Tag: 2010 Canadian Politics

What Is Multiculturalism A Euphemism For Today?

Three friends of mine from undergrad ended up respectively marrying a Brit, a Slovak and a practicing Hindu. The weddings were all marked by their twin cultures and no one, as far as I can tell, lost an eye. A sister-in-law is a Swede. My folks are immigrants. So, I always wonder about these sorts of statements:

…that he considers Muslim fundamentalists an unwelcome element in liberal society is the kind of thing that gets Mr. Steyn so readily branded as a bigot, particularly in Canada where a worship of his most hated term “multiculturalism” has, he says, utterly shrivelled the limits on public discussion. That may, however, only prove his point. “It’s a sick fetish,” he says. “The idea that multiculturalism simply on its own terms is a virtue in itself is completely preposterous.”

What I don’t understand is how “multiculturalism” in this use differs from immigrants who practice Islam? Does Steyn have an issue with Filipinos or Hungarians or Peruvians? If there was no Islam and everything is the same, does he think we have the same issue? I am not sure. Because of that, I really have no idea what he is talking about. Which makes it hard to take him seriously. He may have a good point, one worth considering, if he ever got down to finer strokes. Instead we wallow in silly statements like “… diversity-obsessed Canadians have become generally sympathetic to the plight of Omar Khadr.” I’d say most Canadians have no idea who Omar Khadr is – just natterers. Just those who need it for an illustration of something else, the pre-established conclusion. How hasn’t that approach to thought “utterly shrivelled the limits on public discussion?”

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Friday Bullets For A Heat Wave And The Heat

I watched Lebron. Then I didn’t. Yawn. Going to The Heat. Yawn. Stay in Cleveland? Jump up and down saying “Cleveland Rocks!” and bring out Drew Carey to sing “Cleveland Rocks!” with you and then promise to make something big happen in your home state and screw big cities and screw big money and look in the camera and say “I am the greatest” invoking Ali himself…. that’s what you do when you call a personal hour long press conference live on TV. Going to the Heat? Yawn. Burn baby burn.

  • Hey, I Like This Gig Update: new Tory Senators suddenly not backing Harper’s Senate reform.
  • Jack Hughes Update: Cavs owner goes absolutely MENTAL over Lebron’s decision.
  • Spy Swap!!! I don’t really care that much except that it is fun to write “Spy Swap!!!” I so knew that Flea’s cake candidate Anna Chapman was Anna Kushchenko. I did. I just didn’t tell you.
  • This is a fun web toy to play with at work today … until you remember that it describes out the history of nuclear testing.
  • Will the US catch up to Canada on same sex marriage? Isn’t that so 2004?
  • You know you have been suckered by the seduction of mobile internet when you actually think you can walk around France streaming a radio station from Alberta for free.
  • How do you “challenge” the plain words of the constitution?

Out into the oven again today. Thanks God I got that deep long and restful sleep.

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Entitled Elites Bashing Entitled Elites

Preston Manning and other members of the conservative entitled elite have certainly done their job well. Remember how not a few years ago, the Tories were the big bad clique that met behind closed doors and made decisions for us all in board rooms from Bay Street to Calgary? Well, it appears that all the time it was actually the Grits that were the real enemy of the people. Just look at this splendid piece of journalistic revisionism:

Sometime during the Trudeau years, the Liberals ceased to be the party of the individual and became the voice of special interests, the face of elitism. The transformation began under Lester Pearson, when the Liberals launched huge new social programs — universal medicare and pensions — that were uncharacteristically collectivist for the party. Their central characteristic was the suspension of personal responsibility. Canadians were to be guaranteed health care and retirement income regardless of whether they had made plans and sacrifices during their healthy working years for the time when they became sick or old. They were have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too programs.

Never mind that conservative elites (and United Church ministers) gave us much of socialism long before the 1960s. Never mind that we are still crippled by the national debt built up mainly under the secret Conservative socialism compact of the Mulroney years. No, don’t trouble your pretty head about that stuff. The conservative entitled elite have their story down and it has to be repeated and applied.

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So How Many Boycotts Are There Out There?

The news of NDP deputy leader Libby Davis getting in hot water about supporting a boycott of Israel has got me thinking. Not about Israel’s right to exist – even if I understand any nation’s right to defend itself in order to better assert and ensure continuation of its existence – but about boycotting. The National Post reports it in this way:

The video shows Ms. Davies answering a series of questions about the situation in the Middle East, starting with comments suggesting that Israel has been occupying territories since 1948, which is the year of its independence. “[The occupation started in] ‘48. It’s the longest occupation in the world,” she said in the video. “People are suffering. I’ve been to the West Bank and Gaza twice, so I see what’s going on.” Ms. Davies also expressed her personal support for an international campaign for a boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, breaking ranks with her party’s official position.

Now whether or not she has deviated from the party line is one thing – not to mention to the entirely wackier thing that is any call for the end of Israel – but time was it was all boycotts all the time. We all remember the South African boycott in the 70s and 80s (actually going back into the 60s) but I seem to recall that boycotts of France over nuclear testing and Nestle were also part of my parent’s shopping reality as a kid. Earlier, there were boycotts against the Nazis as well as by them. Farm workers in the US have successfully used the boycott as did politicians in relation to the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Olympics. Right now people apparently want me to boycott Alaska, Nokia and Cheetos.

The thing is boycotting always seemed to me to be about a sort of personal expression or at least participation. My Mom could join in and neither she nor France were at risk. Cheetos will go on. They may even be improved in their Cheetos ways, policies, practices and products. It means folks don’t have to be Ghandi but can be like Ghandi. But only if the cause is right.

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Friday Bullets For World Cup Starts Today!

It’s now been a few years since I played soccer. Last World Cup I was all still in the, you know, idea that me and – like – slide tackling was… errr… not stupid. I thought that it was very healthy to have rolled ankles, sprained kneed, black and blue shins not to mention aches and pains. Not just aches. Aches and pains. Fortunately, I have embraced non-fitba member me since then. I’ve found a life after exhaustion, hot baths and aspirins all weekend. And looking like a bee. It’s a great game, though.

  • France and Uruguay this afternoon. I have always liked Uruguay and not just because of the abundance of the letter “u” in the name. Blues v. Blues. Hope the blue team wins.
  • “6 Ways To Overcome Social Media Burnout“? Doesn’t it start with not being a nerd when you are six?
  • Nigel Barley?
  • Canada Posts bans dog treats. Bite, doggie, bite… but aim for management.
  • Someone doesn’t like “food bloggers with their wankerish little digicameras”! And it’s that most useless of creatures – a newspaper food critic. Remember: those who cant’ complain a lot and do their best to keep available funds to themselves.
  • New UK PM apparently is having a hard look at Jean Chretien’s masterful decision to take a stand eighteen or so against deficits. Will he seek Steve’s advice as to how Jean did it?

Wish good luck for South Africa. I have cousins there, grew up in a boycott house, have a great pal who was in the Army and then got away before the changes, lived in towns with Boer War monuments. We should be closer.

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Why Do Conservatives Have Such Poor Spokesmen?

Or spokeswomen for that matter.

So, Canada is now bad because a speech by Ann Coulter was canceled tonight. As far as I can tell the real trouble with Ann Coulter is that she comes across more than anything else as a poor thinker and a clumsy speaker. Look at what all the fuss is over tonight:

“As a 17-year-old student of this university, Muslim, should I be converted to Christianity? Second of all, since I don’t have a magic carpet, what other modes do you suggest,” Ms. Al-Dhaher said, according to the London Free Press. After being pressed to answer the question, Ms. Coulter said: “What mode of transportation? Take a camel.” On CTV, she defended the camel comment, saying she was trying to give a more nuanced answer but was being heckled to respond quickly and so resorted to a quip. Also, at the University of Western Ontario on Monday, Ms. Coulter attacked feminists, gays and “illegal aliens,” saying liberals in the U.S. regularly complain their rights are being attacked in the same manner black Americans once were. “In America everybody wants to be black. The feminists want to be black, the illegal aliens want to be black, the gays want to be black,” she said, according to the London Free Press. But none of these groups have serious grounds to complain, Ms. Coulter said. “There are only two things gay men can’t do. Number one, get married to each other. Number two, throw a baseball without looking like a girl.”

Pure. Dumb. Where is the wit or the insight? Where is the connection to an actually useful political theory? These are just the ramblings of you drunk dopey pal you never liked much mixed with locker room humour. People say dumb things all the time and they are taken for what they are – dumb. People then stop listening to them having identified them as dumb. Why cancel? Why not just laugh if, as would seem appropriate, you disagree?

You see this same sort of thing in quasi-clever conservative talking heads like Mark Steyn who apparently comfortable missed both the British costs in two World Wars and also seems to have forgotten Maggie Thatcher before scotch taping it along with his self-loathing upon what is wrong with America. It is a comically simplistic coating over of reality and he get paid for it…. yet the proper response is pointing and making fun of the gaps. It is not getting all angry or offended over it.

Where are the good voices for conservative thought? They must be out there. Why is it you have to buy into the catch phrases and the overwhelming fear first to then listen to Rush, Coulter or Steyn or even a Stephen Harper and not feel like there is an uncomfortable gap? The gap is, ironically enough, a lack of a virtue. Virtues exist in relation to proper public relationships. The desire to make a compelling argument as part of the public discourse is a virtue. The desire to sway those who are not already in the congregation’s choir is a virtue. Conservatives are supposed to be all about the virtues and other old school ethics. Why don’t they exemplify it in their capacity to explain themselves?

Don’t get me wrong – people at other points of the political spectrum may suffer from the same fault but it doesn’t seem to be an actual job requirement as it does for the conservative talking head? What is the reason for it all? Complacency perhaps? No need given the revenue streams? I don’t know if this is what Frum means by the conservative entertainment complex and I don’t know if I agree with Frum – because it may be a lot of things but complex it ain’t.

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The Friday Bullets For Hints Of Spring

Ah, a whole work week has come and gone without any Olympics buggering up the TV. We have other things to think about… apparently. Some think we have little on our minds but I think the nation stands for more than that. Me, I stand for a shot at getting out the Weber char-bee-que tomorrow and basking in plus six sunny weather. Heck, the Red Sox are already 3-0 for the pre-season.

  • Why do my peeps need a hypnotist at a job fair? Why, peeps, why?
  • So what do you call a big government conservative who is not that aggressive over deficits and, yet, not all that progressive?
  • Can you believe that the UK’s governing and perhaps spent Labour party has almost crept back into a tie with their version of the Tories? They haven’t been ahead for two and a half years.
  • Life as bad ugly science fiction.
  • “…if it weren’t for liberal snobbishness, we wouldn’t have civil rights, women’s suffrage, unemployment insurance, public education, Medicare, child labor laws, and the “weekend” – amen.
  • What is social deconstruction?
  • Sad that our forefathers did not share our taste and didn’t have more money to make something grander. Heritage, after all, is all about wealth.

Is that it? What will happen in the next 7 days. It gets very exciting, doesn’t it. Maybe I will go for a walk. Fantastic.

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Some Lessons From The Vancouver 2010 Olympics

So it winds up today with one of the most anticipated hockey games in years if not since last week. My cynicism has been somewhat dissipated though I am hardly a bandwagoneer either. Co-opting the skills of the athletes for the alleged purity of the Olympic movement or Federal politics has fallen flat in the face of the performance and individuality of the athletes.

  • Canadians really like sports: This may sound obvious but consider this observation from a BBC columnist:

    Canadians are the best soundbites ever. You can take a camera out, stand on a street corner, and people will come up and ask if you want an interview. If you take it out after a hockey match you get people screaming into the camera – if you want to see fans going crazy, this is the place. It feels as though Canadians are crazy about their sport, whereas at Beijing 2008 you never really got that impression, and it will be interesting to see whether the British bury their cynicism for London 2012.

    We just love watching a game. We don’t even have to win. It just has to be a good game. Did anyone really curse at the Slovaks when they almost came back to tie the Canadian men’s hockey team in the late seconds Friday night? No way. Does anyone want to see the US goalie not stand on his head this afternoon like he did last week? Not a chance. We like a good game.

  • Canadians really like beer: I had no idea that one of the themes that would come out of the games was a national obsession with beer. I certainly was aware of the fondness of booze but we have had to cut off an entire city, gloried in the brassy individualism of the golden march down the street with the pitcher and then were outraged by the sexism and hypocrisy of those who would subject our women’s hockey team to a double standard or, more sillierly, actual liquor regulations.

  • Canadians don’t need derivative pride: the political theory leading up to the games was that Canadians had to loosen up or even learn to express pride and excitement. It is important to note that this was stated by someone who has not generated much national pride or excitement. Canadians are very proud. We just waste it on the incidentals. Like political agendas, especially those with a heavy dose of thinly veiled social engineering. We are proud of our beer and our athletes. We are not particularly proud of bureaucrats and businessmen who come up with odious claims to placing success above all things, including being a good host to the world’s athletes.

  • Canadians do not need to and have not become more patriotic: Nor are they less patriotic. Patriotism is one class of pride. Politicians often fail when they fail to know when to follow and following Canadian’s comfort level with their relationship to the nation is vital. This is one of Mr. Harper’s key failings. In a way it is like he is a visitor from some other Commonwealth nation mostly like Canada, the Royalist rump of Idaho perhaps. He expresses a sort of Canadian insecurity and neediness when he suggests some sort of national failing in emotional expression. Has he never heard people (falsely) trash Americans because of our (allegedly) superior health care system? Has he never heard early middle aged men regale each other (again) over past hockey games watched on TV, over the night the Blue Jays won or over the other night the Blue Jays won? Has he never noticed the silence of the crowd at a Remembrance Day service? If patriotism and pride in sports are related then we must be less because we did not do as well in cross-country skiing, because our ski jumpers suck. Like most Canadians, I can live with it.

  • Luge can be too fast. It is telling that the upper starting spot for the luge was never used in these races for which it was designed. The headline reads “Sliding Centre must deal with Legacy of Luger’s Death” and that is the case. Those behind making it too fast have to deal with it as well. Were they also caught up in the good, better, best rush to seeing a lower number on the fastest time sheets. Did the drive to pride – the owning of the podium – mania help cause a poor design? Maybe a court case will decide that in a few years time.

  • Canada is not always frozen: These were really the Spring Olympics. Late February in Canada can do either way. It rained in Vancouver and it rained here in Easlakia too. The slalom yesterday was played out on a giant 7/11 slushie which was good as half the field seem to get a faceful of the stuff as they fell half way down. The next Olympics are in Sochi, Russia. It’s going to be 15 C and sunny there today.

So, all in all it has a good event. We came third overall. We got a few more medals than last time by throwing over 100 million bucks at the program. We were officially less than gracious hosts but (apparently) non-officially inherently culturally good ones. We now have a second set of winter Olympic training centres which will likely not create the bump long term that the Calgary one caused. We are proud of beer drinking skeleton winning men as well as the women hockey players – and defend their right to have a cold one at 18 years old.

Have we learned anything else?

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Friday Bullets For The Beginning Of The Orgy

And so it begins. An embarrassing manufactured jingoistic spend-fest. Imagine the regret in March, the bills, the questions as to whether all the bronze medals and seventh to seventeenth place finishes were worth it. But then it will be spring, there will be baseball, representational democracy will be returned to us and we can get back to ignoring the good of the nation in favour of our petty regional and political interests. Teams I am backing? Canadian hockey (who’s kidding who?), Norwegian cross country (great sweaters), Latvian everything else (plucky and maroon). Name your real favorite teams in the comments. Five extra points for your list of Olympic sports that are not real sports. Me? I’d trade real wooden toboggan races down the downhill ski run for aerial ski flips and twists. Team snowball, too.

  • What an odd speech. Interesting to see the Great Chilly One needed to have the “very well” in thanking people for a job very well done so he could be reminded to actual attempt human contact at that point in the presentation. For someone who has spent most of his life undermining the national identity, it’s fun to watch him choke out a call to patriotism. I have no idea what he means by it but good to see him try.
  • The culture of casual hate framed in a cartoon.
  • If the Mohawk were Amish or another conservative community no one would care much. Yet it is quite the thing to be reminded that the mini-mall world of Olympic-style cultural identify is not the only game in town.
  • Ben, at yet another site, gets the difference between blogging journalists and political leadership. But does anyone really believe the GOP is working hard behind the scenes to create program alternatives that fulfill the wish that “All Americans should receive the same tax benefit as those who are insured through work, whether through a tax credit or other means”? I love all non tax based health care being described as “other means”.
  • Another moment of the “new Canadian pride“: “They have a magnetic component in their sled that does something. It’d be nice to have that investigated.” Something. Something?? Now there’s a stand to take.
  • China fears cyber attacks (cyber attacks!!!) as Iran hones it skills at turning off the internet. In the future when the Iranians keep us from gathering on Fridays, do have a kind thought for me.

That is it. I am off for an eight hour drive today. What fun.

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Group Project: Western Alienation And The Olympics

We’ve spent a lot of the last 20 years hearing how that bit of Canada known as the West – the bit between BC and Saskatchewan – isn’t understood, doesn’t fit and (quite conversely) wants to rule us all. What has that done, all that cultural decentralization. Well, the Globe speculates this morning that it has made us all so not an “us” that the Olympics are viewed very differently inside host province of BC and elsewhere:

Firstly, Canadians outside British Columbia have been mostly immune to the debate that has raged on the West Coast over the cost of the Games. And secondly, the torch relay has only recently returned to British Columbia after 90 days or so whipping up Olympic fever across the land. Still, the degree to which the rest of Canada has embraced these Games has been impressive. Which leads to the question: Are these Canada’s Games or British Columbia’s? And whose interests and considerations should prevail when it comes to decisions where there may be conflicting interests or differences in opinion?

I was wondering what the heck the guy was suggesting by “the degree to which the rest of Canada has embraced these Games has been impressive” until I remembered the Globe is part of the corporate glom that includes CTV which is the host TV network. I was scratching my head as I have not heard one Canadian say they are excited about the events thousands of kilometres to the west. As with Santa at Christmas, I’ll be nice about it with the kids but after years of political training that out there is some place else, I have a deep sense that these events are somewhere, you know, else. Right now, I am far more interested in the run the Syracuse Orange are putting on in the NCAAs than whether a Canadian comes 17th or 27th in biathalon.

You? Do you care after all the years and the billions in hype?

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