News commentary

I didn’t know Gabrielle Giffords before January 8, 2011.

Why would I?

I didn’t live in Arizona and wasn’t particularly plugged into that part of American politics. Sure, I’m sure I saw her name in news stories and reports, especially after Arizona’s controversial immigration law was passed. But as with most other American congressmen and women — and even governors — her name just didn’t stick.

Then January 8 happened. I remembered following the events of that day on Twitter, especially her “death” — which was later proven to be untrue. That day was the first time in a long time I turned on CNN to follow the events in Arizona.

I don’t know why, but Giffords’ story struck a chord with me. Even before we knew anything about how she was doing.

After the first post-shooting images of her were released, I was even more struck by Giffords and her story. She looked so happy, so at peace, so OK.

Giffords’ first television interview was with Dianne Sawyer. I spent most of the hour in tears watching in amazement at the videos of this woman fighting so hard to be who she was all over again.

“She sounds like a child,” my boyfriend commented after one section where Giffords spoke.

He was right, she did. She spoke in short, usually one-word sentences. She looked confused when she was asked some questions, but I still saw so much hope and possibility from her.

Late last year, Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope was released — a book by Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly. The book told the story of Giffords’ life before the shooting, but more of it took place in the days, weeks and months that came afterward. How she fought to build her life back — to walk, to talk — to learn everything all over again.

Of course, the real question was whether Giffords was going to run for re-election this year. Whenever it was asked, Kelly always gave the same response: The decision was Giffords’ alone to make, and she had until May to make it.

Then this weekend we got more news from Giffords. Only this time, it wasn’t about her future aspirations. This time it was about her present situation. She had decided she would be resigning her congressional seat.

In a video released on her website, wearing a red jacket almost just like the one she was shot in just over a year ago, Giffords said farewell:

“I will return,” Giffords promised, smiling in a way that you could almost see the “old” Gabby shining through.

She promised that while she was getting better, she needed to take some time to focus on her recovery. And while she didn’t expressly say she wasn’t planning to run again, the video made it pretty clear that her political career was probably done.

The New York Times reported Sunday night that Giffords would end her term in congress finishing the Congress on Your Corner event in the supermarket parking lot where she was shot one year ago.

Perhaps because of that decision, and so many others, I still see hope from Gabrielle Gifford. Sunday’s events reminded me of some of what she had written in Gabby‘s final chapter entitled “Gabby’s Voice:”

Hope and faith. You have to have hope and faith.

Everything I do reminds me of that horrible day. Just rolling onto my side is hard. Hard to sleep at night. Reminds me of how badly I was hurt. It was hard but I’m alive …

Long ways to go. Grateful to survive. It’s frustrating. Mentally hard. Hard work. I’m trying. Trying so hard to get better. Regain what I’ve lost. Want to speak better .

Trying to get back to work … I’m so sorry I’m unable to work right now.

I hope I never have to fight a battle like the one that Gabrielle Giffords is fighting, but I know I will fight smaller battles throughout my lifetime.

I hope like Giffords, no matter how tough my fight may seem or how futile it appears to be, I hope I am able to hold my head up high and carry on. I hope no matter how dark things may seem, I am able to say exactly what Giffords said:

I will get stronger. I will return.

 

Of that, I have no doubt.

Good luck, Gabby.

Photo for blog post a screengrab from Giffords’ video announcing her resignation.

Thursday morning news broke that the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council had deemed Money for Nothing by Dire Straits “unfit” for Canadian radio due to their use of the word “faggot” in the lyrics.

In response, Dire Straights has been a trending topic on Twitter for two days now, it’s been steadily climbing up the iTunes Canada chart (as of this writing it was No. 56) and three radio stations plan to play the song for an hour straight in protest Friday night.

So in the spirit of the Canadian Broadcast Standard Council, here are some other songs that came out years ago, but due to political correctness, should be banned from Canadian radio until the offensive term is bleeped out.

5. Louie Louie by the Kingsman (1963

Did the FBI ever fully complete their obscenity investigation into the lyrics of this song? Until we know what they’re really saying here, we should cut this from radio.

4. Blame Canada — South Park (1999)

Really, this should go without saying.

This song incites hate toward Canada, and puts our wonderful nation at fault for everything it can think of (“it seems everything went wrong since Canada came along”). And, they have the nerve to call us “not a real country anyway.”

Don’t even get me started on the Robin Williams performance of this at the Oscars in 2000 (just goes to show you, even the Oscars can reward hate speech).

3. I Touch Myself — the Divinyls (1991)

Come on, we all know what she really means here and Canadian radio is not the place to talk about such things.

Could you imagine being in a car and having to explain these lyrics to a child? What are the radio programmers out there thinking?

Absolute disgust.

2. Relax — Frankie Goes to Hollywood (1983)

“Relax don’t do it/When you want to go to it/Relax don’t do it/When you want to come.”

Released in 1983, this song barely made much a splash on the charts. But after it was banned in 1984 by the BBC due to the sexual nature of the album’s artwork and this song’s lyrics, it shot to No. 1 on the U.K. charts.

Perhaps Money for Nothing will see the same sort of chart explosion after it’s ban in Canada.

1. Raise a Little Hell — Trooper

Yes, Trooper is a classic Canadian band and I don’t like banning them from Canadian radio either, but sometimes you have to make hard decisions.

This song is a call to arms, encouraging revolution (“If you don’t like what you got, why don’t you change it?”) and we can’t be encouraging Canadian citizens to participate in changing their country.

This song also must be the next song banned on Canadian radio after its use on This Hour has 22 Minutes where Canadians politicians encouraged the Canadian public to vote in the 2000 election. Just sickening.

What songs do you think should be banned from Canadian radio and why?

When I was 13, Paul Bernardo went to trial.

Every day on my way to school, I’d steal The Hamilton Spectator‘s news section from our front porch and read the prior day’s details in court while I walked. My teachers looked the other way when I arrived with my reading material, but no doubt were less-than-impressed to see a child take such a vested interest in such a horrific case.

I don’t remember those details clearly anymore. I know what Bernardo and his then-wife Karla Homolka did, but I don’t remember the court details except reading about them on my way to school. Years later as an adult, I bought Nick Pron’s book on the case, Lethal Marriage. It was the hardest book I’ve ever read.

Even the disappearances of Leslie Mahaffey and Kristen French didn’t hit me hard. It wasn’t until my mother and I started to watch the made-for-TV movie on French’s disappearance that I cried about it. The only thing that has stuck with me ever since that case is the shoe French left behind when she was snatched. Now every time I see a lone shoe on the street, I get a chill down my spine.

Along with everyone else in the country, I was shocked when Col. Russel Williams was arrested and charged with the murders of Jessica Lloyd and Marie-France Comeau earlier this year. Not because of the crime at that point, but because of the fact these murders were committed by someone so high-ranking in the military.

Then the colonel plead guilty, which meant we wouldn’t have to wait for the details of his crimes, we’d get them almost immediately.

The press decided to live-blog and live-tweet the court proceedings. The details were explicit and sickening. The way the press has decided to cover this hearing has raised a lot of questions about whether the coverage has gone too far.

People on Twitter are complaining that the tweets are crossing a line. Some are unfollowing journalists. Even other journalists were saying that there has been too much released to the public. The details and exhibits from the court are mind-bending, so where do we draw a line?

I wondered yesterday if cameras in courts would change the way the press had decided to cover this hearing. If people could choose to turn on the TV and watch the Williams hearing, would there be a need for live-tweeting and blogging?

Does live-tweeting cross a line because the information is coming straight to a person, they are not choosing to access it? Similarly, should the front pages of the daily papers mute the coverage and leave the explicit stuff inside?

In short, should we censor the news?

I say no.

Even with Twitter, people can choose to access this information or ignore it. If they decide to unfollow certain journalists while they do their job, then that’s what they’ll do. The information needs to be on the front pages because that’s where it belongs.

It’s not about being sensational, it’s about reporting the facts. The court is hearing salacious details of Williams’ assaults and murders and entering it into the public sphere, it is the press’ job to report on that. Murder and sexual assault are not issues that should be glossed over, nor are they issues that should be buried in the paper for fear of offence.

The news is not something you should be able to turn away from. Too often we ignore what evil is happening in our world because we live in a little bubble. We don’t like to hear about the bad parts in our world, so we look the other way. We ignore genocides, women being raped in the Congo because it’s happening “over there.” I’d wager we don’t even have a clear idea what’s really happening in Iraq or Afghanistan because it’s easier to ignore it than to feel it.

The images and tails of 9/11 were plastered on every front page in North America when it happened. That too was a tragedy. Thousands of people died. Television stations showed close ups of people jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center. If Twitter had been around during 9/11, I’m sure it would have been live-tweeted too. But instead we watched it all live on TV — and we did all watch it.

If Paul Bernardo went to trial today, there’s no doubt those proceedings would be covered just as Williams’ is currently.

People complain the coverage is too much, yet the Williams hearing is some of the most-read stuff on Canadian news sites (The Star and the Globe as of this posting). As for the journalists everyone has decided to unfollow because of their tweets from inside the courtroom — think about what they have to endure this week being inside that courtroom.

Journalism is changing and evolving. It has to. If it doesn’t, it’s going to die. Live-tweeting and blogging is just another way to deliver the news.

Even when that news isn’t so pretty.

Sarah Thomson dropped out of the Toronto mayoral race on Tuesday, throwing her support behind George Smitherman in an attempt to stop current front-runner Rob Ford.

Thomson held an early morning news conference at her campaign headquarters where she made the announcement, saying:

(Ford is) going to basically destroy transit, he doesn’t care about the social issues that George Smitherman cares about, there’s so many reasons … these reasons are very important to the long-term future of Toronto.

Some will applaud Thomson’s move, considering she was trailing in the polls and was not likely to win.

Sarah Thomson dropped out of the Toronto mayoral race to endorse George Smitherman.

However, there’s no doubt that others will see this as another blow to women in politics — losing the only woman who was considered one of the five front-runners will no doubt cause some people concern.

As a woman, I never really got behind Thomson because she was a woman — it’s not how I vote. This being Thomson’s first attempt at politics, it’s also hard for me to get behind her as a genuine candidate (who can forget the kerfuffle when she used her magazine, the Women’s Post, to announce her candidacy?)

The question really boils down to this: Can a woman really run Canada’s biggest city?

Well, they did before amalgamation, but since 1998, both of Toronto’s mayors have been men (Mel Lastman and David Miller). Has the city grown and changed enough that a woman would be unable to handle the portfolio?

Not necessarily.

Was Thomson that woman?

I don’t think so.

Sarah Thomson is a successful business woman, much like Belinda Stronach and others who have entered politics before. But I think she failed to really get the public’s trust before throwing her hat into a big, political job (much like Stronach when she ran for the leadership of the Conservative party).

In order to get a woman elected as mayor in Toronto, I think that woman has to be a councillor and prove herself to the electorate before trying to become mayor of Toronto.

And while even that does not guarantee anything (just look at former mayor Barbara Hall’s failed bid against David Miller in 2003 and former councillor Jane Pitfield’s failed bid in 2007), I think it’s something that will come with time.

It just wasn’t the right time and Sarah Thomson was not the right woman.

(Photo courtesy of Sarah Thomson’s flickr account. See more of her photos here.)