Ian Brown is probably the finest non-fiction writer in the country and his new book, The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son, is fabulous. Don’t let the subject matter fool you into thinking this is a grim read. Sure, it is, in places, sad, and occasionally angry, and always unflinching in its honesty, but it is never despairing; instead, it’s full of wisdom, humour and hope. I was in awe of the guy who wrote it: not just Brown, the supremely talented writer (that was certainly no surprise to me), but of Brown, the man — a guy, who by his own admission is no saint, but who is so devoted to his son Walker.
I will be interviewing Ian Brown at McNally Robinson’s Toronto store on October 13 at 8 pm. That’s a particularly intimidating prospect for me not just because I’ve never interviewed anyone in public before, but because I’ve watched him on stage with some of my favourite writers — including Tobias Wolff, Nicholson Baker and Jim Harrison — and he is the best I’ve ever seen at public author interviews. Still, my apprehension can’t match the honour I feel at the prospect of discussing his brilliant new book with him.
When I am not writing books, I teach journalism at Ryerson University, where I work with the talented students who put out the Ryerson Review of Journalism. We were delighted to learn this week that the magazine, which has been publishing for 26 years, has won six awards in the 2009 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Student Magazine Contest.
Our spring 2009 issue won first place in the Single Issue of an Ongoing Print Magazine (Editorial) category. The judge, Ashley Deahl, who is acting editor-in-chief and managing editor of Phoenix Magazine, had this to say: “The cover grabbed me right away. It felt almost like an Esquire model—very modern, edgy and fun—something a reader would pick up even if he/she weren’t interested in journalism. The clean but sassy design carried itself throughout the issue as well, and it was married well with thought-provoking photography, perfect feature-openers, great use of typography and a real sense of how to break up copy. A tad copy-heavy at times, but the content was interesting enough to keep the reader moving and wanting more. I truly loved every feature.”
D. B. Scott’s Canadian Magazines blog notes that “this year’s competition attracted 232 entries from 23 universities from the United States and Canada.”
Here are the highlights:
* Consumer Magazine Article: People
First Place: “Deconstructing Barry,” by Ashley Walters, Ryerson University
* Consumer Magazine Article: Investigation and Analysis
First Place: “One Powerful Union Tactic,” by Carolyn Morris, Ryerson University
* Consumer Magazine Article: Investigation and Analysis
Third Place: “Hot Topic,” by Eve Tobolka, Ryerson University
* Consumer Magazine Article: Feature
Second Place: “The Long Goodbye,” by Greg Hudson, Ryerson University
* Consumer Magazine Article: Feature
Third Place: “Pissed Off,” by Greg Harris, Ryerson University
* Single Issue of an Ongoing Print Magazine: Editorial
First Place: Ryerson Review of Journalism, Ryerson University. Marit Mitchell, editor
Andrew Cash — musician, writer and a fine Friday afternoon hockey player — explains in Now why the government needs to invest in artists rather than automakers.
The proof is in the numbers: “The arts and culture sector, it turns out, is bigger in Ontario than agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, oil and gas and the utilities sectors – combined! More people work in arts and culture than directly in auto. With every dollar of public investment in the arts netting governments $1.84, it sounds like a pretty safe bet, especially compared to the teetering car business.”
If you care about long-form journalism, then you must read the keynote speech that Gerald Marzorati, editor of The New York Times Magazine, gave at the 2009 CASE Editors’ Forum. I love this line: “I would trust leaving my children with anyone who can fold a broadsheet newspaper properly.”
I am disgusted that the IOC is banning Right to Play from the Athlete’s Village at the Vancouver Games. Right to Play, a humanitarian organization that grew out of the
Olympics, works with kids in war-torn and poverty-stricken
countries, and many Olympic and professional athletes are involved.
Alas, I can’t say I am surprised by this heavy-handedness. Let’s face it, the Games are about making money, nothing more. And what’s freedom of speech when General Motors is an Olympic sponsor while Mitsubishi backs Right to Play.
It’s all just one more reminder that all this stuff about Olympic ideals is pure fiction, just marketing BS to cover the corruption, the cheating and the coziness with totalitarian governments. That’s not news to anyone, but that this censorship will take place in Canada is a disgrace.
So far 92 athletes, many of them high profile, have signed a letter criticizing the decision, according to this National Post story. Let’s hope all athletes use their outside voices to protest this censorship as vigorously as possible.
As usual, Paul Wells has it right:
“I hope I have made it clear since the summer that I have come to believe Stephen Harper is turning into a really bad prime minister. He is incoherent, vicious and unserious. His fall update was idiocy on stilts, and when he sent his transport minister out two days later to disown the work of his finance minister, nobody in the country blinked because nobody in the country takes what this government does as a government seriously.
All the opposition had to do was come up with a better alternative. They have failed. This is a depressing moment in our nation’s politics.”
For the last eight years, despite a trio of unimpressive prime ministers, Canadians have smugly been thankful that George Bush wasn’t leading our country. Now, with Obama moving into the White House and no credible politician — let alone an inspiring one — anywhere near Ottawa, we can go back to wallowing in our inferiority complex.
Fellow wordinistas might find “Obama’s Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy” amusing.
The wonderful James Fallows considers what skills Barack Obama has shown us over the past two years. He concludes: “As a collection of talents brought to bear in a campaign, this is quite remarkable. And the sequential underestimations — by the Hillary Clinton camp, and now by the Republicans — will merit future analysis.”
Since there are elections taking place on both sides of the border this fall, here in Canada on Thursday night we’ll have to choose between seing Stephen Harper embarrass Stephane Dion and witnessing Joe Biden embarrass Sarah Palin. I’ll be watching the latter debate because it promises to be a lot more fun, but afterward the big question will be: who’s the biggest loser?
(A clink of my glass to the B-Man for asking the right question.)
“I do look forward to Thursday night and debating Sen. Joe Biden. We are going to talk about those new ideas, new energy for America. I’m looking forward to meeting him too. I’ve never met him before. But I’ve been hearing about his Senate speeches since I was in, like, second grade.” — Sarah Palin
So let me get this straight: John McCain runs on the idea that he’s more experienced that Barack Obama and then chooses the woefully inexperienced Sarah Palin as his running mate. When Obama agrees with McCain a few times in the first debate, McCain’s team puts out an ad that’s meant to ridicule the Democrat, but really just makes him look sensible, polite and bi-partisan, all attributes independents are looking for after the last eight years. Then as Palin preps for her debate with Joe Biden, she mocks his age — even though the guy at the top of her ticket is 72 years old.
These guys couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery.
CBC Ombudsman Vince Carlin has released his review of a controversial cbc.ca column about Sarah Palin by freelance commentator Heather Mallick. Now, let me first say that Carlin was my boss when he was the chair of Ryerson University’s School of Journalism and that he’s a guy I like and respect a lot. That bias declared, I think his report is well worth reading for anyone interested in journalism.
Carlin concludes that “portions of Ms. Mallick’s column do not meet the standards set out in policy for a point-
of-view piece since some of her ‘facts’ are unsupportable.” But, frankly, I am not much interested in any sins Mallick may or may not have committed. Instead, I was delighted to read Carlin decide that “the CBC should not necessarily avoid having people of strong views on the air, but we must ensure that people of differing views are given a fair opportunity.”
Most of the commentary about Carlin’s report — D.B. Scott’s Canadian Magazines blog, for example — seems to concentrate on the perception that Mallick was getting spanked, but it’s the bosses at cbc.ca who need a really soft chair. Hiring a controversial right winger to spew invective along with Mallick would have given everybody plenty of insulation from angry readers and wise ombudsmen.
I certainly thought Obama did as well as he needed to in the debate last night, but I have to admit that I was frustrated that he didn’t try to tie McCain to Bush on foreign policy the way he did on the economy: when they were in the midst of the debate over whether to meet the leaders of rogue nations with or without preconditions, I really wanted Obama to say, “Well, we tried that approach for eight years — without much success.” Or something even more sarcastic.
But then I read these wise thoughts on tactics and strategies from James Fallows: “Obama would have pleased his base better if he had fought back more harshly in those 90 minutes — cutting McCain off, delivering a similarly harsh closing judgment, using comparably hostile body language, and in general acting more like a combative House of Commons debater. Those would have been effective tactics minute by minute. But Obama either figured out, or instinctively understood, that the real battle was to make himself seem comfortable, reasonable, responsible, well-versed, and in all ways ’safe’ and non-outsiderish to the audience just making up its mind about him… For years and years, Democrats have wondered how their candidates could ‘win’ the debates on logical points — that is, tactics — but lose the larger struggle because these seemed too aggressive, supercilious, cold-blooded, or whatever. To put it in tactical/strategic terms, Democrats have gotten used to winning battles and losing wars. Last night, the Democratic candidate showed a far keener grasp of this distinction than did the Republican who accused him of not understanding it.”
The secret is now out and the proof is irrefutable: even the New York Times crossword puzzle has a liberal bias. OBAMA has shown up as an answer in the puzzle several times, while MCCAIN never has. Both BIDEN and PALIN have appeared — but the clues for PALIN were along the lines of “Monty Python member” or “Cohort of Cleese and Idle,” never “Alaska governor.”
Okay, I don’t pretend to be an expert on US politics — just a fascinated observer — and electoral politics isn’t the purpose of this blog (Watchdogs and Gadflies was about political activists, the citizens working for change outside electoral politics). But sometimes I can’t help myself, especially when I see the media doing such a dreadful job. Andrew Sullivan has it right: “While the media demands that Obama respond to things he never said and never meant, McCain is not even asked to retract a bald-faced, massive, obvious, refutable lie. In the last month, McCain has become the biggest liar in the modern history of presidential politics. He makes Bill Clinton look like George Washington.”
It’s true — most media reports on the ads (or the Bridge to Nowhere or earmarks or any one of a number of other controversies) present them as differences of opinion when the facts are readily available to prove who is lying. Isn’t that exactly how Joseph McCarthy got away with destroying so many American lives?
After disgracing their profession on WMDs and the reasons behind the Iraq war, you’d think at least some reporters would at least try to redeem themselves. Apparently not. The sad truth is the media aren'’t elitist, they’re incompetent.
Look, I’m not naive, I know that distorting the positions — and, alas, the character — of political opponents has long been part of the game when it comes to elections campaigns. Regrettable, but true. And Obama is certainly guilty too, but the McCain campaign is worse: in fact, according to this New York Times piece, the non-partisan group Factcheck.org, which does an excellent job, “has cried foul on Mr. McCain more than twice as often since the start of the political conventions as it has on Mr. Obama.”
But it’s not the number, it’s the nature. Accusing Obama of calling Palin a pig was just moronic (though it was a good way to keep the focus on the vice-presidential candidate, who has energized the Republican base, and away from the the presidential candidate, who was unable to do that), but lying about Obama’s support for kindergarteners getting sex education is nothing but slime. The bill Obama supported helped educate young kids about sexual predators and only sexual predators could possibly be against that.
But McCain, who once had the respect of people across the political spectrum, is so desperate and he went on The View and denied these ads are lies. Straight talk, my ass.
As I was watching Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican convention, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on kept making me think she sounded like a student politician. Afterwards, I checked The Daily Dish and sure enough Andrew Sullivan, who had been live blogging the speech, had put his finger on it: she reminded me of Tracy Flick, Reese Witherspoon’s character in Election. Eeew.
I love the food at Terroni (try the Funghi Assoluti) and generally find the staff lovely — one of the Richlers called the waitresses at the old Victoria St. site “uncommonly foxy and vuluptuous” in a National Post review, which was about right — and find the pretentious food rules more amusing than annoying, so I eat at the three Toronto locations too often. Still, I got a kick out of this rant called “Terroni Abhors Your Unsophisticated Palate” over at the Torontoist site. Writer Marc Lostracco might have added that no amount of pleading will get you balsamic with your bread and olive oil.
I think The New Yorker’s satirical cover of the Obamas is brilliant, so I’ve been following the controversy over it with relish
Over at the Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan has served up several good posts about the controversy, including this one with a link to an online poll showing a majority think the cover is dangerously close to reality. Meanwhile, Poynter Online offers this look at satire’s place in journalism and D.B. Scott, who often writes about magazine covers, points out that the cartoonist, Barry Blitt, is a Canadian. And the New York Times has a story about how hard it is to make jokes about Obama and how the writers for late night comedians are hoping he picks an idiot as his running mate.
But, no surprise here, perhaps the smartest take I’ve seen so far is from Paul Wells: “Or — and this is crucial, and I see it about a hundred times a week in political circles — did more people tell themselves something that sounded a little more like, ‘Well, I get it — I see the joke, funny or lame — but I’m quite sure the simple folk, the ordinary voter who is far less sophisticated in these matters than I am… well, they can’t be expected to understand a joke! And therefore I am outraged on their behalf, for I am ever steadfast in my solidarity with the ordinary cretin who can’t be expected to reason things through for himself!’”
You gotta see this. Read the comments too.