Category Archives: In the news

| In the news, Montreal, Navel-gazing

Kurtis Hansen: Hero

One year ago, a fire up in a far-away cabin near a lake caught fire, killing five out of the six people staying there. One of the victims was Kurtis Hansen, a 26-year-old former security guard at The Gazette, whose rather nasty smoking habit had him often conversing with editorial staff late at night in the smoking room. (Last night it became clear that, for the most part, smokers had a closer relationship with him than non-smokers)

Today, the paper carries a full-page feature on the fire and its aftermath, which as written by Katherine Wilton is so dramatic as to be almost surreal. It focuses on Karl Hansen, who barely survived the fire that took the lives of the five people he brought with him to the cottage.

It also says what Kurtis was doing for the last few minutes of his life:

Kurtis Hansen raced around the one-storey cottage looking for an escape route. They quickly decided the best option was to go through a window in a bedroom.

In a desperate bid to save his family, Kurtis grabbed a small end table and hammered it against the window until it broke. But inhaling the thick black smoke was too much for him. He fell to his knees, then collapsed.

With the flames surrounding the cottage and his son lying on the ground, Hansen instinctively dove head first through the window. He rolled down the hill to extinguish the flames that were burning him.

“Kurtis is the hero in all this,” Karl Hansen recalled recently. “I couldn’t have got out the window without Kurtis breaking it. My doctors said if I breathed in that crap for another few seconds, I would have passed out.”

I don’t know if it’s the personal connection, the inherently emotional nature of the event itself, or Wilton’s writing, but a few editors (including myself) had to take a break after reading the story.

| In the news, On the Net

CHP wants in on debates

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the Christian Heritage Party, which describes itself as the next-most-popular party after the Greens, wants into the leaders’ debates. The party had 45 candidates in the last election, and seems to think 70% of the country supports it. Yeah.

Their platform includes:

  • Spending more money on infrastructure (through enormous interest-free loans which they guess will be repaid in full) and paying off the debt without raising taxes
  • Eliminate income tax and replace it with a sales tax that will make people yearn for the GST
  • Eliminate the Canada Pension Plan and privatize social security
  • Introduce private health care delivery services
  • Outlaw abortion
  • Call a royal commission so they can find a way to get rid of gay marriage without seeming bigoted.
  • Forget about Kyoto, carbon taxes or any other economy-hurting way of dealing with the global warming fraud, but somehow do something “real” for the environment (the platform gives no details on this)
  • Allow doctors and pharmacists to deny care for any reason
  • Educate people about the “health risks” of “sexual promiscuity” and end government funding for a life-saving vaccine because Big Pharma supports it (oh, and it’s for a disease that’s sexually transmitted)
  • Stop human rights commissions from attacking “free speech”

In other words, it’s the platform of the Christian conservative end of the Republican Party.

That might make the debates more entertaining.

UPDATE (Sept. 23): They’re suing.

| In the news, Opinion

Puffingate and the partisan bubble

So apparently the biggest political news of the day had to do with a bird pooping on someone’s shoulder on a website. Canadian soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, our climate is becoming unstable, and our housing market is in trouble, but all of that is unimportant compared to analysis of whether a bird should be pooping on someone online.

Stephen Harper, whose Conservative Party website showed the pooping puffin, apologized for it after his handlers calculated that the bad joke went too far and was too personal (actually, it wasn’t personal at all, it was just pointlessly insulting). Stéphane Dion, the poopee, countered that this showed more about the Conservatives than about him, again following the politically appropriate route as instructed by his handlers and political strategists.

And the media, desperate for a scandal/process/horse-race story because they’re too lazy to research platform points and analyze actual policy issues, sucks it all up.

The excuses that the Conservatives give for this gaffe are the usual barely-believable stuff (a cursor was hiding it when it was approved? Give me a break). But there’s a reason why this was done, a reason why the person who came up with the idea crossed the line, and it’s a problem at the very heart of partisan politics.

Remember all those bad jokes during the Democratic and Republican conventions? Remember how the delegates found them much funnier than we did? In the partisan bubble that these politicians and their staff inhabit, the opposition is dehumanized. Instead of respected colleagues who challenge us to develop our positions on important issues, they’re seen as evil enemies bent on world destruction who must be mercilessly defeated.

That mindset leads to cruel, immature jokes and inevitable comparisons to Hitler. Nobody is there to stop them, because everyone in the bubble is part of the same partisan clique. But once those jokes leave the bubble and reach the reasonable, non-partisan outside world, it finally dawns on them that they were inappropriate.

I watched MSNBC during prime-time tonight, mainly because there was nothing better on TV. (It was mostly in the background as I caught up on some online reading.) The lineup consisted of liberal hero Keith Olbermann, followed by Air America talk show host Rachel Maddow, followed by a repeat of the Keith Olbermann show at 10pm. Listening to the two hosts, they sound identical (though one is much prettier than the other). They both use the same sarcastic points to bring down their enemies (in this case, John McCain, George W. Bush and the Republicans).

Even though I agree with them on their positions, I can’t help but cringe sometimes when I watch these shows. There’s that same immaturity, the same mean jokes, the same anoying smiles when they point out some flaw in the other side. And in Olbermann’s case, an ego the size of Alaska as he goes on with his boring feuds with the Fox News Channel and its pundits.

Olbermann and Maddow are, sadly, part of the problem. They have like-minded staff who won’t tell them that they’re becoming too biased toward the left. Those who do criticize are seen as the enemy or ignored.

The worst part is, some of these activists may be fully aware that they’re crossing over the line, but they accept their actions because they believe the ends justify the means.

Partisan hacks and political pundits need to learn what the politicians are already keenly aware of: cruel insults and immature jokes may get a good response from hard-core supporters who are drinking your Kool-Aid, but they turn off the rest of us, making us ashamed of both you and the political process.

Considering how much ink has been spilled over this issue over the past decades (remember when the PCs made fun of Jean Chrétien’s face?), it’s astonishing there are people who still haven’t learned to attack the issues and not the person.

| Slow News Day, TV

Journalists watch TV

To those of you who might think that our local papers are getting too lazy in their reporting, and look to the respected media like the Globe and Mail and New York Times for insightful analysis on important issues, I point you to the following:

The Globe and Mail has an article about how big Vanna White’s head is. Literally. Who knows how much CBC paid the Globe to write an article about Wheel of Fortune just before it starts airing on the network, but this is certainly an interesting angle to take on it. Will the next piece be an in-depth look at Alex Trebek’s moustache?

Meanwhile, the New York Times summarizes last night’s Colbert Report, regurgitating the jokes made by New York governor David Paterson, who was the headline guest.

| In the news, Opinion, TV, Video

Hurricanes suck

I admit, I get a perverse pleasure out of people who are the creators of their own misfortune. Tragedies in the classical sense. Not necessarily causing death, but at least causing inconvenience. Hurricane Gustav created two examples of this, and the victims are our favourite punching bags: politicians and the media.

The first comes out of the video above. A few weeks ago, Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family posted a video online in which he half-jokingly suggests that Christian Conservatives pray for rain during Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at an open-air stadium. They say they never meant for it to be taken seriously, but it was, and the video was pulled (the one above is a copy).

Of course, there was no rain the night of Obama’s acceptance speech, and the Democratic convention went off without a hitch. But the day after, as John McCain was announcing his vice-presidential pick, we start hearing about this hurricane headed for the Gulf Coast. Toward New Orleans. Three years almost to the day that Katrina struck.

Oh the irony. It almost makes me believe in a god, as it did Michael Moore.

The second example comes from our good friends at CNN. When Barack Obama announced his VP pick, CNN filled the airwaves with news and analysis. Responding to a viewer comment via Facebook (oh how the media has changed, folks), anchor Rick Sanchez says this on air:

By the way, I have to share this with you. It is from Sam. He says, Rick — this is on Facebook — I’m counting on you to do the same kind of coverage when McCain announces his vice president as you’re doing tonight when Barack Obama has announced his vice president. Sam, we’ve already made that decision. I can guarantee you we will.

No caveats, no ifs or buts, just a bold guarantee. Of course, neither CNN nor the other news networks are coming close to meeting that guarantee for the convention. Half the news about Sarah Palin was surrounded (literally) by hurricane updates, and the convention coverage is being threatened by it. Even the convention itself is changing plans at the last minute to deal with people (like President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal) who can’t speak.

I actually feel a bit bad for the Republicans. It’s not their fault this hurricane hit with such horrible timing, nor is it their fault that Bristol Palin got pregnant. If they lose in November, it should be because of the issues, not because the campaign was derailed by … well, acts of God.

| In the news

GRN: 1

Congratulations Green Party on selling your soul to a corrupt Liberal reject in a desperate bid for legitimacy getting your first MP into the House of Commons. Of course, negotiating for an independent to join your party is entirely different from actually having someone win an election under your party banner, but it’s a first step anyway.

Now, as André Pratte asks, does this mean we have to let the Greens into the party leaders’ debates?

| In the news, Media, Opinion

Reporters gone wild

Monday’s paper contained a couple of first-person pieces from reporters who were a bit closer to the action than they normally are. In the first, Gazette reporter Jason Magder recounts walking by a relative’s place whose burglar alarm had just gone off. Nothing happened, but he got scared when he thought there might be nefarious burglars nearby. He later learns that police recommend always calling them first, even if it’s more than likely a false alarm and will result in a fine, because (and this is pretty good logic here) a fine is worth less than your life.

The other, a few pages down, comes from Canwest’s Scott Deveau, who is a reporter in Afghanistan and came face-to-face with a roadside bomb. Again, no serious repercussions, but a pretty huge scare.

So what should we learn from this encounter? Simple: Jason Magder and Scott Deveau are pussies.

But perhaps we can look into this a bit deeper. What purpose do these first-person articles serve? There have been other home break-ins and other roadside bombings that have been worse but gotten less coverage. Is a reporter’s first-person account better than a second-hand version given by a witness? Is this a this-happens-every-day story? Or is it just a way for reporters to placate their enormous egos, a preview into their future memoirs, and an indication that things are more significant when they happen to people we know?

Discuss. Please include unnecessarily personal references in your comments.

| Business, In the news, Media, Opinion, Technology

Globe thinks colour will solve newspaper crisis

The Globe and Mail and Transcontinental have signed a $1.7 billion, 18-year deal for the Montreal-based printer to print the newspaper everywhere but the prairies.

The highlight of the deal (from the Globe press release) is a promise from Transcon to buy new presses capable of printing full-colour on all pages. Currently newspapers have to budget which pages get colour and which stay black, mainly because colour is a four-plate process (CMYK) and black requires only one plate and one colour ink. (The change will also mean a shorter paper and another redesign)

That sounds pretty cool. But spending $200 million on new presses to satisfy an 18-year deal (2010-2028) when we’re not even sure that newspapers are going to last that long?

Like the New York Times and other larger papers, the Globe will probably weather the crisis a bit longer than most (the fact that it hasn’t drastically cut the number of journalists recently certainly helps). But 20 years is a long time in the future, especially when you consider where we were 20 years ago. In 1988, newspaper staffs were at their peak, television production values practically nonexistent, and nobody knew what the Internet was.