Uninhabited Spaces

What a sour pickle political correctness turns out to be. To wit: in a promotion reel CBC TV announces its "holiday" lineup of movies. Of course, every single movie in the clip montage is a Christmas movie. On every news and talk show you'll repeatedly be told "Happy Holidays" by the on-air talent, as they sit on their sets replete with Christmas decorations. As I write this, I am watching CBS 'Early Show' , which is being called a "holidays" edition, and they have a phalanx of special guests singing "holiday music" which all, of course, turn out to be Christmas songs. Now, I am not non-Christian, but if I was I wonder how I would react to all this smoke-and-mirrors. Even as someone raised in the Christian faith, I find this linguistic dance rather disingenuous. If these are truly meant to be so-called "holidays" broadcasts then why aren't there menorahs and kinaras on the sets? Where are the dredles? Why aren't w...

It's occured to me more than once the strange phenomenon that is the disaster flick, that popcorn blockbuster, is a very curious beast indeed. Poor New York is by far targeted more than any other city on earth, as the setting for large-scale battles between humans and aliens or superhumans and their foes, as the case may be. Over the last ten years we have seen icons around Manhattan destroyed in movies such as "Independence Day", and "Godzilla"; the city done in altogether in "The Day After Tomorrow", and badly damaged in this past summer's "Transfomers" and the "Spiderman" franchise. Opening this week is "I am Legend", where the island become home to one last surviving human and overgrown with weeds, and forthcoming is the much-hyped "Cloverfield", in which some unseen nemesis throws the head of Lady Liberty through a few skyscrapers. How many times did we hear witnesses of September 11 say that the tragic ...

Reporting on Bush in the Washington Post , Allen & Broder (2004) noted that “White House aides describe a president who gathers a small circle of trusted advisers, listens to brief debates and then offers swift, gut-based solutions to problems”. Gergen concurs, writing that Bush “takes a minimalist, big-picture approach to learning about an issue…he [asks] that memos be kept to two pages or less. He has said publicly that he rarely reads newspapers and relies on his staff to summarize the news for him” (2003). Although Bush has a relatively small set of advisers and any dissenting voices are effectively muffled (Allen & Broder, 2004) Woodward reports that “there is an aspect of baseball-coach, even fraternity-brother urgency in Bush” during potentially divisive meetings of the National Security Council (2002, 261). Writing about President Bush’s leadership style in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Bob Woodward notes that “He wanted action, solution. Once on a course, he dir...

[released December 1, 1982] As some of you may know, I am a December baby, and I distinctly recall my 11th birthday party in 1982 because my aunt Margaret gave me an album with some black fellow reclining in a white suit on the cover. Yes, I typed "album" as it was a vinyl record, one of the few I owned at that time. The others I had plundered from my mom's impressive 70s collection (Styx forever!). I had no idea who this Michael Jackson character was, and as far as I can remember none of my friends had a copy of what would become a landmark pop culture phenomenon, so I guess for once in my life I was ahead of the curve. 25 years later and I can't help but have a bittersweet reaction to this cover. Michael was a legend and somewhat of a hero to millions of fans. Somewhere along the way he got lost. For the sake of nostalgia, I prefer this youthful and compelling Michael, and just keep in my mind the memory of putting "Thriller" on my turntable for the first...