A Thanksgiving Note to America

Inside Television 529

Publication Date: 11-26-10

By: Hubert O'Hearn

From this to Caledonia - where did we go wrong?

As much as I love our Canadian Thanksgiving - and I've written about its personal meaning in the past – I also know that the Americans got this one right more than we did. You see, their date is chosen to commemorate an actual event: the famous dinner at Plymouth Rock where colonists and aboriginal people alike shared food and conversation which is so commemorated as the cordial introduction of old world and new, and the meeting of different races as equals. All right, things have gone rather downhill since, but the enterprise was at least begun with the best of intentions which still endure and which absolutely deserve recognition and re-commitment.

Besides which, our origins as Canadians began there too with the permanent settlement of North America. I see no particularly persuasive reason for the granting of custody to the United States of the holiday when that nasty divorce decree was issued in 1776. Finally, Canada didn't get around to setting a date until a 1957 Act of Parliament. Not quite as festive sounding, now is it?

So as our American cousins kick off – literally in the case of college football – six weeks of festivities filled with the warm and loving embrace of friends, family and airport security guards I thought it only fair to thank the United States for a cornucopia of its good works; great and small, serious and silly.

Thank you America for giving us the comedy-based talk show. Little did any of us know that it would turn into one of the last bastions of acerbic investigative journalism. From Jack Paar to Jon Stewart, you have delivered a model for the genre.

Thank you for all the ad men and Mad Men too. Your imaginations have made a thousand times a thousand products sell and so employed a continent. And as fictional drama, your story is the last, best show on TV today.

Thank you for the families: Ricardos, Kramdens, Partridges, Huxtables, even Bunkers too. You understand inter-generational battle and how peace can be declared within it.

Thank you for wearing your heart on your sleeve. For all I will rail from time to time about the right wing commentators and libelous political campaigns, one still can't help but be drawn to the spectacle of passion at work.

Thank you for being a comforting friend to all who have faced human tragedy: tsunamis, Haitian earthquakes, the immediate needs of destroyed lands. You have a caring heart.

America is in the decline. A child born today will look at a map of the world when he enters school with the same view we all did when we looked at similar maps and traced the loines of what used to be the British Empire. Its broadcasters are in the decline too – still floundering in the face of the internet. But the United States has always managed to survive and I suspect it will continue to do so: diminished yet unbowed. Happy Thanksgiving.

Be seeing you.

Nigella Lawson Put to the Test

Oddly, I preferred to look at - review! -
Nigella Lawson over Paul Prudhomme...

Inside TV 528
Publication date: 11-19-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn

For the Constant Reader, it will be no surprise that I’ve learned to love cooking, I suppose it was fate-determined, as this column ran for years behind the Food page in Wednesday’s Chronicle-Journal. You’d be amazed at how many incomplete recipes for Yummy Chocolate Brownies I have scissored on the back of saved columns. Actually, they’re usually recipes for Yum Cho Bro … which looks like a recipe for family cannibalism now that I consider it.

Although it was Iron Chef America that got me into this hobby, I have always held a deeper curiousity with Nigella Lawson and her persona as someone responsibly carefree - whisk some things together, be a perfect widowed mother and still have an Absolutely Fabulous time with the girls. You - you! - if you are a Nigellacolyte, will be that person who arrives with lovely gifts of food at any fashionable party you’re attending, unless you’re holding it yourself. If you’re holding it yourself, everyone will talk and look like Martin Amis or Helen Mirren. My darling wife Kimberly has, with a twinkle in her eye,  long accused me of having a crush or a ‘thing’ for Nigella. Being a perceptive woman, Kimberly is of course correct.  For while Nigella may rank second to Kimberly in everything, that still beats out the rest of the mob. Silver medals are not to be sneezed at.

But speaking of pepper, I requested a copy of Nigella’s latest cookbook  ‘Kitchen’ to see if it worked: Test out the cookbook, kick the tires and break out the sharp knives. Could a simple man such as myself actually do what Nigella does effortlessly on TV?

It’s absolutely sumptuous to read. Nigella Lawson’s chapters and individual recipe instructions do read precisely the same as her television character: well-read and educated yet down-to-earth at the same time. I think when Martha Stewart writes or talks, this is the voice she thinks she hears in her head, but doesn’t. For example, from a hilarious short piece in the Introduction titled My Kitchen Gadget Hall of Shame:

‘Healthy-eating electric grill
I know, I know: what was I thinking? Who was I kidding? Myself, for starters. But just as (and here’s an unlikely issuer of the utterance in question) Samuel Beckett said that “probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet”, so there is nothing that arouses more pleasurable self-delusion than those swollen, sleepless, post-prandial hours when, yes, actually a diet tomorrow seems positively welcoming. (But then, well full-up, the planning of a diet can seem excitably delicious.’ And so on.

As to the cooking, I had an advantageous weekend for testing out the recipes. Virtually the entire family was at the house for two nights. Kimberly of course, who is recuperating from an illness at her parents’ home, her parents, sister, two nieces, also her 14 year old son, 21 year old daughter and 3 year old grandson. Now there’s a pretty good span of humanity and Nigella always says on TV that her recipes are for friends and family of all ages. Game on.

So, what to make? I needed two main courses, a breakfast and a dessert. (If you think that’s skimpy, I remind you I’m a writer, not Iron Chef Bobby Flay.) One point that I hadn’t noticed which Kimberly’s mother pointed out is that except for the ‘What’s for Tea?’ section, the recipes are not laid out in the index by meal type or ingredient. The back of the book index is better, listing everything by main ingredient. Here again, the rear index is divided into two between regular length and Express meals. I acknowledge the criticism, having not noticed it by virtue of reading it straight through and noting what I’d like to test out.

I first chose the Cheesy Chili with a mix of sausage and mince beef, along with the usual kidney beans and tomato products. One thing I do like about Nigella’s recipes is that she uses practical ingredients: tins of this and packages of that. Realism is appreciated. It turned out very nicely. Interestingly enough, outside of Worcester sauce, cocoa and oregano, all the heat and the rest of the flavour came from the sausage which infused itself into the rest. The ultimate accolade for a recipe is saying you’d make it again. I’d make this again.

Similarly, I will definitely be doing her Mortadella and mozzarella frittata on the grander weekend mornings. I admit to slightly cheating with Nigella (that didn’t come out right, but I like it too much to edit it out) by using parmesan instead of mozzarella, but she herself states throughout ‘Kitchen’ that one should feel free to use personal and family tastes. No kitchen Hun here. Regardless, I have always been one of those men who start with a well-intentioned youthful visions of omelet and wind up with wrinkly scrambled eggs. The frittata emerged as round and firm and lovely as a well-chosen metaphor.

Next night: African Drumsticks served with my own rotini in my own pesto and Alfredo sauce - one has to feel involved, after all - with the piece de resistance of a Banoffee Cheesecake to follow. Both keepers, although I wish I had taken the time to have marinated the chicken overnight rather than three hours to get the combination of ginger, apricot jam and other goodnesses more firmly into the flesh. But the drumsticks came out almost drizzlingly juicy and were devoured forthwith.

As for the cheesecake, our daughter Amanda is a shrewd and vociferous connoisseur of cheesecakes and this one was actually a long-delayed birthday promise. She loved it, the family loved it ... unfortunately Stella Belle the border collie loved the extra piece I was going to sneak later. C’est la guerre, c’est la maison.

Seriously - Kitchen truly would be a fabulous gift for anyone who likes to cook and feed family or friends. And who says a gift can’t be for one’s self? Not Nigella, nor me. Be seeing you.

(Admittedly, this is a re-working of an earlier book review. BUT - Kitchen is fantastic and can be purchased at a great discount here. Cheers - H)

Harper, Afghanistan and Do the Right Thing

Harper,

Afghanistan

and

Do the Right Thing

Michael Ignatieff driving his invisible car...which has nothing
to do with the column, but it is funny

Politics for Joe 11

by

Hubert O'Hearn

The instinct is to crush Stephen Harper for his announcement today, in the form of an interview with CTV's Lloyd Robertson, that Canada will likely be staying in Afghanistan until 2014; just training and not combat, the Prime Minister stresses. The interview directly contrasts earlier interviews Harper had given. On January 5^th of this year, he told CTV's David Akin and John Ivison:

We will not be undertaking any activities that require any kind of military presence, other than the odd guard guarding an embassy. We will not be undertaking any kind activity that requires a significant military force protection, so it will become a strictly civilian mission. It will be a significantly smaller mission than it is today.

In contrast, Harper said to Robertson today (this being written on November 10):

As you know Lloyd many of our allies would like to extend the combat mission. I've been extremely clear that the combat mission is ending. I haven't made a secret of the fact that I'd like to see all of our troops come home. That said, as we  look at the facts on the ground, I think the reality is, there does need to be some additional training of Afghan forces. So we are looking at some training options for a smaller number of Canadian troops but this would be a strictly non-combat mission.

What is equally interesting as background is that three days ago The Globe & Mail reported that Harper is essentially an Afghanistan dissenter, wanting results and not finding them. Why then run the political risk of announcing an extended or – ahem – new mission that is not likely to be favourably received. As Harper himself notes, Canada has very nearly been in Afghanistan as long as both World Wars combined. According to an on-lined poll begun on October 25^th by The Globe & Mail 74% of respondents does not believe that Canada's mission has been a success. On-line polls are far from a standard of scientific accuracy, but that number does conform to gut instinct. Hearing there may be three more years of death – and there will be; and cost – and there will be...this won't go over well with the country.

Even though he is doing the right thing.

You expected me to write the opposite, didn't you? There's that lying sumbitch Harper deciding a policy in secret that's going to cost this country the lives of its men and women! Something like that. Perhaps leaving out the sumbitch part. Noty truly my style.

But there will be ample voices who will say just that. Question Period on Monday should be a verbal bloodbath. It will probably be worth watching. There will be ample fire from the NDP and Bloc benches on the hypocrisy issue, with Harper retorting that as there is no combat component, he has not changed policy – Stephen Harper changes policies as often as he changes hairstyles – and furthermore this is an honourable thing for Canada to do.

Ignatieff and the Liberals will argue the secrecy angle, as I suspect that in his heart of hearts Ignatieff agrees with Harper's call. He absolutely cannot say that aloud, else the result will be that the Liberals will once again look like lapdogs to the government, closet Tories in red ties.

If there is a game for this in Harper's thinking, that might just be it – a Liberal trap. But for once I prefer to think honourably of the Prime Minister. That the reasons I suspect he will state as his rationale are in fact the real reasons. That Harper is skeptical about the Afghanistan Mission I equally believe. But that does not mean that he is necessarily skeptical about the Afghans.

As the Western war that claimed the past Empires of Britain and the USSR clatters and heaves its way to its unsavory, staggering withdrawal we do at the least owe its people some semblance of hope for stability. Will it work? Oh undoubtedly not, unless absolutely every historical and social precedent in the region suddenly – and I mean suddenly – changes. But what were we in the West between Pericles and the Roman Senate? And from then until Magna Carta?

I grant you, political change is rarely, rarely effectively enforced from the outside – post-World War two Japan being the big exception – but maybe we can at least offer a tinder and the flash paper for the Afghans to make their own better world.

Be seeing you.

Hubert O'Hearn

For Lake Superior News

L'Affaire Olbermann

You da man!

Inside Television 527
Publication Date: 11-12-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn

I very nearly wrote about entertainment this week, but the case of Keith Olbermann intrigued me. I’ve written about Olbermann before - for my money he was the best sports anchor ever, while at ESPN and teaming with Dan Patrick, the Ruth and Gehrig of sportcasting - and his reasons for leaving ESPN were an exemplar for putting ethics above career. (He felt that women and minorities were unfairly treated at the cable profit machine.)

Currently, Olbermann hosts Countdown on MSNBC, weeknights at 8PM. Anyone who cannot tell that Olbermann is liberal, thinks ‘liberal’ is that new sedan from Toyota. But, as the ‘NBC’ in MSNBC implies, this cable news network is bound by the nominal non-partisan standards (nudge nudge, wink wink) of its larger broadcast partner.

Well, as I’ve said before and I suspect I will hold to until my grave, impartial journalism doesn’t exist and attempting to make it exist just makes it boring. I know the reporter has an opinion. She or he clearly knows more about the issue at hand than I do. I’d like to hear that opinion clearly stated. Give me the true and essential facts and all of them, but do share your thoughts.

Which tends to describe much of the cable/satellite news industry. FOX has a definite point of view, as does MSNBC. CNN is ... I don’t know what CNN is anymore and neither do they and neither do you. CBC is mushily liberal (or Liberal) CTV manages to be non-partisan and not boring, while BBC puts everything else to shame.

So, MSNBC with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow is the liberal Yin to FOX’s, er, Yang. But one must still keep up appearances dear. So when Olbermann donated a total of $7,200 - combined - among three Democrat Congressional candidates he received a two day suspension.

Two thoughts. Any Congressman who can be bought for $2,400 a) deserves to be; and b) the district that elects them equally deserves them.

Second thought: Two days? Two days is not a suspension. Two days is an early Thanksgiving weekend. Two days tells me that the network is saying to the world, ‘Yeah, we know we have liberal bias, but let’s all admire the stunning spring show of the Emperor’s tailor.’

I will still and always prefer liberal media to conservative media because liberals are self-flagellating and therefore compulsively seek out facts that immolate the seekers. (Don’t believe me? May I present Paul Martin and the Gomery Commission as evidence?) Conservative media? They flagellate but leave out the ‘self’ bit.

And yet, the conservative media shall always trump the liberal until the liberal dares to declare itself as it is. Until then, it shall always be as the great Steve Martin in The Jerk: ‘You mean I’m not BLACK!?!’

Be seeing you.

The 'Network' Voter

Politics for Joe 10

Peter Finch demonstrates the size of the GOP win ...

Although I've been saying if for years, someone actually decided to test my declaration that Paddy Chayefsky's Network was the most prescient picture ever made. We are living only a slightly less intense version of the world of rant over reason that the late screenwriter predicted all the way back in 1976.

I'm sure that you remember Network. But just in case you don't, that was the movie where Peter Finch played a news anchor gone mad, finally exhorting the viewers to shout out, “I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more.” Thousands did, their echoes sounding out of windows and through the apartment block canyons of New York.

End of lesson in cinema history. Well, according to a poll conducted by Abacus Research in Ottawa, when 1001 Canadians were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement (you guessed it): I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. 26% agreed. 31% disagreed. I suspect 43% had trouble tying their shoelaces that morning. Really now, either you're mad as hell or you're not.

Regardless of the indecisive, who usually don't vote anyway, this means that close to half the people willing to venture their opinion are mad as hell etc. Canadians were also in lock-step with their American cousins. Asked by Abacus if the next generation of Canadians will be better off than the present, 52% said no. When the New York Times/CBS Poll asked Americans the same question, 51% had the same negative opinion.

The smoking wreckage of the Democrats in the United States shows you what half the electorate sharing a dim view of the future can lead to.

The wonder is that Canadians are as negative as Americans. By any reasonable standard, the Canadian economy is as sunny and gold-filled as Scrooge McDuck's vault, relative to the U.S. According to slate.com, the true structural unemployment rate in the U.S. is not 9.6% as reported, but instead closer to 20%. Canada's official rate is at 8%, as of October 9,. 2010.

For those curious about it, the principal difference in American and Canadian reporting is that Canada counts anyone who made 'any' attempt at finding a job as part of the job market, whereas the U.S. only counts those who made 'active' job searches. Those who just look at Job Wanted ads are passive – those who lie on a resume and send it in are active. This of course means that those who are so under-educated or otherwise unqualified for any job offering are therefore passive and are therefore not included in U.S. employment figures. It makes for a very big lump when swept under a rug.

Regardless of technical niceties, voters on both sides of the border feel a spirit of – yes – true fear and loathing and in politics feelings trump science. Regardless of whether the Wall Street bailout was a good idea or not, or whether the massive stimulative speeding was a good idea or not, Americans looked at trillions of dollars being spent in deficit and felt uneasy, unhappy, and afraid. There was/is a sense that the classic hard-earned tax dollars were going to the bums who made this mess in the first place.

America can be explained, but Canada? Why exactly are Canadians mad as hell and ready to take it out on the next person who hands them a political pamphlet? The party or parties that unlock that puzzle and show the way out of the maze will be the victors. Right now – although I usually disregard American precedents in Canadian elections – I would not be wagering heavily on any incumbents.

To borrow one more classic movie line, as Bette Davis said in All About Eve, 'Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.'

Be seeing you.

Hubert O'Hearn

Lake Superior News

If Richler Had Lived - What Would He Have Thought?

Oh he would have had lots to write about ...

Inside Television 526
Publication Date: 11-5-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn

I was thinking about how to start this, for there are both light and serious arguments to be made, when it occurred to me that I had just written a review and done an interview on Charles Foran’s excellent ‘Mordecai: The Life & Times.’ And I wondered, what would Mordecai Richler have made of these times?

For he wasn’t just a novelist, you know. People rarely think of him this way, but I’m willing to put Richler on a short list of the ten best journalists this country ever produced. He had the sharp observer’s eye for the telling detail, understood human foibles and our means and desire to cover them up, was brutally honest, explosively funny and didn’t give a good damn what anyone thought of him or his opinions.

It is a dangerous thing to attempt to guess the opinions of a man deceased for ten years about present events, so I won’t. But i do think I know my Richler canon well enough to surmise what would have fascinated and horrified him.

I believe he would have looked at the politics in the United States and its people as being akin to the Depression-era Jewish neighbourhood he grew up in; Montreal’s The Main. One took shelter in cultural neighbourhoods because the state was distant and belonged to Other People. Interestingly, that Federal riding twice returned an actual Communist MP to Ottawa. He was eventually locked up on sedition charges as was the Mayor of Montreal, Camilien Houde. They had opinions that ran contrary to the prevailing wind, opposing Canada’s entry into World War Two. On the bald face of it, yes, Canada has imprisoned people for having political opinions. Our hands are not that clean.

Nor are those of the hustlers and con men, the Boy Wonder and Duddy Kravitz, fleecing the good neighbours in order to finance grandiose real estate deals. Yes, I think Richler would have recognized those characters placed on a higher pedestal in the grand offices of wall Street. The difference is that Duddy had a conscience about it all. But then again, Duddy was a fictional character.

In culture, there was the same rendering of the family fabric both then and now. Young Mordecai, his brothers and friends were drawn to the exciting new media of comic books, radio thrillers and multiple bills at the local cinema - which now had colour! In the meantime the elders were composing the last audiences cum mourners of the dying Yiddish theatre, just as today’s elders watch a television that is increasingly being taken over by content similar to that produced for telephones. From Action Comics and Superman to iPhones and apps.

Had Richler lived, he would have found ample forums for his views. One good thing about our times is that we live in the golden age of social satire. Even besides The Daily Show, Colbert, Conan and all the other offspring of Saturday Night Live’s Jovian forehead, I don’t think there was one of the fifty or so novels I read so far this tear that didn’t have some sort of pungent social comment. Yes, even the historical ones.

When I talked to Foran he summed up by saying that he hoped that his work would help keep Richler’s canon alive. I suggest that is a fine idea for the reader to adopt. For if you look at the images slipping past our screens, both great and small in size and significance, it might help if you imagine seeing them through the eyes of Molrdecai Richler.

And because that is much too kindly a way of ending a piece about the great cynic, I must add - that a shot or two of The Macallan wouldn’t hurt either. Be seeing you.

Thoughts on the Stewart/Colbert Rally

Inside Television 525
Publication date: 10-29-10
By: Hubert O'Hearn

As anyone who has ever followed these columns for any length of time might guess, I'll definitely be tuning in to watch the twin rallies Saturday afternoon featuring Jon Stewart's 'Rally to Restore Sanity' with Stephen Colbert's 'March to Keep Fear Alive.' Bizarrely, I'm not going to be able to watch shows hosted by two men whose regular shows are carried five nights a week in Canada by both CTV and The Comedy Network on television. In Canada what I suspect will be the largest live comedy event in history can only be seen via live streaming video on thecomedynetwork.ca

Not that one really needed much more evidence, but this is one of the smoking guns indicating the demise of broadcast and cable networks as we knew them. They most definitely will continue to exist, after a period of mergers and acquisitions that will leave a baker's dozen or so large content providers amidst a sea of independently producing media buskers. All that truly remains for the takeover to be complete is for the boxes connecting internet content to your Big Boy flat screen TV to be a whole lot less greedy.

Apple is or has rapidly become everything it ever accused Microsoft of being – an Evil Empire setting the rules the rest of us must follow – Achtung baby! The Apple TV2 is sleeker and easier to use than the original Apple TV, but Apple is still a manipulative parent that only favours some of its children. Apple TV 2 rejects the AVI and DiVX files and charges its now usual 99 cents for a TV show. At that rate, assuming four hours of viewing a day, that would run up a pretty nifty bill of $120 a month. My satellite is safe for now.

Getting back to the shows in question, I do keep saying this but had he lived Paddy Chayefsky might well have been fascinated if not horrified at the world he imagined in 'Network.' Why? Name me any other 'liberal' figure in American life who could draw six figures worth of people to a live event and seven or eight figures worth of  U.S. TV and on-line viewers?The only other events – political or otherwise – that could pull that off would be a music star at the absolute white hot peak of fame, or Jennifer Aniston v. Angelina Jolie in a Steel Cage shoot fight at Wrestlemania XXVII.

The Stewart and Colbert twin events are of course responses to the Glenn Beck and Tea Party rallies. All have been criticized for being non-serious responses to grave and complicated issues. To which I can only respond that we have had generations of politicians deluding the public with bread and circuses – I believe the public has the right to reverse the flow. Be seeing you.