Tag Archives: Irony

| In the news

Presidential campaign song selection 101

In a world where perception is everything and hollow sound bites win over serious thoughtful discussion, the selection of a campaign theme song for a U.S. presidential run is very important. With that in mind, there are a few small rules to follow when making this vital selection:

  1. Choose a popular song that everyone can recite the lyrics to from memory. It doesn’t matter if they don’t understand what the lyrics mean. In fact, it’s probably better if they don’t understand what the lyrics mean.
  2. Choose a song whose chorus means something politically motivating. “Born in the U.S.A.”, “Born to run”, “Change the World” etc. “Money for Nothing” will never be a campaign song, unless the campaign is a parody. Yes, we all know the song’s chorus is nothing more than a metaphor for your last relationship, but take it literally.
  3. Choose a song by an artist who isn’t in jail, accused of murdering someone, or otherwise in disrepute. Stay away from Michael Jackson songs.
  4. Make sure the artist won’t be pissed off at your song selection and start campaigning for the other candidate (see Bruce Springsteen link above).
  5. This one would seem self-evident, but choose a song by an artist who is a citizen of the country you’re running to lead. Choosing a song by a Canadian (and a French Canadian like Celine Dion) might give the wrong impression.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Nobody seems to have pointed this out yet except in passing. And only a few blogs are pointing out the silliness of Hillary Clinton using an old Air Canada theme song for her campaign.

UPDATE: The Gazette gave it front-page treatment, so I guess some people are noticing here at least.

| On the Net

Hate will cure our country

There are those in Canada (outside Quebec) who believe the best solution to the issue of Quebec separation is to simply let it happen. These people, tired of being asked to learn French in order to work in the federal government, think allowing Quebec to separate will turn Canada into the English-speaking-only paradise it is meant to be.

The website Canada Divided represents one of these groups. They think all Quebecers are francophones and all francophones are separatists. Without them, they argue, language purity can be achieved. French is not part of the “Canadian identity” and somehow represents “ethnic segregation” (a xenophobic website denouncing segregation — now that’s balls).

The website is pretty bare, just a web forum and some links to videos. The videos are posted to YouTube, including:

  • This one where a skinhead oppressed anglophone seems to think that the only people hired to bilingual public-sector jobs in this country are unilingual francophones
  • This one which warns that the media (which, as we all know, is part of a giant Jewish francophone conspiracy) is ignoring the growing threat of multiculturalism against our fine country.
  • This one points out for all us stupid people that the French civil code, which Quebec law is based on, is actually COMMUNISM, and that Quebec is secretly annexing the rest of Canada.
  • This one notes that all our health care funding issues are a direct result of the government wasting money promoting bilingualism.

Honestly, it’s really hard not to invoke the obvious comparisons that come to mind. Couldn’t they at least have picked a non-bald guy and had him speak in front of a non-black background, maybe have him smile a bit?

| Uncategorized

What’s a student to do?

Now that the minority Quebec government has put power in the hands of whatever two of three parties can agree on, it looks like tuition in this province is finally going to (formally) increase. The Liberals promised a small hike, and the ADQ’s platform is in favour of tuition hikes. Only the PQ is in favour of keeping the freeze intact.

This is, of course, horrible news for student groups, to whom students pay huge amounts of money to represent their interests – chief among them being tuition. ASSÉ, the more militant student group, has already called for yet another unlimited student strike this fall. (I’d link to the English version, but their English site hasn’t been updated in two years.)

Some people are pointing out that the tuition hikes were open platform points for both parties, and the issue was heavily debated before the election. People want to raise tuition (in as much as voters can “want” any single issue in this electoral system).

The problem is that these groups are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can’t do nothing, or else their power to put fear into politicians’ hearts will fade (pressure from these groups is what has kept tuition this low for so long). On the other hand, cry wolf too often and nobody takes you seriously any more. ASSÉ especially has been very quick on the “strike” trigger (which is made worse by the fact that student “strikes” don’t actually cause financial or labour problems for the government), and this has led to many groups (including the Concordia Student Union) dropping ASSÉ in favour of the less militant and more negotiating FEUQ.

So even though ASSÉ is silly to call this strike, they must do so in order to save face.

| Blogosphere, Business, Technology

It’s the Internet. Ethics don’t matter here.

Montreal Tech Watch points out the stupidity of a group giving website awards to companies like Bell, Videotron and Desjardins. These are big companies with complex websites, but are they really all award-worthy?

A theory:

The answer lies on the “experts” who choose the winner. There was SECOR Conseil, s2i web, Conseil Action and CogniLab. If I could make a hall of shame, I would put them on the list. These companies have Videotron, and all other companies on their customer lists. They are obviously praising these companies in order to get lucrative contracts; because you have to recognize their websites are not a model of excellence, accessibility and user experience.

Doesn’t that sound a tad fishy to anyone else?

I’ll add that in their press release announcing the winners, they don’t bother linking to the websites they mention. I know “A HREF” is a difficult tag to understand, but you’d think these people would get basic HTML down before judging websites for usability.

| Media, Montreal

The full story? Nobody needs that

In another case of blatant editorial masturbation, The West Island Chronicle ejaculates the news that Peter McCabe (not this one, this one) has been nominated for a National Newspaper Award for this photo, which appeared in newspapers around the world the day after the Dawson shooting.

What the Chronicle piece doesn’t mention is why McCabe doesn’t work for them anymore. According to McCabe, the paper (or its owner Transcontinental) decided last year to go from using him as a staff photographer to abusing him as a freelancer and getting him to work for pennies. McCabe said no, and now he’s getting recognition worldwide for a photo his former paper would have paid about $20 for.

Kudos, Peter.