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.

O: the ever-expanding universe

At high noon, January 1st, 2011, the Evil Queen of Daytime TV took one more step toward total world domination when she launched the Oprah Winfrey Network.  This will not be her last territorial demand.  In the last 25 years, Oprah has single-handedly done more damage to the equality of the sexes than Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton combined.   Her brand of Jell-o Journalism has overflowed its mid-western bowl and slopped squishy, sweet goo and celebrity worship over every aspect of society.  And her abnormal obsession with the cult of her own personality has enlisted millions of followers who delight in publically stroking their own egos.  In short, Oprah Winfrey isn’t the Anti-Christ, but I can’t tell the difference.

Phil Donahue invented Jell-o Journalism in the 1970s. What he did was take regular news items and real public issues and tone them down, broaden them out and smooth off the hard edges.  He manipulated the questions to produce an emotion rather than an answer and carefully presented the information to elicit a strong response.  His show pretended to be about hard news and bold discussion.  However, in actuality, it was merely entertainment built on simplistic, preconceived conclusions that seemed to come from his own strong emotional attachment to the subject at hand.   Although he invented the genre, Phil was never very good at it.  He couldn’t produce the single tear for the whimpering puppy — or the spontaneous outrage at the abusive husband.  He just didn’t have it.  He was kind of a Fisher-Price version of Dr. Phil and Sally Jesse Raphael.  So, when Oprah challenged his reign on tabloid TV, he didn’t stand a chance.  She could weep on command and giggle like a schoolgirl.  She had just the right combination of concern and anger, and her indignation was something to behold.   As a result, in the Chi-town Media Grudge Match, held about 25 years ago, Oprah Winfrey kicked Donahue’s ass so badly he had to unbuckle his belt to burp.  Phil’s mistake was that he failed to recognize the ruthlessness of his opponent.  Oprah Winfrey syndicated her TV show nationally, and the Oprah Universe was born.

In the Oprah Universe, Oprah is everywhere.  If she were a South American dictator, the State Department would be concerned about her cult of personality.  She’s on cable TV, 4 and 5 times a day, depending on your time zone.  She’s on Satellite Radio. She’s online anytime you want her.  She has been on the cover of every single issue of her magazine for 10 years.  She has only shared it twice — once with Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States, and once with Ellen Degeneres, perpetual sycophant.  Even Stalin took a day off every once in a while.  Oprah Winfrey has become “Oprah” the one word solution to every problem.  And how did she get there?  By doing what Phil wouldn’t do: selling out a whole generation of women for television ratings.

Oprah’s media presence is based on one simple premise — self help — the ability to change your life.  Of course, the un-named assumption is that women (the majority of Oprah’s audience) are all screwed up in the first place.  She has built her empire on the insecurities of middle-class women and made hundreds of millions of dollars doing it.  The Oprah Winfrey Show follows a very simple pattern: the question is posed and the solution is given.  In her time on TV, Oprah has championed everything from diets to angels, and exercise to something called The Secret which apparently radiates good vibrations from positive thoughts.  And these get-fixed-quick schemes are all in the name of the inadequacies of women. 

Here are some headlines from just one O Magazine, March 2007.

“Too Tall, Too Small, Too big all over?”
“5 Wildly Unexpected Ways to Get Happier”
“Will the Real You Please Stand Up!  How to know what you actually want, think, love”

The entire magazine is devoted to readers who, first of all, don’t like their body image; secondly, are unhappy; and finally, quite frankly don’t even know what they wanted to begin with.  What an incredibly sexist view of women!  And this is just one issue of the magazine.  They’re all the same — every month.  For an entire generation, Oprah and her minions have been pounding away at these same themes — under the nicey-nicey guise of “empowering” women to change their lives.  Meanwhile, Oprah’s Universe has established beyond any doubt that day after day, month after month, women need to be repaired and the wonderful thing is Oprah herself, is going to help them do it – pop psychology DIY.

If you were an alien and watched Oprah for any length of time, you would naturally assume that the females of our species are all fat, dumb and unhappy, not to mention stressed out at every opportunity.  According to Oprah, everything from dinner parties to getting up in the morning is a minefield that women must first diligently navigate and then hopelessly recover from.

What do girls born into this mess think?   Do they believe their lives are going to be nothing more than a relentless war against body fat followed by the daily wardrobe crisis?   If this is help, let me outta here?  But Oprah won’t let you out.  She’s gone wall-to-wall – 25/8 – on an entire television network — soft core promo for the Ubiquitous Oprah.

 We can only pray that her next stop won’t be politics.

There’s a War Going on

Okay, boys and girls: put away the chocolate and pour out that old, dead champagne.  Christmas is over and we’ve rung in the New Year.  Now, it’s time to get serious again, and, as my old buddy Eldridge used to say, “You’re either part of the problem or you’re part of the solution.”

As anybody who hasn’t been in a Jack Daniels coma for the last 20 years knows, there’s a war going on in Canada.  It’s a nasty little bush war.  There are no front lines and the combatants don’t wear uniforms, but the casualties are real and there are snipers everywhere.  The Government forces control the cities, the institutions and the media, but the countryside and the internet are alive with insurgents.  A virtual Civil War is being fought ruthlessly in Cyberspace and beyond, all across the country.  Canada’s Ancien Regime, established 40 years ago by Pierre Trudeau, is under attack by a loose coalition of brave rebels whose only weapons are words and ideas.  The Government and their collaborators want to maintain the status quo and the power that goes with it.  The rebels want the freedom they were promised.  They want to enjoy the harvest of their hard work.  They don’t want 80% of the resources given to 20% of the people.  They want to restore common sense and put an end to the unholy fear that Politically Correct generates.  They want a voice that isn’t manipulated by lazy journalists or shouted down by special interest groups.  And they want the future.  They want it to reflect the unique Canadian experience that produced this country.  They don’t want it squandered by short-sighted, flavour-of-the-week activists or the petty politicians who pander to them.

2010 was just one year in this long and arduous fight.   Here’s how some of it went:

We’re winning the War on Christmas.  “Merry Christmas” signs are back in a few shop windows.  Don’t get complacent, though: Happy Holidays guerrillas are still lurking out there.  Intimidation still stalks the land.  Store clerks still laugh nervously and look over their shoulders at the mere mention of the “C” word.  We can’t claim victory until that fear is washed from their tiny little part-time faces.

Unfortunately, our strongest street fighter, Humour, is still on Life Support.  As you recall, Humour was ambushed by the Loud and Proud crowd a couple of years ago and has been in Intensive Care ever since.  Jokes are strictly monitored, and observational humour is restricted to sex, kids and Sarah Palin.  Maybe, if each one of us could be just a little more irreverent in the new year, it would go a long way to help Humour recover. 

Our universities are still under the heel of the Army of the Politically Correct.  These bastions of intolerance are heavily fortified, and it may take as long as a generation for new ideas to breach their walls.  Just a reminder: free speech is strictly forbidden at Canadian universities, so don’t go there alone.  Campus security cannot guarantee your safety.   Canadian author Christine Blatchford and American nutbar Ann Coulter were both howled down by academic mobs this last year.

The Winter Olympics in Vancouver were a great success, and, for 17 days in February, we were all citizens of our country, not just clients of the government.  It showed, beyond all argument, that Canadians don’t need legislation to be Canadian – just ice and snow.

The dark shadow of the Canadian Inquisition still hangs heavy over our land, the tribunals are busy and the show trials continue.  The Inquisitors are bold and brutal, despite being soundly defeated a couple of times recently.  This shows just how much naked power they wield.  Their hunt for heretics is relentless, so don’t give them an excuse.  Manipulate language to your advantage, not theirs; they are easily fooled.  And remember, informers are everywhere.

The national NDP have been lying low all year, hoping to cash in on the Liberals’ imminent implosion.  Jack Layton’s has been saying little and looking wise.  He’s fooling some of the people some of the time, so remain vigilant — he has to open his mouth eventually.  Thank God the BC New Democrats showed their true colours when 13 malcontents brought out the knives and went Julius Caesar on Carole James.  Obviously their “new” democracy doesn’t actually include the concept of a simple majority — one of the foundations of the old democracy we’ve been living with for the last 800 years.

Naheed Nenshi turned politics on its ear in Calgary.  Without traditional support or media coverage, he took his campaign directly to the people.  He was supposed to be blown out of the water by the established candidates.  However, he showed what hard work and word of mouth can do and how contagious optimism can be.  He surprised everybody — except his supporters – when he was elected mayor.  It was a great victory.

Meanwhile, in T.O. the people had to either elect Rob Ford or call in Dr. Kevorkian.  We can only hope this is a bridgehead into Fortress Toronto.

But best of all, it’s 2011 now, and those old-fashioned ideas from 1969 are another year older, a little more tired and the bullies from the Baby Boom are one step closer to losing their chokehold on our society.

Good Night and Good Luck

Grog and his New Year’s Resolution

Every year, at about this time, I take a pen (remember those?) and a piece of paper and write:  “New Year’s Resolutions” and whatever year is bursting on the horizon.  I write #1 and then I write “Be more ruthless.”  There’s always a bunch of other, currently important resolutions, that may or may not matter next year, but I’m convinced that, over the course of several years, I will actually become more ruthless, simply by writing it down once a year.  That’s the power of New Year’s resolutions — it could happen.   New Year’s Resolutions are that idea that we can somehow be better — if we just set our mind to it.  And we can.  Primitive man knew this and acted accordingly.

For example, in Europe, back in the caveman days, there were two groups of people: the Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthals.  They were both basic knuckle-draggers, but there is one important difference.  The Cro-Magnon people survived and the Neanderthals died out.  Why?  I’m convinced that the Cro-Magnon understood the concept of improvement.  It’s pretty far-fetched to consider a bunch of Cro-Magnons sitting around the cave making plans to go to the gym or start an RRSP, but in caveman terms, I think that’s exactly what they did.  Meanwhile, the Neanderthal hillbillies down the block were picking their noses and wondering why they never seemed to get ahead.  If you multiply that situation by, let’s say, 30 thousand years, Darwin and his theory kick in, and suddenly the Neanderthals are wondering where all their friends went.  On the other hand, the Cro-Magnons have all the cool stuff — like circles and pointy sticks and the missionary position.  The layers of knowledge build up, and before you know it, your species is evolving.  In essence, the reason the Cro-Magnon people are the roots of our family tree and the Neanderthals are bones in a museum is that the Cro-Magnons learned how to do things better.  They also knew there was a thing called tomorrow.

Here’s the deal: it’s December 31st, no year (because they didn’t have them.)  Grog is sitting around the cave.  Mrs. Grog and the kids are huddled over in the corner, shivering and bitchin’ because it’s cold.  Gender equality wasn’t an issue in those days, so it’s Grog’s job to go out in the snow to get wood for the fire.  Grog grunts and groans and hollers and stomps around, but he does it; it’s a matter of survival.  When everybody’s toasty warm again, Grog is still thinking about how much he hates going out in the cold to get wood.  He’s just a little bit smarter than the average Cro-Magnon, so he understands that the snow is eventually going to go away and wood gathering is going to be a lot easier.  But — and this is way more important — he also knows that the snow is cunning, and it always comes back.  Ding dong!  The light goes on!   Grog says to himself, “Wait a minute!  If I get those useless kids to gather wood all summer, when it’s easy, and pile it over in the corner of the cave, I won’t have to go out in the cold to get it when the snow comes back.”  So Grog “resolves” to gather wood next year or make the kids do it.  Grog has a pile more time in the winter to do things like sharpen his pointy sticks (which makes hunting a lot better.)  The family eats better and more often.  At some point, Grog’s neighbours, two caves down, are going to see this and either put two and two together or ask, “Hey, Grog! You lookin’ fat, dumb and happy.  What’s your secret?”  The family Grog and the whole tribe are on the road to evolution because Grog’s kids are going to grow up and make their kids gather wood, too — “just like I did when I was your age.” From there, it’s only a matter of time before somebody’s going to decide that it would be kinda cool if a guy from Ohio took a stroll on the moon.

That’s why we make resolutions and why — every year — I write them down.  It’s not that I keep them (or even remember some of them) but we all have to try: the survival of our species depends on it.