The AFTRA - JP Morgan Chase Lawsuit Explained

Inside Television 557

Publication Date: 6-10-11

By: Hubert O’Hearn





If this story was less complicated, it could serve as a perfect parable for the financial crises that continue to erupt around the globe following the near-Krakatoa explosion on 2008. This is a story about actors, a lawsuit and the structural errors of the American banking system.



The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) is the performers’ union representing some 80,000 actors, voiceover artists, recording artists and stunt persons. So you have included in that number everyone from Jennifer Lopez to Jon Bon Jovi to the guy who falls put of the building in a Jason Statham picture. Some names you know - most you never will.



Dues range from $63.90 per month, just to keep your card alive, to slightly over .73 % of earnings US per year if you’re really raking in the dough at over $100,000 per year. So that may not sound onerous, although I do remind the reader that at the lower end of the golfer Lee Trevino’s dictate that a pressure putt is one to win or lose a $5 bet when you have $2 in your pocket.



Besides negotiating day rates and worker safety with producers, what AFTRA does with the dues is build a pension fund - a bit of security for old age. As of November 2010, the AFTRA defined benefit pension fund had an asset value of slightly more than $1.7 billion. To give the reader something to compare this with, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (the majority owner of perennial loser and cash cow the Toronto Maple Leafs) has a total membership of some 173,000, roughly double that of AFTRA, and net assets of $107C billion, or 62 times the value of the AFTRA fund. Go Leafs go.



Put simply, were the total net assets of each to be divvied up in a pension sell-off, each AFTRA member would get $21,250. Each Ontario Teacher would get $618,500. Kids, this is why your parents tell you to get an education instead of going into acting.



AFTRA is currently involved in a lawsuit against J.P. Morgan Chase, one of the largest banks in the U.S. with whom the union placed $500 million of pension assets in 2007. At the end of 2007, the AFTRA fund had slightly over $2 billion in assets and was able to fund its benefits. At present, it is under-funded by approximately $600 million. What went wrong?



One can argue that the AFTRA administrators should have known better. Go buy hockey teams instead of trusting an investment bank; but wait, isn’t that counter-intuitive? Does the bank not have the responsibility to act in the best interests of its client? Well, you might like to think that, but you would be so wrong.



The bank serves many masters, but none more so than its owners - the stockholders who like their yummy quarterly dividends. It was that motivation that led J.P. Morgan Chase to invest that $500 million into Sigma, a repo fund. Unfortunately, I have to over-simplify here. A repo fund essentially works as follows. I am a bank. I will form an arm’s length company which I will sell a bunch of assets to on the promise that I will buy them back at a fixed price. The arm’s length company will make money by issuing bonds based on the bunch of assets sold to it. Every transaction reaps transaction fees, reaping profits.



In a reasonable world, say that of a well-regulated mutual fund, the bank would be expected to make some money for its work. Let’s say the bank gets 5% for its trouble. That $500 million under those terms would earn it $25 million and the bank would be expected to invest the money to make that money bank and more for AFTRA. Instead, because of a series of transactions and loans propping up the original dubious assets, J.P. Morgan Chase made - wait for it - $1.9 billion in fees for itself.



There are two sad parts to all this. First, this same bank under a different name then did virtually the same thing in the 1920s. Supposedly the practice was legislated out of existence in 1933 as part of teh New Deal reforms following the Pecota Commission (see the fine book: The Hellhound of Wall Street). Supposedly. And sadder yet: many poor men and women who followed the rules and tried to live a dream now wonder what the hell becomes of them?



Be seeing you.

Lydia Cornell: Angel

Inside Television #555

Publication Date: 5-27-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

About My Friend, Lydia Cornell

In thinking about this column, I started leafing through my internal photo album. I basically only have an internal one - I've never been all that big on taking pictures. Somehow having admissible evidence right at your fingertips of who was and where you should have been tends to block that pleasant coat of strawberry icing that the imaginative memory uses to coat the past. Things are always so much sweeter in retrospect. One never remembers pain nor pleasure quite as accurately as the feeling at the time.

But thinking back has its advantages too, provided that the meditative mood is infrequent, special and pleasant. Nostalgia therefore is best eaten like raw oysters. And yes, that imaginative memory supplies the sweet sauce mixed with pokings of horseradish and lemon.

In doing this nostalgie des temps perdu today, I realized that although I have had many unusual friends, I haven't actually had many unusual friendships. As to the first - well, when you spend the better part of your adult life in the company of theatrical and arts folk in general, the crowd tends to be livelier than most of the accounting profession. Not that I bet they don't have their kicks too. In my case, the following people have been considered in that haloed circle of one's true friends; the rings of the halo formed of molecules of laughter, shared tears, moments and extended narratives. The orbital friends as it were, as opposed to the passing comets. There are or have been (no I'm not ranking) within the halo of this louche saint, magicians, puppeteers, writers good and writers 'oh dear', the occasional politician who should have been an actor, and a lawyer-activist who was an actor and may well be again. Musicians and technicians, certainly; journalists, actors male and female, and a small group of improv actors who were my favourite gang of gangs. You get some lively evenings this way.

Yet, by and large, the friendships themselves weren't or aren't unusual. You meet, find a common interested in that you've both at least heard of Frank Lloyd Wright, Stan Musial or the contribution of Zeppo Marx to the greater good and you hit it off. Then comes laugh laugh laugh, argument, settle laugh what did you mean laugh laugh really stupid thing you do together laugh uproariously someone moves someone gets married dear god he's an idiot why hang around with him hot sex episode hot sex episode guilt normal not quite someone dies you him or the person who was the sun that held the planets that held the moons dies. You drift.

Same as you. (Just to clarify, I have not had hot sex episodes with all my friends. They have however had hot sex at some point with someone, as have I and at some discussion or another the topic has come up. Just to clarify.) All that said, and there was quite a bit, wasn't there?, my friendships have been the usual sort in that one and the other work or recreate together, meet at one another's homes or common bars and at the very least actually know one another.

One of the very best friends I have ever had I've never met, not live and in person. Yet she is one of the kindest yet courageous, talented yet giving people I have ever known. Her name is Lydia Cornell. I hope you'll enjoy our story.

Did her name ring a bell, pluck a string, sound a tinkling note? If you're say 35 or over, there's a good chance that your thoughts formed a phrase starting, 'Wasn't she the one who -' The answer is yes she is.

There was a series on ABC in the early 80s called Too Close for Comfort. Ted Knight, who had been a white hot property after his run as one of the ultimate second bananas in his role as Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He lost a lot of that heat after the six-episode disaster of The Ted Knight Show zeppelined into the ground. Ted, playing Roger Dennis, ran an escort service in New York. Yes exactly. In 2011 you might have a runaway hit; in 1978 on American broadcast television, not bloody likely. So after he had a couple of relaxing therapy experiences as a guest on The Love Boat, ABC thought there was still money in Ted Knight's name. And so the Arne Sultan-written series appeared on the air in 1980. Sultan, by the way, had been a major writer on Gilligan's Island, Get Smart, and Barney Miller so he knew how to do funny.

The set-up of the show, for those who might need further reminding, is that Ted played Henry Rush, a cartoonist whose creation was Cosmic Cow. Henry had two young adult daughters with his wife Muriel. The two daughters lived together in separate quarters in the same house below their parents. This makes Daddy nervous, as the daughters are quite attractive. Fitting the conventions of the day, the daughters were loving and compatible opposites. There was the lovely and smart brunette Jackie (played by Deborah Van Valkenburgh) and the eye-poppingly lovely blonde Sara played by, you guessed it, Lydia Cornell.

A broadcasting or media student could turn out a reasonably passable paper in the comparisons between Too Close for Comfort and its slowly expiring ABC colleague sitcom Three's Company. A quick Cliff's Notes version:

Three's Company: Two gorgeous roommates, smart brunette and slightly thick blonde

Too Close for Comfort: Sisters. Otherwise check.

Three's Company: Annoying landlord always spying to make sure no wild sexual shenanigans were going on.

Too Close for Comfort: Landlord is also Dad.

Three's Company: Thye late and missed John Ritter plays Jack Tripper the male comedy lead, who the landlord thinks is gay.

Too Close for Comfort: Jim J. Bullock plays Monroe Fiscus, who is an unattached and well-groomed single male in San Francisco who never makes a pass at the Rush sisters. Exactly.

That said, formulas in television exist for a reason. Audiences like them. One can work ones's way through the intricate family relationships of a Eugene O'Neill play to relax the mind, or one can watch the old guy get out-smarted and exasperated by the gay guy. If the writing is good and the characters likable, the show will succeed. Television is as simple as checkers to understand for rules, yet as difficult to win as a checkers tournament.

Too Close for Comfort had a very nice run of it. 129 episodes in all, with the first three seasons running on ABC and the final three in syndication - this in an age where syndicated scripted series were still very much a rarity.

I remember the show well. Very much a comedy for a family audience, my Mom always hoped that Ted Knight would wear a sweatshirt from her alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. A smart running gimmick was that Knight would wear a different college or university sweatshirt every week, with this becoming a badge, or at least an iron-on, of honour for the selected. My granddad would laugh his head off at Munro. As for me, I was 21 at the time, so as for my interests... Exactly.

There were a couple of things I could never figure out about the show. Even at age 21 I could see Cosmic Cow as a great marketing angle, so I never understood why we so rarely saw the hand puppet Henry Rush used to talk to while drawing his panels. The other puzzle was why the parts of the daughters kept being cut back. As an audience, we never really got to see Jackie and Sara realize their characters' lives, which I still think was a wasted opportunity. When the show died along with Ted Knight in real-life in 1986, there was hopeful talk of a spin-off featuring the two sisters and Munro, but Ted Knight's estate which owned the rights puzzlingly did not want to pursue a cash cow after Cosmic Cow so that was the end of that.

As to Lydia herself, she has a really unique place in the history of television. I mentioned that she was (I'll get to the 'is' in a few paragraphs) eye-poppingly beautiful, but that requires further description. Her eyes were turquoise dreams of dreams that were yet to be, hair so gold that one felt that gold must have a perfume, and of course the figure that launched a thousand erections. In an evening, at that. Yet, Lydia as Sara Rush was the last of the 'innocent sex symbols'. My most-admired novelist from England, Martin Amis, wrote in last year's The Pregnant Widow a character named Scheherazade; an impossibly beautiful and voluptuous young blonde woman who was unaware of her own power. The Pregnant Widow was set in 1970, mostly, at the first full dawn of the sexual revolution where a beautiful woman could be still be beautiful and unaware of her beauty. Sara Rush was of that line, but by 1986, no one would ever believe it again. Madonna had warmed up her lungs and Kelly Bundy was about to stride onto the set of Married...with Children.

So time passes, as it tends to do unless everything churches and physicists have told us is all an inside joke. Lydia never yet re-achieved the white hot fame of being Number Two in poster sales to Farrah Fawcett. By the by, I never had one. I tended more towards the singers in my youth - Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks guarded my bedroom like defending Valkyrie while I slept.

Still, Lydia kept working and continues to do so. She refined her comedic skills and developed as a writer. I invite the reader to do a search on YouTube for 'Lydia Cornell True Love' to see a very good selection from her one-woman show. She does not have the brassiness of the standard stand-up comic. Her voice is burnished copper and copper is a much mellower metal than brass.

Surely by now the reader is wondering, why am I telling you about all this? Is this just (...checking word count) going to be 2500 words or so of Where are They Now? Well yes; well no. Because here's the thing about Lydia: nothing - absolutely nothing I have told you about her looks and career have anything to do with what is important about her as a person. She checks melons for blemishes at Safeway - her career nay as well be that with the rather important codicil that her career grants her the opportunity to do all the important things in her life. Fame, you see, is a renewable passport to performing good works.

And this is what drew me to her in the first place. As anyone who has ever read much of my work over the years knows, I have grown frustrated and tired over the obsession with Bad Celebrity. The slogan for TV used to be borrowed from Dr. Timothy Leary: Turn on, Tune In, Tune Out. Now it's more like: Be bad, Be worse, Be famous. Charlie Sheen has as much place in an article about Lydia Cornell as Donald Trump at an ashram, but for the life of me I truly fail to understand why anyone would pay money to go to a Charlie Sheen 'concert thingie' when they know the show is so bad people walk out on it by the hundreds? The only defence is that this is what the audience is trained to think: celebrities are like Japanese Emperors or Vatican Popes - they are incapable of error, even when wrong, and must be adored.

So my quest in that part of my writing practice that's in the desktop folder marked Inside Television and on thefearandloathingpage.blogspot.com is to try and bring out stories of Good Celebrity. Because the public eventually turns, you know. I suspect that part of the reason why reality TV is rising against scripted series is that celebrities start to look like a clan of mud pigs that one no longer wants clopping their muddy hoofs across the carpeting.

I like to write about happy things. Nothing pleases me more in writing than the fact that a story I did about Alyssa Milano working to bring clean water wells to Africa is still the most-read story I've ever done.

So what is so great about Lydia Cornell? It reminds me of a story the great Charles Grodin told on CNBC talk show about Marlo Thomas. Marlo, who played maybe the first independent woman on a comedy sitcom - That Girl! - has been a well-known supporter of liberal causes for decades. Marlo talked Grodin into show-doctoring a play that was about an important issue or some such, because, as Grodin said straight-faced into the camera: "When Marlo gets involved with something and asks you to get involved, you have to say yes. You have to get involved because when MLydia Cornell gets inarlo gets involved (slightest pause) she's involved." Lydia Cornell gets involved.

It would have been on Twitter that I first ran across her, 25 years nearly since Too Close for Comfort closed down for good. And for the life of mean, I can't even remember now what the cause was she was promoting. There are so many: Autism, Brain Injuries, Young Women in Crisis, Substance Abuse or something else altogether. Lydia had her run with booze - it was the 80s, everyone had a run with something and sometimes jogged with a crowd. She has not had a drink in 15 years and is the picture of perfect health. More on that too.

Anyway, I was looking for celebrities with interesting stories too tall as part of my research for both Inside Television and my book, The Future Was Television. So I did a Google search and found out some fascinating things about the woman who would become my dear friend. She had become quite political, or at least openly political - co-hosting a radio show in Las Vegas, and through it and her Politically Hot blog Lydia had engaged in a glorious pissing match with Ann Coulter. For those who might not recognize the latter name, if Dick Cheney had transsexual fantasies (and one truly hopes he does; it would explain so much) he would imagine himself as Ann Coulter.

Now call me shallow, but when I find intelligent, bold and charitable people at the car wash, let alone the entertainment industry, I want to get to know them. So I contacted Miss Cornell and asked if she would care to grant an interview to me about her career from Too Close to Comfort to her present-day success. The response I received was both personal and kind. We would do the interview when there was time, which was fine by me.

I also then joined Lydia's Facebook page. If there was going to be time to get to know the interview subject better, then I should spend the time doing so. And without a whisper of exaggeration, Lydia's wall is my favourite page on the Internet - well there is also the football page at guardian.co.uk, but a man must have his idle pleasures.

Lydia has a great friends' list. as they aren't public personages per se I think it would be wrong to single out names, but although all sides of an issue are represented, there is usually a tone of respect between disagreeing parties. If that respect is lost through crude or callous remark, the offender is promptly smacked across the lips with -

Love? Yes, love. No one talks about love, peace and letting go of anger more than Lydia. Life has not been all mandolins and rainbows for Lydia. Her beloved younger brother Paul died a suicide death. Lydia found the body. Two divorces, being a single Mom, trying to be taken seriously as a bombshell with a brain - any or all of these things could build a bullet casing around the heart, but not with her. She actually practices what is preached.

I know that Lydia has a great book in her. Its theme will be a celebrity and how it can be both a cancer yet the fund stream to good works alike. There has not been a weekend or scarcely a week when this wonderful person has not been attending a charity event, or counseling young women, or just being like Roy Scheider in All That Jazz while looking in the mirror and saying 'It's showtime folks!' before dressing herself in the showbiz regalia and making an appearance in support of a friend. Lydia is a proud mother, a staunch and faithful friend, and claims to have the ability to speak Klingon. When we eventually do have our interview, I intend to put this to the test.

Lydia also has a regular chat show on Ustream that can be found here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/lydia-live-todhd . That show too is a joy, when it runs on Wednesday evenings from 9:30-11:30 eastern time. The show, Lydia Live is in the process of a set and presentation upgrade from Lydia, a webcam, her iPhone, and a desk lamp for lighting; but I hope it doesn't lose the charm the present show has. Interesting people talking about interesting things in interesting ways don't necessarily have to be famous. As I say, good writing and likable characters make for successful television. And for my money, Lydia is actually much more beautiful now than in her sitcom heyday. The eyes now are not directed to hide their intelligence and she exudes the much-envied look that comes from healthy living. If you watch the show you will see how her inner peace absolutely glows.

I absolutely love this woman, no more so than when our email relationship had got to the point where she asked about Kimberly - my fiancee who was struck by a brain aneurysm a year ago February (my blog on that is here: http://kimberlytheroadtorecovery.blogspot.com/ ). Kimberly lost her short term memory and is still funny and loving and beautiful and the subject of all my dreams and wishes, but will never again be who she was. So I told Lydia about the Love of My Life and the words of prayer that came back were genuine and beautiful. You want to know evidence of when someone cares? When they pray for you. From that moment on she became one of the few who form the eccentric circle I love to call my best friends. She has calmed my rage, raised my hopes and made me laugh. My prayer is that everyone who reads this can say now or someday, 'She sounds just like my friend.' God bless Lydia Cornell. God blesses us for knowing her. God will bless us for being like her.

Be seeing you.

(A song that I think describes my feelings towards my dear friend. Enjoy. As well, if anyone would like to post a link to a good and charitable cause, please comment below. I will post them all. Cheers - H http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQxZztI7264 )  )

Inside Television - Ethics and the Network

Inside Television 553

Publication Date: 5-13-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

As truly historic as theinterview was that Barack Obama granted 60Minutesregarding the decisions made leading up to the death of Osama binLaden, there was still a question left hanging that I wish had beenasked and answered. It occurred to me the night it happened, afterthe American President made the 'We got him' statement in the EastRoom of the White House and crowds started to gather in Times Squareand elsewhere to celebrate their relief.



Iwondered, What is it like, what truly goes through one's mind whenone man gives an order for another man to die? To laugh, to dream, tothink no more, to know in that tiniest split of a second that it isall over. Is that something the President thought about, or does theweight of the over-all scene - the political implications as it were- drive those kinds of considerations aside?



Don'tget me wrong. While I don't think I could have personally pulled thetrigger (and that too would have been an interesting question forObama), I'm satisfied that someone did. After all, it's a questionasked by some wise-ass student in every classroom where the TenCommandments have been taught for the last seventy years.



Teacher:Thou shalt not kill.

Student:What about Hitler?

Teacher:Yes, you can kill Hitler.

Student:Yay!

Teacher:But first you have to finish your homework. Then you can kill Hitler.

Student:But my homework is about killing Hitler!

Teacher:(sigh) You're going to law school some day, aren't you Bobby?



But I digress. The point is that in an age where people will more or less proudly proclaim on the cover of People or in a TMZ interview everything they’ve smoked, stolen or snogged, the one great reluctance is to delve deeply into personal ethics. What are a person’s ‘Hitler exceptions’ to those Ten Commandments or other such code of conduct? Sorry, now you’re getting personal.

That can apply to media in general and television networks in specific as well as the individual. I was putting in a comment on a story on guardian.co.uk the other day when I was prompted to do a quick survey by the world’s greatest on-line newspaper. It was most interesting as it was asking for input on the Guardian’s own ethical stances. How flattering to be asked.



I won’t repeat the entire survey here, but I am going to adapt some of the questions for TV. What do you think? Should a network:



1) Refuse controversial (i.e. sexist or homophobic) advertising?

2) Admit to a political slant if it has one? (and they all have one)

3) Make a concerted effort to put forward the concerns and grievances of disadvantaged peoples in both its news and entertainment programming?

4) Look to put environmental concerns forward in news, entertainment and advertising?

5) Refuse to air or endorse religious content?

6) Invite complete and free comment, or moderate viewer commentary?



I believe these are all legitimate questions for media to answer and for viewers to consider. Consider the answers you would like your own media outlets to give, and then see what they actually do. If you like what you see - endorse. If you don’t - complain. Be seeing you.

Inside Television: Won't Get Fooled Again

Inside Television 552


Publication date: 5-6-11

By: Hubert O’Hearn





I was glad to have run the three-part Actress series that concluded last week for a couple of reasons. One, it always feel good to assist in getting over a local artist; and second you were spared three weeks of analysis of the election campaign. You may send appropriate thank you gifts care of this paper. Unmarked bills will do just fine.



Now that it is all over and we have once more realized the prescience of Pete Townshend when he ended Won’t Get Fooled Again with the pessimistic couplet ‘meet the new boss/same as the old boss’ there are elements of the media campaign that bear examination. So let’s have a look at these Portraits at the Exhibition.

The Telling Moment: The most important moment of this entire campaign was seen by only a handful of the readers of this column. During the French-language debate, NDP leader Jack Layton took the tar baby of constitutional negotiations with Quebec, bounced it on his knee and said (metaphorically obviously) let’s play.



This did two things almost simultaneously. One, a lethargic Bloc Quebecois campaign was kicked to the curb as Quebeckers saw a national party endorsing their interests and ran to it. The resultant and inevitably referred to ‘surge’ (I kept looking for General David Petraeus riding in a convoy with Layton) in the polls in turn boosted NDP fortunes across the rest of the country.



The Fawlty Towers Issue: Remember that episode of Fawlty Towers where Basil hits his head and keeps cautioning Manuel and Polly, ‘Don’t mention the war!’ to a group of German tourists. Outside of Layton flatly stating that an NDP government would bring the troops home from Afghanistan promptly and with dispatch, the whole question of Canada’s defence policies went ignored. This might have been an opportunity for the Liberals to have made a strong case for how they would govern differently than the Conservatives - they had invented Pearsonian peacekeeping after all - but for one little problem.



You Get What You Pay For: The Liberals had anointed Michael Ignatieff as leader without a leadership convention because they saw him as a second Pierre Trudeau. Ignatieff had a PhD., had appeared on television frequently and the examination stopped there. So, one reasonably expected that their campaign would feature the illuminating ideas of Michael Ignatieff. Where were they?



Well, they were well-hidden and for good reason. Perhaps the best thing Jean Chretien did was keep Canada out of the Iraq war. Ignatieff endorsed the war, to the point of contracting himself out to the U.S. Defense Department as a consultant. Worse yet, he takes a benign neglect stance towards the torture of political prisoners. These tend to be ideas not endorsed by the majority of Canadian voters. I suspect, without knowing it, that both the NDP and Conservatives had attack ads on these positions at the ready if the Liberal campaign had gained any traction.



Nixon’s The One: Richard Nixon won a crushing victory over George McGovern in 1972 despite leading a government cloaked in secrecy and sleazeball tactics against its opponents. Before anyone thinks I have my dates mixed up, while it is true that the full Watergate scandal would not break open until after the election, the attempted repression of the Pentagon Papers was known already.



Nixon won on the promise of strong law and order in a tightly-controlled ‘run from the Rose Garden’ campaign with no free interplay with journalists and imaging designed to present him as a regular guy. He bowls! He laughs! He plays piano! Does any of this sound remotely familiar? Stephen Harper and his crew learned well.



Ah well, four more years. Be seeing you.

Campaign 2011: After the Gold Rush

Politics for Joe 25


By: Hubert O’Hearn

For: Lake Superior News

May 4, 2011



I was lying in a burned out basement


With the full moon in my eye


I was hoping for replacement


When the sun burst through the sky






There was a band playing in my head


And I felt like getting high,


Thinking about what a friend had said


I was hoping it was a lie


- Neil Young ‘After the Gold Rush’



It seems like an appropriate enough place to start. Neil Young is the greatest songwriter Canada has ever produced. After the Gold Rush, both album and song came out in 1970, with Richard Nixon in the White House and growing divisions splitting generations as military and surveillance needs with accompanying near-paranoid government secrecy conflicted with desires for freedom, peace and social equality.

A leader for our times...

But that was America then and this is Canada now. We’re about to find out if the Opposition warnings about a Conservative ‘hidden agenda’ are true and we’ll have four years worth of evidence to look at by the time the next Federal election rolls around. 1500 days, more or less. I’ve set my alarm.



It would be unfair to sound an alarm. One has to be gracious about the election result - hope for the best and wish the winners well. And I remember Brian Mulroney’s back-to-back majorities. We managed to survive those after a massive job of painful financial restructuring by Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, so we’ll manage to survive four years of Stephen Harper. But I’m not letting my passport expire either.



That last sentence may have gone through Michael Ignatieff’s head during his concession speech Monday night - right after he said that he would stay on as leader as long as he was wanted or needed. You may, if you wish, write your own punchline here.



The NDP deserve congratulations with a stunning 150% increase from their previous high-water mark of 43 seats. Still, 57 members (out of 102) in Quebec will present its own problem. The NDP surge came about after the French-language debate, wherein Jack Layton offered to re-open constitutional talks with Quebec. Has this just been the separatiste vote changing light blue for day-glo orange shirts? One wonders. Regardless, there will be definite pressure on Layton to keep advancing Quebec’s brief which history has taught us does not tend to endear a party - any party - to anglo-Canada.



There will be pressure mounted from certain quarters for an NDP-Liberal merger. I’ve wavered back and forth on this one over the years. There is absolutely no doubt that several of the Liberals’ best programs over the years have come from CCF/NDP ideas - universal health care being the most cited example. But for the nation as a whole I rather hope this dioes not happen. Why?



I referred earlier to a political polarization building in Canada. Just dealing with announced policies, we will be having a right-wing agenda for the next four years: increased defence spending, mega-prisons, monetarist trickle-down economics and shoot ‘em if you got ‘em. The last thing this country needs is an American-style left-right blue state-red state rift. I grant you that I carry a nostalgic affection for the Liberals. But Idon’t let nostalgia run my brain either.



There is a chance that the Liberals may just wither and die, gone with the wind to wherever Social Credit’s ashes blow. They have run three bad campaigns in a row, unable to put together a cogent message and deliver it in an attractive manner to the public. At some level though that is just a problem that can be solved by getting a new advertising guy and a speechwriter. Their core problem is like that of an ageing sports team that one day looks up and realizes that there are no prospects to call up.



I read on-line that Justin Trudeau is likely a serious contender for the Liberal leadership. That is a terrible idea. As I say, I don’t let nostalgia run my brain. A Liberal insider whose opinions I take seriously has the following take: “Real nice guy, but a lightweight.” But I ask you to name three contenders for the leadership. Bob Rae will be too old although he can capably man the fort until a leadership convention a year from now. And if the Liberals still have any sense at all, they will wait at least a year.



Well, enough of all this for now. To apply a little Neil Young symmetry:



Don't let it bring you down


It's only castles burning,


Find someone who's turning


And you will come around.


- Don’t Let it Bring You Down

Campaign 2011: They Shoot Horses Don't They?

Politics for Joe 24

By: Hubert O'Hearn

For: Lake Superior News

April 28, 2011

I don't know what's going to happen on Monday any more than you or any of the national pollsters. The spread of the three most recently released polls is:

EKOS

CPC: 33.9

NDP: 27.9

LPC: 24.0

Harris-Decima/CP

CPC: 35

NDP: 30

LPC: 22

Nanos/Globe/CTV (three-day rolling average)

CPC: 36.6

NDP: 30.4

LPC: 21.9

EKOS has under-sold the Tories since Day One. It's methodology of random automated calls that do not control for who answers the phone may be causing for a disproportionate number of youth respondents - after all, who answers the phone in your house?

Still, it has been an incredible election and for all I have tut-tutted covering the horse race, it has been a helluva horse race. Pretty much any possible result is still in play, from Tory majority to NDP majority. The Liberal horse has pulled up lame and will be shot at dawn. At that, one has to wonder how deep the commitment of the anti-Harper vote which has perched itself on the NDP branch really is. And at that will the Green vote (somewhere between 4-7% declared) scatter itself over to the NDP?

The three things that I think we safely do know are:

1) The Conservatives will come out of that night with the most seats

2) The Bloc Quebecois will be going the way of the Creditistes. And if

you don't know what that was, that's exactly my point.

2) There will be a sea change of leaders in the next year or two. Gilles

Duceppe will regret not having taken over the PQ when he had the chance. A majority-less Harper will be moved along. And Michael

Ignatieff's horse will be shot at dawn.

Change partners and dance!

Unless the declared vote for the NDP absolutely implodes back into the teens (and I truly can't see it happening) we do have a real shift in Canadian politics. At the very least, from now through all foreseeable future elections the NDP must be seen as true and equal contenders for government formation. The real question will be, will the Liberal Party (Canada) go the way of the Liberal Party (UK)? That has been the dark boogeyman that has lived in the shadows of Liberal bedrooms for years. Once passed by the NDP, could the Liberals ever elbow their way back to the front?

I suspect that we will have the 1985 Ontario result all over again. Harper will get first crack at forming the government, and it still could be a majority. But if the numbers break, ballpark-ishly at:

Conservatives: 130

Reckless Coalition: 180

Under those circumstances I think Harper and the Tories are done for. The Reckless Coalitioners (and someone has to start a band or improv group called Reckless Coalition) will turn the Tory argument around. We can't go back to the polls again because the country needs stability etc. etc.

I do owe the reader an apology. I wanted to write more, but I picked up a couple of writing contracts and money trumps passion when one has bills to pay. But if you're reading this before the polls close, if you haven't voted yet - do. And if you don't, then know your role and shut your mouth because you've lost the right to bitch for the next four years. And what fun is that?

Be seeing you.

Actress (Part Three)

Inside Television 551

Publication Date: 4-29-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

Actress Part Three. This is the third and final column in the series on Lisa DiGiacinto. Where we left the story last week, Lisa had left Calgary for the major media production centre of Vancouver. She was leaving on a high, having featured in the stage production of Red Light Winter and been nominated for Best Actress at the Alberta Film and Television Awards for her role in the short film Deadwalkers, available on iTunes.

I've wanted to explain to you the life of the working actress through the story of Lisa's life thus far. What have we established? If I've done my job, you know that she is lovely and talented and ambitious and dedicated and teachable and had established a solid resume in stage, film and radio. So what more do you need? The world's her oyster and pass her the pearl necklace.

Oysters and pearls. A pearl - in case you didn't know or in case you have forgotten - is born of pain. The little oyster is irritated by a grain of sea sand. It hurts. It hurts and the hurt won't go away so the oyster grows this shiny substance that hardens and smooths around the sand hoping it won't hurt any more. We who just see the result thinks the pearl is all prettiness on the half shell. The oyster knows better, but who ever thought to talk to an oyster?

This story called Actress has been in the works for a year now. When I got back in touch Lisa through Facebook I knew that her story was the story every aspiring actor, and every smug audience member who thought that Life is Hard but Acting is Easy needed to know. I asked her last summer what the highs and lows were. She sent me an audio file last August. It was devastating.

We don't have room in a newspaper column to quote from it, so let me summarize the pain. After a year and a half in Vancouver, things were going less than well. Lisa had passed age 30 and that is a dangerous time for an actress. To paraphrase from a play I directed once called Four Dogs and a Bone, and actress gets three lives: Ingenue, Star, and Someone's Maiden Aunt who's dying of cancer. In the ridiculous age standards of Big Entertainment - and they are our standards dear friends, for Hollywood gives us what we ask them - Lisa was in her prime time, but where was primetime?

Worse, one has to exist. The old joke that inside every actor is a waiter is true. Also inside every actor is a receptionist, office temp, booth attendant, all manner of jobs where the employer hires you on the understanding that if you have to book off for an audition - no problem! Then you need the time and that is a problem.

And it can get very, very lonely. Working actors are surrounded by bonhomie - good times! Cheers! But the relationships are temporary and often born of a quiet desperation. No one can ever fault an actor for finally saying 'The hell with it.'

But Lisa never said those words. She has overcome. Cast in the feature film Quiver over the internet on Skype, she returns home to Thunder Bay in a few weeks to begin shooting. And, her present day job hits a sweet spot for an actress. She works for a casting agency in Vancouver. They will surely understand an actor's needs.

How does Lisa DiGiacinto summarize her own story? 'I feel that the universe (all my jobs and the industry) is all finally supporting me and that I am extremely excited to see what the near future has to offer me! I just feel that some major successes are just around the corner.. but I needed to go through the tough times to get to where I am now, it was all part of the journey.'

Irony and pain and talent and excitement. That - that is an Actress.

Be seeing you.

(Thank you for reading and, I hope, sharing. Just to inject a petty commercial note, this site is supported by readers clicking on the ads. HINT. Cheers - H)