Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

Occupy Wall Street or Whatever!

I’m old enough to remember when Monty Python swept the neighbourhood. It was too funny! You just had to talk about it, and it kept getting better and better. That’s the way I feel about the Occupy Wall Street movement which has rapidly turned into Occupy Whatever! I simply can’t stop talking about it. Every time it comes up on the panel, some new absurdity raises its lovely head and I’m caught between laughing my haunch off and saying to anybody who’ll listen. “Did you see that?”

First of all, let me get serious and clarify. I’m not opposed to people exercising their democratic right to assemble and protest. Knock yourself out! Also, I do believe there is an unholy bond between large corporations and government that needs to be broken. Okay! I just think there’s a lot of jawboning going on when the same amount of energy could be put to good use. If it’s any consolation, when the Tea Party starts yipping I feel the same way – more about that later. The problem is, to skewer Marshall McLuhan, the movement has become the message. It seems the physical act of standing, sitting or lying around in a park is of paramount importance here. The commitment to change is limited to physically being there. It’s like finding a charity or social cause on Facebook and tapping the “like” icon: it’s a nice gesture, but it doesn’t do any good. In fact, every inane remark or other bit of nonsense, no matter how small, that comes out of the Occupy movement has the cumulative effect of downgrading what’s really important. The genuine need for change and all the hard work that that entails has been hijacked by a dog and pony show that closely resembles America’s Got Whiners and it’s playing on Comedy Central.

For example, recently, conservative YouTubers (and quite a few others) were rolling on the floor laughing at a viral video from Occupy Atlanta. You can see it here. It’s long and full of boring, but if you check it out for just the first minute you can get the idea. It shows just how directionless and ineffectual the Occupy Whatever! movement really is.

Spoiler Alert!

Notice the repeat bleating. Didn’t any of these people read Animal Farm in high school? Plus the incredulous look on Congressman Lewis’ face is priceless. I’m not going to put thoughts in the guy’s head, but I don’t think he can believe what he’s seeing. If you’re tough enough to hang in there to the end the best part is the guy with the microphone showing his commitment to nobody’s democracy but his own and shouting down the opposition. I am certain that this is not representative of the entire movement. However, if stuff like this is being passed off as a serious attempt to change society, all I can do is shake my head – words fail me. And, the scary part is this is the public face of the movement, I’m not creative enough to imagine what goes on when the Smart phones are shut off.

In the same vein, here are some recent quotes:

“As long as these big corporations have a good crony capitalist in the White House, they can rely on DC to bail them out until the whole system goes bankrupt, which, I am afraid, is not very far off.”

“At this point, I don’t see any difference between George Bush and Obama. The middle class is a lot worse that when Obama was elected.”

“I have children and grandchildren, and I don’t want them to grow up in this world. I want the world to change. It can be done.”

“I’m just saying this feels an awful lot like the 60s or 70s when I was a kid. I mean, you have the same feeling out here that government and nation have parted paths, and the people will bring the government back to the nation.”

“We got sold out! Banks got bailed out!”

“You leave your country and you expect things to be better in America, a step or two up from what you left back home. And then there’s this rude awakening: America is just not what it used to be.”

“Republicans, Democrats and independents are stepping up and demanding we put our fiscal house in order. I think the overriding message after years of borrowing, spending and bailouts is enough is enough.”

Time for a shock: these come from a BBC quiz, and they’re salted with quotes from the Tea Party. But could you tell the difference? It’s difficult if you’re not careful, because they sound so similar in tone. Yet, I doubt very much if Tea Partiers would be welcomed with open arms by the folks who say they represent the 99%. In fact, I think they`d be met with scorn. By the way, you can take the quiz here, if you like.

It’s not one philosophy or one action or one quote that has turned the Occupy Whatever! movement into a joke for me. It’s the incredible waste of organizational skills, time, money and energy. The people who are part of the Occupy Wall Street movement have shown they can get things done. They`ve shown remarkable organizational skills and a strong commitment to effect change. If they were to turn that energy into just one bank boycott or one corporate embargo, the real effects would be monumental. Unfortunately, I don`t think they realize that democratic change is a long and arduous process; it`s not a montage from an action movie. It takes long hours and hard work, and while I recognize the need for speed to find a way out of this mess, I’m convinced it doesn’t involve sitting around some park all day. However, I`ll take what I`m given and enjoy the grins — while I got èm.

Millionaires, Billionaires and the NBA

After last week, many among us started queuing up to buy tickets for an extended cruise to the not-so-tropic islands of Gloom and Doom. It’s an understatement to say the news from around the world hasn’t been that good. The first of the vulnerable European banks, Dexia SA, is folding up like a cheap lawn chair with a couple more waiting for the next stiff financial breeze to follow suit. Merkel, Cameron and Sarkozy are once again scrambling around, trying to convince European taxpayers that if they just dump enough gold into the Aegean Sea, it will eventually float. (It won’t, by the way.) Meanwhile, Madame Lagarde, who already warned us that we’ve got somewhere between four and six weeks to get our financial house in order, has figuratively thrown up her hands and gone home. I’m not even including Barack Obama in this litany because most of his economic crew have already jumped ship. The ones who are left are shaking their heads and (you guessed it!) rearranging the deck chairs — to invoke a familiar analogy. Then, to top it all off, The Canadian Council on Learning released some astonishing news yesterday. Cloaked in long and boring bureaucratese, their report basically says that the killer whales at Sea World are getting a better education than Canadian children, and if we don’t watch out, in ten years we’re going to be the dumbest country on the planet. Our present situation sucks, and the only thing we can say about the future is, “Thar she blows!”

However, before you give up hope entirely and start looking for an inside cabin on the S.S. Pessimistic, there is one group of people in this world who do understand economics: NBA basketball players! These multimillionaires are putting their livelihood on the line to school their billionaire bosses in the rudiments of supply and demand. And here’s the punch line: I’m only half kidding.

If you live outside the large urban areas of North America, you may not have heard that last July the NBA (National Basketball League) locked out its players and spent the summer trying to negotiate a new CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement.) Negotiations have not gone well, and a couple of days ago the Commissioner of the NBA, David Stern, cancelled the first two weeks of the season with probably more cancelations to follow.

Despite tons of rhetoric on both sides, everybody knows that this is an internal squabble about how the NBA will divide up the spoils they’re going to fleece out of the general public (and various levels of government) over the next five years. The billionaire owners want 53%; however, the millionaire players also want 53%. Since even basketball players can do math, there’s a problem. But that isn’t the real problem because chances are good that like gangsters everywhere, they’ll likely settle on a 50/50 split. The real problem is something called a salary cap. What this means is the billionaire owners want an imposed limit on what they can pay players – kinda like a household budget with a whole bunch of zeros at the end. The millionaire players, however, don’t want any part of that because it limits their potential earning power. The billionaires said, “We can’t function without it.” The millionaires said, “You lying dogs! You can so!” They went back and forth for a while, and then both sides reached for their lawyers. This is where we stand.

What’s actually happened, though, is for the past several years, the NBA owners have been throwing money at their players like a bunch of drunken bridesmaids at an Afterhours party at Chippendales. As a consequence, despite soaring arena and television revenues, the owners’ wastrel ways have severely cut into their profit margins. (Once again, there are arguments on both sides, but in real terms, if you’re giving Kobe 20 million, that’s 20 million you’re not putting in your own pocket. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already got a couple of billion in there.) So, now, the owners want a serious salary cap – to prevent them from spending themselves into the poorhouse. Not only that, but they also want the players to bite the bullet and give up a lot of future earnings to make up for their (the owners’) financial idiocy. One would think billionaires would be better money managers than this, but what can you do?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the bargaining table the players (mere millionaires, mind you) seem to have a better grip on financial reality. They understand that slam dunks and free throws, no matter how well done, have no intrinsic value; they are only worth what the market will bear. This goes all the way from the playground (“I’ll bet you five bucks you can’t make that shot.”) to cars and cheerleaders in college and million-dollar signing bonuses on draft day. In simple economic terms, the players want to maximize their earnings over the short playing career of a professional athlete. For example, if billionaire A (in, let’s say, Ohio) offers you ten million dollars to dribble in your shorts and Billionaire B (in … oh, I don’t know… let’s say Florida) offers you seventeen, your best bet is to take your basketballs and head south for the winter. Anyone who didn’t make that choice would be a flaming fool. It’s straight dollars and good sense.

So there you have it. I have the feeling the NBA lockout is going to last for a while, and I’ll bet you Michael Jordan would give you odds that Kobe and the boys will be playing in Italy before it’s all over. Personally, I gave up on the NBA back when Latrell Sprewell turned it into a bush-league joke, but blaming greedy players for ruining the NBA is nonsense – despite their childish antics. It’s obvious the billionaire owners are the ones spending more money than their bottom lines can absorb — if only on paper. It’s equally obvious the owners will eventually get their salary cap and then overspend it as fast as they can find the loopholes — and the beat goes on.

However, in these troubled times of financial confusion, it’s nice to know that somebody still believes in the power of market economics — even if it is only overpaid basketball players.