Monday, October 4, 2010

Shame: Globe fires Rick Salutin...Dobbin starts letter protest

By Charlie Smith, from straight.com, September 29, 2010

Vancouver writer and activist Murray Dobbin has started a letter-writing campaign to protest the Globe and Mail’s firing of weekly left-wing columnist Rick Salutin.
“I don’t need to tell you how few progressive voices there are in the mainstream media whether it’s TV, radio or newspapers,” Dobbin wrote in a message being distributed by e-mail. “Someone from outside the country observing the media would assume that this is a reactionary country with virtually no progressive tradition.”
Dobbin stated that Salutin told him he was given no reason for his dismissal. Salutin had written a column for the paper since 1991. “If we don’t respond it will be implicit support for the decision—the ideological gate-keepers at the Globe will gloat and claim no one cared anyway,” Dobbin added. “We do care. Rick upheld the best of what Canada has been and can be again.”
Dobbin urged regular readers of Salutin’s column to write to Globe and Mail editor-in-chief John Stackhouse, executive editor Neil Campbell, and national editor Sinclair Stewart: “just say in your own words what you think of the continuing efforts to diminish Canada—in terms of the role of government, our role in the world and the democratic debate which depends on a diversity of views.”
New colour on every page is no substitute for Rick Salutin's long-standing, cutting edge thinking and writing that has appeared in the Globe and Mail since 1991. Over those years, he has constantly contibuted new perspectives on stories worn thin by a media mind-set that can only be described increasingly as "corporatist."
Heather Mallick also used to appear on the pages of the Globe and Mail, now, however she has returned to The Star, and all her former readers welcome her return.
There are, it is too true, far too few left thinkers and writers in Canada, and while I do not hold out any hope that Salutin will be returned to his space in the "new globe," it is also true that both he and his readers deserve a far better explanation than "he does not fit with our new design."
This piece also urges any readers who might pass this way to write to the Globe and Mail and protest the firing of Rick Salutin, in the strongest terms, and perhaps that generates into a few cancelled subscriptions.
Salutin deserves nothing less from his many readers.

Anger OUT; Repression IN!... rubbish!

Truth sacrificed for corporate image protection.
While listening to Reliable Sources on CNN on Sunday morning, I heard the media writer for the Washington Post, while commenting on the over-the-top tirade of Rick Sanchez about Jews owning the media in response to John Stewart's mocking of him on The Daily Show, say, "It has become a standard of U.S. corporations that when an employee criticises their employer, the employee is automatically fired."
Since this statement is unlikely to withstand factual disagreement, we can only assume that a perfect persona for a corporation is more important than the perhaps decade long contribution of an employee who goes into a rant.
How tragic!
Only a couple of weeks ago I listened as an angry woman, in her mid-forties, narrated a story about her disgust with a transportation facility she used daily to and from work. A planned interruption in their schedule had not been communicated adequately, causing unnecessary complications for all passengers, on that particular day. Nevertheless, her husband had "calmed her down" so that she did not write a letter of censure in a heated state. And then she added, "I've never heard of someone achieving justice from an angry letter."
To which I replied, "Sometimes it is not the justice that matters, in terms of a change in policy or practice; sometimes getting the stuff off our chest is more important than any justice that a large corporation might bring about."
What have we done to real feelings, including those that corporations and politicians and bureaucracts find so objectionable, like anger, and frustration and honesty, even when such expressions cause us discomfort.
Have we reduced real feelings to the tabloids and the Mel Gibson's and the off-beat comics like John Stewart. Have we so sanitized our society that no one dares to tell the truth, with the accompanying feelings in a public venus anymore because someone might actually be taking a picture of the rant and uploading it on u-tube?
Have we grown so anemic and predictable and so moderate and so temperate and so politically correct that our society no longer permits individuals to be fully human any longer?
No wonder our cancer and cardiac wards are full to overflowing, and our pharmaceutical industry needs tractor-trailer trucks to cart their profits to their international banks.

Lip-service, a Canadian monograph?

With the floated suggestion that Quebec hold a referendum every fifteen years, by Michel Fortier, the matter of Quebec separation from the rest of Canada is once again on the front burner of our national conversation.
One can only assume that one of the motives of such an idea would be to remove some of the distraction from other issues betwen referenda.
A fairly laudable motive. However...
Think of any relationship between so-called partners, in a law firm, in a corporate board room, in a university governing council, in a hospital board room..or even in a marriage where daily events tend to become magnified for sometimes exhaustive reflection...and ask a simple question: how long would the participants in any of those discussions continue to offer their best counsel, knowing that a senior "member of the firm" is actively contemplating, and even campaigning for the dissolution of the group. To be sure, there are terms of appointment for board members, so there is a constant rotation of members built into the bylaws; however, the question of the survival of the "entity" as originally established is not the background music for all of the discussions of all of the issues before the group. That is not a healthy backdrop.
This is the longest running divorce-non-divorce in history, although it might take a decade or even a century to prove or disprove that contention.
As a Canadian who fully values the unique character and contribution of Quebec to the national character and destiny, I am more than a little troubled by the continuing determination of some Quebecers to seek what they would clearly term "self-determination." It is as if continuing to be a fully participating province in a very loose confederation (sometimes so loose as to be threatening to fly apart from the centrifuge) is never going to be enough and then holding the rest of the country hostage to the threat of leaving.
A local political candidate came calling a few days ago, and when asked what he would like to accomplish, if elected, responded, "Well this city pays lipservice to the word "sustainability" and I would like to put some meat on those bones to make that word mean something." Fair enough.
But as in the case of the local political aspirant, "lip service" is one thing that is a constant in Canadian politics.
We pay lip service to being a welcoming nation for new immigrants, without actually taking seriously our commitment to integrate those newcomers into the fabric of the culture. We prefer "a mosaic" in which they live their separate lives without interferring with the rest of us.
We pay lip service to caring for those in need, like those recently cut loose by the corporate executives, with impunity, for no other reason than there is no protection for workers, unions and worker associations and co-operatives having become unfashionable.
We pay lip service to being a large community of communities, and love to fly the flag on our backpacks when travelling because we want the world to know we are not Americans. But really, does that mean we are a fully functioning, self-respecting, adult member of the community of nations? Sometimes...
We pay lip service to being a unique country with two founding races, languages and cultures that live in harmony, when we know that the reality of that "tension" is never far from opening into a festering and draining open "sore." And yet we still do not know how, or do not have the political will, to cauterize the openness.
If this were a matter of personal health, we would be attending to the issue before it creates a more difficult tension, perhaps even a trauma...in health terms like a cancer or a heart attack. We would be doing more than sitting around tables in both political meetings, and local bars and pubs, discussing what Quebec might do next. When 50,000 people cram into the square in Quebec city, for example, seeking a new arena and a national hockey league team, can that be seen as anything less than another political action demanding attention by our federal and provincial governments?
In no other province could we get 50,000 to march about anything with the same intensity, let alone a national hockey team, and certainly not something "to be wished for" rather than something "to be objected to."
To continue to pay lipservice to a country's national symbols, to an authentic national pride in those symbols, and to continue to watch as hundreds die wearing her uniform in a far-off foreign landscape that has consumed all others who tried to subdue her, while at the same time knowing that every step we take together, or attempting to take together, is counter-punched by a loud, thoughtful and yet petulant province....makes us all very tired.
It also makes us all wonder about the energy we, and our kids and grandkids may have to continue to expend on behalf of those who really do not want to be part of the country.
Placating Quebec, in order to mollify her intentions to leave is unacceptable, and will not work. That is patronizing.
Ignoring Quebec, in order not to magnify her differences and her separation intentions, is only burying the issue until it resurfaces, as it most definitely will.
Taking the "middle road" by permitting her sovereignist members of the "Bloc" to sit in the House of Commons while all the time seeking to dismember the country is both laudable and laughable at the same time.
And perhaps living between laudable and laughable is where most of us live. At least in Canada. At least in this manner we will never lose sight of our imperfections, our vulnerabilities and our dark side. And we certainly know that the threat of leaving could be spawned, in other parts of the country, by the continuing forebearance we show to Quebec. So, an outsider would be promtped to ask,"How serious are Candians really about the stability and sustainability and cohesion of their country?"

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Debunking Lies our Aunts Told Us

It's time to debunk some of the lies "our aunts told us" as our way of claiming a firmer grasp on reality.
One of those lies was that when we went off to graduate school,  we were engaging in "all this foolishness" and we needed to stop.
Another of those lies was that no one had given us permission to provide the supervising doctor with all those prescription bottles when he was attempting to find out why they were hospitalized.
Another of those lies was that "their" parents had never had an argument, simply because there was no known evidence of such an event every having taken place.
Another of those lies was that it was time to talk about something important like "painting the living room," after several pages in a personal letter that detailed the living conditions in my father's family home, as he and his siblings were growing up.
Another of those lies, seeming to be quite innocuous, and coming from a variety of sources especially those linked to the community college system is that "administration involves only sitting in an office and counting up the numbers and paying the accounts and staying away from all things complex and about other human beings."
This last one is so dangerous that it merits some comment: It is dangerous because it misleads anyone who takes an office administration program thinking such thoughts. It is completely reductionistic, as is so much of contemporary coping with the complex realities of both training and also actual living.
It also just might be possible to think such thoughts and pass through such an office admin. program without substantially challenging such a misconception and thereby inflict such insufferable arrogance, intolerance and refusal to communicate about all of the necessary details that humans need to know, even if such graduates do not believe those needs are legitimate.
Another lie our aunts told us is that, when we actually opened up with our vulnerability, that we mighthold things inside for too long, and then burst out with an explosion of anger, frustration and emotion...."that there are pills for that!"
Does that mean that those same aunts who uttered such crap should also have found a pill for their own behaviour when they yanked phones off the wall, in anger and in frustration, while operating in a professional (at least so it claimed) workplace?
Does that mean that those same aunts who uttered such crap should and could have found a pill for their co-dependence with their superiors who, likwise lost their temper, and ranted and raved at employees for decades, and those pills that they could and should have found would relieve the aunts of their tolerance and complicity and co-depdence with those unprofessional superiors?
Another of the lies our aunts told us is that all men are evil, and worthy of contempt, simply because they are men, notwithstanding that the sources of such a lie were spinsters, or wannabe spinsters, or those who became spinsters after a tragic marriage. Again, the statement is self-explanatory, and needs no editorial comment.
I am confident we all have lies our aunts told us...that we would like to write letters to defy....and let's hope each of us seeks and finds the opportunity to do just that.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

David Lloyd Johnston, 28th Governor General of Canada

Had the opportunity to watch the installation of the new GG, yesterday. David Lloyd Johnston, father of five daughters, husband to another "doctorate" wife Sharon, former Dean of Law at University of Western Ontario, former Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill, former President of University of Waterloo and also as an added footnote, fomer captain of the Harvard University hockey team, and son of a hardware store owner in Sudbury.
What an impressive CV, almost as if, as a male, he had to demonstrate that he was at least twice as qualified as his two predecessors, both charismatic, articulate, elegant and acomplished women of Chinese and Haitian ethnicity respectively. Almost as if an "old white male" no longer qualifies for anything, except perhaps a cermonial and inspirational role in Canadian life.
Well, wait! Not so fast! This is a government and a Prime Minister that are both headstrong, bullying of parliament and the Canadian people, appropriating a presidential kind of mandate (something they clearly do not have), and certainly likely to post another (or even more than one) threat to the Canadian constitutional government tradition. And only the kind of timbre, intellect, background, and savvy possessed in spades by David Johnston, or his equal, can be expected to counter such tendencies by either or both Parliament and the Prime Minister.
Support for families and children, support and leadership for learning and innovation, and support for the ideal of public service are Johnston's three pillars of his new term. Nothing shabby there, nor unworthy of a man who breaks with tradition in the most compelling and thoughtful ways: laying 26 roses each presented to him and his spouse upon entry into the Hall of Honors on the tomb of the unknown soldier, and hosting at least five grandchildren in the landau on the way back to Rideau Hall. And then there were the musical presentations in the Senate, as part of the ceremony itself, by a blind Newfoundland "old white guy" whose music, "Ties that Bind" evoked visions of listening to the locals in the bars in St. John's and two young chinese brothers, 13 and 15 respectively on violin and cello, playing their hearts out in another rousing, inspiring and atypical touch for this government, along with choirs of young girls from Christ Church and a second choir of "kids" on his way into the Senate...and the "Creator:Spirit" opening of the prayer of invocation by retired Archbishop of Toronto, Terence Finlay, closing with a familiar Christian "May the Lord Bless you and Keep you, May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you...etc. after evoking courage and strength for the new man in his new post...all of these somewhat "on the edge" for such ceremonies in contemporary, politically correct atmosphere, without offending any...and then there was the Shawn Atleo native prayer and the gift of the drum used while chanting the prayer, as a symbol of both the friendship and support from First Nations peoples for the new GG.
And when Tony Clement failed to actually read the inscription on the Great Seal of Canada as was his only scripted contribution to the swearing in ceremony, it was the Aide-de Camp who suggested that the new GG himself read it to himself....in what was otherwise a cermony without glitch..
And then, there was the unscripted, lengthy and effusive hymn to Johnston by one of his predecessors, Adrienne Clarkson, with Peter Mansbridge as part of CBC's coverage, followed by a kind of civics lesson on how Clarkson had wondered to herself, how her predecessors would handle various situations, drawing from their names inscribed on the wall of the GG's private office. She was given an open-ended opportunity by Mansbridge, took it and ran with it as only someone as articulate, and precise and dedicated to the depth and breadth of both the country and the office could do. And that piece of videotape will be replayed for decades, if not centuries, for civic students, law students and history students at all levels of their learning curve.
We can all breathe a little easier now that Johnston has assumed his duties, and a little less worried about such idiocy as John Baird and his utterings about subverting the will of both Parliament and the Canadian people by going over the heads of both, a la Ronald Reagan while president of the U.S. Why doesn't Baird go back to school and learn some of the differences between how things work north of the 49th as they do south of that line? With this new teacher, he may already have a seminar booked, by the GG, without his knowledge.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Emasculated Men...will they (we) seek self-help?

By Robert Cribb, Toronto Star, October 1, 2010
As a gender, the modern man has been socialized into bumbling submission.

Doting, indecisive and generally wimpy, too many of us have lost the ancient protocols of manhood.
Consider the basic proposition posed by Toronto writer Elliott Katz in his self-help guide for the whipped male called Being the Strong Man A Woman Wants: Our fathers, bewildered by the feminist revolution, have failed to hand down the kind of testosterone-laced wisdom that defined our gender throughout history.
That breaking of the chain has blurred the male social code beyond recognition.
What remains is a kind of wishy-washy modern malehood that has left men puzzled and women frustrated, says Katz.
“We mean well. But boys have grown up without strong role models. We think we’re being nice. But we’re shirking our responsibility.”
I applaud Elliott Katz for writing a self-help guide for men. It may actually reach some men, whose female partners purchase a copy for under the Christmas tree. Self-help and men do not usually go together in the same sentence, unless it is to ridicule their women friends and partners rush to that aisle in the book stores.
This theme of emasculated men is one this scribe has been writing about for the past decade plus. I first noticed the utter capitulation by the male leaders to the female clergy in both the Anglican and Episcopal churches in Canada and the U.S. And their fear of being dubbed "sexist" for disagreeing with their female colleagues was even more appalling.
Feminism as a political, social, cultural and religious movement may have had some benefits. However, I personally know women whose training for the practice of active ministry can be linked directly to their need and demand for a bully pulpit, which the church afforded both them and their feminism, upon graduation, as a sign that the church was keeping up with the mood and spirit of the times. Contemporary, timely and current and relevant are all words used to describe the move of the church to welcome female clergy ( a good move in itself).
Nevertheless, it is the hierarchy of the Anglican/Episcopal churches who first provided the canary in the coal mine, in my experience, that there was no oxygen and no spine left in the male gender. These formerly robust and vital and vibrant leaders grew pale and weak and obsequious in the face of the angry woman archetype that so characterized the feminist movement.
And these men were not stupid, uneducated, nor without a thick file of valuable experience. They could and should have been able to provide ballast and counter-influence to the vicious feminism that was raging around them.
When I actually confronted a bishop about a female priest, in 1995, who had demonstrated utter contempt for the male gender, other male clergy and male members of the congregations with the question: "What would you say to the notion that this women hates men?"
His reply: "I have never seen that from her." (And the subject was dropped from the conversation.)
Of course, he had never seen that from her; she was far too circumspect to disclose such venom to her boss.And in the process of vilifying men, she also made some women so dependent on her that they became her clones, surrogates and cloying adherents to her marvellous ministry! (Italics for irony!)
No it is now long past time for men to start to speak to one another about how we have been negligent in our homes, to our spouses, and to our children of both genders. To our daughters, we have neglected to bring our "A" game to the discussions with their mothers. In our negligent attempt to "please" in what we actually believed was the "right" approach to marriage, (based on our fathers' modelling) we sold ourselves, our hopes and our dreams out to the insecurities of our female partners. And our daughters did not benefit from our complicity in our own emasculation.
Such emasculation did not, obviously, provide effective and challenging role models for our sons, either.
And for at least two or three generations now, men in North America have been wandering around in the wilderness of our own fog about how to relate to each other, how to relate to our female partners, and to our children and grandchildren.
I was once told by a anglican female priest (not the one above), "You are far too intense for me!"
To which I responded, without missing a breath, "And I am also too bald; deal with it!"
I make no apologies then or now, some two decades later for such a rebuttal.

"Terminated for redundancy"...at the whim of corporate greed

Ever since Arthur Andersen was deployed by corporates to eliminate jobs by the thousands, there has developed a kind of immunity for corporate executives to trash workers who have worked diligently and honourably and conscientiously without the protection of their unions (because none were permitted) and without the protection of their federal and provincial governments because they were too frightened of the lobby created by those corporate executives.
An American corporate consultant, in the early part of the first decade of this century once informed me: "People are nothing more or less than another commodity like iron or steel in the production process or in the service-generating process...all in the name of corporate profits and greed."
When Mike Harris cut the funding for Wheel-Trans, that part of the TTC in Toronto needed by the physically and emotionally challenged to get to work and to school, in his trash-and-burn government, we have all known that the American "culture" of commodifying people, as my consultant said, has come to Canada to take up permanent residence, at the peril of all Canadian workers.
When that notice, "position terminated because of redundancy" is first opened by any worker, but especially by those who have made sacrifices and made adjustments to go beyond the minimum level of performance, and have even provided leadership and vision where there was neither, (only to offend their weak, sniveling  mindless and spiritless superiors) it is as if the former KGB have invaded the home of that worker, for no legitimate reason, and have carted that worker off to the gulag, for what? For being too committed and too enthusiastic and too threatening to the mediocrity that existed for far too long in the organization.
We need a new union of workers who have had the indignity to receive and to open such a notice of termination to march through the streets of our towns and cities and demand from their governments new laws against the rape of the worker, not the sexual rape, but the rape of the worker's dignity, and the rape of the worker's honour and the rape of the worker's value, with impunity.
And let's not be seduced by the big houses and the BMW's and the fat bank accounts of the corporate executive class who have squeezed every last "redundant" worker out of his/her position without so much as a "thank you" for your service.
Workers who have provided ideas, and know-how, and communication between and among co-workers whose workplace had little if any of these necessary ingredients, and have in the process naively engendered the revenge and contempt of their very insecure "superiors" whose shoddy work habits and shoddy attitudes and deflated expectations and whose virtually total compliance with the kind of administration that regards workers as exclusively a "cost" and not a "benefit" to the business, in a posture that can only be described as a "sell-out" of those very workers who have made the organization more profitable and more humane and more imaginative and more sensitive than it ever would have been under the "greedy" grasp of the corporate execs...these are the most likely recipients of those "termination for redundancy" notices.
And when the greedy, grasping, selfish and unchallenged hands of those executives have stripped all of the humanity from their organizations, and left virtually only those workers who offer complete and utter compliance, in the face of the fear of their own receipt of such a notice, then what will be left of our organizations?
They will have become nothing more than the signatures of the ego's and the selfish greed of their managers and when those managers attempt to deceive themselves, their clients and their workers that the organizations put the needs of those clients and workers first, we will all know that such a charade is a lie and that such a charade is nothing more than a gallopping gulping machine to which those corporate executives and their compliant workers have become slaves.
And then we will all face the spectre of a health care budget that cannot cope with the ravages of such an approach to humanity, and the law enforcement system cannot cope with the marches in the streets because those necessary (but costly and therefore evil) workers will lose their meagre benefits, and only the rich will be able to afford what has come to be considered a right to excellent health care.
The signs are everywhere in front of our eyes. Greed is NOT GOOD! And while money may never sleep, it is also possible that money and the greed for it will hopefully consume those executives and professionals whose utter depravity and contemptuous insecurity drove them and the rest of us off the cliff and into the canyon in a crash that would make the 2008 bubble-burst look like a picnic.
We are being led by people who consider their social responsibilities as nothing more than tokenism and another marketing opportunity. We are watching the triumph, not merely of the will, as was the case in Hitler's Germany, but the short-term triumph of greed, at the expense of human beings and their families and their dignity and their honour and their self-respect. And while those rich and vaccuuous executives fill their illegal Swiss Bank Accounts with their ill-begotten wealth, we will all pay the price for their insatiable appetite for more money...and such an approach is not restricted merely to the corporates that make cars or sell insurance. It is, like an unstoppable virus, tearing apart our service sector as well.
And it will take more than a vote of workers to bring in the Service Employees International union to bring the ship back on course and upright in the face of this tornado that is sweeping across the North American continent.