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ARCHIVES -- APRIL 2010  

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APRIL 26, 2010 -- MAY 2, 2010

ALAN SILLITOE, THE LEGACY OF A LONG-DISTANCE WRITER

As an expat, anytime I want to be transported back to the hard northern towns of my youth, with their grey slate roofs, red brick walls, and damp backyards and backlanes (which I miss terribly) I read my Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner collected short stories.

The last lines of the last story, the Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller, are maybe the most moving lines of any book I've read.

"I watched him. He ignored the traffic lights, walked diagonally across the wide wet road, then ran after a bus and leapt safely on to its empty platform.

And I with my books have not seen him since. It was like saying goodbye to a big part of me, for ever."

On hearing today's news, I also feel like I have said goodbye to a big part of me.

Read the article U.K.TIMES/British writer, Alan Sillitoe, "the angry young man," dies in London, age 82

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They were in fact Indignant Young Men and therefore well within the mainstream English tradition. The difference was that for the first time a generation of Englishmen were more indignant about the failures of their own country rather than the shortcomings of every other.

Unlike the Sixties radicals, the AYM despised the Establishment not for being the Establishment but for being such an ineffectual one, for presiding over the obsequies of former greatness rather than reviving the corpse. GB had turned into Petty Britain and they were appalled at how drab and insular it had become.

All was wretchedness and absurdity. Salisbury had yielded to Sainsbury. Eden and MacMillan stalked the land, well, shuffled about, trying out the deck chairs and pronouncing them splendid even as the chill waters lapped over the gunwales and gushed through the portholes.

These were not so much Angry Young Men as Bewildered Lost Boys raging at the customs and conventions that had ceased to have meaning just when they needed them most.

Read the article U.K. TELEGRAPH/Alan Sillitoe: Who are you calling angry?

THE SUM OF HER PARTS: THE $12-MILLION-DOLLAR-WOMAN

I think we need to throw some credit to her agents and managers ...they have done an amazing job . Figure they get $3.00 million of the take expenses.

And I confess here and now, her persona has the ability to seize attention...adulation and derision...

Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken :
" Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

Read the article DAILY BEAST/Palin made $12m last year

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Palin is a media phenomenon. It could go on forever - at a somewhat muted pace. Or, it could be over in a heartbeat. Either way, she's a capitalist and it's clear she quit the governorship to make a killing, which she has done. What's kind of distressing is the extent to which this is about physical appearance.

Palin was something of a beauty queen. Scott Brown was a poster boy/model. If you think about those who make it in our political culture, physical appearance is a very important piece of the puzzle.

Under the new rules of the game, would there be room for a George Washington or an Abe Lincoln. Jefferson was a handsome guy, but most of our Founding Fathers were correctly revered for their character, principles and ideas.

Read the article DAILY BEAST/Palin made $12m last year

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Palin may be willfully ignorant, but she ain't dumb. She is extremely mediagenic and knows how to manipulate resentful, half-informed crowds (both the old-fashioned flesh-and-blood kind and the cybercrowd kind) to follow a simple message: (authentic, "real American") Us vs. (effete, left-wing, "anti-American") Them. And she is laughing all the way to the bank on the denunciations of her and her tactics by the commentariat.

To anyone who thinks this stuff doesn't work, at least for a while until people see the cynicism behind, it, I recommend two movies: "A Face In The Crowd" (1957; directed by Elia Kazan, starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau, and a very young Lee Remick) and "Nashville" (1975; directed by Robert Altman, starring Henry Gibson, Lily Tomlin, Ronee Blakley, Ned Beatty, Keith Carradine, Shelley Duval, Karen Black, others).

Read the article NEW YORK MAGAZINE/How Sarah Palin became a singular national industry

APRIL 12, 2010 -- APRIL 25, 2010

MALCOLM MCCLAREN , PROVOCATEUR OF PUNK

I used to knock around with Malcolm a bit at Goldsmiths. I liked him. I liked his grin and his attitude to life. He was nothing like the student types of the late 60s, he was unconventional like I was myself (though we were different - I was the college skinhead), and we occasionally shared delight in something subversive. He used to drop in to the college bar even when he stopped studying there, and I remember him in a tartan drape suit from his shop, and with his hair slicked back in a DA.

I left London, and suddenly his face was all over the papers as manager of some band called the Sex Pistols, and I was thinking "What? What?"

It's not a comfortable feeling when a contemporary dies, particularly if it is someone you know, even vaguely. He was controversial - the Ronnie Biggs thing was weird - but I wish he was still alive, for the simple reason that the world is now a slightly more boring place.

Read the article GUARDIAN/How I got Malcolm McClaren to stand for mayor of London

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To all you nobodies who haven't the self-awareness to just remember the guy as another human being who brought a bit of joy into many lives:

He was an influence, in the same way the Pistols were. The stunts they pulled together shook this country up at a time when it needed it. It's all well sitting here in 2010 - surrounded by the anemic, wipe-clean, culture we now suck up - but in the mid 70's they were (for just a blink of an eye) the most dangerous thing that had happened to music.

That influence lived on and changed things. Clichéd as it is.

Just wish the guy RIP and be on your way.

Read the article GUARDIAN/How I got Malcolm McClaren to stand for mayor of London

APRIL 5, 2010 -- APRIL 11, 2010

AIJALON MAHLI GOMES --  EIGHT YEARS HARD LABOR IN NORTH KOREA

Okay, I dislike NK as much as the next person, but maybe, just maybe, Americans should actually stay out of other countries when we're told to. It's not our job to run into these areas head-first as civilians and then try to get attention and help from the government when we're caught. It just adds stress to an already problematic situation. Also, it's shocking, I know, but entering illegally is not smiled upon even in western countries. Again, NK seems horrible, but that's no reason to act so stupidly.

Read the article CNN/N. Korea: American sentenced to eight years

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Americans constantly refuse to learn lessons. North Korea has their laws and has made it quite clear Americans were not welcome there. When this idiot and those before him violated their laws entering the country illegally, it was criminal in that government's eyes; therefore, they were punished as criminals must be accordingly.

I am not a defender of North Korea, but I am a staunch believer if one violates another countries laws and are caught . . . guess what?.

Regardless of their intentions, humanitarian or not, you do not go around to other countries and break their laws.

Read the article CNN/N. Korea: American sentenced to eight years

MARCH 29, 2010 -- APRIL 4, 2010

ANN COULTER BLAMES CANADA

“You guys used to be so cool. You were smokers. You had epic hockey fights. We had half our comedians from Canada. Now you’re all a bunch of girls named Francois.” -- GLOBE AND MAIL

I don't think the protesters prevented her from speaking; her security cancelled the event. I do believe Ann Coulter decided not to speak (after having spoken at Rideau Hall at an expensive dinner) and then blamed the protesters for shutting her down.

The protesters were not violent, but they were very vociferous in their criticism of Ann Coulter. And there is nothing wrong with that. All the power to them.

I do believe Ms. Coulter plans to play the wronged party and turn this event in her favour. Interesting that she mentioned threats but no one can verify them. I will be watching with interest.

Read the article CBC NEWS/Ann Coulter's adventures in Ottawa

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Poor Ann. It seems that a large number of people were exercising their right to free speech and free assembly by protesting her hate-filled diatribes.

And how predictable that she would complain that her own right to offend was trampled on!

GLOBE AND MAIL/Coulter's Shutout

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Whether you like/agree with/lust after Ann Coulter or not, what happened at the University of Ottawa was sadly not an isolated incident. In Canada these days, anyone who publicly expresses an opinion contrary to the prevailing "liberal" agenda is invariably vilified, ridiculed, condemned and, all too often, silenced.

Oppressing or forbidding expressions of opinion is not indicative of either a free and open society or of a tolerant one. Indeed, it appears that those who once screamed loudest for acceptance and tolerance are the very same who now howl their intolerance of others.

My grandmother used to say: "To each, his own." I don't agree with 99.9% of most people's opinions these days, but I do respect their right to voice those opinions. This respect, not of people's opinions but of their right to express them, is the hallmark of civilised discourse. We appear to have lost that in Canada.

With the Coulter incident, thugs ruled the day; we can only pray that such a brutish, narrow-minded fascist mentality doesn't also one day rule the land.

Read the article GLOBE AND MAIL/Ann Coulter's speech cancelled

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Go ahead, launch the complaint.

Some of your countrymen will wholeheartedly support you. Some of your countrymen will use this as yet another confirmation of your ineptitude

And in the hail of this, a Majority of Canadians will still not want your style of "political commentary" in our Country.

We are a very tolerant country, unless you are preaching intolerance. do ya get it?

Read the article GLOBE AND MAIL/Ann Coulter prepares human rights complaint

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