Stay Tuned - Up Next We Bomb Donald Trump

Inside Television 508
Publication date: 7-2-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn


Happy Canada Day everyone. Granted, my celebration has been somewhat tempered by virtue of various provincial and federal bureaucracies mishandling or flat-out losing important paperwork over the last several weeks, I do realize that as Bruce Cockburn sand, they call it democracy. There are still a few kinks in the system. And we have stable banking laws. You take the good with the bad.

So let’s celebrate the country. There are two fairly interesting Canadian television stories this week. The first is paradoxically both prominent and obscure. CTV absolutely buried every other network in the world in the Promax/BDA Awards Competition this week in Los Angeles. Er, what’s that?, one might say as I did. Essentially, these are the awards for the ‘look’ of a network, its design, the lead-in music and the promos. They are for network design.

And this is hugely important in terms of the branding feel of a network. Think that’s not important? As grandly individual as you and I both are you and me and the neighbour are all easily captured by marketing and promises of a luminous future if only you and this object are put in union. We are drawn to sample by the packaging. It’s equally why we have drawers full of once-used gadgets next to old photos of former lovers.

stare at me long enough and I will own your mind ... 

The CTV Creative Agency won 36 medals including 13 gold, while the CTV Network as a whole won 41. In second place was NBC (who if you think about it has always been good at that, from the peacock through Must See TV) with a relatively paltry 14 total. Before you read the next paragraph, see if you can guess which particularly CTV promo campaign won 13 awards all by itself? Think about it ... and ...

Time’s up. ‘Believe.’ As in the Winter Olympics. If you hadn’t guessed, you’re smacking yourself in the head right now. Either that or waving your hands around in strange motions so the CGI crew at CTV can draw in balloons or letters in post-production. Regardless, well done CTV. No wonder they’re easily number one in the ratings in Canada.

CTV’s private competitor Global is more or less saying, ‘oh what the hell, let’s try it’ by launching as of yesterday the Reality Channel. The same idea crashed and burned like the Red Baron pursued by Snoopy in the United States, even though it was backed by Fox. Come to think of it, Manfred von Richthofen and Rupert Murdoch never were photographed together, so one never knows. Coincidence? I think not.

But will people really tune in to watch re-runs of The Apprentice and Survivor and all that? Even if you’re drawn in by it all initially, and neither series has ever appealed to me even though I’ve clearly softened my once diamond-hard stance against reality TV. Those are the featured series along with Big Brother, Hell’s Kitchen and the like. Oh good. All my enemies are gathered together in one spot. Launch the bombing run. Bin Laden may still be on the loose but we have Donald Trump in our ratings’ crosshairs.

The consensus of opinions that I have read on the subject think that the project is doomed to failure. We may not all be able to cite every season of Masterpiece Theatre - God knows I can’t - but there is a quivering beaver tail in my soul that still believes that the average Canadian is still slightly more culturally sophisticated  than the average American, so if a Reality Channel wouldn’t fly in the Soo, Michigan, why should it work in the Soo, Ontario?

Enjoy the long weekend and at the Blues Festival next weekend I hope I’ll - be seeing you.

(And remember, clicking on ads is informative AND entertaining :) - ! H)

And They're Great Talking Cars Too

The shirts however leave something to be desired...

I’ve been reading Christopher Hitchens’ new memoir ‘Hitch-22.’ It’s a terrific book and I’ll have more to say about it at a future date. I find I don’t read as many biographies and autobiographies as I used to. This may be a result of advancement into what can be kindly termed, and as I’m doing the terming on my own life it’s going to be kindly, the Mature Years. For one eventually has a basic agreement with the biographer - the life written must be more interesting that the reader’s. And fame itself is not necessarily interesting in itself, which wipes out 75% of everything published: the guy who scored the thing that married the girl who sung the song when they made that movie and he got caught with that roomful of hookers. Who cares?

The interesting thing I’ve noticed over the years in the biographies of lives I have enjoyed - everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Groucho Marx to Franklin Roosevelt (and it appears my prime time would have been a quarter century before I was born) is a strong common thread and Hitchens’ book is no exception. Their Moms make them.

Not that I would want it inferred that Dads can just sneak out the back door and go drown golf balls because they’re off the emotional hook. Not quite. But the fathers really only seem to be the ‘important’ parent when the child moves on in the father’s field: Kingsley to Martin Amis, Henry to Jane Fonda, Kennedys and Bushes in full supply. The Moms either open doors and furnish rooms of imagination in their childrens’ minds, or move like frigates under full sail into society or the social or political world and insist that the world will take her young ambassador seriously. The Queen has spoken.

Queens tended to have worked out better than Kings, generally speaking. In England, Elizabeth I firmly established the British Empire, Victoria saw it reach its greatest breadth, and Elizabeth II has overseen its dismantle in generally peaceful terms over the last six decades. Many a King was a fine General, granted; although they had to be for they were forever invading France every time there was a slow weekend coming up.

I’m not sure that series television has ever really captured the essence of that particular maternal role - the playful Socratic in the house, guiding the novice toward his or her destiny. There is a good reason for this: you would need at least a five year commitment from a network

Still, the TV Moms have had their Hall of Famers over the years. Wouldn’t you have loved Lucy for a Mom? Hey, you’d get a drum kit, lots of cool costumes and Superman’s going to show up at your birthday party. Or Shirley Partridge. Everybody in the family forms a band, if you’re the eldest brother you score like Frank Sinatra, if you’re the middle brother after you recover from years of brutal drug abuse and some jail time for bludgeoning a transvestite prostitute in Vegas you somehow still have a career.

Your ideal Mom might have been Carol Brady. Bring in to the family matched sets of siblings of the opposite sex, just in time to add an exquisite twist on the usual adolescent torture. On the other hand, if Mom maybe isn’t a whiz in the kitchen, that doesn’t matter. Your Carol Brady Mom has the smarts and wherewithal to hire a full-time live-in cook and housekeeper. Clean my room? And cost Alice her job? Are you insane!?

And then there’s our real Moms - the one that turned on an NFL championship game in December 1967 between the Packers and Cowboys and said, ‘I think you might enjoy watching football.’ Or the one that enjoyed playing along solving mysteries from Perry Mason to Columbo to Poirot to Morse. And the Mom that taught you about all those great old movies and stars that made you first fall in love with how first words, then words with images are put together into compelling stories. Or all of the above. Which is my Mom who turns 85 on Monday. Happy Birthday. Be seeing you.


(August 6 - I'm slightly amazed and completely flattered that this newspaper column of mine has been the most visited and shared posting of them all. Thank you. And feel free to share it with friends using the Facebook & Twitter up there on the left by the title. Cheers and I hope you're having a great summer!  - H)

The Baying of My Existence

For review purposes - as well as sheer open-faced amusement and joy - I’m reading Christoper Hitchens’ memoir Hitch-22. In it, he refers to being in Belfast at the very dawn of what became known as The Troubles in 1968. Oddly enough, so was I, at the age of 10 and on a Cook’s Tour with my Mom. I didn’t witness any explosions but Hitchens did. A pub was blown up and out of the wreckage came a strapping huge Belfast fireman weeping terribly because the little mangled body in his arms was a dog.

And yes, that is precisely the reaction one would have. I know I would. I love dogs as I suspect you do - I don’t think cat people read much about dogs, much to their loss. But when you think about it, it really is a rather odd thing to do, now isn’t it? We live in shelters with walls and doors and roofs to keep out, among other things, the wildlife. And then we invite in a representative as a permanent invited guest. It’s like an experimental re-conceptualizing of The Man Who Came to Dinner only this time Monty Woolley wears his last name on his paws and tail.

And dogs are like Sheridan Whiteside. If you don’t know the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, you’re missing a treat. Whiteside is a literary radio pundit who slips and falls on the doorstep of a nice suburban family. The sort of family that might well have a dog. Whiteside can’t leave - he’s injured. He takes over the house and invites in all his louche and absurd friends. He’s a busybody who’s into everything the family does and he’s prickly about what he eats. He is a dog.

Our house had a perfectly respectable living room before Stella, our just turned one year old Border Collie arrived last August. There were five qualities we wanted in a dog: no more than knee height (we got that one), an ability to catch flying things (excels at it), was obedient (we’ll get to that), didn’t bite (does nibbling count) and didn’t shed. We’ll cdeal with the last point first.

I fight a losing battle against enough hair to keep a Perrsian rug maker in business for a year, provided there was a hot trade in rugs colored black, chocolate brown and white. I find curly tumbleweeds of fur bouncing over my foot as they travel across the kitchen floor, my chair is an itchy sweater and the rugs now look like the rugs of that family on the next block that you didn’t want the children to ever walk on. ‘No no, tell Bobby to play over here. We’ll go out and have ice cream.’

The technology has failed. The hair and certain trace elements of substances we don’t choose to think about at this time managed to not just tangle the power head of the vacuum (which is child’s play to clean) or stuff the hose (annoying, but doable). It managed to transform itself into a sort of bomb proof concrete that neatly mortared itself into the one hard plastic elbow that you just can’t get at with pliers and the stuff could stop tanks, so what’s a poor coat hangar to do?

And I do by the way sincerely thank you for allowing me to entertain with tales of my wounded vacuum cleaner. Business will pick up shortly.

To come back to the oddity of inviting these rumoured domesticated animals into your or my home, how on Earth did this ever get started? Anthropologists have fairly firmly settled that humans and wolves started to get along when the wolves would approach the camp or village and not eat the children. Domestication followed, they were handy for hunting companions, etc.

But one thought has always troubled me about that theory. Wouldn’t any other animal that stupidly wandered close to the caveman condominium have been killed and eaten? I’ve never eaten dog nor do I suspect I would, but there are cultures that do so it can’t even taste all that bad. So what was the dog offering that trumped the caveman appetite?

It can’t just be cuteness. And a wolf can wear the garment of many fine adjectives - proud, strong, powerful, majestic,steely, wise, et al - but cute would have trouble making the list. And squirrels are cute, but I don’t know anyone who has a squirrel for a pet.

No I have my own, shall we say, pet theory. It would be cool, it would be plausible, it may have already been the recipient of $50 million in research grants for all I know. Two words: telepathic abilities. Yes they know when we’re happy, sad, furt, tired, sick or just plain pissed off. They read us like they’re crack card players at a World Series of Poker final table staring down Phil Ivey while keeping their tails perfectly still. Beware the dreaded tail tell.

Well we know that one. That’s a principle joy of owning a dog. The dog cares. So we’ve been satisfied with that and haven’t looked further. But if we did I suspect that dogs have perfected the ability of Star Trek Vulcans. They do mind melds. They manipulate our feelings. They make us love them.

Cat people, on the other hand, have a flaw in their DNA that makes them impervious to the canine spell. I pity them. Be seeingyou.

Sun of News

Dad would be so proud ...

As Jim Ross used to say when Stone Cold Steve Austin would come storming into the ring, 'Business is about to pick up.' Quebecor, the media giant whose holdings include the Sun chain of newspapers, twenty-nine other papers in Ontario, Le Journal de Montreal and Quebec, television stations, French cable stations and half of Mystery TV. They're big. Did you happen to know that Brian Mulroney is the Chairman of Quebecor World? Unless you looked it up as I did, that's probably news to you. I haven't seen it printed or reported anywhere else.

Which is surprising, given the context of the story. Quebecor has applied to the CRTC for a licence to offer a 24 hour, English-language TV news service. With Stephen Harper's former spokesman Kory Teneycke as Vice -President of Development (i.e. creating new shows), it appears from all reports that the Fox is migrating north. In fact, this is precisely how Fox News did it. Their programming director and evil genius is Roger Ailes who once upon a happy time was a prewss flack for Richard Nixon, working alongside the ever-jovial Pat Buchanan. 

Well, talk about putting the country into a tizzy. The retired dean of CBC Parliamentary reporters Don Newman put up a column on the CBC website saying that such a right-leaning news network was, 'The absolute last thing the country needed.' Personally, Ill take a bad TV channel over famine or flood any day, but Newman's point is interesting in a twisted yet logical way. He fears that such a channel would make Conservative MPs 'more rabid' and would oddly cause the Liberals to be more polarizing. I don't look at the latter as a bad thing. At least if the Liberals consistently jousted against something it might cause the argument to congeal into a platform, something that got left in a trunk someplace along with Michael Ignatieff's charisma. 

But if Don Newman over-reacted, the reaction from Quebecor was a shrieking war cry. Mr. Teneycke promptly Twittered that Don Newman was Canada's answer to Helen Thomas. I'm not sure if he meant to imply senility or fascism but I do look forward to the explanation. 

A further curiousity is some of the reporting. The Toronto Star, not preternaturally disposed to supporting project offerings of the Sun said the whole enterprise as conceived would be doomed. Advertising dollars might be difficult to find since market research finds that the right-wing viewer tend to be older and down market. One can hear the banjos twanging in the trailer court from here. 

So, a fun week in other words. I can dine out on this story for weeks. Thing is, loathe as I am to admit it, it is going to succeed. And I am loathe to admit it but I cannot add my sandbag to the barricade attempting to block or damn the prospectively titled Sun News. I'm much too on the record for not believing in the fairy tale of unbiased news to step back from my principles now. I just look mournfully at the left and wonder why they are always chasing after the right in terms of electoral smarts and media manipulation. And CRTC approval is a given. Don't waste your breath petitioning. 

And there is a market for it because CBC News Channel is just absolutely dreadful. There was a good special on the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders on TSN last week. CBC News has imploded like the Raiders - proud champions for decades - now a mess. This makes Peter Mansbridge and a very few of the others like Howie Long and Tim Brown, the last connectors from the glory days to the wretched present. For instance, my love of sporting metaphors aside, I don't need sports stories cluttering up my newscast. If somebody wins something, great, report that. But I don't need two minutes of a 52 minute newscast taken up with people in Vancouver feeling upbeat because the Canucks got through to the second round. 

So one down and one to go for Sun News. CTV I tend to think is all right. It is the sturdy, Headline News network for busy people who want to know what's important now. But there is a huge market around that core audience. Quebecor did not get so big by being so dumb. If they put out a bright, engaging product that also gets the substantive headlines out there, I expect them to lead the three news services in ratings within six months. We live in interesting times. Be seeing you.

How to be a Wise Guy World Cup Viewer

Well, Stevie's had experience holding trophies

I'll be honest with you (he says implying a change of view), starting Friday the 11th and for exactly one month after I am going to be the World Cup junkie to end all. I will be praying to see the Steven Gerrard that drove Liverpool to the Champions League Miracle in Istanbul in 2005 rather than the clearly depressed man playing for this year's version of Liverpool which is plagued by an  infestation of flat-broke American 'billionaires' in the owners' box. And Gerrard's the England captain with Rio Ferdinand out with knee knack.

Now, then, in return you be honest with me. Have you a random clue what any of the above was about? If no, then you have met pre-condition A for moving along with this column. This stuff is going to be way too basic for the serious footie fan who yearns for the day Jose Mourinho alights to manage his team to perfect, gem-like seasons. Pre-condition B is at least a mild curiousity as to why it is that your co-workers are driving about with little ethnic flags on their car antennae. 

The only real way of learning anything about a sport is by watching a game with someone who knows what the hell they're talking about. But in order to pry around in that person's brains, one needs to know what topics or questions to ask. Maybe don't lead with the one about, 'So if soccer and the NFL both have eleven men, why does the CFL hace twelve?' Your friend in the Manchester United short will clam up tighter than the Prime Minister's Office. 

Let's go through a few possibilities, your guide to seeming enough of a Wise Guy World Cup Viewer in order to actually become a ... er, wise guy World Cup viewer. We don't know when this opportunity will arise or who will be playing, so we'll cover several teams and people. And a pub would make a fine setting. 

England: 

    WHAT TO SAY: Well, it's pretty much a Sven-Goran Eriksson team, even after all of Capello's experiments, isn't it?

    WHAT NOT TO SAY: Think John Terry's had it off with any other player's girls?

France:

    WHAT TO SAY: Thierry Henry moving to MLS I hear. If his career's that shot, why's he still playing for France?

    WHAT NOT TO SAY (at least around me): I think Thierry Henry was quite clever getting away with that hand ball against Ireland.

Spain:

    WHAT TO SAY: It says a lot that the best pure central striker in the Premier League, Fernando Torres, has to fight to start and finish matches for Spain.

    WHAT NOT TO SAY (at least not around me): Gee, I guess L:iverpool must have missed that Xabi Alonso when they let him go to Madrid.

Leo Messi (Argentina):

    WHAT TO SAY: Do you think Messi is better than Maradona?

    WHAT NOT TO SAY: Not as good looking as that Cristiano Ronaldo, now is he?

Diego Maradona (Manager, Argentina):

    WHAT TO SAY: Does he keep his good players on the bench so they're fresh for the last ten minutes?

    WHAT NOT TO SAY (if you're sitting next to Diego Maradona): Do you think Messi is better than Maradona?

South Africa (host nation and automatic entrant):
    WHAT TO SAY: I guess there really can be victory in defeat, in terms of being gracious hosts.

    WHAT NOT TO SAY: Why do they let teams this bad play in the World Cup?

Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Be seeing you.

The First One's Free: A Murderous Short Story

(I've been thinking about the concept of this story for no less than thirty years. It seeming unlikely that I would have any further fresh thoughts on the matter, it seems time to finally write it up. Cheers and enjoy!

            - H)

FROM THE PERSONAL JOURNAL OF THE MINISTER OF PUBLIC VIOLENCE, August 19, 2018 11:45PM EDT

From all police and hospital reports across Canada, the third National Day of Argument Termination has gone exceedingly well. A surprising number of victims didn't even attempt fleeing, which certainly will have lowered the pick-up and clean-up costs of the previous two years. We will not know until all the final accounting is in regards that assumption, but instinct tells me that perhaps most of those who would make a run for it were eliminated in either Year One or Year Two.

There is also rather intriguing evidence indicating that the number of deaths has dropped considerably. The numbers below for 2018 are preliminary, and the sun hasn't set in Vancouver yet, but British Columbia was the last hold-out Province against the Free Murder Day so there may still be in-bred resistance by a large portion of its adult population. I still call it Free Murder Day, even though we dropped that working title when it was pointed out that it might have seemed, well, flippant about so serious matter as gunning real estate agents down in the middle of shopping malls. But it was simple, clean and descriptive.

Those Preliminary Numbers (2016 and 2017 minus Pacific Time Zone)

2016: 16,580 deaths (28 accidental)

2017: 14, 970 deaths (12 accidental - we really worked on Murder Safety last year and it paid off)

2018: 8,269 deaths (only 4 accidental with 8 in Critical Condition, so if one pulls through we'll beat last year's numbers)

One must conclude then that the program has proven a success. Uniquely among government programs, the NDAT or Free Murder Day can define growth by a decreasing use of its service. The better it works, the less it costs. Additionally, as we have both the final crime statistics of 2017 in toto plus the first half of 2018 showing a sharp reduction in Criminal Code Offences as well as the virtual extinction of slander and libel suits in the Court system, the hoped-for social side effects have taken firm hold. 

But as to my initial conjecture on this almost exactly 50% drop from Year One to Year three, I can't right now think of any other conclusion than - most of Canada's assholes got plugged the first two years. Which in our wildest dreams we thought would take a decade. One can make a pretty fair argument (with no intended slight to any other Ministry) that the NDAT is our most successful policy initiative. 

It has all the hallmarks of a great government program. The concept is so simple that even a child could understand it. On one day a year, every Canadian adult citizen may legally murder one Canadian adult citizen of their choice at the time and place of their choosing during the date of August 19 - provided that the target is neither disabled nor one's parent. We had to put that last clause in to pacify Nova Scotia. They worried that Free Murder Day would disrupt the family unit. We may be able to go back to the Constitutional table on this one. The improving numbers have to be putting dissenting minds at ease. Although we would probably have a one year spike if we allowed patricide and matricide. 

And there too, the spike may not be all that extreme. In most cases, the adult child would usually only want to murder one parent. And within those cases where the desire to cash the Argument Termination Ticket on a parent because of an abuse situation, usually the non-targeted/abused parent has already murdered the abusive parent.

This has of course had a harshly detrimental effect on divorce lawyers. The ability to remove the problem spouse without fees beyond a couple of shells or a dose of arsenic or cyanide (people seem to like the classic poisons) has greatly reduced the number of divorce filings. And those that have filed, according to a study gathered and published by the Law Society of Upper Canada, are settled with far fewer billable hours. Child custody can still be a battle zone, but property and support settlements are often accomplished in minutes. If we are criticized for this, I suggest that our response as a government should be that now the divorce lawyers can apply their years of legal study and knowledge towards accomplishing something that improves life rather than simply wallowing in it. I think we can dare to insult divorce lawyers. It would be unlikely to negatively impact our poll numbers with the greater public.

My  thought tonight is that we really should do more for one man. When the hour was darkest, when the Prime Minister and the Premiers met through the night at the old Railway Station in downtown Ottawa, an impasse on the 'moral question' was finally broken. We had at least reached the impasse when at first it looked like we only had the support of Ontario (and even then only its Northern MPs and MPPs were in unanimous support) and the Prairies, the Big Gun Sport provinces. Our logic was reaching them. The main points:

    - increased civility in the home and the workplace

    - racism, if not eliminated, as least taken so far underground as to be invisible

    - less consumer fraud, particularly in the big ticket markets of housing, automobiles and financial investments

    - a boost to the gun, ammunition and pharmaceutical industries

    - increased tourism, as witnessing the capping of Canadians would take its place with running with the bulls at Pamplona. 

We had the logistics worked out. The intended victim would be notified by court service no less than one week before August 19. (Picking the date was such a headache. We didn't want it too close to the other major holidays, but Labour Day coming shortly meant that the murderers could take a little break and vacation off any guilt residue.) At the time of service, a GPS anklet would be attached, preventing flight. It would alert the authorities if the Victim to Be came within .5K of the Announced Murderer and similarly would prevent effective flight. 

(Speaking of that, we've had a report from around Kenora that one V2B trying to hide in the woods was shot and killed not by his AM, but rather by two American moose hunter poaching out of season. They have been duly arrested and charged. The Rainy River District Office of the Ministry of Violence did decide that the AM would not be given a second Ticket, as the rule on notofication tike would be broken. There's always next year.) 

Despite all that there was still the V Factor. V for vengeance. It wasn't the sensibility of the idea that bothered the Premiers, it was the damned morality. As though a government should be involved in legislating morality! Morality is up to a person's individual conscience and that conscience should be respected by the state. But try and tell a probably pot-smoking Premier Walton Gym from B.C. that. 

And that is where Cardinal O'Mara from Toronto saved our bacon and our bill. When he stood at the pulpit (do Catholics stand at pulpits?) that Sunday morning and said, "While it is true that the Lord sayeth that 'Vengeance is Mine', the proposal being debated in Ottawa at this very hour does not seek to replace the Lord's Divine right to vengeance. Rather, this proposal seeks to deliver those upon whom vengeance should be meted out directly to the Lord." Good enough, people said, and we carried the march and the day.

We need as a party and a government to do more for Cardinal O'Mara. I know that the Prime Minister leans towards having the Royal Canadian Mint design and strike the Stephen Harper Medal of Freedom and making O'Mara the first recipient. Really though - a  medal? It might take years for the Harper to take its place of status beside or ahead of the Order of Canada or the Juno Award.

The Senate would be a sentence, not a reward. Being a Cardinal must be more pleasurable. So that is out of the question to me. I believe this brave man who dared to endorse murderous slaughter in the name of the Lord has proven himself worthy to be our next Governor-General. I'll bring it up at Cabinet tomorrow morning. Strike while the iron is hot. I wonder if anyone used that method today?

Just A Suggestion: Let's Abolish the Canadian Cultural Industry

(Well that certainly got your attention. Under absolutely no condition should anything I am about to write and you later will read be taken seriously. I'm going to do these Just A Suggestion columns from time to time for a very good reason. Not to go all Friedrich Engels here and grind all of us into a bored pulp, but there is something to be said for Dialectic Argument. It is only by forcibly pressing a totally opposite view to an existent norm that anything good ever happens. The outcome should always be better than what was there before the argument began. There are several revolutionary states whose citizenry might beg to differ, but that not inconsiderable caveat aside, a Dialectic is still an interesting beacon to shine on a topic. 

And it seemed to work out okay for Jonathan Swift. Onwards.)

It quite troubled me when I wrote my last television column that there was not a single Canadian-made show in the Top 20 this past season except for Hockey Night in Canada. And I still believe that sporting events are not a test of the strength of a broadcaster. People will watch a game because of the game, not because of who is carrying a game or how good they are at it. Outside of the ratings bump Coach's Corner gives HNIC each week, the CBC could put braying sheep in the booth and still draw the same ratings. Plus sheep will work for grass and the occasional post-game ram.

But there it is: no comedy, no drama, no W5 or Fifth Estate. No cops chasing robbers or Newfies chasing seals. The country has changed the channel on itself and turned to the U.S. like never before. For the other 19 shows were collectively as All-American as the offensive line at Ohio State. So I was mulling this over and thought perhaps I should check the Top Ten bestseller lists for Fiction and Non-Fiction. Here are the results: Looking at the most recent numbers, Canadian fiction has two of the top ten slots, while holding four of the ten non-fiction slots. We certainly aren't going to be accused of jingoism any time soon, but those are reasonable numbers.

As for movies ... well you don't really need me to look, now do you? Oh ... why not, let's do it. Miracles do happen. The '69 Mets won the World Series. But in the Canadian Top 20 for the most recent weekend, I see a movie from France, Australia, India and 17 from the U.S. but nary a one from Canada. And we are, after all, the country that in years gone by produced Rashomon, Persona, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, and Meatballs. (Look, if we say it enough people will start to believe it, and the bit about Meatballs is true anyway.)

So as I look at this, I see that decades of national, provincial and private support to the television and movie industries have produced as much success as a dead man. Now I grant you that popularity isn't everything, but you have to concede that it certainly is something. It's not as though a television or film producer sets out to make a show that no one wants to watch. I think that went out of style with Be-In's and Andy Warhol's 'Sleep'. (That was a one camera movie of a man sleeping. It ran as long as the nap.) Unless you're the new Emily Dickinson and keep your poetry to yourself, sewn into little silk pillows, if you're an artist you want lots and lots of people to demonstrate by their attendance that you're quite good at what you do.

Any artist who would argue the point may only do so if they have never charged anyone to watch, feel, taste, smell or hear their craft. As soon as that moment happens, you always want more of the same. Back to the point.

What's delightful to me as a book reviewer is that the healthiest cultural industry by this standard is the one everyone keeps literally writing off - book publishing. Old as Gutenberg himself, book publishing has endured after challenges from symphonies, chautaqua, movies, records and radio; movies, TV, internet; VHS, CD, DVD and coming to you in HD. And Wii. Whee! The book industry knows how to balance its books in both senses of the word. New talent is put over on the strength of old talent's sales, until the new talent is ready to become the old talent. Margaret Atwood's virgin birth was Yann Martel.

The book industry too is also recognizable to the international nature of literary greatness. I exclusively deal with the Canadian publishers, yet just this year I've reviewed books from British, Irish, Indian and South African writers in roughly equal collective proportion to the Canadian writers. It is not a heavily subsidfized industry, its books stand on the same shelves as Stephen King and besides the real concerns about copyright in the internet age it just seems to go about its business without the mass suicides running through the magazine industry. 

So what happens if we look at the book industry as a model? Where does this lead us?

It leads us to folding the whole damn thing up. The Canadian Cultural Committee Collective -CanCult for short - composed of all the cheque-writing government agencies and advisory boards from the Canada Council on down. Clearly they aren't good at what they do. If they were baseball managers, they'd have been fired and dumped on the curb of sports celebrity dinners years ago. And if the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same action while expecting a different result, show me how this is not insane?

At one point, I spent two very fond years as the President of a lovely organization called the Thunder Bay Regional Arts Council. It held events that allowed artists to exchange ideas in good, clean settings; it helped to promote them; it assisted them with their own grant applications. TBRAC,a s it was referred to, didn't have a huge government grant, but it was an important one - the Province of Ontario and the City of Thunder Bay between them paid for the one staff person and the one one tidy office just large enough to hold Board meetings. That's it. 

TBRAC was choked to death by the Province of Ontario and the City of Thunder Bay because those two grave entities had two agendas. One, they wanted TBRAC to do more programming - which would require more staff - which would require more fund-raising - which would require more staff - which would mean that TBRAC would have devolved from an organization that served artists' needs to one that concentrated on fund-raising in order to sustain itself. Well, isn't that just fine?

The second agenda was worse. TBRAC was independent and had a large member base. The Ontario Arts Council didn't care about that because the Ontario Arts Council was in Toronto and it existed in order to flit about like moths into towns and cities, tell people JUST WHAT TO DO! then fly away like Tinkerbell back to the land of lost boys.And the City of Thunder Bay did care about that because it had its own organization, its Arts and Heritage Committee which had no such members to answer to, so they grabbed TBRAC by its financial neck and strangled it.

Therefore ...

I am not pre-disposed to support of CanCult. I admit my prejudice. I do not seek a cure.

In its place, and the tax savings would be substantial, I propose the Irish Solution. The Republic of Ireland invented the World's Best Arts Policy years ago. Artists don't pay tax. Done! The Republic recognized the feast and famine nature of artists' incomes so therefore recognized that taking a given perfcentage of income tax might be grossly out-of-whack to the two years' previous or the two years' following. One could start bringing in averaging laws and the like, but that woukld just be an excuse to buy an accountant a fresh box of Cubans and hiring a thousand storm-trooping auditors, so the Irish said as we Irish do, 'Feck idall. Laugh talone.' And artists got a pass on the income they earned from the arts. For one, the movie director moved over like a shot and promptly bought a horse farm. The money spent on nags, bags of feed, stewards and whomever mowed the lawn and kept the house I'm sure more than made up for what 50 mournful balladeers might have earned on the pub circuit over the same period. 

And that's the bottom line. I welcome - and will sew into little pillows - your comments below. 

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