Section 2

Satirist Showdown

Jon Stewart or Bill Maher?

Discuss.

[I say Maher]

John Kerry's MTV

John Kerry appeared tonight in an MTV special, 20, 000 questions for John Kerry. Kerry answered queries ranging from his post-Vietnam activism to gay marriage. Here's the recap from the MTV News site:

Senator and presidential contender John Kerry weighed in on the ongoing gay-marriage debate in a recent interview with MTV News Kerry explained his belief that sexual orientation is a matter of genetics, not choice, and that both gay and straight people should be accorded equal rights under the law.

"I think it's entirely who you are from birth, personally," Kerry told MTV News recently. "Some people might choose, but I think that it's who you are. I think people need to be able to be who they are.

"I have a friend who was married for many years and then the marriage dissolved and he came out and he announced that he was gay, and he lived this life of tension, and of great difficulty. And I don't think that's a kind of choice. I think that's being who you are. It's in your system. It's in your genes ... I think that people have a right in America to be who they are, who they are born as, and we are all God's children, and that is my view."

Kerry addressed the issue after an MTV viewer pressed him on his stand on gay marriage. The senator has said that he supports same-sex civil unions provided that those unions provide same-sex couples the same rights as straight couples. Kerry, however, has stopped short of calling for acknowledgement of gay marriages. The man that Kerry hopes to unseat, President George W. Bush, has called for a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages.

While most polls indicate that the majority of Americans oppose same-sex marriages, MTV research indicates that voters aged 18 to 24 actually support giving gay couples the right to marry. (You can see the range of opinions on this issue in a special edition of our You Tell Us area.)

"My feeling is that what is important is equal protection under the law," Kerry said. "An equal-protection clause, I think, pertains to the rights you give to people, not to the name you give to something, so I'm for civil unions. That gives people the rights: the rights of partnership, the rights of inheritance of property, the rights of taxation and so forth. But I think there is a distinction between what we have traditionally called 'marriage' between a man and a woman and those rights ... I believe very strongly that we can advance the cause of equality by moving toward civil unions. But that's where my position is at this point in time.

"What is distinct is the institutional name," Kerry explained. "Whatever people look at as the sacrament within a church or within a synagogue or within a mosque as a religious institution, there is a distinction. The civil state really just adopted that. It's the rights that are important, not the name of the institution."

Long live Otis

Is there any song better than "The Dock of the Bay"?

Comments?

And I don't give a damn about my reputation

Clearly living up to the pen name this evening... the nightcrawler just stumbled in, half past three, on a Tuesday evening. Constitutional law class begins at 8:30am. Rough.

I may be getting too old for this...

Oops, She Sucked Again

Britney's live from Miami concert aired last night on Showtime was, pardon my French, awful.
I'll cop to being a bit of a Britney fan, if only because I had the opportunity in 2000 to interview the lass, and found her to be something of a charmer. I've also attended two live shows in Montreal. I'm no fool - I know she lip-synched both of those concerts. But it didn't bother me so much if they were exciting, vibrant productions, which they were. So I tuned in last night, expecting what I've come to expect from Ms. Spears. And unfortunately, she only delivered on one front - the shitty singing. The rest of the "Onyx Hotel" show was a poor knock-off of the Lady Marmalade video, riffed with even more quasi-sexual intrigue and cleavage. The dance routines were tried, the costumes (read: skivvies) were barely there, and the song re-mixes were just uninspired. The opening number, Toxic, carried the only infectious energy of the night... but she didn't don the infamous body glitter that rendered that vid un-broadcastable during primetime!

Miami Herald reviewer Howard Cohen sums up the smut quite nicely. In this morning's paper he writes:

"The garish show was dubbed Onyx Hotel for some unfathomable reason but had no theme to speak of unless Spears shimmying on luggage carts while being pushed by topless bellboy dancers contains some hidden meaning.

Musically it was a bust, too. Cocktail lounge restructurings of her early bubblegum pop hits like . . . Baby One More Time and Oops! . . . I Did It Again were ill-conceived, done in by discordant arrangements and Spears' shocking lack of vocal ability. If anything, her breathy and nasal voice is becoming weaker, rather than stronger, as her career progresses.

Last week Spears was forced to cancel a concert when she hurt her knee the night before while performing. For most vocalists this wouldn't be as serious as losing their voice, but when your whole concert is based on aerobic-style dancing and you lip-sync for practically the full 90 minutes of your act, your legs are your most valuable asset.

It was almost amusing to hear Spears gasping for breath when her mike would switch on for between-song pitter-patter and then, miraculously, immediately thereafter she'd 'sing' without panting."

Brit, it may just be time to quit.

Why "W" Is Just Not Okay

From Dowd's column of this morning:

"The president seems oblivious to the swelling doubts about his policy in an Iraq sulfurous with treachery and blood. On Wednesday, he went to a press dinner here and made light of the fact that his rationale for invasion has evaporated. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he cracked, showing a photo of himself searching under a table in the Oval Office.

This was awkward for some, because the dinner also featured the first presentation of an award named for David Bloom and a speech by his wife, Melanie. Mr. Bloom, the NBC correspondent who died in Iraq, probably would not have been there without the hyped claims of W.M.D."

Exposing David Brooks

Is the NY Times' pundit one of America's greatest sociologists, or just a pseudo-intellectual prone to sweeping generalizations? This piece from Philadelphia Magazine (Brooks' hometown) will make ya wonder...

(An excerpt. Full story to be found at: http://www.phillymag.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=350

Boo-Boos in Paradise
by Sasha Issenberg
From the April 2004 issue.

Wayne-bred David Brooks is the public intellectual of the moment. But our writer found out he doesn't check his facts

A few years ago, journalist David Brooks wrote a celebrated article for the Atlantic Monthly, "One Nation, Slightly Divisible," in which he examined the country's cultural split in the aftermath of the 2000 election, contrasting the red states that went for Bush and the blue ones for Gore. To see the vast nation whose condition he diagnosed, Brooks compared two counties: Maryland's Montgomery (Blue), where he himself lives, and Pennsylvania's Franklin (a Red county in a Blue state). "I went to Franklin County because I wanted to get a sense of how deep the divide really is," Brooks wrote of his leisurely northward drive to see the other America across "the Meatloaf Line; from here on there will be a lot fewer sun-dried-tomato concoctions on restaurant menus and a lot more meatloaf platters." Franklin County was a place where "no blue New York Times delivery bags dot driveways on Sunday mornings … [where] people don't complain that Woody Allen isn't as funny as he used to be, because they never thought he was funny," he wrote. "In Red America churches are everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere. In Red America they have QVC, the Pro Bowlers Tour, and hunting. In Blue America we have NPR, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and socially conscious investing."

Brooks, an agile and engaging writer, was doing what he does best, bringing sweeping social movements to life by zeroing in on what Tom Wolfe called "status detail," those telling symbols -- the Weber Grill, the open-toed sandals with advanced polymer soles -- that immediately fix a person in place, time and class. Through his articles, a best-selling book, and now a twice-a-week column in what is arguably journalism's most prized locale, the New York Times op-ed page, Brooks has become a must-read, charming us into seeing events in the news through his worldview.

There's just one problem: Many of his generalizations are false. According to Amazon.com sales data, one of Goodwin's strongest markets has been deep-Red McAllen, Texas. That's probably not, however, QVC country. "I would guess our audience would skew toward Blue areas of the country," says Doug Rose, the network's vice president of merchandising and brand development. "Generally our audience is female suburban baby boomers, and our business skews towards affluent areas." Rose's standard PowerPoint presentation of the QVC brand includes a map of one zip code -- Beverly Hills, 90210 -- covered in little red dots that each represent one QVC customer address, to debunk "the myth that they're all little old ladies in trailer parks eating bonbons all day."

Hold your tongue in College Park

COLLEGE PARK, Md., March 26 (UPI) -- State officials have told the University of Maryland they can restrict the use of vulgar signs and chants by fans at campus sporting events.

Assistant Attorney General John Anderson wrote in a four-page opinion the university may "constitutionally adopt a carefully drafted policy that prohibits offensive speech at Comcast (Center)."

The university requested the state's attorney general review the school's existing policy in the wake of a Jan. 21 incident at a men's basketball game that angered and embarrassed school officials and alumni, the Washington Times said Friday.

In the final minutes of a 68-60 loss to Duke, fans directed a sustained, vulgar chant at Blue Devils guard J.J. Redick.

School officials said school policy prevented them from stopping fans from screaming expletives at opposing teams or wearing T-shirts bearing vulgar slogans because those actions are protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

The Latest Google Bomb

Type: unfortunate combover

It's Still a Material World...

Madonna reps announced today that the blonde bombshell-turned mama-turned kiddie lit-er will be on tour from May until September. The Re-Invention Tour will bring Madonna and her mockney accent to stages in most major American and European cities, as well as a stop in Israel. No Montreal dates scheduled as of yet, but Torontonians will be able to shell out for seats at the Air Canada Centre.

Re-Invention they say... maybe she could re-invent herself into a viable artist. Remember when Madonna actually produced quality records? If this re-invention is unsuccessful, the next tour will have to be the resurrection.

"President Bush, he's our Caligula." ~ Gore Vidal on Real Time with Bill Maher this evening.

Puttin' on the Ritz

Those of you familiar with my weakness for upscale hotels will be unsurprised by my appreciation for Jesse Brown's humour piece in this month's Saturday Night magazine.

An excerpt:

A couple of low-rent grifters sample the high life at the famed Montreal hotel

Hypothesis: Believe their brochure - Montreal's Ritz Carlton is indeed one of the finest hotels in the world. At almost 100 years old, it is refined, elegant, classic. Everything from the magnificent ballrooms to the fine dining rooms evokes fading images of a simpler era, one of true aristocracy.
Today, things are different. CEOs wear blue jeans and common thugs were Prada. It's getting hard for a hotel doorman to know who to welcome into the arms of luxury and who to show to the snowy curb.
Thought the Ritz gets top marks from all the major hotel guides, no one has tested it on this one crucial standard: can its staff identify and exclude people of limited means and poor pedigree? More important, how many freebies and perks can such a miserable person finagle out of the Ritz? I'm just the guy to find out.
Apparatus: My one good suit. A dead cellphone. Leon, my roommate.
Method: One snowy afternoon, I walk into the Ritz, dead cellphone to my ear.
Observations: 6pm I march purposefully toward the stocky doorman. "Oh really?" I say into the dead cellphone. "And just why should that be my problem?" I share an exasperated eye roll with the doorman, who guides me into the Ritz's magnificent lobby with a smile. I proceed directly into the wooded, velvety warmth of the Café de Paris bar, settling myself onto a plush sofa. A dapper, elderly waiter soon approaches, and I order a gin martini, dirty. When the drink arrives with a silver bowl of plump macadamia nuts, I request today's paper as well.
"Will the Times do, sir?"
"I suppose."
7pm. The room fills up. To my right, a gaggle of sales reps laughs unconvincingly at a client's jokes. In the corner, an attractive young couple coo at each other. From the other corner, a bejewelled, richly perfumed poodle of a woman shoots me brazen glances. Not a moment too soon, Leon arrives, looking dapper in his dark blue suit making its first appearance outside of a synagogue. Leon orders a vodka martini, very dry, and we are presented a plate of complimentary shrimp dumplings. Delicious, yes - but a little more ethnic than I care for from the Ritz. What of caviar? Is there no place left for preserving the old ways?

Boorstin: a tribute

I'm a little late on this one, but felt it imperative to dedicate a little blog space to one of America's most prescient social historians. I read The Image first year at Brandeis for Journalism in Modern America, and instantly ranked it among my all-time favourite examinations of the mass media.

Here's an excerpt from the London Telegraph's obit:

Daniel Boorstin, who died on Saturday aged 89, was one of America's most renowned historians and, between 1975 and 1987, the Librarian of Congress in Washington, the world's largest library.

An erudite and witty social theorist, Boorstin analysed the distinctive character of his country's culture in two popular trilogies and foresaw the growth of the late 20th phenomenon of celebrity.

His reputation as a leading historian of American culture began with the publication of his acclaimed three-volume work The Americans (1958-1973), which suggested that the country had been shaped by the efforts of the settlers to adjust to their new environment and that American democracy was founded in pragmatism rather than ideology.

But he was equally well-known for his prediction of a world ruled by the mass media and popular culture. In 1962 he published The Image: or, What Happened to the American Dream, in which he argued that modern man was able to enjoy so much through newspapers, televisions, films, photography, art and sound recordings that he had come to prefer the image to the reality.

Moreover, Boorstin suggested, man's appetite for pseudo-knowledge had increased; but since readers could only be persuaded to read if the information was excitingly and simplistically presented, the picture they received of the world had less and less to do with reality. Thus modern methods of communication were creating illusions instead of spreading knowledge. "We are," he wrote "the most illusioned people on earth."

Bemoaning the "programming of our experiences", Boorstin cited the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, which he argued reduced important national issues to mere theatrics. In addition he identified the rise of the celebrity and the confusion between celebrity worship and hero-worship.

"The celebrity," he explained, "is a person who is well-known for his well-knownness... the creature of gossip, of public opinion, of magazines, newspapers and the ephemeral images of movie and television screen. The passage of time, which creates and establishes the hero, destroys the celebrity..."

Boorstin repeatedly warned Americans that media saturation and technological success would lower their quality of life and enjoyment of the natural world. The "single, greatest technical advance" he said, was the book. It was fitting, therefore, that his last public appointment was as Librarian of Congress.

"For each of us," he wrote, "reading remains a private, uniquely qualitative nook of our life. As readers, then, we are refugees from the flood of contemporaneous mathematicized homogeneity. With a book we are at home with ourselves."

The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Daniel Joseph Boorstin was born on October 1 1914 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was educated at Tulsa Central High School and Harvard, from where he graduated with honours in Law. In 1934 he won a place as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol, Oxford, where he took a Double First. In 1937 he became one of the few Americans at that time to pass the English Bar examinations, after which he returned to America to further his studies at Yale University Law School.

After a brief flirtation with communism (it was, he later recalled, "boringly instructive") Boorstin moved to the University of Chicago, where he joined an interdisciplinary programme and found himself first drawn to social history. During his time at Chicago he also took on research and teaching work at Cambridge and at universities in Rome, Kyoto and Paris.

Déjà Done

Before Saturday night, I hadn’t been dancing on Crescent Street in eight years. I’m 23. You do the math.

But my friend had VIP passes to one of the basement booty boxes just above Ste. Catherine, and so we decided that with gratis entry, Crescent dancing wouldn’t be too terrible. There were four of us, and we’d just do our own thing.

Clearly it had been long enough that we’d forgotten exactly what clubbing on Crescent meant. I should’ve been carded and denied entry on the basis of old age. Up in the club were the ‘tweens, decked out on a chilly March night in white stretch pants, platform sandals and midriffs. And true to recent reports in the Gazette and the Globe and Mail, pairs and trios of teenaged girls were mimicking the Britney-Madonna-Christina kiss heard ‘round the world – much to the delight of the older, Molson Ex wielding, gold chain donning dudes lining the perimeter of the dancefloor.

Sitting on a barstool with my seven-dollar Corona, I remembered Friday nights passed in that very club circa grade 11. It had been renamed at least three times a week since the mid-90s but the crowd remained unchanged. Whether they were the exact people or not was irrelevant because essentially, they were the same people. The same woman was table dancing in the same stretch purple jumpsuit, the same guys were slicking their bangs back with pocket combs, and the same DJ was spinning the same C & C Music Factory (or insert other cheezy dance group here) remix.

There were the American boys, of course, on spring break from UNH. Their baseball caps and flannels rendering them easily distinguishable from the Montreal set clad in black from toes to nose. The Abercrombie boys pounded their fists on the bar, gleefully proclaiming Canadian beer to be “the shit dude!” while attempting to woo the younger ladies back to the Quality Inn.

It all reminded me of the first episode of the third season of Sex and the City, when Carrie compares Staten Island to a quaint European country where fashion and music are twenty years behind, and where you can smoke anywhere. The same goes for Crescent Street clubs, though there ain’t nothing quaint about these joints. En route to the washroom, a burly barfly tapped my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, but could I please have a dance? I’ve been watching you out there, and you seem like a lot of fun.”

I contemplated the offer for a moment, relieved that his approach had been direct and courteous.

“Ok, but I’m going to the washroom first.” I said smiling and continuing past him.

“That’s cool – hey, lemme come with you – I’m wearing an electric blue thong.” He shouted after me.

That’s when I riffled through my purse for my coat check ticket. I was well past my prime in this meat market. Partying on Crescent Street is akin to waking up as Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day – it’s all a big mess of déjà vu, and for far too many, a big mess of déjà do.

Adbusters gone too far

Dear friends,

Please take a moment to follow this link,
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/52/articles/jewish.html, to an article and
list that appear in this week's Adbuster's Magazine. The piece is written by
Kalle Lasn, the magazine's Editor. There is no doubt
that this piece IS ant-semitic - even despite its admission that issuing
such statements will make it easily classifiable as such. A list that
singles out Jews, only because they are Jews, is simply frightening. End of
story.

The mainstream press has yet to pick up on the story, either in Canada or
the U.S. The article discusses American Jewish influence on foreign policy,
but the 'zine is published in Vancouver. There are a number of online discussions and blogs that are abuzz
with the isssue. If interested, please see also Rabble Babble's discussion
board: http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001053