Category: Social Media

The Rule of Truth

I’m a child of the 60s: I love a good demonstration, and I’m an absolute sucker for a riot.  No cheap perfume excites me more than that first whiff of teargas, and, as far as I’m concerned, the erotic beat of batons on riot shields is way more suggestive than any burlesque trumpet solo.  But civil disobedience is a young person’s game, so, these days, I’m content to watch it all on TV.  For a while there, my cup runneth over – Tunisia, Egypt, a couple of shots of Yemen, Iran? – I’m a happy guy.  But just when I thought it was safe to kick back, munch some Doritos and watch  Cooper Anderson Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer shape American foreign policy and the Arab Revolution on CNN, some guy I’ve never heard of wants to screw it all up.

Here’s the situation.  As usual, with government problems, it’s all totally complicated and scattered across at least three different departments.  Nobody really knows what’s actually going on — or why — and there are several interpretations, but in simple speak, this is what’s happening.

In Canada, we have a rule.  It says that the news has to be true.  Most people don’t know this.  They think the truth comes naturally to journalists, or it happens by magic or something, or it’s just the way of the world.  No, folks, none of the above — and that’s why we have a rule.  It’s written down.  It’s a good rule.  Basically, it’s there, so guys like Neil Macdonald and Craig Oliver can’t go Glenn Beck insane and say Stephen Harper is Lucifer’s brother.  They can insinuate it all they want, but they can’t report it as news — unless they can back it up with evidence of horns and a tail.  Canadian news must be factual.  It’s very simple.  If it’s not a provable fact, it can’t be reported as news.  In other words, opinion, hearsay, gossip and downright lies are not news, and they can’t be reported as such.  I think everybody would agree that this is a wise rule that serves our country well.

Apparently, not so much, because — believe it or not — the junta that controls the media in Canada, the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission) has recently decided to change the rule.  There’s a whole bunch more blah, blah, blah, but, in essence, what they want to do is “amend” the regulation.  This “amendment” would mean that the news doesn’t necessarily have to be true anymore — as long as the broadcaster thinks it’s true.  So, as long as the media doesn’t knowingly broadcast something that is “false or misleading,” they can do as they please.  (There’s some other crap about not causing people harm, but that’s like slapping someone you just shot in the face.  Who cares?)  The operative word here is “knowingly.”  What it means is that something can be reported as the truth if the journalist believes it’s true; factual corroboration is no longer necessary.  Hypothetically, if a journalist was told by several sources he believed to be reliable that Jack Layton was having an affair with Belinda Stronach, he can report it that way.  Jack and Belinda can defend themselves later.  My outrage at this little tidbit of news is real but I’m really outraged that so few journalists saw fit to report this to the Canadian public.

 One of the cornerstones of journalism — besides distinguishing fact from fiction — is journalists think they’re sexy.  They all think they’re hard-boiled reporters, tracking down the big story, exposing corruption and injustice.  They’re also bone-ass lazy.  Sitting through a boring afternoon of CRTC hearings, while some nameless bureaucrat cuts the guts out of the public trust, is not what they’re going to do.  Nor are they going to spend hours reading through transcripts, checking the facts.  They’d much rather hang out with each other, awash in self importance, playing with their Blackberrys.  And this is what bugs me.  That nameless bureaucrat is about to give a free hand to the very people who shouldn’t have it.  Journalists have one purpose on earth: tell the general public the truth.  Their only job is to cut through the spin and tell me what’s actually going on.  In recent history, they’ve gone just about as far away from that purpose as is humanly possible without leaving Earth’s orbit.  So why would some faceless, nameless, brainless government stickperson water down the only rule that governs them?

The reason Wolf and what’s-his-lastname go in for endless analysis is that it’s easy.  It’s not in-depth reporting; it’s off the cuff yakking, with some low-grade speculation thrown in.  It’s fun.  But hard news isn’t.  Hard news is wading through city council meetings, looking for the inconsistencies.  Hard news is finding the one fact that doesn’t fit the spin and building a story from there.  Hard news is doing all the work I don’t want to do because I’m buckled up with my Doritos, laughing my ass off at CNN trying to fill time between their commercials.  Most importantly, hard news is reporting to the Canadian public that they’re not going to get any hard news anymore, so they might as well stick with CNN.  Oh, and by the way could you name the nameless bureaucrat so at least I know who spoiled my evening’s entertainment?

Valentine’s Quiz for Lovers

Now that places like eHarmony have taken the romantic out of romance, it’s nice to remember what love was in the old days.  But do you remember?  Here’s a chance to test your own romantic IQ.  Here are a couple of fractured love stories rewritten for Facebook.  See if you can still figure out just who these great lovers were.  I’ll give you the first one, just for practice.  Good luck!

It was just your average love story.  Boy meets girl; they fall in love.  Nazis invade France.  Boy loses girl.  Girl goes back to her husband.  Boy opens a bar and tries to forget.  Boy gets 2 free tickets to Lisbon.  Girl shows up one night, with her husband in tow.  Boy forgets about forgetting.  Girl wants the free tickets.  Nazis stride around, looking evil.  Husband finally figures things out.  Not very complicated, really, but when you throw in a corrupt French official, a freedom fighter, some Arabs and a dozen or so champagne cocktails, it becomes one of the greatest love story of all time.

Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund, from the movie Casablanca.

A — He was a bachelor who enjoyed hunting and fishing, lying around in his underwear, grunting and scratching himself.  She was from Baltimore.  It was love at first sight — especially since he had never seen anything like her before in his life.  Typically, they spent their first date rather awkwardly trying to make conversation, but eventually she taught him how to open up and express himself.  Like most women, she was a civilizing influence on him and he went on to take a seat in the House of Lords.  However, they always returned to his bachelor pad, where they first fell in love.

B — Even though it was actually an arranged marriage, it was definitely a match made in heaven.  These two crazy kids were literally in a world of their own.  They had so much in common it was like they were made for each other.  Unfortunately, every romance has its rocky bits, and, although most couples argue about sex or money, these two disagreed over the landlord.  Eventually, to keep peace, he sided with her, and, as a result, they were evicted.   However, they stuck with each other through all the hardships and raised a huge extended family — although some would say they’ve been homeless ever since.

C — She was the most beautiful woman of her age, and he was the world’s greatest warrior.  They were married — but not to each other.  He embodied the hope of a nation at war, whereas she had a reputation that qualified her for a Dr. Phil special (She’d once been used to pay off a gambling debt.)   However, love conquers all, and they ran off together to travel across Europe.  Oddly enough, her husband came with them.  When the three of them finally settled in England, his enraged wife and the British public were not quite so sporting.  Still, for a time, they were happy.  Unfortunately, duty eventually called and he was killed in battle, and beautiful or not, she was tossed out on her reputation.  She died in poverty — alone with her memories.

D — It was a mismatch for the ages.  He was the world’s most eligible bachelor, rich and famous, with all kinds of handsome thrown in.  She was from Baltimore.  He was waited on hand and foot.  Literally!  The guy didn’t even dress himself!  She was more of a hamburger-and-fries girl, from the school of hard knocks.  For example, she learned about love and marriage through trial and error.  Rumor has it that she gave frequent flyer miles.  Needless to say, his family didn’t approve of the marriage, and when he insisted, they disinherited him.  However, they stayed together for the rest of their lives, traveling the world purposeless, and tragically romantic.

E — They met under rather unusual circumstances.  He robbed her, kidnapped her, and took her back to his hideout, but some girls just love an outlaw.  He was definitely a guy who played by his own rules and didn’t like authority, but she was convinced that society had made him that way.  Love blossomed, even though it was a long distance romance with the local law enforcement firmly in the middle.  However, the two of them did manage to steal a few kisses over the years (along with anything else that wasn’t nailed down) and they were relatively happy.  Fortunately, times changed; our boy gave up his thieving ways, and the two of them did finally settle down.  I think sometimes, though, after the kids were in bed, they’d go and steal something — just to see if it still felt the same.

F — They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but when you’re dealing with the fate of the world, love has a habit of getting in the way.  She was a political wunderkind who understood that power didn’t necessarily come out of the barrel of a gun.  He was naïve.  She was living with his best friend.  He had an extra-large army.  When the best friend was killed — in what was clearly a political assassination — she didn’t waste any time finding him and getting behind that extra-large army.  But fate wouldn’t rest, and they fell in love.  Suddenly, all bets were off and politics weren’t that important, any more.  He gave her the largest wedding present in history, but in the end, it was she who was naïve and he who couldn’t live without her.

G — Finally, who is the Number One Greatest Lover in all history?  This guy makes Casanova, Don Juan and Johnny Depp all look like clumsy geeks.  He has been curling girls around his little finger his entire life.  He has so much sex appeal the mere mention of his name has virgins quivering.  No woman can resist him, and every man would be happy with the leftovers.  And here’s a hint: according to rumors he’s juggling the hearts of 3 women — even as we speak.

Bonus Question (If you can answer this one, you’re really good.)

H — She was nothing special.  He was from Baltimore.  They met on a blind date: he was blind drunk, and she was working hard to keep up.  From there, they spent the next 30 years madly in love, chasing each other back and forth across America, fighting and drinking, splitting up and getting back together.  He did nothing less than create a whole new style of fiction and one of the most enduring characters in American literature.  She did nothing more than help him get out of jail and stay with him when he became too sick to live and too scared to die.  That’s why they call it love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Our Olympic Anniversary

The reason the modern world has festivals and anniversaries is that, long ago, primitive peoples had such short, brutal lives that, every once in a while, they had to stop working themselves to death and have some fun.  In the days when people still toiled, these quick breaks were important to regenerate the emotional batteries.  It was an excuse to take the day off, get together with the tribe, get drunk and eat all the food that was going to go rotten anyway.  These events were usually local and also served to strengthen the common bonds of a town or village.  Today, February 11th, we celebrate the one year anniversary of one of the best festivals Canada ever had.  One year ago, Wayne Gretzky lit the Olympic Torch and we partied like it was 2010.  Essentially, for 17 days, we forgot we were Canadians and became a primitive tribe marking out our territory in the world of winter sports — although it could just as easily have been a buffalo hunt or a successful raid for ponies.  For one brief, shining moment, we were citizens of our country — and we liked it.

It’s difficult for Canadians to be Canadian, simply because we have no single imperative to hang our toques on.  In case you haven’t been watching, Canada doesn’t work the same way as most countries.  We really don’t have a defining moment that stamps us out as Canadians.  There was no war of liberation nor a revolution that gave birth to our nation.  We negotiated our country into existence as an extra-territorial Britain, and then bought the rest of it — including a very confused native population — from the Hudson’s Bay Company.   Once a year, journalists try to shoehorn Vimy Ridge into our national consciousness, but somehow, it never rings as true with us as Bunker Hill does with Americans or the Storming of the Bastille does with the French.  Nor do we have an historical persona that identifies us; we were never Vikings or Cossacks or philosopher kings.  Our best effort was the Coureur de Bois (who was, in reality, a petty crook, trying to trade furs without a license.)  Besides, the plaid shirt and red toque has always been an object of fun — on both sides of the Two Solitudes.  Furthermore, we do not produce larger than life leaders, like Churchill or Gandhi — at least not since Sir John A. discovered single malt.  Nor do we lionize our military.  We have no collective cultural memory that leads us to exalt the art and architecture of our Golden Age.  Nor do we depend on cheese or cuckoo clocks to distinguish us from our neighbours.  Our cuisine consists of everybody else’s, and our national dress is probably a parka.

There is no single overwhelming ideal that guides us, no event that names us, no crisis that forged us.  Yet we are the people called Canadians, and for a brief moment last February, we knew why.

So what the hell happened last year?  The answer is easy.  We had something to believe in.  As our young people chased their young people up and down the ice and snow, we believed in them.  We wanted to win.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair play, good sportsmanship and camaraderie, but in the end we wanted the podium.  We want to stand one head taller than everybody else and hear our music being played.  We wanted to prevail.  And when we did (and even when we didn’t) we gathered around our totem – the red maple leaf – and celebrated our accomplishments.  We were no longer Canadians by accident of birth or immigration record, we were Canadians by the power of our deeds — a great northern tribe, jubilant in our triumph, dancing by our fires, far into the night.