Personal Essay

Pop Culture: an essay

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[Originally published in ASH Magazine, volume 3 number three Summer 1996.]

First, a definition. You will notice that the phrase is made from separable units: popular, and culture. Popular, I think, expresses the essential character of a high-tech, media-dominated age. Hence, by popular culture, I do not mean a culture everyone “likes” — as common usage would have it (“she’s the most popular gal in grade nine!”). If the media are correct, this is emphatically not the character of popular culture. No: pop culture is a “popular” one because it addresses itself to and thereby captivates the attention of The People. Every day each person is addressed by cultural institutions — television for instance — which assume as their audience nothing short of the Collective Man. It is the nature of popular culture to get into one’s daily life, whether discussions, chat, entertainment, or sex. And it does not matter who one is, popular culture makes few rhetorical distinctions, for we are all “of the people.” Innovations in technology guarantee that this will be the case not only in North America, but increasingly also in (for examples) Tokyo, Paris, and Beijing, each of which is becoming increasingly “Americanised.” Another way of saying this: the world is increasingly adopting the trappings of mass-produced popular culture, a culture “of the people.” And we are all of us of the people.

By Culture I intend those instituted actions and objects expressing that which is held in high esteem. For the public articulation of personal beliefs is never free from institutional mediation, such as when a newspaper reporter elicits our private opinion of the Conservative Harris agenda, using carefully-worded questions. Culture does not issue from a vacuum, and not even from the sincere, spontaneous expression of an individual. Culture is the institutionally-determined expression of “values”: admirable actions, appropriate behaviours, moral codes of conduct, aesthetic tastes, religious orthodoxies. And let us not forget perversions and heresies as well; for a culture, if it is to be vibrant, must somehow appropriate to itself that which issues a threatening challenge or a deplored variation. The language in which we express “that which is held in high esteem” will be necessarily variegated; not the Queen’s English certainly, but a jostling Creole, what Mikhail Bakhtin called “heteroglossia,” or “differing tongues.” Culture is a grab-bag of contending but mostly peacefully coexisting perceptions and representations of the world and of our place within it. The strength of a culture is therefore to be judged by the ability (or relative inability) of its institutions to respect diversity while representing to its constituents a public: that is, a collective self-image, construed more-or-less as a people. Aristocracies accomplish this by appealing to the metaphor of the body politic, of which the King serves as head, and we ordinary folk presumably as toes, elbows, and the like. Our tastes however, inclining as they do toward democratic models, are supposedly gratified not by distinctions, but by uniformity. Hence, pop institutions labour toward the illusion that, whatever our superficial peculiarities, we are all of us of a mass, sharing certain fundamental values.

There is one further point I wish to advance before I move on. In an industrialised capitalist nation, the expression of that “which is held in high esteem,” the present definition of culture, is inextricable from the logic and ends of capitalism. That is why capitalist differ from non-capitalist societies, tribal or socialist for examples, which nonetheless also conceive of themselves as a “people.” Capitalist societies express values with dollars and cents. And I know it might sound extreme, but I suggest that everything about persons subject to capitalist social organization, including (as I’ve earlier suggested) their sex lives, is in some manner related to capitalism. (If you doubt this, call me on the 14TH of February). Popular culture is mass-produced by corporations for profit: monetary profit of course, but political and personal profit as well. And most of the time, most people are quite comfortable with this. The relations of culture, values and capitalism — and ultimately one’s personal pathway through them —  are ongoing negotiations between the agenda of the individual and the agenda of her culture’s institutions.

Last year’s attack on Time Warner, issued by American Senate leader and Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, was an ostensible defence of the values of the people against those of popular culture. Given my argument thus far, this would appear absurd. How does one defend the values of the people against the culture of the people? Dole’s manoeuvre is a familiar one: he accused Time Warner of representing, not the people, but the “elitist” interests of capital. Whether Dole was right to accuse Time Warner of disregarding the values of the people in their quest for profit I won’t here explore (if I did, I would have to answer a disturbing question: from whence did the profit come?), but the fact that a Republican could even articulate such a critique, for indubitable political gain, is itself telling. Dole’s views are not peculiar; his comments were greeted sympathetically by Liberals and Conservatives alike, amply demonstrating that “popular” culture is widely judged not very popular in either sense of the term: for critics contend it can today claim neither to have achieved uniform popularity (in the vulgar sense) nor an acceptable representation of a public — that is, of a People. Of course, the common wisdom, promulgated with great (self-) interest by the media, is that institutions are under the attack of the people also for their “elitism.” I suggest that such propositions however are hopelessly abstract, even if most individuals are in fact at odds with institutions (and it is not clear to me that they are, for I don’t know “most” individuals).

You might have concluded that Dole’s attack on popular culture represents, or even constitutes, a tear in the national fabric,  but I myself doubt this. The popular culture industry feeds on attack, and is indeed founded upon it. The music industry, for one, has been richly rewarded for its appropriation of rebellion and critique, whether it was the 60s youth culture or 90s Gangsta Rap. Establishment record companies promptly soak up the disposable income of anti-establishment teens, to the apparent satisfaction of all involved. This is precisely the genius of capitalism, which swiftly commodifies fringe lunatics, malcontents, and would-be subversives, the latter learning to express their politics in terms compatible with the interests of capital (and being rewarded for it), or else losing their public voice if they don’t. Capitalism thrives because it can sell even anti-capitalism.

What do we learn from all of this? Perhaps that Dole’s attack was germane not because it posed a genuine threat to a cynical elite (it did not), but because it asserted two fundamental truths of capitalist democracy: that pop culture institutions — and the market forces which guide them — play an active role in civic life, and are no less capable of moral neutrality than we are. I do think Dole is correct when he suggests that our media are fundamentally anti-democratic, and that he is in agreement on this point with Noam Chomsky only supports this conclusion. But attacks on “elitism” help little, and might even distract us from more fruitful investigations.

Why an issue of ASH on popular culture? First, we might be instructed if we reflect on the very idea of a popular culture. Inherent in the notion is the belief that people (and not only kings, or some other elite) are competent to imagine, assemble, express and debate visions of their collectivity. Popular culture issues from an implicitly constructive, democratic and hopeful assessment of the human lot. Thus, if constructivism, equity, and hope are not frequent features of public discourse, or “culture,” we might well find this odd, and question why it is so. We will be suspicious of the artist’s mantra that “I am only showing what I see,” which you’ll notice discloses a passive formulation of creativity indeed. Second, considered as a historical development, popular culture is profoundly progressive, anti-elitist, and anti-authoritarian. And yet popular culture too often glamourises ill-gotten wealth, sexism, invidious class and race stereotypes, petty atrocities, and brutal excess. What has become of the notion that all women and men are worthy of justice, respect and dignity? Dole’s attack, for all its hypocrisy (he praised Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican booster), raises important questions about the character of popular culture and its relationship to democracy. Dole’s jeremiad inspired the media to ask the question, What judgement have the people passed on popular culture? But I have been waiting for someone to consider another question: What judgement has popular culture passed on the people?

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First Nations

The High Arctic Relocation

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THE FIRST public act of Canada’s Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, John Duncan, came today in the form of an apology to the nineteen Inuit families of Inukjuak and the three of Pond Inlet relocated to the barren landscapes of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, on Cornwallis and Ellesmere Islands, respectively, in 1953.

One today commonly refers to this region as “the northernmost inhabited part of Canada,” Cape Columbia being the northernmost point on the map of Canada. However, during the Cold War, when these eighty-nine Inuit were taken on a 2,000 km journey (the trip was shorter for the Pond Inlet residents, relocated to assist the southern Inuit in adjusting to their new life) and then unceremoniously divided up and abandoned to an entirely foreign ecosystem in their ill-adapted clothing, the United States and Greenland had at least as much substantive claim to the territory, if not more.

This detail matters because since the 1980s, when the Inuit initiated their claim against the Canadian government, a stumbling block of negotiations toward a proper settlement has been the suggestion that the relocation was part of an effort to assert Canada’s sovereignty over the “High Arctic.” Arctic Sovereignty is a pressing matter for the Canadian government of our own day, and would have been in the 1950s, when the menacing prospect of Soviet encroachment in the North constituted something beyond a political and economic challenge. It was the Communists after all that drove the Canadian military north in the first place, and many Inuit living today went from tundra to TV, and caribou to cash, within a decade — most never having seen a white man or a dollar bill until the trucks rolled in. Few are the Canadians who have even tried to imagine the trauma doubtless brought on by this sort of encounter, and the truth in any case is that they couldn’t do it.

Canada’s position has always been that the 1953/’55 relocations were a well-intentioned solution to over-crowding, the decline of hunting, and welfare dependency in Inukjuak. (It’s odd to think a place named Giant in Inuktitut would be overcrowded.) Today’s Government apology reiterates the official position that the move had nothing to do with concerns over Arctic Sovereignty, hedging the matter by stating that the “Government of Canada recognizes that these communities have contributed to a strong Canadian presence in the High Arctic.” Those relocated however believe that, in addition to the physical and emotional suffering brought upon them by a poorly conceived and badly executed policy, lies the ironic insult of having been exploited by a Government eager to claim an uninhabited region of the North as its Sovereign Domain. If the claim is true, then the blows do fall rather below the belt. It means that the pointless and avoidable suffering of these individuals was all for the benefit of a colonizing power contemptuous of “its” indigenous people.

The Government’s claims raise many objections, among them the odd choice of destination and the all-too-convenient coincidence of the timing and geographical placement of the families with the evident Government agenda at the time. At the very least, Government officials would have been aware of the nice convenience of having preemptively populated contested land with individuals they could claim belong there anyway. The for-your-own-good line is a familiar convention, a self-serving trope brought out for public consumption on those frequent occasions when Government wants to enjoy the exquisite pleasure of having it both ways. Those who pay careful attention to language will notice that even the name of the department, “Indian Affairs and Northern Development,” is a contradiction as well as a confession.

I have further cause to doubt the Government’s position. The relocation is portrayed in two films, Marquise Lepage’s “Martha of the North” and Zacharias Kunuk’s “Exile.” As it happens, I know the Martha in question, and I knew her when only a few years ago she learned herself the reason why her family had been chosen to be among those moved across a continent. (Around that time I had lunch with her and Zacharias Kunuk in Iqaluit.) You will have to wait for the book she is writing to learn that, but let it suffice that her own relocation was not for the reasons given by Government. And so in at least one case I am certain the official version is wrong, from which it follows that today at least one person has received no more than one-half an apology.

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Humor

Speech For The Graduating Class

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[“Speech For The Graduating Class” belongs to the Imagined Occasions 2010 series.]

Of my own graduation day many many years ago I remember little. Nothing of the speech, nor of the ceremony. I recall feeling vaguely ridiculous in cap and gown, and I must also have been inconvenienced by heat and by what would have seemed at the time an endless queue of persons, each like me eager to get on with it already. But even in producing this very rough outline I speculate about a day that is mostly, for me, irretrievable. Did I mention it was many years ago? Well, it was.

Notice that the ironies of this observation come at both my expense and yours. And it may be that the only qualitative difference between you and me, between youth and age, innocence and experience — I hesitate to say beast and beauty, it’s a modesty thing — is that I possess an ear finely attuned to the strains of irony. I don’t mind if that sounds like a boast, and I suppose that it is. Time will mostly take from you, but as it’s busy doing this you may as well through your own effort grab something for yourself in return.

Here’s a more plain way of saying it. It’s never too soon to face two unavoidable and unpleasant facts: the first is that your prime is going to pass quickly, whether you now believe this or not, and the second is that you have much disappointment in your future. You have arrived at the first condition, the past-prime, when you see the years ahead not as an exotic land of wild promise but as a more-of-the-same domesticated pasture. (Note. Is it mere coincidence that your waistline has suffered the consequences of too much red meat? I think not!) The second condition is plain enough. The only variable will concern the measure of the disappointment, whether it is generic or extraordinary. Looking at the question from a statistical viewpoint, I infer most of you will have conventional, or average, disappointment — not enough paid, not enough laid, that sort of thing. A few of you will be exceptional, which is a tautology, exception being only for the few. You will reach greater heights, and fall accordingly. Serves you right.

That earlier bit about grabbing something for yourself as time takes from you goes like this. The energy you would have wasted trying to evade, sweeten, or defer unpleasant facts can be much better applied to the active cultivation of an ironic outlook. That’s something that can never be taken away, excepting a blow to the head or dementia, and perhaps not even then, or at least up to a point and in some cases. This is only my professional medical opinion, however. Another useful endeavour is to discover your one or two non-negotiables, the things you will under no condition surrender. You have less of these non-negotiables than you now think, and so in years to come you will find yourself making what the younger you would have considered dangerous compromises and even deals with the devil. I myself believe you should never let your principles get in the way of a good idea, not to mention a good time, and in any case you young people usually have too many principles for your own good. It will take you some time, but paring down your list to what really — really — matters is a good exercise. Think of it as creating a life compass, which needless to say points to your true north. You need only one arrow, and indeed any more than that risks your being set off in the wrong direction. That is my view as an engineering expert. Of course you’ll find that this happens anyway, and when it does be sure to remember that I did warn you, in my expert capacity as a navigator, or career cartographer. Also, this is another instance in which an ironic outlook, and the willingness to laugh at oneself and one’s misfortunes, will provide good value. I say this only because I am an economist by trade, hence I know.

If any of what I have said sounds to you depressing, be mindful of the fact that a person who can laugh at misfortunes great and small is going to laugh, and laugh quite a bit. I know this to be fact because I myself have the good fortune of always being around for misfortune, and other than in the physical and emotional senses of the term, I find I am never in the least depressed. On the other side of the ledger, I could enter jolly claims that your generation is going to change the world, that you will do great things, that your life is all ahead of you, unscripted. The last so-called observation is an empty shell of rhetoric, true but obvious. The second is a maybe, the odds being against you, unless by great one means the many graciously applauded but nonetheless common things a few of which any person who isn’t a total imbecile can do — examples: making a baby, getting an office job, finishing the crossword puzzle without consulting the solution, or baking “a great lasagna.” That’s great, dear! Hurrah, and so forth. I would hardly feel I’d earned my pay, however, if I came here merely to compliment you on your cooking and ability to breed, both of which I don’t doubt are very solid. No, the only certain thing is that your generation will change the world, but that’s only because my generation will do you the enormous favour of getting out of your way, also known as biting the dust.

Concerning changing the world, you do have a choice to make, and your decision will have an effect on the character of life on this planet. Yes, it will be a small difference, but if you just hold on until I reach the end of what I have to say you’ll see a small difference can be of consequence. You can choose to be a decent person. One individual committed to a great cause may or may not improve the quality of living in this world, but one person actively committed to simple decency certainly will. It follows from what I have said that you can also choose to be a massive shit, in which case I ask only that you choose not to move in next door nor to join a religion that will have you in my living-room recommending your deity and the promise of eternal life, among other massive shits like you. If in years to come you recall only one of my points, and given my own admission even this may be asking too much, then the preceding request wouldn’t be a bad one to have at the ready.

Thank-you for putting up with me, not that you had a choice in the matter.

Fiction, Writers and Writing

Supposing It Happens

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What will you do when you become a billionaire? Well, supposing you do. Become a billionaire. You’ve got to think about something while you’re supposed to be working. Of course, the work day is almost over. When you’re finished, you’ll go home to your dream house in the country and your personal Italian chef will prepare for you a gourmet meal. And this time the chef’s name won’t be Boyardee, either.

Well, supposing it happens.

You better decide right now whether you will have a Jacuzzi after dinner, or see a film in your personal movie theatre. Or maybe just lounge around the master bedroom: build a fire, lie in your big bed, look out of the picture window at the mountains. Boy, your river sure is beautiful. Wish I had one of my own.

Supposing I did. I’d go fishing everyday and catch trout. Fly fishing. Who knows what else I’d hook. Yeah, I’d be a fisherman.

Think of all the things you’re going to have when you’re rich. And the travel! Paris, Bermuda, Greece, South America. Me, I’ll be right here, fishing.

You could finally do the things you’ve always wanted to do. And suppose on top of being rich, you were young and sexy as well. With perfect health. Did I mention you are also brilliant? Everyone thinks you are the best.

You have wonderful taste in clothing. Money isn’t everything: you have to know how to spend it. Anyone can throw a billion dollars around. But taste, that’s another matter. And you have je ne sais quoi, which no amount of money can buy either. That’s why members of the opposite sex find you so attractive. Of course, you’re already involved in a passionate and exciting love affair. You and your lover travel the world together and see exotic places. You make love on beaches and buy each other delightful gifts in Rome and Moscow and Rio de Janeiro.

Meanwhile, I’m quite content to be fishing. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve hooked something. I’m just reeling it in.

Most billionaires aren’t cultured; have you ever noticed that? They’re all capitalism, all business. They have no charm, no class. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see someone like you. You’re rich, but you wear it well, if you know what I mean. You know exactly what you want. You make good choices. Your lover is a cultured person too. Has a great singing voice. A sensitive person. Has lots of talent. Athletic and creative. And witty, but not pretentious or condescending. Kind, loving, generous. And a great body, if you don’t mind me saying so.

Wow, that was a quick catch. Amazing how easy it is when you know what bait to use.

First Nations

Of Truth and Reconciliation

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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (whose website may be accessed here) is faring poorly of late in the court of public opinion, for reasons that have been widely reported. Foremost concerns have been the acrimonious resignations and dismissals of senior staff, a two-year delay of primary activities such as staffing and office-assembly, the apparent compromising of the Commission’s independence, and the inability of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to compel testimony by means of subpoena, or even to name perpetrators. Many are wondering if the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be able to accomplish anything of value.

One might well begin in fairness by acknowledging the extraordinary burden of the “truth and reconciliation commission” brand name. It’s rather like coming into the world christened Brock Skyconqueror. Even before the business cards were printed and the phones were installed, people were day-dreaming about 1989 — Nelson Mandela and the crumbling walls of the prison, that sort of thing. It may however help the cause of expectation management to familiarize yourself, if you haven’t already, with the precise character of this institution:

2. Establishment, Powers, Duties and Procedures of the Commission. Pursuant to the Court-approved final settlement agreement and the class action judgements, the Commissioners: (a) in fulfilling their Truth and Reconciliation Mandate, are authorized to receive statements and documents from former students, their families, community and all other interested participants ….

This is to say, the Commission’s authority consists in the power to listen, under conditions which actively forbid assignment of responsibility:

[the Commissioners] (g) shall not name names in their events, activities, public statements, report or recommendations, or make use of personal information or of statements which identify a person, without the express consent of that individual, unless that information and/or the identity of the person so identified has already been established through legal proceedings, by admission, or by public disclosure by that individual.

I could go on quoting legalese from Schedule N of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, and no doubt you’d be enthralled by my doing so, but most of the twelve-page document establishing the scope of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is contained in these extracts. The rest of it is amplification, that the Commission shall “adopt methods and procedures which it deems necessary to achieve its goals” and shall “have available the use of such facilities and equipment as is required …,” etc.

Part of the burden of this Commission, and quite a large part, is truth — specifically the expectation that it will root out and present to Canada The Truth of the Indian Residential School System. But since the TRC is neither a public inquiry (see 4. Exercise of Duties: “… the Commission is not to act as a public inquiry”) nor a legal process, truth can only mean personal truth, the truth of one’s convictions and experiences as presented to the Commission. Another term for this is subjective truth.

It’s for me impossible to imagine the Government of Canada, the Churches, and their many respective lawyers agreeing to the establishment of an independent investigative body with quasi-judicial powers. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is precisely what one would expect of a court-mandated, lawyer-negotiated instrument: it is a circumspect compromise between parties, an admission of responsibility which carefully circumscribes consequences.

As an agent of public education it does hold promise. The TRC is mandated to create from its gatherings, as well as from other source documents (voluntarily yielded), “as complete an historical record as possible of the IRS system and legacy.” The importance of this cannot be overstated. But the challenge here is on the distribution, and not on the production, end. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples generated enormous material and testimony related to residential schools, much more than could be contained in its Final Report, but few have seen it. Many Canadians remain ignorant of Canada’s Indian Residential School System, and are therefore ignorant of its consequences and legacy. Without a sustained campaign of public education, which means actually getting the stuff into the public domain, the Canadian public is certain to remain in its bubble on not-knowing. So far the degree of effective public outreach is the principal difference between Canada’s and South Africa’s truth and reconciliation efforts,  according to comments made by South African professor Piet Meiring. But even here, we must acknowledge that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has resources unequal to the work of educating a country. It must have public and private sector partners in this endeavour.

So to recap: there’s a modest potential for some good in this Truth and Reconciliation Commission, only don’t expect an uncovering of Truth and the reconciliation of Canada and Aboriginal peoples. Rather, hope that individual truths will reach the individuals who can be reached, and that some small, personal acts of reconciliation will result. Expectation of anything more is a mere dream.

World

Celebrities, Coltan, and the Trial of Charles Taylor

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It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that the stupid cult of the celebrity has overtaken a war crimes trial of former professional corpse-maker and Liberian warlord, Charles Taylor. Nor do I need to explain to you either the nature of the misfortune or, especially, of the predictability. Femi Fani-Kayode decries the unfairness of the trial (Taylor had an AU-backed safe-haven agreement) and American hypocrisy (the U.S. is not a member of the International Court of Criminal Justice, and has forever shielded itself from such prosecutions). I would take issue with the first point, and with the second I would agree and would suggest its inaugural application to Henry Kissinger. Confronted by this trial however I see filth of another kind. One can never look deeply into the familiar business of the African tribal massacre without feeling that we are all, you and I, dirtied.

If we weren’t too engrossed in the nonentity Naomi Campbell, we might notice the discomforting Judeo-Christian dimension of Taylor’s criminal undertakings. Among his charges of American hypocrisy, Femi Fani-Kayode bitterly cites the failure to indite war crimes related to Iraq and to the killings of “the defenceless Arab women and children of Sabra and Chatilla in Southern Lebanon just a couple of decades ago.” These giveaway indictments serve to situate Africa’s divisions within their proper, religious context. It is a context manifested in Liberia’s 19th-century proxy colonization, or “re-patriation” if you prefer, by Christianized former American slaves. (The early domination of local, non-Christian Africans by this Americanized elite and proxy-colonizer mirrors the contemporary rivalries of Liberia’s many ethnic groups.) Next, recall some years ago when it was disclosed that Pat Robertson was profiting from the blood diamond business, that furthermore he was financing the business with 700 Club money, and that Taylor was on the take. Taylor, who has been known to compare himself to Jesus, has had other gross associates of the Christian sort. Kilari Anand Paul, for example. Argue, for whatever good it will do you, that these people don’t represent the faith. The points to be taken away are that our world is today poisoned by this sort of rubbish, that it is getting worse — particularly in Africa, from whence the next wave of international terrorism is already arriving — and that we are likely to be living with the consequences for generations to come.

But hold on, it gets worse. Cecil Rhodes’s De Beers company has been for years an Economics 101 textbook case of marketing genius, as well as the cartel knack at price-fixing. If you are a married woman, chances are quite good you can glance down right now at the diamond on your left hand. For years the only kind of diamond was the blood variety, and even now it’s near impossible to guarantee otherwise. Add to this the unpleasant fact that commerce in critical and ubiquitous materials like rubber and coltan (used in computer chips and cell phones) finances the purchases of weapons throughout Africa, has for many years, and will for many more to come. It would be easier to hedge the complicity if it weren’t the case that North Americans only care about Africa when it’s presented through celebrity proxies — Bob Geldof, Bono, Brad Pitt, Madonna, or Naomi Campbell.

In a better world the West would not undermine every attempt by Africans to improve their lot (and only Africans can improve their own lot). North Americans would stop seeing Africa, to the miniscule degree which they see that continent at all, as a backwards place of starvation and war. The many and diverse nations of Africa are so much more than these, and in many cases not even these. Unfortunately this better world is a good way off.

In the meantime the warlord, weapons, cell phone, and celebrity industries thrive.

History

Why the US Should Not Apologize for the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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Looking backwards at the savagery, at the irrational and disgusting business of industrial murder which was World War Two, it seems a fool’s errand to sort out the matter of guilt and innocence in any manner which nicely assigns positive moral value to what happened between the years 1939-1945. There is never an honourable soldier and never a good war: war is a positive evil which makes everyone, and everything, dirty. So surely the legacy of the August 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ought to be universal commitment to the denuclearization of our world.

The call for an American apology for these acts of mass killing may seem on its surface reasonable enough, but to apologize would be to engage in hypocrisy and would misrepresent both history and current attitudes in the United States. Many of the Americans who would have been there far from feeling apologetic after the war were thankful. (A good and representative example is Paul Fussell’s essay, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.”) The simple fact of the August 6 and 9 murders is that the war was brought to an immediate end, preventing the certain deaths of many hundreds of thousands who would have been compelled to fight on land in a gruesome and bloodied exercise of attrition. Nor should we forget by whom they would have been compelled — specifically, the Emperor Showa, who, claiming himself to be an arahitogami (god), lived in extreme comfort on his massive conclave-estate while forcefully urging upon his subjects the honour of suicide. His defeat and displacement made possible a democratic and prosperous Japan, and though it is not today fashionable to say so, often only violence (or the credible threat of violence) can accomplish the fascism-to-democracy transformation. If you wish to blame someone for the death and misery which follow from this vile truism, let me recommend the fascists.

In my opinion it is one of the principal shames of the post-war period that the Emperor was allowed to keep his material possessions and to avoid facing prosecution as a war criminal, particularly for his sanctioning of the 1937 invasion of China and the depravity which thereby ensued. General MacArthur appears to have thought him useful as a stabilizing presence during the post-war occupation, and it may be that the Allies wished to avoid imposing the humiliating terms of the previous war, resentments over which abetted the successes of militarist regimes. The Emperor appears in retrospect to have cultivated the notion that decisions were made by the gozen kaigi, or Imperial Conference, and that he himself was a mere figurehead — a fiction which would perhaps have been credible.

This is speculation. What is certain is that the Emperor Showa exploited all the Twentieth Century signature barbarisms, which is to say fascism, religious fanaticism, and militaristic nationalism. A self-aggrandizing god when it suited him, or a mere mortal figurehead on a walkabout with foreign heads of state — when that had become the ticket — the man for many years was as deadly for the Japanese as any bomb. Yet he was allowed to enjoy a long and privileged life, during which no apology ever came from his lips.

Personal Essay

All In A Day’s Work

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It happens that Stockwell Day once again has the misfortune to be rather thickly in the news. You must have noted the tautology in that: Stockwell Day in the news is always a misfortune, never anything else. Quite without needing to, the man is perennially at the habit of putting himself before microphone and camera, only to make a bung of it.

Do you recall the extraordinary media hyperventilation which attended his farcical lunge, conducted partly by Jet Ski, at the Canadian Alliance leadership, in 2000? As Finance Minister, in the Ralph Klein government, Day had paid down debt and balanced the provincial budget. On these accomplishments, and little else, rested the extraordinary enthusiasm for an unexamined man who began to dismay as soon as the shrink wrap was off.

Everywhere Stockwell Day went throughout his leadership campaign against Preston Manning, he said plainly wrong things, made an ass of himself, and in the end split the Alliance Party in two. It is worth remembering that Day has a federal political career only as a result of a deal made with Stephen Harper — a deal which brought prominent party members disgusted with Day back into the fold, restoring the Alliance and enabling them to take power. There’s another, even less kind, way to say this: the Conservative Party of Canada is today united and in power because its absurd and impossible leader got out of the way and let someone competent take over.

One is tempted in speaking of Day’s political career to produce the actuarial. Well then, one instructive example of the real-world liability he represents is his illogical and tub-thumping attack on Lorne Goddard, which cost the Albertan taxpayers over $700,000, again needlessly. The expression, “it is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt,” could have been written about Stockwell Day and in any case would provide him some sound direction. His mistakes were at one time innocent and therefore merely comical, such as when he got the direction of the Niagara River backward. This is no longer the case. His lazy indifference to the assimilation and production of relevant facts, and his recourse to settled ideological conviction, are liabilities and nothing beside.

Nor are these character traits limited within the Harper Government to the Treasury Board President. He is unique only in that looking over his career one can see that he always brings the misery upon himself, and upon his party, despite there being an alternative within an easy reach. Now it appears the misery will overtake Canadians as well, as they endure yet another avoidable controversy, this time about whether crime is going up or down. All that, and more, in a Day’s work.

Personal Essay

(Big) Business As Usual

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[Originally published in ASH Magaine, Volume Four Number Three, Summer 1997.]

Now and then I find myself in a philosophical mood, pondering the evolution of this creature called ASH. I think it’s a healthy activity, the more so since I’m inclined these days not to take the magazine too seriously. I’d like to leave behind me a respectable corpus when I at long last turn my attention elsewhere, but I know also that ASH is likely never to attain a status beyond the obscurity common to small publications.

I confess this disappoints me — and not merely for its humbling effect on the ego. You see, I had a conversation once with a business-minded fellow, who maintained that the market should decide the outcome in all matters. He noted the widespread reliance of Canadian magazines on government funding (ASH is an exception) and wondered aloud: Why sustain a magazine read by so few that it needs taxpayers’ money just to survive? Indeed. I must say the logic, bolstered by economic concepts such as “utility maximization,” seemed to me to be solid. But when I drew out its implications and followed them to their conclusions, I was left with a rather troubling picture.

The image I had in my mind was of a culture that could never have enough movie celebrities, rock stars, elite athletes, arms traders, investment bankers, futures speculators, and corporate lawyers: for their market value is, it appears, without limit. As for, say, motherhood (that sacred job which is praised to the skies at appropriate occasions by businessmen and politicians), well, it has no market value whatsoever; and nearly the same is true of all the so-called “caring” professions and the many wage-labour jobs which have long sustained our privileged standard of living. Think about it: much that we might reasonably claim dignifies and enriches life, much which makes this world more than merely bearable, is practically valueless, economically speaking. Remember Mike Harris’s contempt, oft-expressed in the 1995 Ontario election campaign, for welfare mothers, who don’t do anything? Such contempt is one of the free market’s proud accomplishments, and a remarkable accomplishment it is.

I suspect my business-minded acquaintance is now pleased. His vision of an efficient, competitive, rational, growth-centred world has triumphed, and we shall live for many years to come its social and ecological consequences. The New World Order has its bureaucracy (the economists, policy experts, and investment gurus who now make regular appearances on the evening news and the bestseller lists), its constitution (the General Agreement on Trade and Tarrifs), and its Bill of Rights (the Multilateral Agreement on Investment). The message for the masses is also vaguely familiar: believe, submit, and you’ll be rewarded in a future life.

Perhaps the market knows best in some matters — magazines, for instance. In any case, I’m inclined these days to keep ASH going, if only that it might be a voice crying in the market wilderness. It’s an obscure voice, as I’ve already acknowledged, and so there’s little hope ASH might counter effectively the fallacious claims of the economic experts who dominate the landscape. The very attempt risks the pomposity and the intolerable self-righteousness that usually attend those who are convinced they’re on a mission from God. So much, you might then say, for not taking ASH too seriously.

Self-righteousness isn’t the only temptation to which the dissenters are susceptible, as the global economic empire discloses what appears to many to be a heartless agenda. Have you noticed the abundance of books in the last few years with the phrase “The End Of” in their titles? All about us, the horsemen are assuming the saddle in gleeful anticipation of the apocalypse. Unfortunately for them, there’s no end in sight. It’s (big) business as usual.

Not long ago I read George Orwell’s The Road To Wigan Pier, a book that makes me wonder why Orwell is represented in the school curricula by Animal Farm and 1984. Wigan Pier is really two books in one: the first half describes in horrific detail the lives of U.K. miners during the 1930s, and the second half is a scathing look at the people who propose to improve matters by adopting socialism. Orwell of course considered himself a socialist, but his temperament was such that he could never settle into a dogmatic understanding of human affairs. The possessor of a keen, sceptical mind, Orwell had the habit of bringing into his work troubling details — such as his observation that many a would-be “bourgeois Socialist” of his day was at heart an “old Etonian”:

Perhaps once, out of sheer bravado, he has smoked a cigar with the band on, but it would be almost physically impossible for him to put pieces of cheese into his mouth on the point of his knife, or to sit indoors with his cap on, or even to drink his tea out of the saucer. … It can only be because in his heart he feels that proletarian manners are disgusting.

Wigan Pier is full of such scandal, much of it delivered at the author’s expense. Orwell could be, and often was, indignant in the face of injustice, but I’ve yet to catch him indulging in self-righteous cant or doom-saying. It’s this balanced cast of mind that strikes me as Orwell’s greatest contribution to the dissenters’ canon, a contribution well worth recalling.

As it has turned out, Orwell’s works have thus far escaped obscurity. It would be silly to hope for the same outcome in the case of ASH, but that isn’t the point. In the here and now, there’s plenty of Orwellian work to be done — and after all, I’ve only said I’d like to leave a respectable corpus.

Interviews

An Interview with Heather Menzies

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[The following was first published in ASH Magazine Volume 4 Number 1, Winter 1996.]

Your argument, in the book Whose Brave New World?, is that a corporate agenda is “colonizing” the institutions and services upon which we depend in this country. Would you comment on the choice of this word?

In a colonization model, what we are talking about is empire rather than democracy —the empire of technique, but also the new corporate empires imposing their centralised authority, which is what empire is all about, over more and more of the territories of our lives. Colonization has to do with the fact that there is a cultural component, and related to that an ideological component. We’re shifting from an ethic of public service to an ethic that treats services as commodities and service transactions. In the health care field this is very dramatic, and therefore something very important to watch. This is coming out of the United States, where health care is an industry, where sickness is the raw material for a profit-making industry —their bias is built into that— and these are completely taking us away from prevention of debility, prevention of disease, and taking us toward simply the treatment model, where people can make money off a continuing dependence on medicines and treatments and so on. So the colonization aspect gets at the cultural component and the shift toward this more commoditized approach to life, generally, and then within that, service being transformed from an engaged and empathetic human interaction, to a service transaction —which is a business.

There is also colonization in the sense of an existing knowledge base being pushed to the side and treated as completely unimportant while this new knowledge base, and the new sets of technological skills being imposed by the colonizers —by the new technological agents— are being treated as the only ones that count. It’s the same kind of way in which you had the imposition of the pricing system and the commodity form that displaced barter, exchange, and the subsistence basis of an economy based on the commons of the land here.

Neil Postman has stated, in Technopoly, that a technology will “play out its hand” when introduced —that is, it will do what it’s designed to do, regardless of our efforts to control it. But you seem to believe we have a good degree of control.

I’m neither for nor against technology: I’m for a particular use of technology, one that extends what people do, rather than replaces people and replaces what they do. And so, at a fundamental level I understand and I work with the definition of technology as a social construction. Now, there’s a point at which it begins to become deterministic. It’s a bit like what Ursula Franklin said, that once values are incorporated into the design of a technology, they cannot be negotiated. That speaks to the fact that, for instance, once software monitors people and has taken over more and more of the knowledge required to do a job effectively —taken that knowledge away from people and de-skilled them — once that system is put into place, you can’t negotiate around it. There is a time when one has to negotiate. That is in the initial stages of design, and the initial stages of organizing work and the place of technology. There is scope for intervention at that point. I am somewhat sanguine about the possibility of people gaining control. People still have the capacity to negotiate. People are endlessly inventive.

What do you say to the people —and some of them aren’t necessarily pro-business— who find your critique of corporations “conspiratorial,” or at least so dark that it’s hard to accept? I have to admit I find it hard to believe that business has gotten so mean-spirited that it can enrich itself on human misery.

I think that people who subscribe to conspiracy theories are capitulating to the mystique of all-powerfulness associated with many of the institutions of power, which get all the press and are held up as being the only institutions of power. The corollary of that is that these people are betraying and not sufficiently having confidence in the power that in fact people out in the community still do have, to think for themselves, to speak for themselves, and to act. Where I think I come down is that those people who are in institutions of power do have, usually, access to faster means of communication, and they are therefore able to more quickly apprise the situation and seize an opportunity to exploit it. History is much more chaotic, much more fraught with possibilities than the conspiracy theorists would have us believe. And also it’s peopled on the other side with an awfully lot more stupidity and laziness than conspiracy theorists would have us believe [laughter]

There is another enormous advantage for those who have power, and that’s the ability to define the public interest. Until a public interest is defined, it’s impossible to get any sort of program underway.

And again, that comes back to this moral voice issue. I was giving a speech Friday, in which I stressed the importance of scale —the scale of the voices that are saying “This is in fact what the public interest is all about.” I proceeded to lay out what’s happening —the social devastations that globalization and restructuring are causing, with the downsizing and deficit being part of that larger agenda —and having done so, I was talking about the need for media paying attention to networking amongst all those voices, so that you can get the kind of sustained moral tone that is going to in fact communicate this different definition of the public interest: that the public interest is not deficit cutting, is not global competitiveness; the public interest is in fact defined by meeting people’s needs and positioning all these other agendas within the caring capacity of the larger social environment.

I find myself using the language of “community” when I speak of the public interest. But I suspect this is a buzzword — I mean, community is clearly important, but it’s hard not to be self-conscious. Do I really live in a community? And what’s the relation of business, on any scale, to the interests of community? — particularly given the erosion of traditional ties of business to employees, towns, and even democracy itself?

Too much of this gets discussed in the abstract. And abstractions can be so used by anybody. Community is a perfect case in point. You’ve got various ways in which “community” is being used. It’s being used by business to talk about corporate alliances —now they’re being called communities. Communities are also being defined around ownership of consumer goods, such as cars. And communities are being defined around lifestyles. These are all a redefinition of community into consumer roles and property relations. And that’s a complete betrayal of the historical origins of community. People don’t tend to pay attention to the hard work that communities involve. There’s this tendency to reach into the past and pull out this golden, hazy image of community where everybody gets along with their neighbours. But in fact there is no such community. Community-building is hard work. It’s the art of listening to the other person, putting up with their halitosis [laughter] —one of my ways of describing it— but it’s also the daily practice of dialogue, and dialogue doesn’t just involve speaking for yourself, and your family, and your locale, and the particularities of your group identity. It also involves listening. Listening, to be able to respect, so that freedom can be combined with responsibility, in the microcosm, and you can actually work out differences —you know, negotiate differences. That’s my sense of a real community. We need that kind of practice to avoid the idealisms: the golden age of community, which didn’t exist, and also to avoid the new commoditized images of community. The public interest isn’t an abstraction; it’s the people going to the food bank around the corner from where I live, or the Daily Bread food bank in Toronto, or the one where you live.

The current buzzwords do express an abstracted way of looking at the world which has not very much to do with people and a lot to do with processes and technologies.

One of the major shifts going on right now is we’re moving toward the equivalence of the neoliberal and neoconservative agenda —they’re really one and the same. Democracy and democratic values are being subsumed by corporate values. Human rights are being subsumed, or eclipsed, by property rights. “Whoever has the most power wins” seems to be emerging as the ethic of the new era. It’s really important to name that for what it is, and then also know what you have to do if you want to turn that around. You don’t do it, I think, with abstractions about human rights. I think we can regain our perspectives by grounding ourselves, positioning ourselves in solidarity with the people who have been marginalized —who are being displaced. We’re not doing them a favour; we’re doing ourselves a favour. Because we can redefine the public interest with people at the centre.

The economist Paul Krugman has stated [in Mother Jones], “it will take another [Roosevelt], and perhaps the moral equivalent of another war” to bring back the decent society Americans had a generation ago. What do you think it will take here?

What I was also saying about “the empire versus a democracy” is that you get something imposed, versus something negotiated. The whole public discussion of this has almost shut out the notion, the idea, that this kind of thing should be negotiated. In other words, that there should be a debate, a negotiation, between an ethic of social justice and an ethic of business efficiency and corporate profit. And instead what we’re getting is the imposition of this one ethic, the business agenda. Negotiation is reduced to quibbling over the adjustment mechanisms. To be able to reassert that this is in fact an ethical discussion, and that there are moral choices to be made, requires leadership in a very engaged form. And I think there are already in Canada a number of voices that do represent the kind of moral equivalent of, let’s say, the Roosevelt era —people like Ursula Franklin, various people also in communities. We need to pay attention to the fact that the macrocosm is also composed of a bunch of microcosms.

You’ve written a half-dozen or so books about computers, and one about cheese [By the Labour of Their Hands]. Obviously, there’s more to Heather Menzies than technology.

[laughter] The Menzies were farmers in rural Ontario, so this is sort of my personal roots book. I was also as a child taken to the cheese factories. I got a sense of fascination with technology as part of the landscape. I think I gained a sense that machines had characters and were part of our story. And having written that book, it gave me a lovely perspective, because I jumped into 18th and 19th century technology. I learned a lot about technology in the process of writing [By the Labour of Their Hands], although it isn’t at all a technology book. It’s very much a book of the rural culture in Ontario, which has hardly been written on at all. The other thing is I’m a writer first; I hate being described as an expert on computer technology. Now I’m able to pose, at least for myself if not for others, some of the deeper questions about our society and the philosophies at work in it. It’s been an interesting journey.

Heather Menzies is the author of 7 books, including Whose Brave New World?: The Information Highway and the New Economy. (Between The Lines, 1996). She spoke to ASH from Ottawa, Ontario.

Writers and Writing

E. B. White

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As many of my generation, I first encountered Elwyn Brooks White as the author of Charlotte’s Web. In college, The Elements of Style was an often-recommended guide to prose composition, written by William Strunk in 1918 and by White revised in the 1950s. With these associations, E. B. White would for years be summed up in my mind.

Some time ago I found a collection of his “Notes and Comment” writings for The New Yorker. It now rests on my bedside table, and most nights I dip in at day’s end. In our age of the rant, it’s pleasurable to read prose of a decent, civilized, and ironic character: prose which recalls a time when irony was not mere sarcastic contempt. His work suggests a man of principle and conviction, but of some reservation also. One imagines him too kind to engage in polemic, though the firmness of his convictions seems clear. John Updike, in Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism, states that White’s writing career began with an essay describing his reaction to a waitress who had spilled a glass of buttermilk on him:

with composure and dignity, he comforted the waitress, paid for the soup and even left her a tip, while the entire restaurant gaped in awe. The readers loved it. Andy [i.e. White] discovered that “the world would pay a man for setting down a simple, legible account of his own misfortunes.” For most of the rest of his career, Andy published steady accounts of his own misfortunes, to popular acclaim.

Having read a good deal of White’s published works, I find the story credible. The words “simple” and “legible” well describe the sort of prose you will get from an E. B. White essay. He writes in defence of humanist values, principally of freedom of thought, critical expression, and the dignity of the individual. Much of his work concerns compassion and solidarity, themes which are prominent in his writings for children.

In recent years he has been blamed for having introduced “hyper-correctness” into the teaching of English prose composition. Some of his grammatical dicta, for instance the prohibition against splitting of infinitives, are seen as nit-picking. To some readers, his style will seem antique and stilted — a perception doubtless compounded by The New Yorker’s insistence that he write in the third person. Against these charges, I’ll say only that in times of war and inquisition, when much was at stake, E. B. White took a clear and thoughtful stand against tyranny, and even when confronting his opponents he was generous and thoughtful. Never having allowed himself to lose grip on his wit, nor his wits, he has left us a useful legacy.

First Nations

What The Media Won’t Tell You About The Oka Crisis

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I assume you are familiar with the background and chronology of what is today known as “The Oka Crisis.” My purpose in this short piece is not to rehearse the already amply-stated; it is instead to provide you some remarks concerning the events of 1990 which I am confident you have not encountered in Canada’s media.

In August 1990 I moved from Niagara to Kingston. Four days earlier, the Canadian Army had occupied the community. I contemplated a show of support for Kanesatake — now a half-day’s drive away — but quickly came to the conclusion there was nothing I could do that wasn’t useless and indeed reckless. The main problem, it seemed to me, was that there were too many outsiders in Kanesatake and Kahnawake already.

Most Canadians misapprehend the Kanesatake conflict. The media coverage is to a degree responsible, but it should also be allowed that historical conflicts are by their nature highly complex. Consider the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia, which was near unintelligible to most Westerners. Slobodan Milošević instigated Serbian nationalist attacks of Albanians in the 1990s by invoking the 1389 Battle of Kosovo with the Ottomans. In this one sentence there is a lot of history (some of it arguably bogus) and a lot of ethnic division at work. In similar fashion, the proposed 1990 expansion of an Oka golf course invoked a land dispute going back to the early eighteenth century, unresolved to this day. Those who see the Oka Crisis as a dispute over a golf course see a flat rendering of a three-dimensional world.

Here is what most Canadians don’t know about the Oka Crisis, and likely never will. Very few community members in Kanesatake or Kahnawake wanted the barricades. By “community members” I mean just that: the Kanien’keha:ka [Mohawk] men, women, and children who live in these two communities, and in nearby Oka. The people were caught between, on the one side, Canadian politicians such as the Mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, and on the other hand, the so-called “Mohawk Warriors.” Municipal and provincial politicians immediately resorted to force, deploying first the Sûreté du Québec and thereafter the army. (Federal politicians, for instance the spineless Minister of Indian Affairs, Tom Siddon, mostly just twiddled thumbs and waited for the mess to go away.) This militancy suited the Warriors just fine, since their interest is not in land settlements or Mohawk sovereignty or even in the well-being of the community itself, but in the operation of a petty third-world crime empire. The Warriors had come to Oka from across the United States and Canada to pursue a plan, and the Canadian politicians — whose collective failure at Oka has yet to receive an adequate accounting — were playing right into it.

The plan of these Warrior outsiders was to provoke Canada to armed battle at Oka, on the assumption Canada would be surprised by the fierceness of the Warriors. First a fight, then negotiations cloaked in the Haudenosaunee, the Kaswentha (Two Row Wampum — the Nation-to-Nation treaty with Canada) and the ongoing land claims. The Warriors since the 70s have been adept at co-opting both the good name and legitimacy of the Haudenosaunee, or “Iroquois Confederacy,” but have no real interest in the struggles. The goal has always been to place Mohawk territories outside of Canada’s legal jurisdiction, thereby giving the Warriors a law-free zone to do what they do best: make money from drugs, cigarettes, weapons, and gambling. To this end the people of Kanesatake were put before Canada’s army, by thugs who play the game of Haudenosaunee dress-up.

The disgusting and sad fact of the Oka Crisis is that this strategy worked. The Warriors are much stronger today as a result of what happened in Oka. Their crime empire thrives. Canada treads more lightly, a fact evident in the Caledonia occupation. Many indigenous people in Canada, as well as Canadians, regard the Warriors as a legitimate voice of the Haudenosaunee. I have often seen, to my sorrow, Warrior flags flown by Aboriginal people at gatherings. If only they knew. (Some do, and still approve, but that’s another matter.) Meanwhile none of the community’s land claims has been addressed. The mess persists, and the people tossed unwillingly into the Warriors’ filthy little 1990 gambit today suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. The Warriors are a cancer, as threatening to the aspirations of the Haudenosaunee as any Canadian soldier or Indian-hating politician.

Those who say nothing has changed are wrong. Matters have gotten worse. The Oka Crisis has further divided and wounded the Haudenosaunee. The Warriors attract our angry and hopeless youth, and submit the communities to further harms. Their hypocrisies turn the public against us. They misrepresent themselves as spokespersons of the Confederacy, which they are not, and make a mockery of our struggles and aspirations. And always — always — the needs and concerns of the people are pushed aside so the bullies can better work the camera. On a silly CBC Radio program called ReVision Quest, broadcast last night, comedian and host Darrell Dennis at least got one thing right: “it’s kind of ironic,” he said, “twenty years later, the lasting impact of the biggest armed confrontation between Aboriginals and Canada in recent history has been to push Aboriginals to buy into the Canadian system.” This too is a legacy of the bogus, corrosive, and repellent work of the Warriors.

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Fiction

Making Love

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1. The first thing we need to clarify is the terminology.

Making love is not to be confused with having sex. To make love is, as the phrase suggests, to make. To have sex is, conversely, to have. To have is to possess, and everyone knows that possession and love are nowhere to be found together.

Intercourse, fornication, and copulation are too clinical and pretentious; they lack emotional content and make one feel that you are just showing off your vocabulary. There’s nothing romantic about snobbery.

Sex sounds too Anglo-Saxon, even if it has a Romance etymology. We ought not to confuse the matter by getting obsessed with the facts. The truth is, sex doesn’t sound very nice, no matter how delicately you try to articulate it.

Humping and screwing are demeaning. It grieves us that we have to even mention them. Some people think these terms are cute and funny, but general consensus dictates otherwise. The former term might be appropriate for the sexual activities of dromedaries, but certainly not of homo sapiens, while the latter term is best reserved for specific acts of carpentry.

For brevity’s sake, we will dispense with a thorough technical discussion of: porking, poking, the horizontal bop, bonking, doing the wild thing, makin’ bacon, fooling around, going down and tumbling in the hay. These terms should be avoided. This is not a moral judgement, however – merely a recommendation.

2. When to make love.

The best time to make love is Saturday night between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. The weekdays are problematic because of busy work schedules. No one has time nor energy. Friday night is worst of all because of the cumulative exhaustion of the work-week. Your best plan is to get as much sleep on Friday night as possible. Therefore: go straight to bed. Do not make love.

Saturday morning would be good, except that there are so many things to do. Think of all the bills that have to be paid, the errands that have to be run, the myriad of chores that have been neglected because you were too busy throughout the week to get around to them. When the alarm clock rings, you had best get right out of bed and get to it. Have your partner help. Tell him to think of dusting as fore-play. This will encourage him to be efficient and enthusiastic.

Note: make sure the bills are paid! Nothing causes coitus interruptus and similar sexual disfunction like the stress of financial debt. One gas bill alone could wreck everything.

If you are efficient and organized, you will have enough energy Saturday night for making love. Here are five questions you can ask yourself and your partner to be sure:

-Am I craving sleep continually?
-Am I listening to my inner child?
-Does my partner respect my needs no matter what, or am I being pressured somehow to do something I do not want to do?
-Do I typically fall asleep during lovemaking?
-Am I getting pleasure out of lovemaking, or am I merely fooling myself?

If you have determined that it is prudent to make love, we recommend the following: First, wait until your favorite television program is finished. If you make love during a half-hour block in which a program you do not like is being broadcasted, your mind will not be divided between love making and television watching. A one-half hour block ensures that you will have time to make love and also to finish any chores (such as dish-washing) that have accumulated throughout the day. Second, ensure that the answering machine is on so that you won’t need to answer calls. Resist the impulse to rush to the phone, even if you are experiencing a lull in the activities. Most calls are not urgent and can be followed up immediately after orgasm, if such an event occurs.

3. Let us proceed to the act itself.

We have established the following norms of lovemaking:

-the missionary position, man on top. Creativity leads to perversity, and besides, you work hard all week. Don’t complicate your life needlessly.

-the bedroom. We are told that the French make love throughout the house, and even prefer the bathroom. This seems unhygienic, and not entirely in good taste. We feel the bedroom was made for making love, and making love for the bedroom.

-since foreplay has more or less been merged with Saturday chores, you might as well get right down to business. It’s a busy world, and besides, you’ve been waiting all day. And no one waits all day for anything anymore.

-congratulate yourself and your partner when appropriate. Nothing is more important in today’s atmosphere of global competitiveness than to reward and to encourage excellence.

Canada, Wayne's Picks

Canadian History if Necessary, But Not Necessarily Canadian History

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THE CHIEF THING that I remember of high school Canadian history is that it was boring. I suspect the same is true in your case. Here is my summary of high school Canadian history, roughly as I recall it: Canada was a pristine land inhabited by some Indians, and discovered by John Cabot in 1497. Jacques Cartier later explored the interior. It’s thought Vikings were in Canada before Europeans, but in any case Samuel de Champlain first colonized the land adjacent to the St. Lawrence (Upper Canada). The French settlers took to fighting the English over control of the resources. A number of alliances with the Indians were made by each side, and trade networks were established. This was the era of the courier de bois, or ‘woods-runner,’ usually a “half-breed” who moved goods from indigenous supplier to white trader. The English gained the upper hand over the French at the Plains of Abraham, in the 1750s or so. The Treaty of Paris ceded North America to Britain. The Yankees then took to fighting the British. In the War of 1812 the Yankees were finally driven back for good. Isaac Brock fought heroically and died beside Chief Tecumseh at Queenston. Troops from Halifax invaded Washington and burnt down buildings, most famously a building which was afterward painted white and called the White House.

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Personal Essay

A Faggot On The Alexandra Bridge

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I’m not one given to the media fetish of the Ten (or One or Twenty or …) Years Ago Today. We knew, for instance, there would be a gush at the moment Michael Jackson had been dead for precisely three hundred and sixty-five days. It’s an arbitrary and meaningless trope, a cheap hook on which to hang a cheap rag.

However, there are some anniversaries that are with me throughout the year — one of them being the 1989 murder of Alain Brosseau. This then thirty-three year-old man worked in downtown Ottawa and lived in Hull, which necessitated a crossing after each shift of the Alexandra Bridge. On August 21 he was attacked by a group of men, who dropped him head-first from the bridge onto the rocks below, resulting in his death. The piece of information considered essential in this senseless incident is that Mr Brosseau’s attackers killed him because they assumed — wrongly — he was gay.

On the twentieth anniversary of this vile act, civilians and the Ottawa and Gatineau Chiefs of Police met at the middle of the Alexandra bridge at dusk in a symbolic “lighting” of the bridge with flashlights. The idea was to represent a commitment to ensuring “gay-bashing” does not go unreported or unnoticed.

It’s an important commitment, and worth renewing. But of course it won’t and cannot prevent future attacks. Only a three-hundred and sixty-five effort toward discrediting and finally extirpating homophobia will do that. The lesson taken away by many from the murder of Alain Brosseau is that “it can happen to anyone.” I’ve always felt this both hit and missed the target. What if it could only happen to one in ten? Would that make it okay, or less urgent, if your name weren’t on the list of those Not Wanted On The Voyage? In that case you are complicit in the crime — another bystander who allowed it to happen.

I’d prefer to stand in solidarity; and as it happened on my way to work today, crossing the Alexandra Bridge (as I do each day), I was called a faggot by three drunken and menacing-looking men. Apparently it can happen to anyone. But even if it couldn’t happen to “just anyone,” it should never happen. We still have a lot of work to do.