Archive for August 2010

Why the Rob Ford lead isn’t suprising after all

August 25, 2010 Politics 4 comments

Rob Ford (Not) for Mayor

In case you have been living under a rock, Toronto is in the middle of a municipal election. Currently Councillor Rob Ford is leading the polls (as he has been for most of the race). It seems every week new allegations surface in order to try and knock him down a few knotches.

In a nutshell, here’s just a sampling of the criticism about Ford:

And he’s still in the lead.

A year ago, I would have wagered that George Smitherman or John Tory (if he had run) would be leading — that this race would have been there’s to lose. Instead, Tory’s still on the radio and Smitherman is a distant second.

People are shocked about this. The Globe’s Christie Blatchford had the city all in a tizzy on Saturday when she wrote a column saying that Rob Ford isn’t all that bad after all. She said in her column that just admitting that fact will cause people’s “heads to explode.”

And they did.

My Twitter feed lit up with people outraged and their heads exploding online in a series of tweets (some expletive-filled). But here’s the rub (as much as it pains me to say it out loud), it’s really not a shock that Ford is leading.

Before your head explodes, here’s why: Ford is a mayor from the boroughs. So while the downtown citizens express outrage about his lead, he’s getting the votes from all those in the boroughs who have been forgotten about (or felt forgotten about) for the last six years under David Miller.

Smitherman is not leading because he’s a downtown man, that’s it. Ford is the guy for those who feel they don’t have a voice anymore.

Can Ford be beat? Perhaps, if enough downtown residents come out and vote Oct. 25. But I wouldn’t be too surprised if he wins.

(Photo courtesy of denmar on Flickr. See more of his photos in his photostream.)

Executive producer of Lost emails me!

August 19, 2010 Personal No comments

A few things you should know about me to understand why I think this is cool:

  • I like Lost (OK, I really like Lost)
  • I was so much of a Lost geek, I listened to the podcast with executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (I submitted questions all the freaking time to it, in the hopes they would one day read mine. They never did).
  • I paid movie theatre prices to watch the two of them have a discussion with The New York Times days before the finale.
  • I refer to the two of them as Darlton and, in conversation, will mention something one of them has said as if I knew them personally (e.g.: “Well Damon disputed that!”) and follow them both on Twitter (I actually saw Inception as fast as I did because Lindelof kept tweeting spoilers and I had to stop following him and didn’t want to forget to start following him again).

So the week started like any other. Knowing that the copy of Entertainment Weekly that came in the mail last week featured an interview with the two of them (as well as loads of information on the contents of the Season 6 and Complete Series DVD sets), I saved it until Friday night and enjoyed it slowly. Taking my time to read and devour every word know this will likely be the last time I read anything from the two of these guys on Lost. Ever.

Flash forward (get it?) to Monday night, there I am at work, my Twitter stream popping up in the background, when I saw this series of tweets from Cuse asking for followers of his to submit questions to television writers for an Emmy panel he’s moderating in a few weeks.

I looked at the list of writers and was torn. I liked Glee, but is there anything I could ask Ryan Murphy that hasn’t already been asked? I needed something original, but something that meant something. I tried to draw on my film theory education as I looked once again at the list of writers Cuse would be talking to. There had to be something there that would tip me off …

And then it came to me. I directed my question to the writers of The Good Wife (a great show and the breakout drama from last fall):

Too many times it’s said that women don’t watch serial TV shows or go to movies that feature strong female characters in the lead role. The Good Wife, obviously, has proved that statement wrong (yet again). Since the show also appeals to men, how do you balance the amount of women’s melodrama you put into it, from what would attract a male viewer (e.g. the court cases). Were you ever worried that telling a story about a woman like Alicia Florrick would not take off because of that old adage about women and strong female characters? Could anyone but Julianna Margulies played that role? Do you think Margulies makes the difference?

I hit send and thought nothing of it.

Flash forward to Tuesday night at work. I happened to glance at my Gmail and saw two unread messages. I clicked over to the tab. And there it was. The Email:

Only eight words, but the sender says Carlton Cuse. Definitely the best email I’ve ever gotten.

Can’t wait to see if my question gets asked and answered in a couple of weeks!

Journalism Warning Labels: It’s really come to this?

August 15, 2010 Media One comment

When I saw this blog post, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Journalism Warning Labels” was the title of the post written by Tom Scott (you can find the whole thing here). In the introduction to his post, Scott writes:

It seems a bit strange to me that the media carefully warn about and label any content that involves sex, violence or strong language — but there’s no similar labelling system for, say, sloppy journalism and other questionable content.
I figured it was time to fix that, so I made some stickers. I’ve been putting them on copies of the free papers that I find on the London Underground. You might want to as well.

Here is the U.S. version (yes, Scott made all of his labels ready to print for your own at-home use, you can download them for yourself at his blog). Click for a larger version:

When reading them, they first made me laugh, and then a little sad when I realized that a lot of “journalism” today could use these stickers.

A few prime examples:

Yes folks, this is what journalism has come to in 2010.

As newspapers continue their decline, and ad revenues continue to fall on television, it’s almost hard to wonder why all of this is occurring considering the state of content in a lot of the mainstream media today.

Newspapers are trying to find a way to make money online and get people to pay for content. Here’s the biggest problem though, a lot of the content run in newspapers isn’t worth paying for.

That’s not me being bitter or trying to slam anyone in my own industry, it’s just a fact right now. Is it because we are not hiring the same top-tiered journalists we once did? Not at all. Rather it’s what happens when you ask reporters to write a story, take a photo, constantly update for the web, tweet and write a blog post all in one day.

Simply put, the quality of journalism has suffered in the profession’s desperate attempt to stay relevant. And that’s a shame.

Sure, there are some great pieces out there, but there are also a number of pieces that were just written from the press release, or “borrowed heavily” from another news source.

The news business faces a lot of questions nowadays, how to stay relevant is likely the biggest one. But when it comes down to stickers telling us how we don’t do our job right, there’s a problem.

A doctor would never get away with doing a half-assed surgery because he didn’t have the proper time and focus to finish it properly. Just as it would be unacceptable for a pilot to do a half-assed landing. So why is it OK when journalists do half-assed work?

It’s not. It’s time to start demanding more. And by demanding more, I mean give them less. Because when it comes to crafting a story, time and focus is really what make a story spark.

To paraphrase a famous ad campaign from the 1990s: If we wanted the press release, we’d just read the press release.

Hey Bill, we’ve had this fight before

August 13, 2010 Entertainment, Media One comment

Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly attacked comments made by Jennifer Aniston earlier this week, calling women who have babies without men “destructive to our society.”

Aniston, currently doing the talk show circuit for her forthcoming movie The Switch about a woman who has a baby on her own, had originally said that women are no longer waiting for a man to have a child:

Women are realizing more and more that you don’t have to settle, they don’t have to fiddle with a man to have that child.”

After O’Reilly’s attack, she fought back, saying:

Of course, the ideal scenario for parenting is obviously two parents of a mature age. Parenting is one of the hardest jobs on earth. And, of course, many women dream of finding Prince Charming (with fatherly instincts), but for those who’ve not yet found their Bill O’Reilly, I’m just glad science has provided a few other options.”

Here’s the thing, Bill: We’ve already had this fight about single women having babies being detrimental to our society. It happened 17 years ago to a man by the name of Dan Quayle when he attacked Murphy Brown for choosing to keep her baby and raise it on her own.

Now, I’ll give O’Reilly this; at least Jennifer Aniston is in fact a real person (unlike Murphy Brown, who was a television character), but that’s it. The argument was flawed when Quayle made it in 1992, but it’s even more flawed today.

Let’s go back. According to a Time magazine article, Quayle, who was the American vice-president at the time, made the following remarks:

“It doesn’t help matters,” Quayle complained, when Brown, “a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman” is portrayed as “mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another ‘life-style choice.’ “

Hmm. What did O’Reilly say again?

Right. Perhaps O’Reilly was busy back in 1992 when the whole Dan Quayle-Murphy Brown thing happened (maybe he was busy at Inside Edition), or maybe society went back in time to a time when it was a problem for women to decide to have kids on their own. I don’t know.

Here’s the thing. Conservatives say they’re pro-life, yet when it comes to a woman deciding that she’s ready to have a kid and decides she wants to do it now, on her own, this is a problem.

Who’s business is it if a single woman decides to have a baby on her own? No one’s. It’s not mine, it’s not the general population, and it’s definitely not Bill O’Reilly’s. Would being a single mom be hard? Undoubtedly so. But women have been doing it for years (think of all the women who are abandoned by the men who get them pregnant while they are pregnant — is it not better to be a single mother by choice rather than someone else forcing it on you?).

What if a man wanted to have a child on his own? Would that be a problem as well to O’Reilly? I’d wager not.

It’s well past the time that American conservatives get out of women’s reproductive health. Roe v. Wade should be left alone. Women who choose to be single mothers should be left alone. We are all people capable of making our own decisions in our own lives.

But really, someone get O’Reilly a copy of Murphy Brown. I’d love to see her give the same speech to him she gave about Quayle (and someone should also remind him that Quayle lost re-election that year — not that his comments about Murphy Brown had anything to do with it, I’m sure):

(I deleted the embedded video because it was automatically started whenever the page was opened, so click on the link for some retro Entertainment Tonight).

Toronto Life opens old wounds with Michael Bryant article

August 12, 2010 Media 9 comments

This is what we know for sure: There are three people who know what happened the night of August 31, 2009; one of them is dead; anything not said by the two in the car is just speculation.

In a lot of ways, nothing has changed since that night. Leah McLaren’s article in Toronto Life, Michael Bryant’s Very Bad Year, cannot change that because Bryant did not speak to her for the article.

As evident online the last few days, the main thing this article has done is open old wounds as an anniversary no one involved likely wants to remember approaches. Once again, cyclists are up in arms at what they see as another sympathetic portrayal of Bryant. A man, who some see, got away with murder.

Sarah Fulford’s editor’s note at the beginning of this month’s issue of Toronto Life introducing the Bryant story is spot-on. This city is still divided over the Michael Bryant accident. The two sides will likely never come together no matter how much time has passed.

In her editor’s note, Fulford writes:

Torontonians were — and still are — divided. Some think the courts were too quick to forgive the powerful guy with friends in high places. Others are sympathetic to Bryant and see the verdict as vindication. They’re convinced he reacted as anyone would have in an extremely difficult situation.

bike memorial

The memorial at the site where Darcy Allen Sheppard struck a mailbox on the night of the confrontation with Michael Bryant.

September 1 is my birthday. Last September 1 was when the news began to trickle out that Bryant — the former Ontario Attorney General — had struck and killed a cyclist with his car. I was appalled.

And as the sides began to split, I didn’t know what to think or who to believe anymore. I commended the justice system for bringing in a special prosecutor from B.C. to eliminate any hint of potential bias in trying the case. I could only imagine how difficult this was for those at the crown who used to work for Bryant.

But I believed in my justice system. I believed that right would prevail. Whatever “right” was. A man was still dead no matter if Bryant went to prison or not.

The first time I walked by the memorial on Bloor St. where Sheppard struck the mailbox that likely killed him (photo at left), I cried. No one should have to die on the street like that.

Almost one year later, have we changed at all? Has the city learned any lessons from the night that changed three lives forever? I’d wager a no.

Yes, we had bike lanes installed on Jarvis St., but drivers are still up in arms about that. This city is constantly the cyclists versus the driver. There’s no inbetween, even though neither side is right.

There are horrible drivers in this city that break the law, drive dangerously and don’t share the road. I know, I see them every day, too (and, as a pedestrian, almost got hit twice today alone). But there are also cyclists that weave through traffic, don’t signal and don’t obey their rules of the road. It cuts both ways.

And we will never see that. We will never fix that.

Does McLaren’s article lean toward a sympathetic view of Bryant? Yes, but it is a profile on Bryant — on his political career and aspirations that may have died that night. If August 31, 2009 had never happened, one wonders how different the Toronto mayoral race would be right now. Would Bryant be running?

All that is immaterial though when you remember Darcy Allen Sheppard is still dead. Whether he was the aggressor in the incident or not, he is still dead and that is the saddest fact of the whole tale.

Journalism is not meant to gloss over the ugly incidents in life. If anything, its job is to point them out for all to see, almost like ripping off a Band Aid — cause immediate pain in order to try and heal a wound.

It’s no coincidence then that this piece ran just weeks before the first anniversary of Sheppard’s death. It’s no surprise that outrage is greeting it. But the outrage and timing is no reason this piece should not have been written or should not have been run.

Perhaps as August 31 approaches, instead of bemoaning Michael Bryant being absolved of all charges or Toronto Life running an article championing Bryant, we should look at our actions on the road and see how we can make it safer for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists alike.

So that no one else will ever have to experience what Michael Bryant, his wife Susan, and Darcy Allen Sheppard had to last August 31.

(Photo courtesy of ppelisek on Flickr. See more of his photos in his photostream.)

« Older Entries