CONTRA BLOGDUM

 

Kathy Shaidle writes:

 

Why don't [Rick] McGinnis, David Warren and I and Donna Laframboise and Colby Cosh and Jeremy Lott etc etc just start our own goddamn newspaper? Besides the fact that we don't have the money, I mean...

 

Funny, I don’t see my name in this list. Or am I presumed buried in the etc thickets? Perhaps Kathy suspects me of Fiskian deviationism. I had better come clean then. I admire Robert Fisk and have for years. I don’t agree with him about everything, but then I don’t expect to agree with anyone about everything. Srdja Trifkovic writes in Chronicles Online:

 

The Independent’s Robert Fisk…can be infuriating as well as biased and plain wrong but never boringly predictable like, say, Bill Kristol. (He can also write.)

 

Just so.

 

Fisk became the warbloggers’s favourite abusive verb after he wrote about his reaction to the beating he suffered in Afghanistan.

 

I realized--there were all the Afghan men and boys who had attacked me who should never have done so but whose brutality was entirely the product of others, of us--of we who had armed their struggle against the Russians and ignored their pain and laughed at their civil war and then armed and paid them again for the "War for Civilization" just a few miles away and then bombed their homes and ripped up their families and called them "collateral damage."

 

So I thought I should write about what happened to us in this fearful, silly, bloody, tiny incident. I feared other versions would produce a different narrative, of how a British journalist was "beaten up by a mob of Afghan refugees".

 

And of course, that's the point. The people who were assaulted were the Afghans, the scars inflicted by us--by B-52s, not by them. And I'll say it again. If I was an Afghan refugee in Kila Abdullah, I would have done just what they did. I would have attacked Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.

 

I gather I'm supposed to find this richly amusing. I’m sorry, but I find it noble. How many of us—in the media or otherwise—have watched in horror as some miserable excuse for a human being shoves a microphone in the face of a bereaved mother and asks, "How did you feel as you watched little Timmy being torn apart by that pit bull?" How many of us have not asked ourselves, "Why doesn’t she just punch him in the nose?" Why should bereaved Afghanis deserve any less sympathy?

 

I am confidently informed that the secret to mass murder is dehumanization. Thus Jews became "vermin" under Hitler and Russians "class enemies" under Stalin. When we laugh at Fisk, are we not colluding in the dehumanization of the Afghanis as mere "collateral damage"? Are we not descending into pit with the Nazis and the Communists?

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 4.04 a.m., January 30, 2003 [Link]

 

 

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE GOLD MINE

 

This week finds me brooding about the future of America. First there was the depraved Super Bowl spectacle. (Can’t U.S. Customs find some dress-code restriction to keep out Celine Dion and Shania Twain? Can’t Congress pass some law to prevent the defilement of Irving Berlin and country music by foreigners?) Then there was Franklin Delano Bushevelt’s State of the World address. And finally, this, from a January 29 Washington Post story on the call-up of the Wyoming National Guard:

 

"To be honest, O Lord, these soldiers would prefer that this task not be set before them," said the unit's chaplain, Skip Perry, in his benediction. "But it has been, and we pray for their safe return."

 

The Reverend Skip? Albert Brooks fans will remember how in Lost in America he refuses to take seriously a Wienerschnitzel manager with that moniker. The Reverend Skip? God is no respecter of persons, but is he a respecter of names? The fighting men of the Wyoming National Guard had better hope He is not. I can only pray Robert Fisk doesn’t find out about this.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 2.51 a.m., January 30, 2003 [Link]

 

 

THE OLD WAY

 

Anthony Cronin’s fine book, No Laughing Matter, is not only a biography of Brian O’Nolan, better known as Flann O’Brien and Myles na Gopaleen. It is also something of a potted history (spiritual, intellectual) of an Ireland that is gone forever. On March 2, 1966, four weeks before his death, O’Nolan wrote:

 

[Anybody who] has the courage to raise his eyes and look sanely at the awful human condition…must realize finally that tiny periods of temporary release from intolerable suffering is the most that any individual has the right to expect.

 

There’s the true Irish spirit and the true Catholic spirit. Devotees of the effusions of the Brothers McCourt please take note.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 8.19 a.m., January 29, 2003 [Link]

 

 

ELECTING A NEW PEOPLE

 

An old friend writes, January 22:

 

I note that today's [Vancouver] Sun is extolling the virtues of our current immigration policy; it even goes so far as to state that "Rural Areas Suffer Lack of Diversity" (B5). I guess that my memory fails me because I don't remember "suffering" while living in the Kootenays for seven years. What I do remember though, is purchasing a four-bedroom, three-bathroom "executive" (that's what the listing stated) home on an oversize lot that backed onto a greenbelt for $94,500. However, I can't recall of any incidents where an RCMP officer was killed by street racers, nor of any Internet cafe assassinations, nor of gangs extorting money from members of the Fernie Ghostriders Hockey Club. Come to think of it, there were no Honduran refugee claimants selling crack on Main Street, nor was there pressure on the school budget because of ever larger ESL classes. The local editor of the Free Press was never threatened, let alone murdered, for her viewpoints. There were no problems of crime in immigrant communities because there were none. As for crime levels, I do remember in the first week after relocating there that a bike was stolen from Safeway, and it made headlines. (It was recovered however, and the local RCMP blamed a high school joyrider.). There were no self-declared "experts" about declaring that immigrants were "essential"; and contradicting Daphne Bramham's article (B1), I felt very Canadian, thank you, without the diversity (or is it dysfunction?). Racism or intolerance were non-starters. But I guess I missed out in those seven years on all the economic and social benefits that go hand-in-hand with the Lower Mainland's multicultural society.

 

I share my friend’s distress at the unneeded and uncalled for transformation of our native land. It helps, however, if one learns this mantra: Every day and in every way, Canada is becoming a country fit for real estate agents to live in. And if it’s any comfort, keep in mind that Bramham and the other Anglo heralds of enforced "diversity" conspire in their own obsolescence. Soon enough they shall be forced to learn Chinese and go cap in hand seeking employment at the offices of Sing Tao, Ming Pao or one of Vancouver’s six other (or is it more?) Chinese-language daily newspapers. The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 7.39 a.m., January 29, 2003 [Link]

 

 

SCREW THE MESSENGER

 

Michael Jenkinson’s Monday column was pretty droll. I thought so, anyway. Mike, a long-time friend and former colleague, now editorial editor of the Edmonton Sun, reported the "mini-fiasco" that ensued when he attempted to get an interview with Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper. He wanted to "talk to Harper about the recent EKOS and Ipsos-Reid polls that showed the Alliance so far behind the Liberals that they're about to get lapped." (Those polls have since been supplanted by one from Environics.)

 

Harper’s press secretary, the "competent and charming" (Licia Corbella, Calgary Sun) Carolyn Stewart Olsen, offered Mike an off-the-record chat. He refused; he wanted quotes. The competent and charming one offered an on-the-record chat with the Alliance’s pollster. Mike refused; he wanted to speak to the organ grinder, not the monkey. So Ms. Competent Charming explained that Harper was not talking about polls. Besides, if he talked to Mike, he’d have to talk to all the other hacks, wouldn’t he?

 

(To which my response would have been, "What, are you ------- kidding me? I look forward to your explanation of why exactly Harper would have to talk to everyone just because he talked to me." But then Mike is a much gentler soul than I and averse to profanity even under stress.)

 

So Mike got to work the next day, went through the papers and discovered that Harper has given an interview on polling numbers to the aforementioned Corbella, editorial editor of the Calgary Sun. The day before. (Sorry, no link.) I wasn’t there when it happened, but I suspect that Mike might have uttered some of the words that Baptists must never say.

 

Mike demanded an explanation from Carolyn Competent Charming. Her excuse? The interview with Corbella "had been arranged long before the polling story broke."

 

(To which my response would have been, "Why didn’t you ------- tell me that yesterday?" But then I’ve had more run-ins with dear Carolyn than Mike has.)

 

I’ve probably done as many lengthy interviews with Stephen Harper over the last two years as any journalist. Before Harper ran for the Alliance leadership, these were arranged with the man himself. They were friendly interviews, and as readers of this space know, Harper might have been expected to be happy with the results. After Harper announced his leadership bid and after he became leader, the interviews were arranged with CCC. Again, Harper might have been expected to be happy with the results.

 

I had taken issue with Harper’s "rope-a-dope" leadership-campaign strategy, but as I later admitted in person and in print, my reservations had been groundless. After my mea culpa, Competent Charming and I got along like a house on fire. That is, until some words—but not my words--critical of the Great Leader appeared in my stories. The Alliance had gone AWOL on the free speech file, and Harper had pretty much just gone AWOL. People were talking.

 

I thought I could it make it up to Harper by offering him a Q&A in the next issue of my magazine. No contrary voices, no spin, just Stephen Harper explaining his strategy. Carolyn Competent Charming assured me this was eminently doable. I then got jerked around by her for several days and found out she had gone over my head to my boss and arranged a "just-a-couple-of-questions, I-must-be-off" chat in Edmonton.

 

I did not take kindly to this. Nevertheless, come the next issue, I offered Competent Charming the same deal. She again assured me a 20-minute interview was eminently doable. I then got jerked around for an entire week, and Wednesday (deadline day) found me making increasingly desperate phone calls to CCC’s office and cellphone. I knew she was using her cellphone, and I also knew she wasn’t returning my messages. By 3 p.m. I was almost hysterical. I had a two-page, 1,800-word space to fill. CCC finally called to say that "Stephen" was doing an interview with CBC Newsworld but would call me in half an hour. Disaster averted.

 

Harper called, and I asked him a couple of preliminary questions about the Kyoto Protocol. After three minutes, he said, "I gotta go." I could hardly believe my ears. I remonstrated. I continued the interview, and two minutes later, Harper said, "I really gotta go now." Goodbye. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

 

The two-page spread was scrapped. Afterward, Carolyn Competent Charming explained (but not to me) that the whole thing had been a "misunderstanding."

 

(To which my response would have been, "Do you know the ------- meaning of the words quid pro quo?" But then it would have been unreasonable to expect to find familiarity with Latin among Competent Charming’s doubtless long list of accomplishments.)

 

Although I remained political correspondent of my magazine for another four months, I never again attempted to interview Stephen Harper. No skin off my nose—or his. I’m sure he would prefer to never give another interview to anyone. Harper distrusts the media, which is understandable. But he also believes it can be ignored, which is insane—but wholly characteristic of the Reform/Alliance. I went through the same nonsense with both Preston Manning and Stockwell Day. Manning was dodging radio interviews back when his party had one seat in the House of Commons. When Day’s leadership was collapsing two years ago, I several times offered his people the same deal I had offered Harper, a two-page Q&A—the best free publicity there is. Day’s people never even bothered to get back to me.

 

The arrogance of Reform/Alliance leaders has been wondrous to behold. Their attitude to the press (in general) has always been

 

We possess the truth. Those that seek the truth shall come to us. We shall not sully the truth by attempting to disseminate it through intermediaries.

 

While their attitude to the right-wing press (in particular) has always been

 

You are rightly our flacks. Assume the position, lest you suffer our displeasure.

 

While researching this piece, I found an off-the-record interview I’d done with one of Harper’s backroom boys in early September. I complained that Harper’s disdain for the media was hurting him. Mr. Backroom Boy explained, "Stephen is personally indisposed against going to the media unless he has something to say." Something to say? Something to say? When your party is polling in the low teens, a party leader should have plenty to say. He added, "If you want to know what Stephen thinks is wrong with the country, you should dig out the five speeches he made during the leadership campaign." Well, that’s reasonable. After all, he’s said it once, why should he have to say it again?

 

Backroom Boy predicted that Harper’s "disappearing act" "will be seen as a wise strategic move." He concluded, "Ask me in four months." Well, it’s been five months, and I am asking. How do you like your blue-eyed boy now? After the worst year any Liberal government has had since, oh, say, 1956, the Alliance stands at 17% nationally and 14% in Ontario. Here’s a prediction for you. A few more months of this wise strategery, and Harper won’t be able to beg, borrow or steal an interview.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 12.19 a.m., January 28, 2003 [Link]

 

 

MUST READS

 

Two articles I cannot recommend too highly, both on George W. Bush and Europe: Eric Margolis in the January 27 Toronto Sun and Stuart Reid in the January 27 American Conservative.

 

From Margolis:

 

Europeans still have fresh memories of their brutal, futile colonial wars. America, about to embark in Iraq on its first large-scale colonial adventure since it annexed Cuba and the Philippines in 1899, has forgotten, and seems fated to relearn, the cost of empire.

By and large, Europeans like and admire Americans, as do most people around the globe. There are some chronic America-haters in Britain and France, to be sure, on both right and left, but in general Europeans are opposed to the unilateralist, aggressive policies of the Bush White House, not to America. But it's also plain, Bush's thirst for war and oil are cultivating strong new strains of anti-Americanism.

 

From Reid:

 

Why are the neocons so mad at Europe? The anti-Semitism that is allegedly swamping the Continent cannot be the answer, except in the minds of the more loopy Zionists. Nor can Europe’s supposed envy of the United States. It does not exist except among pathologically pro-American beauty consultants and self-employed plumbers in Essex. What is to envy? East Texas? No, the answer is that neocons fear Europe. Why else would they get so angry about a continent that they profess to believe is impotent? Why, if the United States is mortally threatened by a two-bit mass-murderer in the Middle East, should the hacks of the New Right—and with them the administration—give a damn about what the Europeans think?

 

Reid predicts that the expansion of NATO and the EU will indeed isolate "Old Europe" because this "is likely to strengthen Washington and weaken Brussels." He concludes:

 

[Europeans] who are not prepared to straighten up and fly right will have to move to Canada—if there is still such a place.

 

I’ll have something to say about Canada’s America First crowd shortly. In the meantime, some thoughts about the Iraq adventure. Bush II has proved itself the most incompetent American administration in foreign policy since Jimmy Carter. Managing to wholly alienate France and Germany within two years is quite an accomplishment. Nor should Bush count on Great Britain either. The only support he has there is from Tony Blair and the America Firsters in the Conservative Party. Seventy-five percent of the British people are opposed to invasion without a UN mandate, and President Blair is opposed by his caucus and cabinet.

 

The Europeans have concluded that Bush is bonkers—and who can blame them? It was Bush who took the "regime change" campaign to the UN. Why? Because he sought legitimacy. It never seems to have occurred to him that the UN member states might demand proof of the alleged threat posed by Saddam Hussein. He seems genuinely bemused that France and Germany won’t dance to his tune simply because he demands they must.

 

There is not a single decent argument for invasion except stealing Iraq’s oil, and that is one argument Bush has not been prepared to make. War hawks like James Bowman are now reduced to advancing the preposterous case that invasion is a necessity because otherwise America "will lose face." The Europeans ask what kind of statesman would engineer a crisis with only two possible results: invasion or humiliation. The answer is, quite simply, a petulant child.

 

Bush’s foreign policy combines bellicosity and cowardice in equal measure. Even as America prepares to make the rubble dance in Iraq, it rushes to appease North Korea—a country that represents a real threat to its neighbours and even, perhaps, to the United States itself. The message to the world’s dictators could not be more obvious—if you want Uncle Sam off your back, get nuclear weapons. No wonder the Old Europeans are aghast.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 10.39 p.m., January 27, 2003 [Link]

 

 

POETRY CORNER

Täuschung

 

Ein Licht tanzt freundlich vor mir her,
Ich folg' ihm nach die Kreuz und Quer;
Ich folg' ihm gern und seh's ihm an,
Daß es verlockt den Wandersmann.

Ach! wer wie ich so elend ist,
Gibt gern sich hin der bunten List,
Die hinter Eis und Nacht und Graus
Ihm weist ein helles, warmes Haus.
Und eine liebe Seele drin.--
Nur Täuschung ist für mich Gewinn!

 

--Wilhelm Müller, 1794-1827

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 12.26 p.m., January 26, 2003 [Link]

LET FREEDOM MINCE

 

Andrew Stuttaford wrote in the National Review Corner yesterday:

 

Going through security at a West Coast airport this week my harmless-seeming (if battered) shoes once again triggered off the system.

“Metal shanks,” explained a sympathetic screener as he studied these not so lethal pieces of fine English footwear. “Try wearing sneakers when you travel and just pack the regular shoes in your hand baggage”.

OK, maybe most people have already worked this out for themselves, but it seemed like good, if aesthetically distressing, advice to pass on to anybody (like me) not smart enough to do so. Just thought I’d mention it.

 

There it is, folks: the obiter dicta. War on Terrorism, eh? Just who is terrorizing whom?

 

My country, 'tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty,
of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrim's pride,
from every mountainside
let freedom ring.

My native country, thee,
land of the noble free,
thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
thy woods and templed hills;
my heart with rapture thrills
like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,
and ring from all the trees
sweet freedom's song;
let mortal tongues awake,
let all that breathe partake,
let rocks their silence break,
the sound prolong.

 

Stuttaford’s fathers, of course, did not die in America. Stuttaford is an immigrant from Britain. To America’s immigrant class—the many, the meek, the craven—the United States might seem even today a land of liberty. But what of the natives? The America I have known and loved would not have tolerated Stuttaford’s “good advice.” What price pilgrim's pride now, eh?

 

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of sneakers and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me wingtips or give me death!

 

But Patrick Henry ("libertarian," "extremist"), not to mention Samuel Francis Smith ("nativist," probable "racist"), would not be welcome in the National Review Corner. Who needs liberty when you have SUVs, Star Trek and Cheetos? Right, Jonah?

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 10.44 p.m., January 26, 2003 [Link]

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND

 

I don’t know if anyone will read this or even if anyone can read this. I haven’t been able to get my site stats for a day now, but I suspect it doesn’t matter. As Aristotle pointed out, one cannot determine the quality of a nullity. The Sapphire worm has not only made the NDP convention a laughing stock, it has also made logging onto my site interminable. And how do we know that this isn’t going to become the norm, anyway? A syllogism:

1. Pissed off South Koreans have slowed the Internet to a halt.
2. Given that South Korea faces annihilation, South Koreans are liable to remain pissed off.
3. We should get used to interminable Internet waits.

My dear friend Colby Cosh has accused me in so many words of hypocrisy. He knows me and knows I long ago switched my allegiance from the CFL to the NFL. He asks:

 

If Canadian cultural sovereignty begins anywhere, surely it's on the 55-yard line?

 

Witty and elegant. I could point out that before Canadian homes got cable, watching NFL (and AFL) football was not easy. But I do not advocate trying to put that genie back into the bottle. How you gonna keep ’em at Taylor Field, after they’ve seen the Meadowlands? I have all sorts of reasons for giving up on the CFL.

1. It is wearying beyond measure to support a league perennially on the verge of dissolution. I can suffer only so many near-death experiences before I think, “Go ahead and die, already.”
2. The CFL rewards failure. Six of nine teams make the playoffs.
3. Football is meant to be played outdoors on grass. The NFL knows this. B.C. Place and SkyDome killed football in Vancouver and Toronto.
4. Football is a game of offence and defence. The NFL knows this. Colby says the CFL is “exciting.” Well, so is flag football.
5. A CFL game is like a Winston Cup race. There’s no point paying attention until the final 10 laps of the latter and until the final 10 minutes of the former.
6. I remember the CFL when it was a big deal. It rivalled the NHL in popularity when I was growing up. Russ Jackson, Jackie Parker, Joe Kapp, Garney Henley, Hugh Campbell and Angelo Mosca were household names. Apart from partisans like Colby, how many Canadians could name six current CFL players? The CFL is now just another example of what a pathetic country Canada has become. I choose not to be reminded of this sad situation more than is strictly necessary. I don’t follow sports to be depressed.

I am not a Little Canadian, despite what Colby might think. I am not going to support the CFL solely because it is Canadian, just as I am not going to choose Glenn Gould’s Bach over Murray Perahia’s solely because the former lived in Toronto.

 

You will notice that Colby did not address my main argument. Does he deny that Canadian culture (in its most obvious manifestations) has been assimilated by America? Does he deny that Canadian political culture is in danger of being assimilated by America as well? Does he deny that American television has been the prime mover in this assimilation?

 

Oh, and by the way, I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a Seahawks jersey. For over three decades my team has worn Silver and Black—the Oakland Raiders.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 6.19 p.m., January 25, 2003 [Link]

BREWED UNDER LICENCE

 

I used to write a TV column called Galaxy 500. It was rather good. I don’t write it anymore. How sad. I was looking for something I’d written about Budweiser, and I came across the piece that follows. It appeared in the January 11, 1999 BC Report. It is an expression of Canadian nationalism, which, despite the best efforts of the National Post and the Canadian Alliance, is not yet a hate crime under the Criminal Code.

---

 

A month from now I’ll be at my sister’s Super Bowl party and I expect that sometime during the first quarter someone will ask, “Hey, what’s the deal with the commercials?” Because the Super Bowl is not only the circus maximus of American sport, it is the grand bazaar of American industry. Instead of the pride of Madison Avenue, my sister’s guests in Abbotsford will see that fatuous ad about two morons who have a “score to settle” with a river. They’ll watch it again and again and again…and again, thanks to those fine folks at Budweiser, “Proud sponsor of the National Football League in Canada,” brewed by Labatt under licence from Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis, Missouri. 

 

The state of Canadian culture, 1999: Canadians don’t want to “tell themselves their own stories”--in the words of Heritage Minister Sheila Copps--they want American stories, and please, dear CRTC, could you on this very special occasion let us watch those neat American commercials, too?

 

It’s easy to mock Ms. Copps--God knows I’ve done my bit--but even a busted clock is right twice a day, and only a fool would disagree with her than Canadian culture is in deadly peril. Step forward Andrew Coyne. Mr. Coyne writes in the December 17 National Post:

 

To talk of French culture or Canadian culture as distinct from American culture, you have to first imagine such a thing as a culture: a single entity, that is, fortuitously contiguous with national borders, with readily defined features. The exercise is inherently reductionist.

 

Come off it, Mr. Coyne. Talk about your reductio ad absurdum. Culture, like the judge said of obscenity, is hard to define, but we know it when we see it. It is the thousand little things that differentiate one people from another. Like, say, preferring your sports to a foreign country’s or Canadian TV programs from American.

 

Jeffrey Simpson points out that 60% of English-language television programming is non-Canadian, and 86% of prime-time English language drama on Canadian television is foreign. What percentage of situation comedy programming on Canadian is American Mr. Simpson does not tell us, but since the number of popular Canadian sitcoms ever can be counted on one hand, it is probably close to 100%.

 

So what, you say. We still get our news from Lloyd and Peter, don’t we? Our political institutions remain intact, and Manifest Destiny has stalled at the 49th parallel. We still have our social programs (the envy of the world, you know); you don’t have to take out a bank loan to have an operation; and every year the United Nations reassures us we are still number one.

 

So where’s the harm in American TV? It’s the best in the world, after all. And as Lionel Chetwynd admonishes us, “Toronto will never be New York. Nor Hollywood.” The trouble is this: if we don’t tell ourselves our own stories, someone else will. And for 30 years, since this country was bound to the United States by coaxial cable, Canada has been bombarded with American stories, American values, American certainties.

 

The proverbial man from Mars who surveyed the Canadian media today would likely form the opinion, for instance, that Bill Clinton was Canada’s head of state and that Jean Chretien was some colonial administrator. But the influence of American television is not demonstrated merely by an obsessive Canadian interest in things that Americans call “inside the Beltway.” Canadians now think like Americans, and this has transformed our political culture. No more so than in the Charter of Rights that, according to Mr. Coyne, defines this country.

 

The Charter has turned Canadian law red, white and blue. Out with common law; out with the supremacy of Parliament. In with a written bill of rights; in with rule by judiciary. And perhaps not so coincidentally, no longer do Canadians have to wonder why their policemen don’t read them the Miranda rights that cop shows from Dragnet to Law and Order have taught them is their birthright.

 

For years I have pondered why every damn fool American idea shows up in Canadian garments, first as the will of the people, then as a “defining Canadian characteristic”: abortion on demand, the Constitution as a “living document,” the “right to privacy,” the nation as “melting pot” and then as “multicultural mosaic,” women in combat, etc. Well, these ideas are in the air--or more properly, on the air--and connected to our TVs by that white umbilical cord that attaches us to the American empire.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 10.23 p.m., January 24, 2003 [Link]

MY LIFE IN (ART) SONG

 

X. The Desire for Knowledge

 

Ah! To be alone in a little cell with nobody near me;
beloved that pilgrimage before the last pilgrimage to Death.
Singing the passing hours to cloudy Heaven;
feeding upon dry bread and water from the cold spring.
That will be an end to evil when I am alone
in a lovely little corner among tombs
far from the houses of the great.
Ah! to be alone in a little cell,
to be alone, all alone:
Alone I came into the world,
alone I shall go from it.

 

From Hermit Songs by Samuel Barber; text Irish, 8th to 9th century, based on a translation by Sean O’Faolain

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 9.21 p.m., January 24, 2003 [Link]

BEING AND BECOMING

 

Posting has been sparse—nonexistent, if you insist—for some time. Two reasons. 1. A week rich in incident, and it’s only half over. 2. An imminent redesign. Yes, I know others promise new looks, but mine is for real. Even as I type, "world-class" photographers, designers and fontillists in New York, London, Paris and Milan are as busy as Republican Party "letter writers" working tirelessly to "rebrand" The Ambler so that you—the few, the proud, the brave—will enjoy an even more efficient and enjoyable blogging experience.

 

What’s in store? A bolder yet more authoritative main page! Non-intrusive hyperlinks! A working archive! A portrait of the reclusive yet charismatic Kevin Michael Grace! (Of whom there are fewer than 10 photographs extant!)

 

All this and more, coming Real Soon Now!

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 6.38 p.m., January 23, 2003 [Link]

THE EQUALIZER

 

Attention fellow right-wing peaceniks! Tired of having the sand kicked in your face by neocon bullies? Fed up with Jonah "Get Your Freak On" Goldberg sneering about those "Free Mumia" signs at every anti-war rally? Well, let me throw you some. And this is the bomb. Guess who supports the invasion of Iraq? Here are some hints. He’s the world’s ugliest man and worst novelist. He’s the man who called Margaret Thatcher "Mrs. Torture" and the great V.S. Naipaul "a fellow traveler of fascism and a disgrace to the Nobel award." He’s the craven opportunist who bit the Western hand that protected him, the mewling impostor who made "champagne socialist" a term of abuse. Step forward, Mr. Salman Rushdie:

 

There is a strong, even unanswerable case for a 'regime change' in Iraq that ought to unite Western public opinion and all those who care about the brutal oppression of an entire Muslim nation. Saddam Hussein and his ruthless gang of cronies from his home village of Tikrit are homicidal criminals, and their Iraq is a living hell. This obvious truth is no less true because we have been turning a blind eye to it - and 'we' includes, until recently, the government of the United States. But, as I listen to Iraqi voices describing the atrocities of the Saddam years, I am bound to say that if the US and the United Nations agree on a new Iraq resolution, then the rest of the world must stop sitting on its hands and join the Americans and British in ridding the world of this vile despot and his cohorts.
(Observer, January 19)

 

So whose side are you on? The side of Christopher Robin Hitchens, Salamander Rushdie and Andrew "Bottled Testosterone Made a Real Man of Me" Sullivan—or the side of General Norman Schwarzkopf, Marine Corps Commandant James Jones and General Anthony Zinni? Don’t answer all at once now.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 1.59 a.m., January 21, 2003 [Link]

BECALMED

 

An Ekos poll released Sunday gives the Canadian Alliance 10.5% nationally, 8% in Ontario. This is a return to the miserable level of support the party enjoyed during Stockwell Day’s self-immolation. This is after 10 months of a new, respected leader who hasn’t made any major gaffes, who has led the party to its most consistent performance in the House of Commons and who isn’t Stockwell Day.

 

This has to be discouraging. The 8% in Ontario confirms that this province has written off the Alliance as an alternative to the Liberals, whom Ekos puts at 52.1%. (The poll has the Tories at 13.8%, the New Democrats at 13.6% and the Bloc Quebecois at 6.9%.)

Did I say discouraging? Heartbreaking, more like it. Could the Liberals have had a worse year? Riven by internal dissension, revealed as the most corrupt Canadian government since, well, ever, led by a man who gives every indication of being deranged… And none of it matters.

 

Stephen Harper, in the January 15 National Post, declared, "I don't think I'll remain leader if I don't make progress in Ontario." My first reaction to this was to think, oh, come off it, Stephen. You couldn’t be blasted out of the leader’s bunker with a daisy cutter. Your Iain Duncan Smith impersonation will be tolerated as long as you’re prepared to keep it up. The Alliance has already had three leaders in three years. One more leadership change, and it will be as dead as L. Ron Hubbard.

 

But wait:

 

I don’t think I’ll remain leader if I don’t make progress in Ontario.

 

Is Harper laying the groundwork for a graceful exit?

 

Did what the party expected of me…gave it my best shot…unfortunately, my best was not good enough, etc.

 

And then a return to Alberta and the "Alberta Agenda"?

 

Interesting.

 

For my American readers:

 

You’ve suffered this far; now it’s time for some fun. Here’s more proof—as always, if more proof is needed--that Canada is as messed up as Pete Townshend. Joe Paraskevas reports in the January 20 Calgary Herald (sorry, no link) the reactions of two kiddies, 17-year-olds Rachel Van Harten and Caroline Dykstra, who drove one hour through a snowstorm to hear Harper speak. Their verdict:

 

"He's not doing it for me," Van Harten said afterwards, as Dykstra nodded in agreement. "The emphasis of his platform is on the economic future, paying off the debt and cutting taxes. That's a really realistic emphasis. I think this country could stand to be more idealistic.

 

"What about people in this society who don't contribute by paying taxes?" Van Harten added. "What about those who aren't upstanding citizens? Where do they fit in, in the future for Canada?"

 

Hey, Rachel and Caroline, where have you been? Check out Canada's new motto, "They also serve who only stand and take." Where do the non-taxpayers fit in? They fit in quite nicely by putting the Liberals in power every three or four years.

 

You call it parasitism? We call it idealism. Hell, we call it Canadianism. Will you please all rise for the National Anthem…

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 12.36 a.m., January 21, 2003 [Link]

AT THE MOVIES

 

Bought something called The Billy Wilder Collection yesterday. It is a handsome box containing DVDs of Sabrina, Stalag 17, and Sunset Boulevard. As Wilder made 26 English-language films, the title is flagrantly dishonest, but the box is handsome and the price was right.

 

Watched Stalag 17 for the first time last night. It was a disappointment. William Holden was excellent as the antihero Sergeant J.J. Sefton, as were Otto Preminger as the commandant and Sig Ruman as Sergeant Schulz. But this movie lasts 120 minutes, and there is barely enough dramatic material for 60. Much of the film is wasted with the desperately unfunny "antics" of Robert Strauss (Stanilas "Animal" Kasava) and Harvey Lembeck (Harry "Sugar Lips" Shapiro). Another character even gives us impersonations of Cary Grant and Clark Gable. Oy gevalt!

 

Perhaps people were more easily amused in those days, but I doubt it. The interminable Christmas Day party was as boring to me as it likely was to the POWs. Boredom is a subject difficult to portray in art, for an obvious reason, but it was the morning and evening prayer of these prisoners, and there is no attempt made to demonstrate the effect of enforced idleness on men of action. Even between loved ones, repetition breeds hatred; how is that Sugar Lips and Animal weren’t beaten to death for their shtick? I only know Betty Grable as someone name-checked in Warner Brothers cartoons; but after this movie, I never want to hear her name again.

 

Almost all of the characters are ciphers or cliché archetypes. There is one nice touch, however: the prisoner who discovers his wife has "found" a baby on her doorstep bearing her features. "I believe it," he mutters to himself; later he is found knitting booties for the bastard.

And despite Holden’s best effort, Sefton remains a cipher too. We learn nothing about his history or the reason why he is so hard bitten. We discover that he had known Lieutenant Dunbar in officers training school and hated him as a Boston Brahmin. But Dunbar is a real hero; what is it that turned Sefton against him? One hardly needed money to become an officer during World War II; what was Sefton’s flaw? We never find out.

 

Wilder, of course, is celebrated (or reviled) for his cynicism, but the question of morality is barely touched in Stalag 17. It is understood that the POWs must make compromises with the Germans to ensure decent lives for themselves, but what are the effects of these compromises? Yes, America was at war with Germany, but the Germans were, quite literally, keeping them alive. We know that it was common for POWs to develop a respect, even an admiration, for their German (though not Japanese) captors. Was this, perhaps, too controversial for 1954? Wilder co-wrote the scripts for most of his films; he didn’t write this one, and it shows. It is also revealing, I think, that the commandant is the only really fleshed-out character in the film, the only character that Wilder demonstrates much sympathy towards.

 

We are invited to believe that the airman Joey became catatonic because of the horror he had experienced, but horror is war’s meat. One has nothing but time to contemplate such things while in prison; are we to believe that none of the others had indulged in such speculation? Wouldn’t Joey’s mute reproach have become as intolerable as the "comic" shenanigans of Animal and Shapiro?

 

Neither is there an examination of the morality of the injunction to escape, even after the deaths of Manfredi and Johnson, even after the disgusting public display of their corpses.

Finally, the dénouement is one of the flattest I’ve ever seen. The men of the barracks learn that everything they had supposed was wrong. They had savaged a man’s character and his body. Their reaction to the truth?--well, how about that?!

 

Stalag 17 was acclaimed for its newly-possible "realism." Don’t you believe it. Twelve O’Clock High is superior in every respect on that score, and it was made five years earlier. Stalag 17 might as well have been called Sixty Angry Men. It was adapted from a play, and proves yet again that there’s a good reason "stagy" is a term of opprobrium.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 12.37 a.m., January 20, 2003 [Link]

FUN WITH TERMINATION

 

Right, then.

 

Let’s make this quick. It’s 12.20 p.m as I type; I’ve just woken up; the sun is shining; and I want to get out of the house. Finished production this morning at 1.15. Not bad at all, but I’ve been stuck indoors for a week, and I want to get out of the house. But I repeat myself.

 

The blogo------ is buzzing with the news that a certain Iain Murray has been fired—frog-marched out the door, as they say--for blogging on the job. Never heard of the fellow before, but I’m sure he’s never heard of me either. He has my deepest sympathy.

 

Mark Cameron, who I had just put on my blogroll, posts this:

 

My new employer sent me this story [the Murray termination], strictly on a friendly and tongue in cheek basis, of course, but I'm taking the hint. So blogging will probably be a bit more sporadic for a while. And I'm likely to stick to safer subjects, like bunnies romping in flowery meadows, and fewer debates of the Iraq War or trad vs. neocon theology. Anyway, keep in touch, kids!

 

But  I don’t want to link to anyone who blogs about bunnies romping. I link to my daughter Rebecca, but she’s only 12, and there is a familial obligation there. Remember what I told Kelly Torrance, Mark: No passengers on this voyage. (Except my son, but there's that whole familial obligation thing there too.)

 

But how about Mark’s boss--tongue in cheek, eh? What japes! That’s what I call managing. Reminiscent of what happened to me and the other employees of CJOR Radio in 1986.

 

Jimmy Pattison, the "eccentric" billionaire who owned the station, fired the general manager, Harvey Gold. Harvey was later to be my boss again in Edmonton at CJCA, and he was fired there too. Harvey learned the great lesson of radio—see below—and decided on a rather unusual career change. He became an actor. As you can see from the IMDB record, he’s become rather successful at it too. Good for you, Harvey, you were always kind to me.

 

So anyway, my boss, Peter Weissbach, the man who got me into radio, didn’t take well to the new manager, George Madden. So he quit. Madden, had a robust sense of humour, just like Cameron’s boss. His bio cities "his ease in working and establishing a quick rapport with people." Not half. Madden invited the entire staff of the station to a meeting in the boardroom. Upon arriving, we each had an envelope with our name on it. An engineer fiddled with a TV/Video display. We were all somewhat apprehensive, you might say. The engineer fiddled and fiddled, and we grew rather more apprehensive. Finally, Madden gave up and told us to open the envelopes.

 

So we did and each pulled out a pink slip. Surprise, you’re not fired! Madden, beside himself with merriment, explained that the video he had wanted to play detailed the ratings bonanza that could be expected from a different format than the one CJOR employed—talk radio. This was not quite on the order of the mock execution of Dostoyevsky and his friends in the Petrashevsky circle, but I had an inkling of how he felt. What a piece of work is man, eh?

 

As constant readers of this blog will know, I was fired shortly thereafter anyway. Madden himself was fired later, but it was only years later, at CJCA, as it happened, that I finally internalized the great lesson of radio. You will be fired. And then you’ll be fired again.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 1.03 p.m., January 18, 2003 [Link]

OUR ELECTED CAESARS

 

Joe Lieberman says he is running for President to "renew the American Dream." This he defines as

 

The promise America makes to all its people—that no matter who you are or where you start, if you work hard and play by the rules, you can go as far as your God-given talents will take you.

 

Of course any president would need dictatorial powers to even attempt to make this utopia a reality. He would need the power to abolish all distinctions of wealth and status, for a start. No, the "American Dream" is simply a platitude, like "God, motherhood and apple pie." (Since superseded by spirituality, planned parenthood and the microwave burrito.)

 

Senator Lieberman asserts that the

 

American Dream is in danger, threatened by terrorists and tyrants from abroad and a weak economy that makes it harder to live a better life here at home.

 

This is certainly a curious enemies list.

 

How tyrants from abroad threaten America Lieberman does not specify. Perhaps he is referring to the billions America has already spent and the untold billions more America may spend in the pursuit of the overthrow of the tinpot tyrant of Iraq—billions that once removed from the pockets of American taxpayers will make it "harder for them to live a better life at home." But as Lieberman also believes "We must never shrink from using American power to defend our ideals against evil in a time of war," this cannot be the case.

 

And it would be pointless to remind Lieberman that the terrorist outrages of September 11, 2001, did not commence in Baghdad and were committed by legal residents of the United States. The threat a quasi-Open Borders immigration policy poses to the "American Dream" is an interesting question but not one Lieberman cares to interest himself in.

But who or what is to blame for the "weak economy"? Senator Lieberman declares:

 

Two years ago we were promised a better America. But that promise has not been kept.

Today I am ready to rise above partisan politics to fight for what’s right for the American people. I am ready to protect their security, revive their economy, and uphold their values. I am ready to announce today I am running for President in 2004.

 

Lieberman’s context makes plain—despite his hypocritical blather about disdaining "partisan politics"—that he blames the weak economy on President George W. Bush. It would be pointless to remind Lieberman that Bill Clinton was president for eight years directly before Bush, that wealth (or the lack of it) is the sum of human action—not the result of government Diktak—or that man proposes but God disposes.

 

Harold Macmillan won a resounding victory in the 1959 British election campaigning on the slogan "You’ve never had it so good." At the time, his presumptuous boast was considered shocking by some, especially as he was the leader of the "Conservative" Party. No one found such presumption shocking in 1980, however, when "conservative" icon Ronald Reagan poleaxed Jimmy Carter with his invitation to Americans to ask themselves this simple question: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

 

Politicians are no longer judged on whether their actions are prudent and just. They are now universally regarded as demigods and believed to exercise the power to make dreams reality. No wonder we are so disgruntled.

 

Kevin Michael Grace, 8.59 a.m., January 17, 2003 [Link]

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