We're Gonna Whip Your Ass! (the great Canadian reality show)

Alternate title or subtitle of the show: Who Wants to be a Solomonaire?
    Like many of my better ideas (should I put irony-quotes around the "better"?) this one comes to me as I emerge from deep sleep and the grotesque empire of dreams. I forget most of the details of this dream--my dreams tend to disappear on waking, no matter how hard I try to remember them) on this occasion one item remains in my consciousness: my undergoing a particularly curious and horrific type of torture (at whose hands I have no idea) and the simultaneous panicky thought that I should NEVER tell anyone what this torture method is, lest some clever sadist out there might see it and use it.
   The rest of the dream evaporates as my waking thoughts assemble, but the analytic thought then occurs that this weird dream is some sort of wacky offshoot of a large buffet supper and the last bit of reading I did before bedtime, a quick, superficial glance at a profile of Jason Kenney in the latest issue of Walrus magazine (cover-headline: "And you think Harper is right wing: The ascent of Jason Kenney")
   Amid all this, the daily domestic agenda comes pelting in (jeez, how long since I've watered the plants...) intermixed with an almost automatic elaboration (not sure what else to call it) of a Walrus call-out (large-type thing) that the magazine's layout crew used to relieve the long grey story--a call-out restating, "Still Kenney's balancing act has come at a cost: increasingly, this country has seen its international image tarred with a mean streak."--into some extrapolations of the whole tough-on-crime tenet (over which the article vigorously wrings its semantic hands) into some thoughts about how the dramatic structure of civil and criminal trials might be improved by turning a few of them into reality shows. Details of how this would work, e.g.lawyers showboating extravagently, and the vast audience voting on the verdict and sentence, cascade into my brain remarkably fast.
    But also another panicky thought intrudes, that I won't get the details threshed out in the hour or so before the dog must be walked, or I'll get sidelined on social-media as I too often do ...

Judge Judy...

...todays G&Mail India election p.1 too...
 

Whoa! Adbusters has a grand scheme for us!

Perhaps I have a twisted sense of humor, but it always strikes me as funny that I can pick up a copy of Adbusters at Safeway. The new revolution, plunked between Esquire and tubs of potato-salad, mine for only $12.99 plus GST (the price giving a fair indication how much advertising helps with cost of the average $5.99 to $7.99 glossy; and REALLY, why doesn't everybody just round up to the dollar?)
    Adbusters has recently ditched its perverse oversize format for the normal 8x11 magazine size, but something about the last issue (some aspect of its always-fervent ideology, no doubt) annoyed me into passing it over, as I usually do. At the risk of revealing a punchy punchline without a spoiler-alert, Adbusters is solid leftie and this scoffer is implacable rightie. And maybe that is all you need to know.
    But as occasionally happens, I grab a copy...

Hey, hey, it's Noam Chomsky! (and perkier stuff)

The illusion persists that intellectuals are able to choose their own paths of thought, and select their own fields of battle, but this is no more true for us professional thunkers than it is for other cops. At least 90% of our time is spent dealing with other thunkers and/or perceived malefactors who pounce upon the polity. And circumscribing their thunking is, with brutal and often tedious inevitability, what constitutes our never-ending patrol work.
    Cruising through Edmonton's Fringe Festival last week (the second-largest in the world after Edinburgh!) a gang of us over-educated folks stopped by the Wee Book Inn to browse...

Peter Lougheed, poetically

My sense of humor is acting up again as I read the Edmonton Sun obit-editorial: "Lougheed left lasting legacy."

Okay, this might be Semantics 101, but "lasting legacy" is a redundancy, right? If it doesn't last, you can hardly call it a legacy, right? A short-lived legacy would be ridiculous, right?

To put it plainly, the headline (like many a headline) is pure poetics, as much as would be, say, "Peter packed a pipeline of high-priced petroleum." Moreover, let me suggest that any enduring Lougheed imprint, including the 41 years of solid Tory majorities in Alberta, has proved somewhat thin and evaporative so far.

On the radio yesterday, they played a clip where Lougheed himself stated he thought his biggest bequeathal was the Canadian Constitution. But even if Lougheed was the sole architect of its ultimate-fudge, Great Canadian Compromise "notwithstanding clause" (largely a sop to Quebec, which largely snubbed it; the exuberant Sun editorialist says "Lougheed was a driving force behind the formula"--okay, how MANY driving-forces exactly conjured up that cute legalism??) you could hardly call our vaunted uberlaw a shining monument upon the planet (although I've encountered at least one rhapsodic attempt in that direction, citing the world's rookie democrats, who allegedly prefer it to the stale-dated U.S. Constitution. Amid such hosannas, dare I suggest that our constitution is just a blob of plasticine to be shaped by over-eager judges?)

Both the Sun and the radio station also mentioned Lougheed's heroic attempts to diversify Alberta's economy. Alas, neither source bothered to support the assertion with statistics, which probably show our economy growing more oil-centred than ever during his 1971 to 1985 reign and subsequently, as various attempts to "green" our energy hit the cost-wall (e.g. ethanol and the current drought in the U.S.) Alas, fossil fuels remain the cheapest way to power humanity's somewhat comic hurrying and scurrying, and this massive economic fact steam-rollered Alberta as much as anybody, Lougheed or no Lougheed.

By happenstance I know a large corporate furniture-maker of the Lougheed era, who along with other Alberta manufacturers met with the Premier back in the day, to talk about some sort of support for secondary industry, and who came away notably bitter at getting nothing worth mentioning (the furniture corporation eventually went under). Admittedly this is anecdotal evidence, and maybe we should all be harumphing about bootstraps, but really, if you are going to say Lougheed did anything about diversifying the economy aside from uttering platitudes, please provide some evidence in that direction. Or get a speechwriter to pump up the iconography with Lougheed's role in our triumphant agricultural switch from wheat to canola or something.

To tell the truth, it is difficult to find ANYTHING to say about Lougheed beyond his personal charm (although I suspect a certain Mr. Sindlinger may chip away at even that). There was plenty of evidence of that charisma yesterday--Albertans phoning in to the radio shows to hymn Lougheed's photographic memory of them and their kids, etc. By coincidence I even snagged a broadcast-media guy in my taxi, with a story of himself and his cameraman attending some political event back in the Lougheed era, and the cameraman getting into the long receiving-line twice to shake hands with Lougheed. The second time the cameraman arrived, Lougheed said "Hey, I already shook your hand!" or something like that. Quite funny, but my passenger was clearly won over by the encounter.

Heck, I could probably add my own story: the 100th-anniversary dinner for alumni of the University of Alberta student newspaper the Gateway, less than two years ago. Lougheed was Sports Editor on the Gateway circa 1950, and was arguably the most illustrious graduate of our esteemed rag (even ahead of blink-and-miss-him Prime Minister Joe Clark) and had plenty of excuses for not going to the soiree, starting with the triviality of our student publication and finishing with age and infirmity (he and an accompanying ex-cabinet minister rather shocked me with their appearance, but I'm getting rather worn around the edges myself, so maybe I shouldn't talk).

But there amid all us freaks and non-entities (hey!--there's the shaggy cartoonist who draws Bob the Angry Flower!)  Lougheed gamely appeared, and made a passable speech about the importance of education, and ways of financing upgrades to Highway 63, and a few other things. Our late-70s/early-80s contingent (one of whom was even then helping compile a potted-obituary for Lougheed for a major daily) sat very close to the ex-Premier's head-table, and I furtively watched him, hoping he didn't recognize me, nor recall that I once wrote a slashing column in the Gateway on his lousy English, and then compounded the offense by reducing it to a joke later when he was being touted for the federal Conservative leadership (check also my dismantling of Barbara Amiel in the latter column. Ah, the fun times of yore). I had to restrain the urge to go over and apologize, muttering something like ""Hey, all politicians have lousy English, it was nothing personal, guy." He would undoubtedly have accepted that with his usual patrician grace and aplomb, no?

Even Don Iveson, current member of Edmonton City Council, who introduced Lougheed to the assembled alumni, intimating gingerly that he (Iveson) had some differences of ideological nicety, seemed rather abashed by Lougheed's presence--matching the across-the-board tributes that have poured forth since Thursday, which clearly transcend mere speaking-well-of-the-dead. Just what Lougheed represented, however, remains a bit of an enigma. Maybe it was primarily the banal fights over Alberta's oil wealth, which, although Lougheed probably lost (cue: indignation over NEP) he at least fought the good fight. Or maybe he earned a stalemate: maybe some of Alberta's natural-resources "lottery ticket" is still Alberta's thanks to him; maybe the Trans-Canada Gimmes didn't get it all.

And he had a tall-in-the-saddle yet modest style (much ballyhooed by the effusive Rex Murphy in today's National Post) which not only impressed people like my father (also born in 1928) but got him plastered onto the cover of Saturday Night as the iconic face on our Rockies. What more could a legend want? Actual notable accomplishments maybe? I recall my razor-sharp journalism teacher shrugging off Lougheed as "a Mannix man" (a comment that baffled me at the time; what did the TV show have to do with Lougheed, I naively wondered) but this was 1973, very early in Lougheed's career.

The implication, I now suppose, was that Lougheed was just a corporate lubricant, a mere business tool--criticisms common enough from leftward. Perhaps his eminence was even a mere optical illusion produced by high oil prices, as our Gateway editorial cartoonist Gerard Kennedy ("Pasken") later suggested. Aside from building Alberta's economy to some degree (I'd argue other business leaders deserve as much or more credit, as do OPEC gougers) what did Lougheed REALLY DO? Racking my brain for anything, I find... not much.

I recall from somewhere that his first act as premier in 1971 was to repeal the Socreds' eugenics/sterilization legislation, which shows some intelligence and gumption, but I'd be hard-pressed to find a second instance as admirable. Today's Globe and Mail obituary cites 20 pieces of legislation that Lougheed's PCs introduced even in opposition, but neglects to state whether they were passed, or even what the 20 bills specifically or generally dealt with. Nor was Lougheed very leaderly when the Keegstra affair erupted (although commenting on a case before the courts is rarely a good idea). Nor did he tamp down western separatists with any special alacrity. But maybe he was just coolly and passively acknowledging the deep Zen truth that all things must pass. Who knows...

Aside from that? Well, I have an excuse for resuscting "Kubla Pete"--a poem named after him and published in the Gateway. Actually, despite the title it was more about certain high-octane leftists in the Students Union than about Lougheed.

But, punchline: in the dirty business of politics Lougheed maybe did emerge (thrusting!) (sorry) a bit cleaner than most. Maybe his relative cleanliness was due to nothing more than a certain cool, lawyerly dignity of his. Still, having that quality of character reminds us how scarce a commodity it is in politics anywhere.

As to the gang of professors who named him the best Canadian Premier of the last 40 years--ha ha! But really--what (besides unintentional comedy) did you expect from professors?

So far ahead of his time he's lurking in ours

It's a pretty rare day I don't think about H. L. Mencken at least ten times.

And here is Dan Gardner of the Ottawa Citizen, Sept 3, starting a column on presidential aspirant Mr. Romney by citing the "dour" satirist of yore. Dour??
   And yet, I've heard Mencken called "bilious" too, an even more tone-deaf assessment. Is this the same Mencken who publicly regretted not calling his second and third volumes of memoirs Happy Days II and Happy Days III to match the first title? (yes, LONG before the TV show, you ahistoric moron). Is this the 67-year-old summing up his life at an age when bitterness is almost automatic, who states:

(Chrestomathy quote: "I have little call to join the race of viewers-with-alarm" etc./approx.... damn but I hate research... and of course my copy of the Mencken Chrestomathy  has disappeared into the office uber-mess...)

(Yep, another teaser for an item for sale. Sorry! Stay tuned!)  =]

Productivity, Efficiency and Dreaming in Technicolor

The morning dog-walk is a refreshing exercise--getting away from the stuffy house and chores, abandoning (briefly) the mind-boggling backlog of reading-material, flushing out the lungs, recalibrating the brain, and doing nothing newsworthy or contributory to the GDP. Beyond the primal pleasure of the act of walking, and giving the frisky mutt a bathroom break (scoop!) and letting her lunge at cats and sniff at anything and everything and God knows what, we have no agenda or obligation at all.
   But the city, of course, impinges on aforesaid brain. I idly recheck familiar houses, note old paint and new vinyl siding, survey the degree of rust on cars, scan weed-to-grass ratio, scout irregularities in the sidewalk and pavement, estimate the droppings of litterbuggor canadensis (vast), gauge the possibility that a passing female may be a hooker (and contributing to the GDP, unlike my lackadaisical self) assessing that possibility with an almost-unconscious set of criteria ranging from skinniness to motility...
   The morning I began this essay, I was spurred by a jarring disconnect between my easygoing routine (and a familiar sight on the stroll; more on that in a moment) and an earlier radio-report of someone, possibly Prime Minister Harper or Finance Minister Flaherty, urging Canadians to be more productive so we can be competitive in the global marketplace (stop them if you've heard this one).
   So, um, not that we should go back to building log-cabins, trading furs and eating pemmican, but... exactly HOW productive do we need to be? $3,000 per capita more? $10,000 per capita? Maybe 2.3% more productive than the Chinese in their less-suicidal factories??
   Increased productivity always SOUNDS good, in an abstract, editorial sort of way, which is why our beloved suits chant the mantra, I suppose. And if you add the imploring faces of some Third World... sorry, developing-world victims (or local street-people) to kick-start the mantra, you may even feel some of the urgency that our ever-alarmist politicians and business-suits strive to promote.
   But let me flip the mantra around, for a little Nietzschean perspectivism: if we (and by "we" I mean residents of the industrialized West) are so productive and efficient that we need maybe only 7% of our workforce to produce our basic food, clothing and shelter needs, what do we do with the remaining 93% of the, um, loiterers?
   A few, of course will be needed for "management"...

    *    *    *
in progress (allegedly)

So what in hell is conservatism?

Haul up any essay upon social issues nowadays and, whatever the topic--climate-change, culture-clashes, health-care or any election orgy past, present or future--you will see it almost inevitably (and usually quickly) descends into a shrill combat of left versus right. Some defective neural pattern in the human brain, it seems, hard-wires us to clatter along in the auto-default mode of Manicheism, black hats and white hats, good and evil, and the imagined road where not too far along awaits a glorious denouement with angels triumphant. Out of materials of melodrama are political careers and Hollywood millions built.
  Indeed, rummaging around for instances, I find two almost instantly in...