If This Isn't Sexual Assault, What Is?

It was curious to see Toronto Star reporter Rosie DiManno arguing in a column yesterday that the sexual assault case involving former Saskatchewan Roughriders general manager Eric Tillman was "patronizing to women." Tillman, who resigned his position last week, received an absolute discharge last week - escaping even the stigma of a criminal record in the process - after admitting he was guilty of fondling a 16-year babysitter.

DiManno reports the agreed statement of facts in the case as follows: Tillman, apparently made woozy by medication, sidled up behind the young woman, grabbed her by the hips and pulled her back end up against his front end. Dimanno then, despite admitting she couldn't quite buy Tillman's claim that he didn't remember these events, nevertheless dismisses the encounter as a trivial lapse in judgement that couldn't possibly have been damaging to the victim.

I share her skepticism about Tillman's memory loss - and about the notion that sleeping pills and pain relievers combine to create a Viagra-like arousal response - but the rest of her argument doesn't hold water. DiManno laments that a justice system based on zero-tolerance when it comes to sex offences condescends to women by placing even sufferers of relatively mild offences into aggrieved victim status. "Where's the sex or the assault in the sexual assault charge to which Eric Tillman pleaded guilty," DiManno wonders. Later, she suggests that calling Tillman's offence sexual assault diminishes the trauma felt by victims of more severe crimes such as rape.

DiManno might have a point that the law should do a better job of distiniguishing between different grades of sexual assault. She might even be right that victims of "minor" sex offences are often not be as traumatized as some believe - although I'll leave that one to the psychiatric experts.

But if she can't see that Tillman's actions were clearly of a sexual nature and could very reasonably have been upsetting to a young woman who, it bears repeating, was working for him at the time, I'm not sure what definition of sexual assault she would accept short of the stereotypical "rapist jumping out of the bushes" scenario.

Tillman's actions constituted a crime and his clean-slate escape from the legal system is a farce. DiManno, always eager to uphold her tough-as-nails image, may believe that prosecuting offences like Tillman's is patronizing to women, but columns like hers do a far greater disservice.

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The Pro Rogue

It's a new year and here's the first of what should be 71 posts in 2010, according to the statistical average of the first two years. Anyone care to play the over-under?

Anyone care at all?

This last query isn't really a dig at myself or the blog. It's more of an open question in the wake of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's successful move last week to prorogue Parliament for the second straight year. Late in 2008, Harper sent Canadians to their political dictionaries to look up "prorogue" after he created a furor by trying to cut off public funding for political parties. The request, granted by Governor-General Michaelle Jean, bought the Conservatives enough time to avoid a non-confidence vote that could have thrown them out of power.

Harper clearly prizes effectiveness over originality when it comes to political strategy. No wonder, then, that he went back to the prorogue well when the heat got turned up about the Canadian military and the possibility that they'd handed over prisoners in Afghanistan to local authorities with a thing for torture. Opposition leaders demanded answers and Parliament as a whole agreed that the Prime Minister needed to supply them. So Harper did the logical thing - he put Parliament to sleep until early March.

An article in today's Vancouver Sun enumerates some of the advantages and disadvantages of this move by the Conservatives. Author Barbara Yaffe points out that, by the time Parliament sits again, Conservatives will have had the chance to look all official and important at Olympic photo-ops and will also be able to set the agenda with the Throne Speech. She also speculates that the Conservatives are betting Canadians will be more engrossed with the fate of the Canadian Olympic hockey team than Afghan detainees over the next couple of months.

She could be right. Andrew Coyne at Maclean's certainly seems to think so. Coyne suspects Harper will absorb less political punishment from this latest prorogation because Canadians will be more desensitized to it and distracted from it. Jaffe cites a poll showing that 43% of Canadians oppose this prorogation, but Coyne believes we're just not likely to notice the death of our democracy if the murder is carried out by numerous paper cuts.

I'm inclined to agree with Coyne. Harper's willingness to render Parliament irrelevant by ignoring and then silencing it - twice - suggests he's perfectly capable of this kind of slow democra-cide. If citizens don't show resistance, we'll be accomplices. And it's going to take more than a Facebook group.

Keep It Off My Wave

I hope I'm applying the meaning of the old Soundgarden song properly by using it as the heading for this entry. In any case, you'll get one interpretation of that meaning (mine) if you keep reading.

A few recent events have left me puzzled as to why people with certain strong political or social beliefs automatically assume that, because one might share their ethnic or class background, geographical location or even last name, one agrees with those beliefs. It's not the beliefs themselves that I'm talking about here - although in the cases I'm about to cite they are deplorable - but the assumption that I would be complicit with them.

One of the recent instances involved someone with whom I had a connection, however tenuous, due to genetic circumstance. After having not been in contact with this person for several years, I had occasion to get in touch. Soon afterward, this person saw fit to forward on an email that viciously maligned people of Arab descent. Leaving aside the matter of this person's prejudice, I wondered why he would presume that I would agree.

The other instance occurred during the pickup of a piece of furniture from a stranger's house (side note: screenwriters and authors in search of inspiration for rich characters are hereby advised to go on a Kijiji or Craigslist buying binge). Immediately upon introduction, this person began moaning about her health (imagine the odds of having not one, but TWO rare spinal diseases) and lamenting that she was "the only white person in this apartment building." The racial comment was not merely an observation of fact, believe me. And again, I was left to wonder why she presumed, because of the colour of my skin, that I would nod in agreement.

Of course, bigots aren't the only ones guilty of this. I was reminded of the two real-life instances while watching Year of the Dog, a decent-but-uneven movie about an animal-lover's mental collapse. In it, Molly Shannon's lead character goes to ever-greater lengths to fight for animal rights, including browbeating her family and coworkers into joining the cause. Because she believed in the nobility of her cause, she also believed everyone around her shared that passion.

Whether motivated by hate or love, people need to get out of their own heads and understand that others might not feel that way. Keep it off my wave, unless you know it's the kind I like to surf.

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Afghanistan: Dumbing It Down, Surging It Up

I've never been one to buy into the notion that Stephen Harper's Conservatives are the Canadian equivalent of the George W. Bush Republicans. For one thing, the Bush brand of religious moralism, thankfully, hasn't been viable as a foundation for electoral success in Canada for quite some time. For another, Bush's failings, if nothing else, revealed in painful fashion his undeniable humanity, while Harper rarely shows evidence of being carbon-based.

But there is certainly something Bush-like in the way the Harper Conservatives have dragged political discourse in Canada down to its most reptilian level. The most recent case in point was this week's head-slappingly stupid back-and-forth between Defence Minister Peter McKay and members of the opposition about allegations that the Canadian military ignored evidence that detainees in Afghanistan had been tortured after being handed over to Afghan authorities.

To review: these allegations were brought by diplomat Richard Colvin, and - this is crucial - do not include accusations that Canadian soldiers themselves had tortured anyone. The issues Colvin has raised relate to the military's process and policies regarding detainees, not the behaviour of individual soldiers.

This should be pretty clear to any thinking person. But the Tories seem to be betting, or hoping, that Canadians aren't interested in thinking. Thus, they've trotted out the familiar rhetoric about how those who would dare follow up on Colvin's claims are guilty of failing to support our men and women in uniform. "Casting aspersions," to use McKay's words.

That's a clear case of Bush-speak - spouting the idea that anyone who even questions the way the war in Afganistan is being prosecuted is an unpatriotic jerk.

Conservatives have also argued that Colvin is alone in his concerns. But today, news broke that, in fact, the Red Cross had raised the same issues, to the extent that international law enables them. One wonders whether the Conservatives are now prepared to cast aspersions on the behaviour and credibility of that most dastardly of organizations, the International Red Cross.

The point is, the Conservatives have tried to dodge some serious allegations by using numbingly simplistic arguments that could only reasonably convince a population that was either amazingly apathetic or, yes, even dumb. It's up to Canadians to prove otherwise.

Meanwhile, another figure, one far more popular than Harper, has also gone in for a little bit of Bush-iness. President Barack Obama, ever the "on the one hand, on the other hand" thinker, has announced both an increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan - a 30,000-soldier deployment reminiscent of Bush's "surge" in Iraq - and a date for said soldiers to start coming home.

The additional troops may be enough to appease hawkish types who believes more boots and bullets are the keys to victory, while the July, 2011 pullout date is a sop to Obama's lefty supporters who want the Afghan adventure over with. As Fred Kaplan of Slate explains here, neither side is likely to be happy with this apparently muddled compromise. In Kaplan's view, the additional troops won't matter unless they're put to proper use - and figuring out just what that is is a quandary that's plagued the mission since the Taliban was overthrown. And he notes that the 2011 "deadline" is actually quite artificial and unlikely to be enforced unless things change dramatically.

But the point Kaplan makes at the beginning of his article is the one I want to echo here - that Obama, with this announcement, can no longer be seen as the hamstrung inheritor of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unavoidable or not, he's now waded into the fray, and history will accord him a share of the responsibility for the results.

Bush may still bear the bulk of that responsibility. But he must find it nice to have company.

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On Masculinity

Okay, now for something a little more serious.

In today's Toronto Star, sports reporter Damien Cox interviews Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke about the latter's 20-year-old son, who happens to be gay. That fact has been known to the Burke family for almost two years, but it's just now coming out, as it were, in the media.

In the article, the elder Burke quite understandably wishes for the day when items like this won't be considered newsworthy. And some of the readers commenting on the article protest that the day is already here, arguing that the story isn't relevant to hockey fans. That may be true. But the fact is that the article is fully deserving of its column inches for the effect it hopefully will have on a sports culture that lags well behind the times in terms of accepting differences.

Brian Burke isn't just any old professional sports executive. He's a proverbial man's man, an opinionated and tough-minded guy who believes bare-knuckled fighting belongs in hockey and has placed a premium on qualities such as "truculence" and "testosterone" in his so-far unsuccessful attempt to rebuild his team. He's old-school - a beat 'em in the alley type who'd just as soon win a physical war of attrition as a test of skill.

In other words, he's the type of guy you might expect to deny or bury reports about his son's homosexuality. Instead, he's acknowledged it in public with honesty and without squirming equivocation. He doesn't claim, like many in his position would, to love his son in spite of his sexuality, but rather professes more admiration for the young man because of the courage it's taken to come out while still working within a hockey environment (the younger Burke analyzes statistics and video for a U.S. college team).

Moreover, Burke senior shows that he's not afraid to use his famously salty language or his celebrity to defend his son against bigots. Cox's article relates Burke's cussing out of anti-gay marriage protesters in California and his openness to marching in Toronto's gay pride parade next year.

That the coarse, aggressive Brian Burke has taken this stand is meaningful in a sports world where "don't ask, don't tell" would actually be considered an upgrade in terms of the acceptance of gay people. He may be a prototypical man's man, but Burke's uncompromising support for his son is his most admirable display of masculinity.

Masculinity, of course, is a notion under siege these days - and not from the people that some men would complain about. Sure, feminists have for years (rightly) questioned some of the more unsavoury aspects of stereotypical maleness, but as this article from a couple of weeks back by Eye Weekly's Edward Keenan shows, it's actually men who could render manliness extinct. Men like the writer-turned-filmmaker Tucker Max, whose movie I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell opened a couple of weeks ago.

Max - who I hadn't even heard of since the Eye piece - has apparently made a name for himself by evangelizing for what Keenan calls "dude culture," a lifestyle predicated on binge drinking, sexual promiscuity and general obnoxiousness. Keenan makes an excellent argument that this form of "manliness" can be defined more accurately as childishness - the refusal to assume and perform the responsibilities that, in previous generations, would have been central to common notions of masculinity. You don't have to spend much time in a downtown bar, a mall or a movie theatre without encountering this kind of misbegotten idea of what makes a man.

The definition of masculinity will continue to evolve and be debated. With any luck, men will pass up Tucker Max's infantile version for the one exemplified by Brian Burke and his son.

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Riddle Me This, Nova Scotia

The first thing I did was go to Tim Hortons.

After an early-morning flight from Toronto to our new home in Atlantic Canada, I was eager to start this new chapter with a cup of the old, familiar sugar-water. Being that the nearest location is within two downhill blocks of the new place (I believe there is a bylaw in Dartmouth requiring that there be a Timmy's within spitting distance of each resident), this should have taken only a couple of minutes.

But as those minutes passed, I found myself progressing no further than a nearby stoplight, where I stared, mystified, at a flashing orange hand that never seemed to give way to the white glow of the "walk" signal no matter what the colour of the streetlights. If I wasn't supposed to walk on green, red or yellow lights, when was I supposed to walk? Was the Timmy's, its sign visible above a row of houses, permanently out of my reach despite its palpable proximity? And what were these curious buttons with arrows above them on the pole beside me?

This traumatic experience made it clear that adjusting to Dartmouth after a lifetime encased in the friendly concrete of Toronto was going to be difficult. The entire Halifax Regional Municipality area, it turns out, is a land of riddles seemingly designed to confuse innocent, vulnerable Torontonians.

The ever-present, admonishing traffic hand is just one of these. After nearly two weeks on the East Coast, I have made several similar observations, which I shall list here:

1) Garbage, recycling and composting here is complicated. Apparently, the residents of HRM are clever enough to understand and execute instructions that call for organic materials, solid waste and two different kinds of recyclable materials to be dropped in entirely separate bins. I noticed while at the mall that most people were able to do this without crying, even though tears were welling up in my own eyes as I stood helplessly in front of all those options, wondering whether my crumpled-up napkins belonged in the paper recyling or organics bin.

2) In Toronto, one can be reasonably certain that climbing aboard a streetcar marked "Queen Street" will result in a steady progression in the same direction down said street. Not so in HRM. The buses here dip and dive down streets with no regard for their passengers' equilibrium, making sudden, unpredictable cuts and switches as if they're following an especially complex offensive scheme designed by an NBA coach. Yet the locals register little to no alarm as all this goes on, their knowledge of the bus' number and eventual destination inexplicably filling them with confidence.

3) The people here have a habit of speaking to you. Even those who have never met you or friended you on Facebook tend to say hello without warning. Despite their clear violation of my personal-space bubble, they respond to my aggrieved grunts as though I'm the one who's committed the social faux-pas.

There are, and will be, more such revelations as life here proceeds. Reporting them may be the only thing that keeps me sane in this insane town.

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All Apologies

But who am I apologizing to? Myself?

That's probably right. But in any case, I was surprised to see that I'd split nary an arrow in the entire month of October. And a high percentage of my irregular posts since July have been apologies for posting so irregularly accompanied by resolutions to get back in the blogging groove. Empty promises, as it turns out.

Here's the thing. It's been rather busy. Travel, marriage, a cross-country move impending. Said move will put me in a position where I will likely have to blog to save my own sanity, so while I might remain quiet for a couple more weeks, after that I'll hardly be able to shut up.

I mean it this time.

Organizing the Race Cards

Stanford University law professor Richard Thompson Ford makes an invaluable contribution to societal discourse about racism with his Slate article today. Spurred to action by a world in which leftists blame every challenge faced by minorities on overt and despicable racism and righties torture logic with claims of "reverse racism," Ford defines several different sub-genres of bigotry, how these sub-genres manifest in society and their legitimacy as examples of true racism.


One might disagree with some of Ford's conclusions - I know quite a few people, for example, who would resolutely insist that "bad people acting with racial animus" led to the pitiful government response to Hurricane Katrina - but that's beside the point. The more essential lesson is that discussion of racial issues is fundamentally undermined by the inflammatory and egregious use of the term "racism," and that we need to take an honest look at what true racism is and where, how and when it still poisons our culture.


It's a convenient thing - and in the heat of a very emotional moment, it may even seem to be an insightful and wise thing - to say that "George Bush does not care about black people," as Kanye West so famously claimed in the wake of Katrina. But while the R-word is useful in identifying heroes and villains, real life is rarely about such clear-cut distinctions. Ford's article is a reminder that the other forces at play, from unconscious biases to poor urban planning to the lingering after-effects of centuries of undeniable racism, are probably more relevant at this point in history than overt hatred. Understanding how these forces work, rather than cavalierly tossing the term "racist" around, is the key to overcoming racial inequality.

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The Infamous Date Rape

That's the title of an old Tribe Called Quest song, but it could also apply to the case of the five Hoftstra University students who were accused of gang-raping a female student in a campus bathroom earlier this month. The men spent two days in jail and were identified in numerous media accounts, but were freed when the alleged victim recanted her story. The case is similar to the Duke lacrosse team scandal of a few years back, but the Hofstra situation included an oddly of-the-times twist - the woman's admission that she had consented to the group grope came after she saw the cell-phone video of the encounter recorded by one of the alleged assailants. While it may be disrespectful, exploitative and just plain gross, filming one's sexual adventures evidently makes some legal sense.


That last point is cribbed from a column by Slate legal writer Emily Bazelon in the female-focused blog Double X. It's just a small note in a piece that goes on to discuss whether the accuser's name, like those of the accused, should be released to the public. Bazelon agonizes over this question and ultimately decides that the false accuser should remain anonymous, although in a later blog post she also acknowledges that perhaps the same courtesy should be extended to those accused of a crime. In doing so, she also acknowledges that the question itself brings into conflict her views on gender solidarity, the imperatives of journalism and the law.


All this, and I'm still dancing around the essential point of the piece and the (non?) lessons of the Hofstra case. Bazelon is wading into the contentious territory of "grey rape," a phrase coined to describe sexual encounters wherein consent is difficult to determine and even the "victim" isn't quite sure whether they've been violated or just feel a particularly stomach-churning remorse about a choice or series of choices. Not surprisingly, the "grey rape" term has been derided in some feminist circles as blame-the-victim terminology and by some men for further muddying the already opaque waters of sexual transactions, particularly those involving alcohol.


The extreme viewpoints are well-represented in the comments section underneath the article, as are more moderate views. But what cuts to the bone for me is an essential question: are women fully equal to men and thus responsible for their own decisions, or are they fundamentally vulnerable and thus dependent on the law to protect them from those decisions.


Let me be clear - on the issue of any sex that results from the application of force or drink-spiking or any other physically assaultive action, I see no grey area. But when it comes to other factors, such as straight-up alcohol consumption, it's a lot murkier. The notion, expressed by some of the commenters, that women are essentially powerless against "manipulative" men who "get them" drunk in order to sleep with them seems to strip women of any kind of power. Coming from women who identify as feminist, I find this to be a bizarre proposition. Of course, sex with an unconscious person is unconscionable, and I'm quite comfortable with the idea that any man who takes advantage of a woman so drunk that she's in blackout, or even unintelligible mode, has committed rape. But what if - as I suspect is the case in a lot of college-campus cases - the man is also drunk out of his mind? Should the law require that he take full responsibility for his actions and the woman none? Again, that seems to violate fundamental feminist principles, at least as I understand them.


I don't for a second believe there's an epidemic of false rape allegations, but cases like these do point to some uncomfortable problems with the way we treat sex and gender equality under the law. Rape cases so often come down to the competing accounts of the accuser and the accused, with only their respective words to guide a judge or jury. It's a legal arena that has always screamed out for more clarity, but I'm not sure that tipping the scales in a way that presumes men to be conscious predators and women to be helpless prey brings any more justice to the justice system or any more gender equality to society.


We want so badly for these things to be black and whites, but the grey remains. Maybe the solution is to videotape everything.


arrowsplitter.blogspot.com

Travelogue

So let's see. On day one, we arrived at the airport in Istanbul and got in a taxi. It was warm outside...

Okay, I'll go easy on the blow-by-blow. But suffice to say that 10 days in Turkey (and one unexpected bonus night in Frankfurt) is a pretty good tonic for the malaise brought on by the daily grind. As is marriage, a state of bliss that, I have been assured, at no point devolves into anything deserving of the words "daily grind."

But enough of the personal. Some observations about Turkey:

First off, the people there are tremendous. Witty, playful and friendly, always willing to go to extend themselves in order to help out strangers. Even the "aggression" of the carpet-shop salesmen and the ware-hawkers at the Grand Bazaar is for the most part benign and conducted with a self-aware wink. We depended greatly on the kindness of strangers and found it in strong supply at nearly every turn.

Secondly, the food is incredible, and far more varied than menus offered up by many better-known culinary nations. Sure, there are a million different variations on eggplant and the country is well-stocked with kebabs, but the Turks have a long list of multi-flavour recipes. It also doesn't hurt that the fruit and vegetables are fresh and tasty in a way that this particular Ontarian didn't believe was possible.

So much else to say. The weather was mostly great (dodged the deadly floods that hit the Istanbul suburbs), the Mediterranean Sea was eminently swimmable at 22 degrees Celsius and the landscapes - from the mountainous regions to the arid desert in the middle of the country to the mosque-dominated cityscape of Istanbul - were stunning. The only downside was that many areas of the Mediterranean coast were overrun with British and German tourists, such that the only Turks visible were those in service positions.

In other words, Turkey comes highly recommended from this source. 

But this source is not the Lonely Planet, so I'm moved to share another observation. Turkey, of course, has been vying for many years to gain entrance into the European Union. Some people I spoke with there said they'd never be let in for "political reasons." I'm not sure, but the dismissive way they said this led me to believe that the locals don't think these reasons are particularly valid. However, Turkey's EU troubles have to do with its denial of the Armenian genocide and the squabble with Greece over Cyprus - serious business to be sure. I don't know enough about either to come down on one side or the other, but it's a reminder that international politics look very different in the eyes of beholders from different nations. 

This should be obvious, but it's pretty easy, I realized, to wrap oneself in a myopic, North America-centred cocoon. Something to endeavour to avoid as this blog, hopefully, becomes a more regular occurrence again.

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Turkish Delight

It's been awful quiet around here the last couple of months, and it's going to continue to be that way for another couple of weeks. But I'm not sad about it, because I'm off for vacation in Turkey.

I may come back with all kinds of insights about the history of Western civilization, life on the border of Europe and Asia, the inner workings of a secular democracy where 98% of the people self-identify as observant Muslims and the melting of decades of diplomatic ice. But I may not. The plan is to make the mind a blank slate and see what fills it up. 

And if all that gets written on that slate is 11 days of warm sun and crazy sights and sounds, so be it.

Sticks and Stones

It wasn't by design. It wasn't the result of a summer vacation spent in far-off exotic countries (that's still to come). I wasn't in a coma. I was just insanely busy doing actual work and kind of lost the plot on the whole blog thing. But hey, no biggie, right? It's the summer and nothing happens. Nobody dies. People go away on boring trips. They putter uneventfully around their own houses. Cultural and political discourse slows to a heat-induced crawl. 

Truth be told, I'm now a bit rusty when it comes to the whole arrow-splitting business. But I'm happy to say that one of the contributing causes was an unusually juicy story I got to work on in an official, non-blog capacity. The story, which you can read here, concerned accusations of ethical misbehaviour by an ad agency and car company in a recent contest.

In following the aftermath of the story, I've come to realize how its central point - that companies have to be wary of how social media tools allow for a frenzy of negative opinion about brands to brew up quickly and powerfully - applies to me and my profession. In years past, a journalist might expect even his most controversial work to yield a few impassioned letters to the editor and not much more. Not the case any more. As I've recently discovered, the social media age means that I'll probably encounter statements like this one, which I found on the comments section of a blog operated by one of the upset contestants from the car contest, more often:

"Semansky, like so many writers in recent years, is masterful at appearing to be a journalist whilst at the same time infusing articles with subtle sheep-factor propaganda."

Ouch. On one hand, it should be easy to dismiss this kind of thing. On the other hand, I have to admit that reading this comment activated a strong self-defence instinct. Not that I responded, or should have responded. But the whole situation was humbling because it brought into sharp relief the fact that, as my career moves on, I'll have to be more cognizant of the "two-way conversations" that accompany my stories. 

Which is good. If the media's job is, in part, to call bullshit and speak truth to power, it's only fair that everyone else can call bullshit, if they see fit, on the media.

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Penguins Set Back March of Gay Rights

Homophobes often try to frame homosexuality as an immoral choice that flouts the laws of nature, while most gays respond that, surely as nature made them, nature made them gay. To bolster the latter argument, homosexuals and gay rights activists have sometimes pointed to the same-sex action that takes place elsewhere in the animal kingdom.


But now, the gay rights movement has a new and potentially dangerous enemy: penguins. And what hurts most of all is that this enemy is a traitor to the cause.


The evidence is here, in a story about two male penguins from the San Francisco Zoo whose six-year relationship recently ended when one of them decided to jump into the nest of a widowed female. Defenders of "traditional family values" might suggest that Harry philandered because he realized that, six years ago, he'd made a bad choice that steered him away from his "natural" heterosexuality. No doubt they'd also blame that choice on an evil "homosexual agenda," the goal of which is presumably to turn everyone gay, animals included. At least in San Francisco.


Either way, the anti-gay army now has a new poster-penguin. Me, I think the whole affair demonstrates that sexuality can be a fluid thing, no matter what species is involved. As for poor cuckolded Pepper, I just hope he recovers from the shock. It's okay, Pepper. You're worth more than cheatin' Harry and homewrecker Linda combined.


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'Til Death

Fascinating case emanating from Europe in the past couple of days about an elderly and eminent British couple who chose to commit simultaneous suicide with the help of a Swiss clinic. Conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife Joan died hand-in-hand last week after knocking back a lethal drug cocktail, a move that's as sure to make ethicists wring their hands as it is to make romantics swoon.

Assisted suicide is one of those issues that's much easier to argue about in the abstract than in the specific. It's understandable that many people would defend this decision by two apparently rational adults, a decision that was supported by their children. After all, what benefit would there be to charging the children, already grieving, with a criminal offense for helping the Downeses meet their chosen fate? 

Yet it's also easy to understand why the couple's death would make people squirm. Joan Downes was reportedly in the final stages of terminal cancer, but aside from being described by his kids as "blind and nearly deaf," Edward Downes was only on his deathbed because he chose to be. Thus, the usual slippery-slope arguments are activated. What, for example, is the standard a person must meet in order to receive assistance in ending one's own life? Should people have access to assisted suicide because they're afraid to grieve for a loved one? Is this option available only for the elderly? If the option was available, how many people would use it to escape what might be temporary physical and mental pain.

I can't fault the Downeses for what they did. But I'm not sure I'm comfortable with assisted suicide if the rationale behind it is to achieve some romantic ideal or avoid grief. Coming to terms with death is a sad but necessary part of life. Even at 85, Edward Downes might very well have gained wisdom and character from the process of mourning his wife. Or it may have tortured him. 

That's the thing about death. Once it happens, all those questions go forever unanswered. My take is that public policy concerning assisted suicide should err on the side of exploring the possibilities and answering those questions.

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The Problem With Intervention

Yesterday I wrote about how it's difficult to know if, when and how to respond to situations where someone says something inappropriate in public. I raised two cases from the past week in which I was an eye and ear witness to shocking verbal encounters, one of them involving a profane mother (whom I didn't respond to or report to any authority) and one involving - or so I thought - a profane and racist bus driver (whom I did report to the Toronto Transit Commission). I talked about how I had some misgivings about both my passive and active responses in these two situations.

Well, it turns out that whatever small feeling of nobility I had about reporting the case of the racist bus driver was short-lived. My girlfriend, who was with me on the bus, later explained that it was a passenger, not the driver, who made the nasty comments to an elderly Asian lady sitting across from him. Just now I called the TTC back and explained the error, but still, having mistakenly blown the whistle on the innocent driver, I now feel at least as sick as I did yesterday while the incident was actually happening. I can only hope he hasn't already been contacted about it.

So is it better to hear and see no evil, allowing hateful comments in public spaces to go unchallenged? After this whole affair, I know it's going to be more difficult for me personally to stand up, for fear that I'm somehow mistaken. But I hope that's not the case. 

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What's My Business, and How Should I Mind It?

It's been said before, by more articulate and authoritative voices than I, that the spread of evil owes less to the extremist zealotry of the few than it does to the listless apathy of the many. For example, this theory would suggest that the rise of the Nazis in Germany wasn't so much a result of Hitler's charisma or strong-arm tactics as it was the result of a general population that shrugged its collective shoulders as he consolidated power. The intimate personal lesson we're supposed to draw is that, when we ignore or dismiss hate and violence, we're not much better than those who commit it.

But two recent situations from my own life have illustrated, to me at least, why this moral rule that makes perfect sense in the abstract is extraordinarily difficult to abide by in specific, real-life cases. In one of these instances, I decided to respond in some fashion. In the other, I didn't. But was I right in either case?

Case #1: 

Last week while doing laundry, I witnessed a parenting display that twisted my stomach into knots. While doing her laundry, a relatively young mother was occasionally interrupted by one or both of her young children (both aged five or under, I'd guess), who were understandably bored but were quite well-behaved considering their dull surroundings. Not well-behaved enough for this mom, though. After crabbily urging her kids to leave her alone a few times, the woman snapped, berating one of the little ones with the words, "For fuck's sake, why don't you go sit down."

Swearing in the presence of children is a pet peeve of mine. I hate when people do it, in part because I feel bad for the parents who are put in the uncomfortable situation of having to either pretend it didn't happen, raise an embarrassing scene or explain to their kids what the bad words mean. But in this case it was the mother who made me feel uncomfortable. It occurred to me that if this was how she treated her children when they were all in public, she may well be even more abusive, or even violent, in the privacy of their home. I wondered if I should say something to her, report her to some authority (Children's Aid? The cops?) or simply shake my head and ignore her. I chose the last. But my stomach is still in knots about it. 

Case #2

This case, which happened this morning, was even more alarming. As my bus was about to leave from the stop where I boarded, an elderly Asian woman shuffled up to the door and started banging on it, hoping the bus driver would stop. He did, but not before bellowing "Fuck off. Get the next one." The woman was still outside when he said this, so she couldn't hear it, but a busload of bystanders certainly did. And then it got worse. When the woman came aboard, the driver turned around and quite loudly asked her if she was in a rush because she was "on her way to a big rice sale or something." My girlfriend and I were both on the bus at the time, and our jaws hit the floor so hard they nearly activated the doors-open system.

In this case, however, I called the Toronto Transit Commission and registered a complaint about the driver, explaining exactly what had happened. Of course, I don't know whether anything will end up happening to him. And I'm not sure what exactly I would want to happen to him. Should he be fired (as he certainly would be from pretty much any other job for that kind of conduct), or should he simply be scolded? Will his own racial identity - he was a young black man - have any bearing in terms of how his behaviour is judged and punished? Did it have any impact on my own reaction?

In one case, I chose silence. In the other, I chose action. Quite honestly, I can't say that either was terribly satisfying. I still don't know how to respond in situations where strangers say hateful things to other strangers. I still don't know when and to what degree I have a moral obligation to intervene - and when I should mind my own business. I'm still skeptical about whether I can make a difference.

I do know that it's depressing to hear such hatefulness expressed so openly. I do know that it makes me and most bystanders incredibly uncomfortable. But if it's true that apathy is the ally of evil, then we have a duty to respond. And if we can't do it when the hate is out in the open, what hope do we have of extinguishing the hate that burbles, unspoken and bitter, under the floorboards of society?

www.arrowsplitter.blogspot.com

Wrongs and Rights

I've finally gotten around to reading Ezra Levant's book Shakedown, which aims to expose Canada's federal and provincial Human Rights Commissions as bloated, self-interested bureaucracies that have drifted a long way from their noble beginnings. I'm only halfway through, but so far Levant's done a good job illuminating both the problems themselves - most notably the idea that the HRCs have a vested interest in sowing societal disharmony - and the reasons why Canadians should be upset about them. I expect the rest of the book to further raise my hackles, if for no other reason than, as I've written before, finding oneself in agreement with Ezra Levant on anything is disconcerting.

I'm already guilty of bestowing too much verbiage on him, but I can't help wondering what Levant makes of the case of Frank Ricci, a firefighter in New Haven, Connecticut who claimed reverse-discrimination when he was passed over for a departmental promotion. On the surface, Ricci made for a sympathetic plaintiff - despite suffering from dyslexia, he studied hard for a written test that was supposed to carry the most weight in the evaluations for promotions and achieved one of the top scores. However, almost no visible-minority candidates scored high enough on the test to receive a promotion, a fact that resulted in the New Haven government, nervous about a politically-correct backlash, changing the promotion criteria after the fact. Ricci was denied his promotion and learned first-hand the terrible injustices that one faces when one is white and male in North American society. 

I kid, of course, but it's true that Ricci was a sympathetic figure. It did in fact seem that his whiteness cost him a promotion that he'd earned, and what's more, the achievement was actually snatched away from him after he'd achieved it. His story was the kind that would make even the most ardent (white) affirmative-action supporter pause. It certainly made an impression on the U.S. Supreme Court (seven white males, one white female, one black male), which ruled in Ricci's favour a couple of weeks ago in a decision that may have grave implications on civil rights law in America.

In Shakedown, Levant makes a convincing case that Canada's HRCs have created an industry wherein both Commission employees and thin-skinned or disingenuous citizens make their living through serial complaining. Most of these complaints, he argues, have little to do with what most people would think of as human rights. In this environment, Ricci would be right at home - it turns out that this blue-collar everyman has no problem suing his way up the employment ladder. What once seemed sympathetic now seems opportunistic. Would Levant champion Ricci as a man of the people who dared to challenge politically correct orthodoxy? Or would he denounce him as a cynical manipulator of a skittish legal system? 

The same question applies to lefties, considering how Ricci and some of the HRC complainants in Canada have ju-jitsued well-intentioned discrimination laws for their own selfish ends. This is all part of a larger debate, one that Levant flicks at in his book when he paints Canada as a country where intolerance is largely a thing of the past. I don't think that's true. But it's possible that affirmative action and HRCs, as they're currently constituted, could be outdated and in need of reform. Otherwise, the future of human rights belongs to professional complainers like Ricci. 

Don't You Forget About John Hughes

Journalistic ethics pretty much preclude shilling for friends, and that's as it should be. But while I try to observe a journalistic code of conduct on this blog, the fact is that it's a blog. My blog. And dammit, when my friends do something cool and legitimately shill-worthy, I'm gonna shill for it.

Which is why I'm urging anyone who comes across this post to visit this blog, recently started by the producers of Don't You Forget About Me, a documentary about director John Hughes, the influence of his teen films and his reclusive life since dropping out of Hollywood almost two decades ago. I'm fortunate enough to know Kari Hollend, one of the producers of the movie and a name I look forward to dropping for years to come as her career builds.

I've seen the movie and it's a blast. Structured around the producers' road trip to Hughes' house in an attempt to get the writer-director to participate, DYFAM includes interviews of cast and crew from classic 80s teen films like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. From these sources, the viewer gets funny and fascinating insight into the making of these movies and the mind of Hughes. Meanwhile, interviews of subjects like film critic Roger Ebert, director Kevin Smith and current-day high school students prove one of the filmmakers' main points - that Hughes managed to capture some fundamental essence of teenagerdom that allowed his movies to transcend their dated 80s window-dressing.

Just as DYFAM is a window into the John Hughes universe, the filmmakers' blog is a window into the process of making the documentary. On that level, it's an interesting site to visit even if you're not a Hughes junkie. And if you are, the filmmakers reward you with extra interview footage that didn't make the final cut of the movie. That final cut will soon be available for purchase through the blog website, but you should go there now to get a little taste. 

As for me, I'm not as much of a Hughes acolyte as my friend and her fellow documentarians - I haven't even seen Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink, and for my money nothing in the teen flick genre ever topped Fast Times at Ridgemont High - but Ferris and Breakfast Club alone constitute a Hall-of-Fame resume.

Bruno and the Perils of Interpretation

The impending release of Sacha Baron Cohen's film Bruno, which follows in the semi-scripted, quasi-documentary footsteps of the wildly successful Borat, re-ignites an old debate about activism and popular culture. Like his goofy, lovable and - oh yeah - scathingly anti-Semitic Borat character, Cohen's Bruno is designed to dredge up the worst bigoted feelings from the average Joes and Jills he encounters and play them for laughs. In Bruno's case, the title character is a homosexual fashion expert from Austria whose cartoonish flamboyance unearths the vile undercurrent of homophobia in certain segments of society. 

To expose and then ridicule prejudice is a noble goal, and one could argue that there's almost no better way to eradicate it. Laws are important, obviously, but laws alone don't change minds. And although the legalization of gay marriage is sure to result, over time, in greater acceptance for homosexuals, releasing a Hollywood blockbuster that makes fun of the haters is a more immediately satisfying way to advance the cause.

Of course, one could also argue that Bruno doesn't so much make fun of homophobes as provide them with another target, a character who embodies all they think they know and love to hate about gays. I haven't seen the movie yet, but from what I've read it could very well be possible to see Bruno and come away not with the notion that hatred of homosexuals is stupid, but rather that homosexuals are indeed worthy objects of derision. Will people laugh with Cohen, or at Bruno? These two reviews, one positive and one somewhat negative, outline the parameters of the debate.

The reality is probably that people will probably laugh both with and at Bruno. Which is unfortunate, in the sense that a film with a very pointed message will be viewed by millions of people who will take away the exact opposite of that message. But that's the deal with pop culture. Kurt Cobain, for example, changed the entire music scene with music and public statements denigrating bigoted meatheads, but no doubt a huge portion of the audience that made him rich were bigoted meatheads of the highest order, responding to the volume of Cobain's screams but ignoring their content. 

As an artist, one ceases to own something the moment they put it out to the public. So in the end, it matters very little what Cohen's intent is with the Bruno character (it says here that, since he's a comedian and not an activist, he's probably happy to have it both ways - to play shamelessly and comically into gay stereotypes while at the same time making fun of those who hate and stereotype). It only matters what the audience does with it. 

Moreover, Cohen can't be held responsible for those who misinterpret the film. To force artists to censor themselves based on the potential reactions of society's most ignorant members would mean the end of any truly provocative art. And we deserve better than to be held hostage by stupidity.

Newsunworthy

It's hardly news that the news media can be quite pitiful in terms of story selection, foregrounding titillating non-news ahead of actual, important developments. Any written complaint about this deserves to be filed in the "tell me something I don't know" bin. Still, some days are more ridiculous than others.

Today, for example. There are of course the numerous recaps of Michael Jackson's funeral, which news organizations broadcast live yesterday as though Jackson was a head-of-state. And on the domestic front, all three newspapers have seen fit to weigh in on the "controversy" about whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper ate the communion wafer he was offered at the funeral of former Governor-General Romeo Leblanc or pocketed it (Harper's a Protestant but Leblanc, the funeral and the communion ceremony are all Catholic - gives new meaning to the notion of being damned if you do, damned if you don't).

The Toronto Star's Wafergate headline seems like it was ripped from the web pages of The Onion. Thankfully, on slow news days we can look to The Onion itself for amusement. This is one of their best of all time, I dare say. 

Who needs news when you can read about things you wish were news.