Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Canada

A tale of two elections – Part 2

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Among the many interesting but not earthshaking side effects of the Obama election is an overdue tempering of a kind of understood superiority that had taken over the Canadian view of their way of governing when compared to that of the US for the last decade. After all about ten years ago, US politics was completely dominated by a grotesquely overblown miserable little sex scandal of the old kind that ruined the final years of an otherwise apparently more than capable president, only to be followed by a most curious piece of vote counting that brought to power an obviously incapable president who was even re-elected. During the same period Canada was governed by a series of mediocre leaders who made everyone wish for just a touch of the intelligence, charm and cold determination of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. But when the same people looked south, it was clear that Ottawa was a centre of charisma and excellence when compared to whoever was sitting in the White House.

It may well turn out that Barack Obama will not be able to fulfill the great hopes that have inevitably been placed on him (probably nobody could), but he’s already done a great deal just by winning this election. Now the world can stop dumping on the Americans for not even being able to run their own fair elections while telling every one else to become democratic, and Canadian commentators can stop preaching to them about their lack of benevolence towards the downtrodden, while ignoring the often scandalous state of their own aboriginal communities. Because while the Americans, against all odds, voted for someone named Barack Obama to be their leader, a smaller percentage of eligible Canadian voters confirmed, in the most boring election in memory, the re-election of a prime minister whose name they could scarcely remember after his first term in office.

Snowbound trip to the Polls

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Canucks got out of their igloos yesterday, rounded up the sled dogs and snow shoes and headed off to the polls to make sure that they got their money’s worth out of the $300,000,000 spent on what most thought was an unnecessary election. Well, less than 60% actually did that, an all-time low turnout that proved that the skeptics were right. At the end of the day very little had changed. As predicted, the Conservatives will once again lead a minority government with 1 per cent more of the popular vote and 17 new seats, mostly at the expense of the opposition Liberals, but still well short of the majority it was looking for. But while the Tories swept rural BC and Alberta, where a rubber duck would have easily carried most ridings, they failed to make any gains in Quebec, despite endless aggressive courting, and had no seats at all in Newfoundland or the three major cities Vancouver, Montreál and Toronto. It also could be a victory, that they may soon come to regret as the liberal kings-in-waiting, Michael Ignatief, Bob Rae, and yes young Justin Trudeau, expectantly observe Prime Minister Harper making hash of the economic crisis.

About the only thing the election did prove was how spectacularly stupid the British first past the post vote-counting system is. In Canada there is no reward for getting 49% of the vote in your riding if someone else gets 51%, which makes voting a useless gesture in vast areas of the country where it is clear from the start who will get the most votes in a particular riding. The result is mocking disinterest from the young folks (among others) as they see their green party get 7% of the vote and no seats while the Bloc Quebecois, running only in Quebec, gets 10% of the national vote and 50 seats. What the hell is the point of rounding up the dogs for the long cold trip to the polling booth? Only true satirists could come up with a system like that.

A Tale of Two Elections

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The Canadian election was called 6 weeks before the vote on Oct. 14. the day after Thanksgiving, and has provided journalists and media types with plenty of largely vacuous material to keep them employed for the period. Among the specialties of the Canadian six-weeks are the two debates among the now 5 major party leaders, one of whose parties has never had anyone elected, first in French and one night later in English. The spectacle of 3 native English-speakers attempting to use their various levels of high-school French (from pretty primitive to B plus) to outargue two very smart native French speakers provides a certain amount of sadistic humour, but wears thin after 15 grueling minutes. And then vice versa on the next evening, since amazingly none of these five leaders is as bilingual as thousands of kids attending French schools in Vancouver, not to mention many scores of thousand bilingual Chinese speakers. In the long run, it seems clear that this election, despite all its energy and windbag rhetoric, will not change the makeup of parliament very much at all, and there will be another minority government.

The US election with a set date, on the other hand, has gone on seemingly forever and cost scores (hundreds?) of millions of dollars, something which does not seem to have been mentioned in the current financial crisis, where that money might have been used for something more useful, like hiring more inspectors and controllers of financial institutions. But for all its own brand of windbagging rhetoric, a huckstering media performance, and sideshow shenanigans like a vice-presidential debate, the US system does allow the main candidates to give some indication of what they are really made of, something hard to argue for the Canadian system. It is an exhausting process and a youngster like Obama should have a real advantage over an old warrior like McCain, but the old soldier seems to be hanging in there quite admirably and ultimately the vote should come down to which of the two convinces more people of the superiority of their view of the world, assuming they put functioning ballot boxes in states like Ohio and Florida, and that the Palin fiasco doesn’t lead to comicall voting patterns. You’d have to be gambler to bet against Obama but at least the game seems to have been played on a level field.

Another Province Heard From on Palin

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Our leading source for innuendo, Fox News, is reporting that one Heather Mallick, analyst and columnist for the CBC has morphed into Canada’s left wing Ann Coulter. Writing about Senator McCain’s VP nominee Sarah Palin, Ms. Mallick has said in recent columns for the CBC and The Guardian the following nasty bits:

“A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention…” noting that Republican VP nominee Sarah “…”added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn’t already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America’s name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.”

“The semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new microwave.”

“…red states vote Republican on social issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their broken, economically abused existence.”

“We share a 1,500-mile border with a frontier state full of drunks and crazy people, of the blight that cheap-built structures bring to a glorious landscape. … Alaska is our redneck cousin, our Yukon Territory forms a blessed buffer zone, and thank God he never visits. Alaska is the end of the line.”

And, et cetera. It is easy to dismiss Ms. Palin as not up to the job of Vice President without stooping to a level that diminishes the impact of the argument and anything that gives Fox News an opportunity to cry “foul” is a disservice to the real debate. Ms. Mallick provides a great example of smugness gone awry.

We leave it to our intrepid Canadian correspondents Bob and Doug MacKenzie to determine if Ms. Mallick is really Canadian?

There’s an election in Canada, too

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The US presidential election with its seemingly endless foreplay followed by a curve ball from left field was bound to catch any gambler or sport fan’s attention, and the Canadian one, taking place almost simultaneously, is designed to go unnoticed in the great wide world. But it was announced last week for Oct. 14 by the governing Conservative Party, and its very shortness underlines both the strengths and weaknesses of the parliamentary versus the set-date systems of voting. On the one hand the US system has turned into such an expensive and long campaign as candidates jostle for media attention for the whole year preceding the set early November date that only the super-rich or those with super-rich friends can take a run. On the other hand, the voters do have a chance to find out everything and more that they want to know about the candidates, or at least they would if the press played an intelligent probing role. In this area, the sudden and completely unexpected appearance of a total outsider from Alaska as a vice-presidential candidate who had spent no money was surely a breath of fresh air even for her skeptics.

In the parliamentary system, in which the ruling party gets to announce the election date with only 6 weeks notice, there is by comparison very little money spent, but time does fly and instead of intelligent discussion and probing much of that time is spent by the press chasing down trivial events and meaningless mini-scandals and in the end the public hasn’t learned much about anything except the manipulated public persona of the party leader, who in not who you are voting for. You are voting only for the local representative who belongs to the caucus which will choose that leader. Thus the ruling Conservative Party spends its money on tv ads meant to show that the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is really a warmer and fuzzier man than he seems to be, and the challenging Liberal party does the same in an attempt to show that their leader, Stéphane Dion, is a better communicator than he seems to be. In private, M Dion, who once spent time with my brother and me in Iceland, is a charming, very intelligent man, who would obviously be an excellent Prime Minister. Those who know Mr. Harper well would undoubtedly say the same, but the actual election campaign does very little to actually show any of this.

So take your pick. My brother and i actually prefer the German system, but that’s another story.

Getting to know you – Dubja style

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Despite vociferous criticism of the press recently that is is longer doing its researched investigative job, occasionally a story comes out that shows that some informative journalism still takes place. The Vancouver Sun, for instance, published in its August 6 edition, startling information about US State Department grasp of foreign affairs, when, after a 3 and a half year wait, it received information it had requested under the freedom of information act, about the protocol guide prepared for President Bush and his staff before Bush’s first visit to Canada in Ottawa and Halifax from Nov. 30-Dec 1, 2004. Documents included by the U.S. Office of the Chief of Protocol prepared the president for the culture shock he would experience when travelling far from home.

Under social customs and courtesies, designed to prevent USERS from accidently offending the natives, were the following:
“On being introduced the customary greetings are firm handshake, customary “Hello” or Bonjour” in Quebec.”
“During conversations remove sunglasses.”
“While indoors remove hats.”
“Canadians, for the most part, place importance on education, skill, modesty and politeness”.

Under advice on deciphering a foreign tongue
‘”eh” is pronounced “ay”, is used mostly in rural areas and roughly translates as: “You know?” or “Isn’t it?”‘

While concluding “that most Canadian gestures are the same as those in the US it notes some exceptions:
“To call someone to you, use the entire hand rather than the index figure.”
“In Quebec, the thumbs down sign is considered offensive.”

In a follow-up analysis of the visit, the document also deals with serious political matters such as expected anti-US demonstrations, noting that protesters ranged from anarchists to raging grannies:

but “The Belly Dancers Against Bush were nowhere to be seen… they do tend to be active in the summer, for obvious reasons.”

No we assure you that these are not the fantasies of Rick Moranis, Joe Flaherty, John Candy, Martin Short, Andrea Martin and my brother and me in one of our finest hours. If you don’t believe me, put in your request for freedom of information documents, and in three and one half years, you will see why my brother and I can no longer do satire like we could in the good old days when we blew up things real good. Now it’s done by bureaucrats who should be stand-up comedians. By the way, your president by then will probably be a chap who recently announced that he would like to talk to the president of Canada. If he ever had made the trip 100 kilometers north of his home base (which he hasn’t), he would find out there was no such thing. Oh no, not another one! I wonder if he knows which country is by far the US’s largest trading partner and which country is by far the leading source of its fuel. There must be some documents on the topic in the secret vaults that he could take a look at before it’s too late.

International Sports: Canada Rescues Boston

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The Boston Red Sox were faced with a dilemma: how do you get rid of an ego-twisted hitting machine with a $20M contract? Manny Ramirez had soured on Boston and Boston had pretty much soured on him. While the arguments on whether they should have caved into whatever weird needs Manny had developed but not articulated continue, his behavior had gone around the proverbial corner and the management of the Red Sox could not stand having him around.

The trade that was finally worked out – minutes before the trade deadline – sent Ramirez to the Dodgers (with his remaining salary paid by the Sox!), the Dodgers sent a couple of minor league players to the Pirates and the Red Sox got Jason Bay from the Pirates to take the place of Ramirez, one of the baseball’s best hitters over the last ten years. Turns out that Bay is from Trail, British Columbia and brings a typically Canadian modesty along with a 282 batting average and 22 home runs, similar stats to those of Ramirez this year.

While no one believes Bay will hit like Ramirez, he will bring a couple of new dimensions to the left field position – speed, a decent arm, a willingness to run from home to first and a dedication to the game that goes beyond looking at himself in the mirror. Bay scored both runs in a 2-1 win over Oakland in his first game with the Sox and hit a three run homer in the next game. The Sox’ previous experience with a Canadian player was with Ferguson Jenkins who had a nasty curve ball and a police record of carrying illegal drugs across borders. Jason Bay will likely last a lot longer in Boston.

The Great White North celebrates

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It’s July 1, Canada Day, and my brother Doug and I have decided to finally give into the many annual requests from around the globe and, in our role of Canadian idols and icons, help the world celebrate the event. Canada Day, as many will now realize, takes place exactly four days before rival US Day, documenting the speed of the Great White North’s fathers and mothers of confederation – loyalists, Quebecois and First Nations working together – in establishing the globe’s largest nation (at the time, Russia not having yet expanded eastward) exactly four days before the rebel USers followed suit. It is a tale told by an idol, full of sound and fury and signifying the birth of a nation reaching from sea to sea to suddenly unfrozen sea. As my brother Bob put it in a moment caught by one of Youtube’s most revered sites, this land is great because it is great, white and north. In addition, as other sites will testify, it is the only nation which will pass along crucial tips on how to roll your owns while wearing mittens and how to get a mouse in the Molson bottle so you get a free 12 pack.

An apology that might mean something

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My brother Doug and I are suspicious of official apologies by governments who are convinced by election polls that they might win some ethnic votes if they recall how miserably a specific ethnic group was treated a century ago. But this week the Canadian government made an official apology that might actually have been meant and which might have a meaningul impact. Prime Minister Stephen Harper read off an unambiguous apology to the assembled First Nations Chiefs in the House of Parliament regarding the way native peoples have been treated since Canada existed and in particular with regard to what happened during the lengthy period when residential schools were used to “take the Indian out of the Indians” as Harper put it. Children were removed from their families and their homes and transported to remote live-in schools where they were punished for using their native languiage, taught the ways of the white man and untaught the ways of their parents. Even worse, if that can be imagined, is that these children in far too many cases, were also sexually exploited by the people who were supposed to be teaching them.

It was a miserable cultural performance of the highest order, and its abject failure can still be felt a generation after the last residential school was closed. Not only have many of the former students never really recoverd from their ordeal, in many cases they have passed on their existential disillusionment to their own children. The results can be seen in many of the poverty-stricken reserves, particularly in the north, that remain Canada’s darkest secret, though it is no secret to any alert Canadian living today. For the problems are also sadly present in the drug-dominated sections of too many Canadian cities. where the attempt at enforced assimilation has led only to despair. Some natives were not interested in Harper’s belated apology, but many more seemed to be genuinely attentive, no doubt in the hope that a page is finally turning and that the native peoples can soon regain their rightful place on their home turf. Let’s hope they are right.

Shipping Up to Ontario

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Our pals the MacKenzies have for some time tried to lure us north of the border but rumors of walrus blubber meals, national curling championships, screech cocktails, dollars called “loonies” and an insufficient number of liquor stores kept us for the most part happily ensconced well south of the 49th parallel. But seven years of George W. Bush, the tediousness of the Democratic primaries, and the lure of the great singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen conspired to get us on the road – headed north.

Leonard brought his “golden voice” to the concert in Hamilton, Ontario and his lyrics were as darkly powerful as ever. While the current tour includes only dates in Canada and Europe, he did dedicate “Democracy” to his “friends in the United States” and the implicit irony was not lost on the mostly Canadian audience. At 73 some worried that Cohen would not be up to a full concert but 3 hours after the concert’s start he was going at full strength. He began the concert with a gracious thank you to the crowd for coming out “on a school night” and ended it with another gracious thank you for allowing him to sing to them. The Canadian press often refers to him as “our Bob Dylan” but to this friendly neighbor from the South it might really be vice versa.

I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.
And I’m neither left nor right
I’m just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A

L. Cohen in “Democracy”