Category: Media

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The Televisionization of the Internet

You probably don’t think of our society as Totalitarian. A Totalitarian society is a society that is rule by a pernicious doctrine to which all societal functions must be subordinated to one exclusive purpose.

By golly, we’re free to live as we choose, in our society. Aren’t we?

Suppose I wanted to come up with a new type of communication network that combined the functionality of the telephone, television, and radio, into one powerful medium, with one small proviso. The proviso is this: no commercial use of the medium is allowed. None whatsoever. No advertising, no selling, no profiteering. The system would be created and run by volunteers only.

There’s a lot of technical obstacles, of course. But probably not as many as you think. But there is one overwhelming obstacle: our society is totalitarian and will not stand for a non-commercial communications network.

Think that analysis is a little extreme? No television network will allow Adbusters to run their advertisements criticizing advertisers and the consumerist lifestyle. They won’t accept the money, they won’t run the ads. You can sell gas-guzzling cars, unproven pharmaceutical products, and booze, and even scantily-clad women, but you can’t challenge the fundamental religion of our society: consumerism.

And now the internet. When it started, it was beautiful, free, clean, and amazing. Have you browsed around the net lately? All you see is advertising, on every single damn site. And if you aren’t seeing advertising on the site itself, you are getting whacked via e-mail, or in the browser frames, or with pop-up windows.

You might think it’s merely a case of a lot of internet users deciding to try to make a few bucks. But that’s not all it is. Why on earth should your browser permit a pop-up ad? Why should it enable such a function? Why should it be difficult or impossible to turn off that function? Microsoft and Netscape design the browsers. They have incorporated features into the browser to guarantee that you will be whacked every time you go on the internet.

And Microsoft has designed the operating system to encourage the user to become a passive drooling idiot, gushing over the little animations and sound effects playing on his computer, while relinquishing control over his eyeballs and ears to the corporate politburos of America.

The internet is the largest single source of pollution. It is so bad, that for the first time since I first went “on-line” way back in the early 1990’s, I am seriously considering getting off.

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Woodward the Intern

Bob Woodward– he of “All the President’s Men” fame– used to be a journalist. He’ll probably be honored forever for his celebrated expose– with Carl Bernstein– of the Watergate scandal.

He probably doesn’t know why.

He is now an iconographer of the worst sort. He belongs to the Barbara Walters school of pseudo-journalists who think that it is better to write fawning little laudatory tracts from the inside, than incisive, perceptive, important news from the outside.

Bob Woodward is in. He is invited to join President Bush and Cheney and the whole gang in the White House for an “insider” look at the presidency of George W. That’s like getting an “insider” account of the 9/11 bombings from Osama Bin Laden– if he really even had anything to do with it.*

The Bush administration, which, believe it or not, still has few holdovers from the Nixon era, must love the irony of it all, tee hee. Just imagine– one of the most famous journalists on the planet, known primarily for his role in bringing down the Nixon White House, gives his imprimatur of approval to a president that is as far to the right of Nixon as McGovern was to his left.

If George W. Bush had any real character, of course, he would have invited a reporter with acuity and objectivity, to see that he really is, ahem, doing a good job. Democrats sometimes like to do this, because, after all, they are the party of tolerance and diversity. That’s why Clinton had David Gergen on his staff for a while. That’s why President Bartlett on West Wing brought in Ainsley as Sam Seaborne’s nemesis for a while. (Why is it that you just know that a similar show with a Republican president and republican sensibilities would never bring in a liberal to ensure diversity of opinion? Because they believe they’re always right, that’s why.)

Instead, Bush, having established to his satisfaction that Woodward was politically sympathetic, and eager to please, invited the little toady, a naïve little fawn, an intern, for heaven’s sake, into the oval office for what can only be described as journalistic fellatio. Woodward’s stained dress is his “casual” and coy references to files marked “Top Secret” left within his view, and the flattering portrait of the president and his staff as personable, patriotic, and steely-eyed with determination to do something noble, be it whacking the Iraqi’s or giving billions of dollars in tax rebates to the rich.

I don’t mind Woodward fawning over Bush and writing pornographic iconography (pornography of the political mind). I do mind him continuing to pass himself off as a journalist on CNN and other talk shows, and acting as if he has any kind of objectivity left.

Woodward, take off the dress. It’s time to go home.

* I know some people will think it is pretty strange when I say “if he even had anything to do with it”. I’ll repeat it: if he even had anything to do with it.

If you are at all familiar with Nazi history, you know about the concept of the big lie. The idea is that any idea, no matter how ridiculous, can be sold to the general population as unquestionable truth by simply repeating it over and over again, no matter what anyone says.

That is what has happened with Osama Bin Laden. He is absolutely regarded as the mastermind behind 9/11 even though no proof has ever been adduced to that effect. Without a doubt, he approved of the attack. Without a doubt, he hates the United States. Without a doubt, he supports terrorist activities against Israel and the United States, and Western Civilization altogether.

But that is not proof that he orchestrated or financed or designed the attack on the World Trade Centre, and it bothers me, even if it doesn’t bother anyone else, that he would be hanged on the spot in the U.S. if he was ever found there and no one would mind at all

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School Portrait Pimps

What is going on here?

Your kid has to go to school. It’s required by law. It doesn’t matter whether your kid goes to a private school or public school, he or she is required by law to be there until he or she is 16.

So, while we’ve got your kid, we’re going to take an assembly-line picture and you have to buy it.

You don’t actually have to buy it. I lied. You can choose to be “different’ and disappoint your child and not buy it or you can buy it. If you’re poor, you might not buy it because it is fairly expensive, especially if you take the “package”. If you take a picture with your own camera, it might cost you fifty cents. But the school photographers charge a lot more than that for a basic print. And, of course, they always offer you packages.  You can’t just pick the one you want: you must buy the package that contains the one you want.  They offer you these little wallet-sized photos that your kids can hand out to all their friends and you can mail to your relatives. Buy it. And you can buy the deluxe glamour photo if you want. That’s really expensive.

The portrait pimps operate extremely efficiently. They are not interested in getting a personalized shot of your kid. They don’t want to waste any time at all following your kid around to see what she does, who her friends are, or which piece of playground equipment is her favorite. No, the kids are marched into a room,– assembly line style– and snapped in about 45 seconds. They are snapped in front of a cookie-cutter non-descript amorphous background. The photos are printed for everyone even if you don’t ask to see the larger prints. They are sent home– the teachers have to get the photos to the kids and force them to take them home. You have to see them. Your kids see them. Your kids friends see them. Buy.

I saw a really remarkable set of school photographs once. They were photos I would have liked to have. It was taken at Calvin Memorial Christian School in the early 1960’s. The photos were taken of each student at their desks or in their classrooms at an activity. Then they were all printed on one 5 X 7, in black and white. It was an amazing photo. You were immediately struck by the diversity of poses and expressions. It was filled with character and revelation and colour, even though it was black and white.

You can just imagine what the Portrait Studio Pimps would think of that. Lord almighty! You’d have to go into each classroom with a camera and think about each of 20 or 25 or 30 shots. You’d have to take time to do it right. You have to compose the shot, set the aperture and shutter speed, focus, aim, and shoot.  It must have also taken more time to print. And then, of course, you lose the rubber-stamp enlargements that are so lucrative to sell to the fond parents.

The company that comes in to take and sell the photos does not have any competition. I questioned the idea once when I was a teacher in Chatham I was told that it would be impractical to have numerous companies compete. The school negotiates with and chooses a vendor and they have exclusive access to the students and teachers for that year.

Does it even matter? Are you happy about the fact that your child is photographed in exactly the same style, with the same background, and the same lighting, as 40 million other children in every town, city, and hicksville on the entire continent?

Of course, it does have the unintended bizarre side effect of collectivizing public memory of school children. The image of our children at school is that frozen, bland, colourless portrait photo of an awkward nervous kid sitting in front of a strange cameraman because the teacher told him or her to. It’s almost like a tattoo or a uniform or, yes, a rubber stamp. Approved. Collectivized. A certified consumer.

Why is it impractical? Because the photo studios don’t want to ask parents first if they want to have a picture taken of their children in front of a colourless, characterless backdrop and if they would be willing to pay $50 for a “package” of prints. If they did that, some parents might reasonably say “no”. By forcing all students to have shots taken and then handing out the pictures at school and forcing the children to take them home, you have to believe, you guarantee much higher sales. Of course it’s practical. It just doesn’t guarantee enough profits to the company selling the photos.

Why do schools allow this?  The yearbook.  Yes, they get the standardized cookie-cutter roster shots of every kid in every class for the yearbook.  Indispensable.

I always feel bullied by this system. I don’t like cookie-cutter photos, and I don’t like them being shoved down my throat by people who care as much about your kid as they do about photography– nil. I think the schools should take the upper hand here and start dictating terms. Stop using the cookie-cutter approach. Get out there into the classrooms on the new “annual photography day” and start taking pictures of students doing what they do at school, studying, listening, interacting, being smart-alecks, getting stumped, whatever. Use digital cameras so film cost is not an issue, and students can pick the best shot to use for their “official” school photo.

October 13, 2002

The technical quality of school portraits is not very bad, usually. The faces are well-lit, and a large format camera is usually used, so the pictures are sharp and accurate. For many families in the 1960’s, it might well be the best technical photos they have.

But with the vastly increased popularity of 35mm cameras, however, that little niche is no longer quite so prominent, and I suspect a lot of families no longer bother with the school portraits. They take their own very good pictures.

The newer digital cameras offer excellent picture quality and would allow school photographers to take as many shots as they need to to get a good one. They can load them all onto a computer and then print out exactly as many as parents request, instead trying to shove “packages” down our throats.

 

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Barbie Barbs

“My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be,” Handler wrote in a 1994 autobiography. “Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.”

Ruth Handler, the inventor of the Barbie doll in 1959, quoted in NY Times, Sunday April 28, 2002.

Another example of how “spin” works. You define a nuclear missile as a “peace-keeper”, and a bill that increases pollution as “the Clear Skies Act”. And you define a toy that glorifies unrealistic body shapes and conspicuous consumption as something that is all about giving women “choices”.

The idea of the Barbie Doll was not well-received by Mattel’s male executives, but it became a hit and made a fortune for Mattel, especially once it got the idea of selling outfits and accessories to go with the doll. In other words, it became a training tool for little girls: acquire and acquire and acquire.

How ironic is it that, later in life, after suffering from breast cancer, Handler created a new, more satisfactory prosthetic breast, which she called “Nearly Me” and later sold the company for $1 million.

2013-10: I recently saw a Facebook link to a mother who found a “solution” to the horrible, horrible problem of naked Barbies in the toy box. The “solution” is to paint “bathing suits” on the Barbie dolls. That way Barbie would never be naked.

Of course, Barbie is doll. She is never naked. But you know how little girls are: one minute they forget to put Barbies expensive clothing back on, along with the accessories, and the next they are twerking at the MTV awards.

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JAGged Little Pill

According to the New York Times (March 31, 2002), the television program “JAG” (I’ve never watched it) has become a mouthpiece for the Pentagon, lovingly rendering noble soldiers and officers wisely and bravely enacting foreign policy on behalf of an adoring citizenry.

Star David Elliot says, “we send our scripts to our liaison and they weigh in on it,” he said, referring to Paul Strub, the Pentagon’s liaison with the entertainment industry. Mr. Elliott said the show hesitated to anger its Pentagon contacts, “because they certainly lend a great deal of production value that we couldn’t buy.” That “production value” is government funded military installations and equipment that are used in the series.

“JAG” reflects the pro-military sensibility of Mr. Bellisario, 66, a former staff sergeant in the Marines. He said that he believed military tribunals, not an international court, were the best way to mete out justice to terrorists, and that he wanted to show that such tribunals would not be kangaroo courts.

“I want to show people that the tribunals are not what many people feared they would be, which is that they would be nothing more than a necktie party, that they would have no foundation in law, that this was a way of taking these people and killing them,” Mr. Bellisario said. “I wanted to show that we still have a system of justice.” Personally, though, he said he believed “they should all be taken out and blown up.”

The JAG episode thrills viewers with a tribunal lynching party of a real Qaeda implicated in the WTC bombing. In real life, we haven’t caught a single suspect yet. Not one. Most of them, apparently, escaped into Pakistan where General Musharraf (98% approval rating in the latest “poll”) pretends to be trying to round them up, while testing nuclear missiles to use on India.

At $62 billion, the most expensive fruitless prosecution in history.

But what really concerns me is this. Bush is the Republican President, a member of the party that believes that welfare is a corrosive handout that increases lassitude and dependency, and that the government should stay out of business let the free enterprise system work it’s magic unencumbered.

So why are they subsidizing Hollywood movies and television programs like JAG? It’s a bailout. It’s propaganda. It’s a government handout. It’s created dependencies and laziness and lassitude. Make those entertainment moguls get off their fat butts and build their own sets and special effects! Stop these massive government hand-outs and subsidies immediately, so that the taxpayer’s money can be used for legitimate purposes. Like building more prisons.

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Mel Lastman and the Bikers

Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino nearly had a fit when he heard that Mayor Mel Lastman went down to a local hotel that was hosting a biker’s convention and shook hands with a member of a motorcycle gang.

Didn’t he know, by golly, that these bikers are criminals? What the hell was he doing shaking hands and smiling with a gang of known felons?

My question is, what was Julian Fantino doing sitting on his duff while known criminals were frequenting a Toronto bar? Why didn’t he get into his new police helicopter, race down to the hotel, and arrest them? Quick– before they hurt the mayor!

Possibly because the police didn’t happen to have any evidence that any one of these particular persons shaking the hands of the mayor had actually committed a crime.

In other words, these were merely unsavory characters, with whom respectable men– like Julian Fantino– would never associate.

Fantino knows that some members of biker gangs commit crimes. He also knows very well that some do not, just as we know that not all business executives cheat and lie and then sell off their stocks and retire with millions in ill-gotten gains. But I’ll bet Mayor Lastman doesn’t get any flack for shaking hands with Enron executives.

Mel Lastman should never have apologized. He should have said, look Fantino, if you have evidence that these people committed crimes, go ahead and arrest them. If you don’t, then respect the fact that like any other citizen they are entitled to the assumption of innocence, and to visit our fair city and spend their tourist dollars here like any other tourist.

The image of a supposedly respectable public person shaking hands with a felon, though, calls to mind an image from last year: Margaret Thatcher embracing Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s dictator and torturer-general.

I don’t care if you call it “stereo-typing” or “profiling” or any other euphemism for prejudice. It’s wrong. Fantino is the one who should apologize. His statement is the one that should be garnering loads of disapproval from the so-called liberal media.

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National Hysterical Orgasm

We are safe.

This is probably the least popular opinion I’ve ever posted here but I think the whole continent has gone nuts. And I mean really nuts. This is not just a case of the public or politicians getting a little carried away with paranoia and hysteria. It’s just a matter of idiocy on a grand scale. The world has not changed. We are safe.

What’s really going on? There was a massively successful terrorist attack on New York City. A lot of people were killed and a lot of property was damaged. That, folks, is about all we know so far. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You think I’m nuts? What about the anthrax? What about the new threats? What about Saddam—isn’t he pointing his Scud missiles at us right now?

Everything aside from the initial attack is hype. CNN, which packages news about war, death, and destruction as entertainment, talks about nothing else. The only real news here is that otherwise rational people have completely lost their senses.

How often, for example, do you hear the actual number of dead? 10,000? 8,000? 5,000? It is closer to 4,000. That’s a big number, but it’s not 30,000, which is the number of body bags New York officials initially requested. Who made that judgment? Why hasn’t he been sacked?

It is getting comical. President Bush attends a ballgame in New York and we are given to understand that the holy and sacred Vice-President is being safely stowed away, in a Tupperware container somewhere near Camp David, I presume. It is an “undisclosed” location. Cheney himself probably doesn’t know where it is. Are we supposed to be reassured that the deputy sidekick of the unelected president of the United States is safe? For what? Comic relief? We’re supposed to be relieved that if something happens to George W., Dick Cheney will be in charge???

The anthrax? Do you know how many people have died from anthrax? Four. But we are going to spend about a billion dollars preventing a fifth victim.

What the hell does anyone really know about the anthrax attacks? The government is trying to set the all-time record in dissimulation and disinformation, but the bottom line is that nobody has brought forward even the slightest evidence that the anthrax letters came from anyone other than your usual all-American crackpot. I’m not saying that it’s not possible that some Islamic fundamentalist is behind it. I don’t think it’s likely, myself, but, unlike our noble leaders, I’m willing to admit that I don’t know. Until the FBI has some kind of proof, it is not only stupid but actually irresponsible to go around pointing the finger at anyone.

Every year, tens of thousands of people die at work and on the highway. But what is everyone terrified of now? Anthrax. Nobody is organizing massive numbers of safe-driving clinics, but everyone’s putting on rubber gloves when they handle the mail! How many people get injured or killed in hunting accidents, or accidents involving all-terrain vehicles, or fires, or incorrectly prescribed medicines? Way, way more than will be killed by terrorists in the foreseeable future.

According to the United Nations, 11 million children die every year of preventable causes. [NY Times, March 14, 2002] Nobody, yet, has sounded the alarm.

An actress– whom I never heard of– stated that she no longer opened her mail because of the anthrax scare. Aside from the absurdity of Osama Bin Laden targeting some second-rate unknown Hollywood actress, instead of, for example, Fort Benning, you have to realize that she didn’t say that her mail wasn’t being opened. In other words, good heavens, I’ll have my secretary risk her life instead…

President Bush and other officials have publicly linked the anthrax letters to Osama Bin Laden, while admitting there is no proof. This has the effect of focusing American anger even more intensely on a subject who seems more credibly linked to other terrorist acts. You get a muddying of emotions and intellect here. You get arguments in favor of harsh action against Afghanistan linked to vague feelings of hysteria towards the anthrax threat.

And what on earth is going on in Afghanistan? I thought there was a plan? The trouble is that most of the terrorists who crashed the planes into the World Trade Centre come from Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. According to Seymour Hersh and others, the Saudi Royal Family has been less than cooperative.

What’s really going on here? Not much, since the attack itself. But there are a lot of people with a lot of reasons why they want this “crisis” to be hyped as much as possible. From the cop putting in over-time guarding buildings that are absurdly unlikely to be targets of anyone, to the generals and the military suppliers who have enormous profits and power at stake.

I just watched a press conference in Washington at which the Mayor and various cronies discussed their response to the possibility of anthrax contamination at the local postal sorting stations. They are modeling their presentation on Giuliani’s highly regarded press conferences in New York. The people behind the mayor all look so very self-important and responsible. They’d like us to believe they are our noble leaders and fully in charge and competent. I’m starting to think there’s a bit of a contest here to get on TV and get your five minutes of fame and maybe get more funding and more staff for your department.

CNN, at this very moment, is using talcum powder to demonstrate that anthrax spores can leak through an envelope. Highly scientific. You go, oh my god, the powder is getting out! It’s everywhere! Run, run for your lives!

In London, Ontario, officials are searching the bags of three-year-olds attending the Children’s Museum. I’m sorry—with all due respect, I think these officials are idiots. Do they imagine Osama Bin Laden sitting in his cave in the mountains of Afghanistan and wondering if the suicide bomber he sent to the Children’s Museum in London, Ontario made it through yet?

In Peterborough, Ontario, an idiot school board cancelled a class trip to Holland to take part in a United Nations Conference.

Why? Because of the terrorism! What terrorism? What terrorism!? Are you mad! It’s everywhere. Planes are falling out of the sky! Bombs exploding everywhere! Anthrax in all the postal outlets…..

No. It’s hysteria, plain and simple, and God keep us out of the hands of hysterics. When a group of parents– with better sense than most–decided to send their children to the conference anyway (with proper chaperones and liability insurance) the school board, in a snit, decided to punish them by ordering teachers to give these students zeros for all assignments and tests missed.  How dare you make us look hysterical and paranoid?!

Well, you could argue that it’s simply good and wise to have more security than we used to have. The problem is that if you convince everyone to get hysterical, they lose all sense of reasonableness and proportion. Thousands of people die every year in this country, of disease, accident, neglect, and murder. We have accrued a widely shared body of wisdom about the relative immediacy and causes of these deaths. In a few short weeks, we have thrown all this common sense out the window. We go home and watch the cheesy and disreputable CNN and come to the conclusion that Osama Bin Laden is after us.

Now CNN is bringing on a professional “headhunter” to tell us which vocations are most at risk from terrorist attack.

I am getting roundly sick of idiot conservatives who see this whole crisis as an excuse to get rid of civil liberties and engorge the defense department with new high-tech toys. And I’m really getting fed up with conservatives who regard anyone who disagrees with their own personal views on how the war against Bin Laden should be run as patsies. “Oh, so you want to do nothing!” I don’t know of any liberal who wants to do nothing, but if you don’t go along with the current incoherent policies, conservatives can’t stand the thought that something not involving big explosions and blood-letting should even be considered.

The festering sore of the administration’s current policies is Saudi Arabia. It is becoming increasingly obvious to some that the Saudi’s may not only have provided 15 of the 19 hijackers, but they may actually have been paying off Osama Bin Laden for years.

Look, it’s not that complicated. Osama Bin Laden’s terrorists are not standing outside in Afghanistan waiting for American bombs to fall on them. Most of them are probably not even in Afghanistan. So you have the U.S. bombing one of the poorest and most unfortunate nations on earth. And you have the U.S. snuggling up to authoritarian leaders in Syria, Jordan, Iran, and Pakistan, all of whom faced potential insurgencies in their own nations.

Real police work…. How come the FBI can’t trace those letters? When they talk about funding needs for the agency, the bravado about how new, expensive technologies will enable them to magically apprehend criminals before they even commit a crime is invigorating. The reality, obviously, is more like Inspector Clouseau.

Some people have questioned the idea of bombing a country that is already in a state of near-collapse. Some conservatives have angrily retorted, basically, “how dare you?” Regardless of the strategic value of the bombing runs, and regardless of the fact that we are probably created an entire new generation of suicide-bombers among those very angry victims, you can’t ignore the fact that we have an immense military-industrial complex in the U.S. that is absolutely in lust with power and money. There hasn’t been a good war in a decade, while the military has been stockpiling weapons and delivery systems with unbridled but frustrated passion. This opportunity, for them, is a godsend, and I would wager that the desire of the military to use up as many bombs as possible and make frantic pitches for new weapons systems and more money, is without restraint.

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Pabulaolum

Have you seen those new AOL ads, the ones about “Chelsea Buns”? This smug but concerned-looking mother talks about how her daughter was looking for a recipe for “Chelsea Buns” when, it is implied, she accidentally hit a porn site. The mom goes, thank god for AOL! She mentions that she also has a son who is deeply into… “X-Men”.

AOL controls your access to the internet. AOL decides which sites are safe for you to see and which ones are not. To add insult to injury, AOL won’t tell you what it’s criteria is, because it believes that it’s criteria is a trade secret. Like the recipe for Captain Crunch, or Barbie’s measurements.

Sometimes an ad tells you a lot more than it thinks it does. And what this ad tells you is that AOL is really not an online information service at all. It is a television network. Television is about corporate control over what you think and do. Entertainment is merely a vehicle for merchandising. The viewer is a passive recipient of logos, celebrity endorsements, lifestyle ads. Yes, even if you are stupid, you can have a fulfilling life if you have a credit card.

And I’ll bet this woman, so concerned about “Chelsea Buns” lets her kids watch gazillions of ads, three hours of television a day, without the slightest concern. Well, for heaven’s sake, her son is fan of the “X-men”. Violence and mayhem are okay. Sex is not.

These ads practically shout, “I want to be told what to think! I want my information to be controlled and doled out like Pabulum by giant soul-less corporations! Please—it hurts to be free!”

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Conrad Black

So it’s now Lord Black.

I personally find it completely offensive that there still exists, within the British Empire, an institution whose very foundation rests upon assumptions about class and lineage that should be utterly repellent to any democrat. The House of Lords is a bastion of exclusive White Rich Male Privilege (no matter how many token women and blacks are added) and British Upper Class Twittledom. And now, Mr. Twittledom himself, Conrad Black, who started a newspaper (and did a good job of it) just so he could show bad pictures of Jean Chretien and declare the Alliance winners before the election was held, is a Brit and a Lord and gets to wear hysterically funny costumes that remind me of the arch stereo-type of British Lords as, well, er, gay. Shall we say, fops. Precious. Delicate and righteous.

It’s Barbara Amiel who really annoys me, though. She once wrote an interesting article on Leonard Cohen, and I believe admitted that she agreed to strip for him in exchange for the interview. Correct me if my memory fails me, Barbara. She also wrote an article for Chatelaine once– my memory is clearer about this– in which she provided a vigorous defense of the art of gold-digging, which is, of course, the art of offering sex in exchange for position, power, and vast amounts of capital. Other than the prostitution angle, I suppose, not much to quibble with there, but it should suggest to us that perhaps Lord Black wasn’t himself so passionate about the cause of privilege as his wife, who now gets to be known as Lady Golddigger. Perhaps Mr. Cohen, recently descended from Mount Baldy (I kid you not) would consent to strip for the aristocracy.

The only thing that disturbs me is that she was a fan of Leonard Cohen. She should have been a fan of Frank Sinatra instead. Maybe she was. That would have been perfect. Frank was exactly the type of man who could see the value in an expensive Lordship. Perhaps she admired both. That’s possible nowadays. There was a time when any person acquainted with the work of Leonard Cohen could be counted on to be a dissident in some way, and remarkable for independence of thought, and, perhaps, a passionate spirit. Nowadays, it is obligatory to honor Mr. Cohen, which is precisely what is beginning to make Mr. Cohen boring. I say it makes Mr. Cohen boring not because his earlier work has become boring, but because Mr. Cohen has begun to believe in it himself.

Which leads me to the question of how one becomes a Lord. Well, it’s quite simple, really. If you have any doubts about my insinuations above just ask yourself a really easy question: is there any way that you or anyone you know could become a Lord? Yes, there is, of course. You simply have to have enough money.

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CTV Mutilates Another Film

For about 5,000 little reasons, I have always disliked CTV. It has always seemed to me to be the most “American” of the big three Canadian Networks, and the most commercial. By “American” I mean that it seems populated by editors and programmers who never forget for even one second that the bottom line is profitability.

Even the investigative journalism on CTV smacks of ABC’s “20/20”, one of the worst journalistic television programs in existence. What’s it called? W5? Sensationalistic and specious.

The CBC, of course, is a prize. Non-commercial radio and semi-non-commercial television. The truth is, in the last few years, CBC television is starting to show too many commercials. But it is still the last hope in Canada for television that is not controlled by corporations and the imperatives of advertising.

Tonight I watched a movie called “Something About Mary” on CTV. “Something About Mary” is a vulgar but sometimes hysterically funny movie about a guy who decides to look up the girl of his dreams 12 years after an incredibly disastrous first and only date with her.

I’ve seen the movie before. It’s not really very good, but a couple of scenes are actually pretty funny and sometimes I just want to veg out and go along for the ride.

There was no ride. First of all, there were more commercial interruptions than scenes in the movie, and the commercials went on and on and on. I guess I’m not as used to them as I used to be– we do a lot of video in this house– but it is also a fact that tv networks, desperate for new revenue as the internet begins to suck away their advertising dollars, are showing more commercials than ever before.

Did you know that “The Dick Van Dyke Show” presented 28 minutes of actual program for the half-hour slot. Two minutes of advertising! Today, your so-called 1/2 hour comedy presents about 22 minutes, if you’re lucky.

Anyway, we have seen “Something About Mary” and were familiar enough with it to notice that, in addition to interrupting the movie about every six minutes to show another batch of ads, CTV had edited or removed scenes and language that, one supposes, it deemed to be offensive to viewers.

And it went one amazing step further. The one scene that “saved” the movie from mediocrity in my view was the ending, where the entire cast exuberantly sings “Build Me Up Buttercup”. All right– it’s kind of hokey, but it’s a pleasant, good-natured hokey and keeps the film in perspective: it’s just fun.

I guess the CTV thought this sort of fun was dangerous or unprofitable– it was deleted. The film ended on CTV with Stiller kissing Diaz in their final embrace, after she turns down the hunky football quarterback. Then– the credits roll.

The obvious reason was so CTV could squeeze in some more commercials. The judgment of where the cuts should occur was obviously left up to a stock boy or janitor.

The decision to cut a portion of the film out is so unspeakably barbaric, stupid, and offensive, that I am almost speechless.