| A four-hour flight from Hamilton, Ontario to Calgary gave me the chance to reflect on recent events. Must admit, I'd rather let the tide of news wash over me in the past two or three weeks, so I might be a bit fuzzy on some of the details here. But I was left with a definite impression that the media has opted for "outrage" as the key tone in much of its coverage of late.
This is fine – after all, appealing to the public's sense of outrage sells papers and attracts viewers. Yet outrage is not always conducive to clear thinking or sensible response, I'd suggest, and we seem to be in danger of mistaking the truly outrageous for the largely trivial. Four isolated yet, in various ways, overlapping episodes illustrate this point.
Number one: the Janet Jackson nipple exposure. This clearly staged event during the Superbowl halftime show inevitably made the headlines the next day, but rather than treat it as a juvenile gesture, the media – at least in the U.S. – quickly adopted the line that some great public offence had taken place. This approach was compounded, of course, by the launch of an inquiry by U.S. federal regulators to get to the bottom of the whole affair.
Don't get me wrong, I too shared a sense of outrage over the event. But that had more to do with the symbolism of a pretty white boy forcing himself on to a black woman, even if Jackson's expression of shock was only part of the act. Much like the spectacle of a bunch of fat, white cigar-smoking men watching two black heavyweight boxers beat each other to a pulp in a ring, the Timberlake-Jackson show was just one more reminder of the direction in which racial lines are still drawn in America.
But that was not the point here. A nipple had been exposed and that, goddammit, was just not wholesome entertainment. I'm still not sure what it is about Americans and nipples, but clearly some major protocol had been breached here. But on closer inspection, it turned out that in fact the nipple had not really been exposed, not entirely, but in fact had been covered in some sort of Alcan foil contraption. And it still isn't clear to me just why a full-blown inquiry is necessary. Why not just sit Timberlake and Jackson down in a room and ask them what the hell they were thinking?
The saddest part – and the true outrage – of the whole affair was the quick and lame excuses and apologies offered by the pair. A word of advice, Justin: if you're hoping to build (save?) your career by flouting even trivial social conventions like this, then at least have the decency or courage to stand by your stupid gestures. Never apologize.
Which brings me to...
Number two: the Bush backpedal. In the recent one-on-one interview – the first he's given since 9/11 – U.S. President George Bush attempted to clarify just why he had gone to war with Iraq. Faced with the fact that Iraq clearly did not, at that time, possess any weapons of mass destruction (the original justification), Bush argued that Iraq had the potential to make WMD and represented an imminent terrorist threat to the U.S.
The truth of these revised claims is, itself, also questionable, for no evidence has been offered to support either one. But more to the point, even if true, they do not, under international law, justify a full-scale invasion of another sovereign power. Instead, as seems increasingly clear now, George Bush went to war with Iraq because he wanted to, regardless of any particular threat posed by that nation. To secure congressional and public support for that action, he resorted to lying and manipulating the evidence.
I seem to recall that, amidst much public outrage, the previous president faced impeachment for lying about whether or not he had stuck his penis in an intern's mouth. The current president, it seems, can lie with impunity and without fear of facing any official inquiry into his actions. A good thing, I suppose, as the U.S. government is still busy with the Jackson-Timberlake affair.
Sometimes, a sense of outrage is evident only by its absence.
Number three: the Cherry-O'Brian suck(er) punch. Surprise, surprise, sometime hockey commentator Don Cherry takes advantage of his Coach's Corner soapbox to denounce European and (more to the point) French-Canadian players as "sucks" for wearing visors. Then comes U.S. humorist Conan O'Brian, dragging his show up to Toronto in order to go one better and insult all French-Canadians – regardless of their equipment – in the most derogatory manner imaginable. Indeed, he even quipped that he was the man who made Don Cherry look good.
OK, I know there's a difference here. O'Brian is an American satirist. He has little direct knowledge of Canadian society or culture, resorts to obvious and exaggerated stereotypes as a mode of humour, and his jokes are not intended to be taken as serious commentary. Cherry, on the other hand, is a 70-year-old Canadian who knows this country only too well and fully understands (or should) how his comments would be received. It would be wrong, therefore, to lump the two men and their remarks together.
However, the two episodes are in fact closely connected. Both men got to air their views courtesy of substantial public money. In O'Brian's case, the Ontario Liberal government offered considerable inducements (i.e. cash) to bring the show to Toronto. In Cherry's case, his salary is paid by the CBC, which in turn is significantly dependent on the public purse. As such, the public has a right to express their outrage at both attacks – and they have – and demand that punitive action be taken.
This is unlikely as far as O'Brian is concerned. At most, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty may face some heat and criticism at the next election, but has far bigger worries to deal with right now. As for Cherry, however, the CBC's response – to impose a seven-second delay on his future comments – would be laughable were it not so cowardly. Quite simply, as a public (and publicly-paid) broadcaster, Cherry should either grow up and exercise a modicum of self-control or resign. Failing that, the CBC should just fire him. But they won't, of course.
Which reminds me...
Number four: Paul "I'll Go If You Catch Me" Martin. Even as I write, the scandal over the Liberal party's misappropriation of public funds in the campaign to promote Canada in Quebec after the last referendum continues to unfold. In short, it seems that more than $100 million somehow went missing, unaccounted for and so far untraceable in the government's own ledger sheets.
To his credit, the new prime minister has promised that those responsible – he's avoided using the word "guilty," so far – will be dealt with. Less deserving of praise is the weasel-phrased nature of that promise. "Anyone who is found to have known that people are... falsifying invoices – me or anybody else – should resign," Martin declared on a phone-in show on January 15. "I've made that very, very clear."
Huh? The threat here seems to be that only if you are caught will you be expected to resign, though you may choose not to even then. And what about that "me or anybody else." Does this mean Martin will resign if it's discovered that he was part of the scam? Does he himself not know, right now, if he was or wasn't? Maybe it's just me, but a man who's unsure of his own culpability in a major fraud probably shouldn't be leading a nation.
So as the plane approached Calgary International, I tried to bring my thoughts into a final focus. In America, you can lie to the public and lead your nation into war as long as your shirt's buttoned up and your nipples aren't showing. In Canada, you can take the public's money and then turn around and bad-mouth a full quarter of that same public and not worry about the consquences, or else you can simply just steal – sorry, misappropriate – that money directly without fear of retribution, promising only to own up after you've been caught, maybe.
If I wasn't so tired after the flight, I too would feel outraged. |
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