(Not So) OK, Boomer (Anymore).

Traps'RUs

HobbesianVille

In my opinion, one of the more insightful columnists writing about the passing parade in greater Lotuslandia is Jody Paterson.

A couple of weeks ago Ms. Paterson's blog came back to life and, most recently, she wrote about how her generation, which is also mine, has no stories about how bad things were in their youth.

You know, those stories about playing hockey with frozen hunks of dung and/or going to school in a shoebox.

And why is that?

Because, as Ms. Paterson points out, we who grew up on the tail end of the post-war boom actually had it really, really good back in the days of yore:

"...It struck me the other day that the Boomer generation that I'm part of just might be the first generation in Canada whose own stories will instead be of how good they had it compared to their grandkids. 

Let me tell ya, kid, back in my day we had houses for people. We didn't even have a word for homelessness, and you camped for fun, not because it was that or nothing. We burned through natural resources like there was no tomorrow. (Turns out that last part was true.) 

Back in my day, we made real money, and if we hit a bad spell, could fall back on employment insurance that actually covered most of a person's bills. We had doctors. Weather was just weather, not an ominous portent of end of days..."

I would add that we of a certain age also had a good post-secondary education available to us at a cost of almost nothing at all.*

The larger point?

There really was a concerted class levelling that went on in these here parts back in the '60's and '70's that expanded possibilities for everyone.

Which brings me to a recent piece in Jacobin by David Moscrop, whose stuff I also have a lot of time for, about how the majority of Canadians these days don't trust, essentially, anyone:

"...Beyond political and media institutions, social cohesion is also thin in Canada — and trending downward. In March, Ipsos found that “only 30% of adults say most people can be trusted against 70% who believe that you can’t be too careful dealing with people.” Once again, the data is conditioned by education and income level — those with more education and income trust one another more..."

So.

Why is that (part deux)?

Well, Mr. Moscrop, who is a young guy, thinks that in large part this is because folks today have lost or will never see any of those nice, and truly important, things that we Boomers had when we were young:

"...Polite Canadian society encourages the wringing of one’s hands about low trust. It makes for good columns and think pieces, fascinating TV and radio, and endless polls and reports. Evidently, all of this fretting is for nothing, because the arc of trust is bending toward its antithesis despite the consternation of elites. It’s not surprising. The market economy and class are rarely discussed when trust is the topic of conversation, even if everyone will skirt around the issue that plainly sits right in the middle of the room. Come on, people. It’s a class issue. It’s an economic issue. And the origin of low trust, and thus its deleterious manifestations, is a political failure by those who run government and shape the economy. The origin of low trust is decades of capitalist depredation and the thinning out of the state in such a way that working people have been left to fend for themselves in a Hobbesian state of struggle..."

I, for one, think he just might be right.

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*Longtime reader EG and I have discussed this point before...My first year as an undergraduate student cost me $540. As a result, those of us who went to school at that time could quite easily finance university with summer jobs alone or, at worst, with small student loans that didn't cripple us financially until we reached middle age or beyond (the latter was C.'s situation).

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COP-27...Look Under The (5th) Big W.

It'sAMadMadMad

MadWorldVille


From George Monbiot's lede, in the Guardian, on the failure of the recent COP-27 meeting to do anything whatsoever:

...So how have heads of government chosen to use this miracle (of life on earth)? ...

{snip}

...They have chosen to do nothing. Nothing that has a realistic chance, in this contest of probabilities, of changing our trajectory. They had a choice at the Cop27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh of defending the habitable planet or appeasing their sponsors. 

They went with the sponsors...

So.

Given all that.

And given that, as Mr. Monbiot points out, it has been going on like that for the last fifty years straight, it's pretty hard not to ask yourself why.

As in...

Why does this keep happening?

Well, how about this?

There are more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists at the Cop27 climate conference, a rise of more than 25% from last year and outnumbering any one frontline community affected by the climate crisis.

There are 636 lobbyists from the oil and gas industries registered to attend the UN event in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. At Glasgow, the figure was 503, which outnumbered the delegation of any single country. This year the only country with a larger delegation is the United Arab Emirates, hosts of Cop28 next year, which has 1,070 registered delegates, up from 176 last year...

In other words the lunatics, errrr, 'sponsors' are running the asylum.

And, of course, it is in their best interests that the quo stays status as long as carbonly possible.

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Re: Header...The five 'W's' of journalism are who, what, when, where and why...

As for the image at the top of the post...That's the gang looking for the pot of gold under the 'Big W' in 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'

And, while Canada may not quite be the UAE when it comes to rolling around in petro dollars 24/7, we, too, took our share of 'sponsors' along for the ride.


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O'Brien's Nocturne (M. Ward Cover)

 

1989 was a very good year for C. and me.

One thing I don't mention in the bit of blather after the tune was that it was also around this time that we got hooked on minor league baseball, thanks to all those free tickets that Stu Kehoe gave out, which stood us in good stead a few years later when we began our adventures in America...

It's The Ratings, Stupid.

 

While Gil Scott-Heron may have been right about the revolution not being televised, that does not rule out the stupid.

Being televised, I mean. 

Especially if said stupid garners big time ratings.

To wit, here is the Washington Post's Margaret Sullivan writing about why cable news in general, and CNN in particular, couldn't lay off the stupid back in the salad days of golden escalator rides, if not showers:

Just a few years ago, CNN seemed intent on giving Donald Trump as much help as possible for his (2016) presidential run.

The network obsessively covered the candidate’s raucous speeches in the Republican presidential primary. It treated his campaign like entertainment, rather than a prelude to autocracy. It ran chyrons like “Breaking News: Standing By for Trump to Speak” over footage of an empty stage and hired Trump loyalists such as Corey Lewandowski and Kayleigh McEnany as talking heads to boost his reputation...

{snip}

... (Then CNN boss Jeff) Zucker and Trump shared a common goal: TV ratings.

Trump, quite accurately, has called himself a “ratings machine.” The endless media attention he has commanded is a testament to that.

And Zucker? A former NBC executive once called him a “ratings whore.” A reporter who worked for him at CNN put it more genteelly, telling New York Times columnist Ben Smith that ratings were always the executive’s “North Star.”...

And it wasn't just the cables who were hooked on the money that Trump's ratings while spouting the stupid would make for them. It was the network's too as the late, great Eric Boehlert noted at the time (i.e. the spring of 2016):

...CBS executive chairman, president, and CEO Les Moonves recently insisted the Trump campaign "may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS," adding, "Donald's place in this election is a good thing."....

****

But that was then and this is now.

From Digby, writing about how the cable networks dealt with a particularly stupid announcement earlier this week:

...The hand-picked Mar-a-Lago crowd was straining to stay engaged as Trump rambled on. First CNN cut away and then Fox News followed suit — MSNBC didn’t cover it at all — switching to their pundit panels even as he was still talking. That was when we finally got a glimpse of how this pseudo-event was going to be received by the media...

Hmmmm...

One can only wonder if Mr. Trump will take this latest development as a sign that the only way to get those ratings and networks back on his side is to ratchet the stupid up to, say, infinity.

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HST Sunday...Bunglers, Swine Or Both?

YouMoveLikeACat

MartyVille

"There are a lot of people in this country - editors, congressmen and lawyers among others - who like themselves a lot better today for the way they reacted when the Watergate octopus got hold of them.

There are also a lot of people who got dragged down forever by it - which is probably just as well for the rest of us, because many of them were exposed as either dangerous bunglers, ruthless swine or both..."

Fear and Loathing In Washington: The Boys in the Bag.

Rolling Stone #164, July 4, 1974.

****

First, from the inner sanctum of the intellectual, hard-headed heart of the Murdoch family's media empire:

Second, from American conservatism's longtime media apologist-in-chief:

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Subheader?...My favourite line from the bungled, but most certainly not dangerous 'Where The Buffalo Roam' wherein Thompson says it to the Wenner stand-in, played by Bruno Kirby, after yet another prank by the former that freaks out the latter.

Why no link to the Thompson piece still wholly owned by Jann Wenner?...Well, it turns out the king of the ten percenters has decided to put most of HST's stuff behind a paywall...Personally, I was more than happy to use that as an excuse to rifle through my dog-eared copy of 'The Great Shark Hunt'  (with the Bank of America ATM slip book mark, circa 1994), to find the above quote.



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Wheat Kings (Tragically Hip Cover)

Late breaking story on the CBC:

..."Even if David became prime minister, the day that David dies, the first line of his obituary is going to be 'David Milgaard, who spent 23 years in prison for a wrongful conviction and later went on to become Prime Minister"...

Sadly, Mr. Milgaard passed away earlier this year and his wrongful conviction and longterm inprisonment was, indeed, the first line of his obituary.

Still, it was good to read in pretty much every single one of his obits that Mr. Milgaard built a good life for himself and his loved ones despite all that we did to him.

Here's Gord Downie's lyrical and the band's musical version of Mr. Milgaard's story, written and first recorded thirty years ago now (which is really, really hard to believe)...

 

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Image at the top of the post?...The greatest junior hockey line I ever saw, the Brandon Wheat Kings' Ray Allison, Bill Derlago and Brian Propp, from back in the days (i.e. the late '70's) when I was still really paying attention.

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We Are All Frances McDormand Now.

There is a scene from that ode to the 1970's, 'Almost Famous' where Frances McDormand, playing young William's Mom shouts, 'Don't Do Drugs!' to comic effect.

Why comic?

Well, back then recreational drug use really was not a super big deal.

How do I know this?

Because, while I was no young William/Cameron Crowe, I too was a kid coming of age in the 1970's.

Of course, that would all gradually change as the kids and the idols of that age got older and, for some of them at least, excess and addiction gradually took hold.

The point is, though, that none of my friends went to a party on a Saturday night took something that somebody gave them in the heat/fun of the moment, and keeled over dead.

That is not the case now. 

And it's not just the fentanyl.

The following is from a recent piece in The Tyee by Moira Wyton:

...Data released today (Nov 7th) by the BC Coroners Service shows the toll of an increasingly contaminated drug supply that makes it nearly impossible for anyone to know how much and what they are taking.

At least 81 per cent of samples contained fentanyl, an opioid up to 100 times as potent as heroin, which began to take hold in B.C.’s criminalized drug supply in 2015. Extreme fentanyl concentrations have contributed to 16 per cent of deaths in the last year, compared to 8 per cent pre-March 2020.

Fentanyl’s even more potent analogue, carfentanil, has contributed to 79 deaths this year, and 190 the year before.

More and more benzodiazepines, a class of sedatives that don’t respond to naloxone, are present in the drug supply, making poisonings more likely to be fatal and more difficult to reverse when combined with opioids. Since July, the benzo analogue etizolam has been found in 38 per cent of samples, and contributed to as many as 55 per cent of deaths in some months.

While the drug supply and resources vary across the province, the crisis continues to affect every community in B.C...

Ms. Wynton's piece is mostly focussed on the need for a safe supply for the folks that are in the throes of addiction which is something I very much agree with.

However, in addition, me I'm planning to make like Frances McDormand every chance I get when it comes to my own kids and all the kids I work with that like to go out and have fun with their friends on a Saturday night.

OK?



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Who's Happiest About The Red Wave That Wasn't?

AllTheirCrazies'RBelong
ToThemVille


So.

Who's happiest about the fact that the US Republicans made historically low midterm gains?

How about Dark Brandon, who certainly out did Obama given that Barry O lost 60, plus, house seats in his first midterm election?

Of course....

Or, how about people who actually care about what happens to other people as well as what happens to them and there's?

Even more, of course.

But what about the crazies in the Republican caucus who will now be able to run around stomping their well-shod feet and screaming like a mini-army of Joe Manchins on speedballs demanding the fealty of whomever finally becomes their own Ghost-of-a-John-Boehner house leader?

Well...

...Some House Republicans, like Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., are “just as happy with a slim majority” because it would benefit them, Politico reported.

“I mean, look at what Joe Manchin has done in the Senate as the one deciding vote, right? I would love for the Massie caucus to be relevant. If there’s a one seat majority, my caucus has one person. It’s me. So I can decide whether a bill passes or not,” Massie told the outlet. “I’d be the wrong guy if you’re trying to find somebody who’s heartbroken that we don’t have a 40-seat majority.”...

And whadd'ya know...

The foot stomping of the hopped-up mini-me's trying to force star chamber hearings on, say, vaccinations, has already begun...

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Hey!...Good news on the local bloggodome front...Jody Paterson is back!


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The Chasming.

Who'sWedging

WhoVille


No matter what happens with the US'ian midterm election returns you're sure to be reading all sorts of aftermath stories noting that the American populace is more divided than ever.

Heckfire.

Sulzberger family sinecure David Brooks even did his best to get out in front of this colour-free big media wave to come when he slipped stuff like the following into his New York Times column late last week:

"... America has riven itself into two different cultures. It’s very hard for the party based in one culture to reach out and win voters in the other culture — or even to understand what people in the other culture are thinking.

As I’ve shuttled between red and blue America over decades of reporting on American politics, I’ve seen social, cultural, moral and ideological rifts widen from cracks to chasms..."

But here's the thing.

Like many a never Trumper who, starting in January of 2017, suddenly saw the light when it comes to the divided state of the American body politic, the good Mr. Brooks didn't always do what he's doing now.

In point of fact, Mr. Brooks once wrote stuff like the following, over and over and over again, for William Kristol in the Weekly Chasm Maker Standard, pre-Trump and Tea Party, in this specific case 2003, when a super-fine fellow named Bush stood on an aircraft carrier off of San Diego and declared the mission in Iraq accomplished:

"...My guess is that the Bush haters will grow more vociferous as their numbers shrink. Even progress in Iraq will not dampen their anger, because as many people have noted, hatred of Bush and his corporate cronies is all that is left of their leftism. And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. And so they will still have their rallies, their alternative weeklies, and their Gore Vidal polemics. They will still have a huge influence over the Democratic party, perhaps even determining its next presidential nominee. But they will seem increasingly unattractive to most moderate and even many normally Democratic voters who never really adopted outrage as their dominant public emotion..."

Put that in your once-a-week appearance forever (no matter how many wedges he has driven into cracks to create chasms) PBS Newshour pipe and smoke it!

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If you would like to learn just how far down the depravity curve Mr. Brooks and his ilk have slid, Driftglass is the guy for you...

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The Shape Of Things To Come...

ABetterCityForWhom

ExactlyVille

The new mayor and council of Vancouver were sworn into office earlier today in, as long term city watcher Raymond Tomlin noted, "the luxuriously comfortable and city-owned Orpheum Theatre".

Mr. Tomlin also noted that, "Monday afternoon’s festivities (were) an ‘invite only’ affair".

Furthermore, according to the invite itself, the dress for the event was "business attire".

Hmmmm...

Comforting (for) the luxuriously comfortable, perhaps?

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When The Skies Of November Get Gloomy

FellasIt'sTooRough

ToFeedYaVille

One thing that never changes for me is the fact that in mid-summer, when everything is wide open, bright and easy, I can never imagine it ever being grey, wet, windy and winter.

Heckfire. Two weeks ago I couldn't imagine it ever being winter.

But the weather has changed, as has the time, and winter is most definitely almost here.

****

Growing up in a mid-sized city on the edge of the rain forest winter for me essentially meant a change in sports, road hockey in the dying light, and, occasionally, soaked socks.

As for the danger lurking in gale force winds, maybe once in awhile there would be a trip on the ferry when things got a little rough.

But for my Dad, taking all those trips on tow boats up and down the coast, I can only imagine how many times a cook had say it was too rough to feed the crew - and all that entailed.

Anyway, here's a cover of Mr. Lightfoot's ode to the wrath of November gales on the Great Lakes...

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Big story by Jim Rutenberg in this weekend's New York Times Magazine all about how it was Mr. Putin's plan, right from the start, to have his good friend Mr. Trump and a cowed Republican Party first split and then neuter Ukraine, effectively satelliteizing it forever...Will this, and all that has followed, including Mr. Putin's continuing attempts to annex Ukraine by force, not to mention his efforts to disrupt the world's political and economic order, matter one bit come Tuesday's US'ian midterm elections?...Sadly, I fear not...


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Sunday Set...Of Lullabies and Murder Ballads.

BothOverAndUnder

HillsAndDalesVille

Despite the post title, this one has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Halloween.

Tunes covered include:

Abilene...W&W version

Thirteen...by Mr. Bell and Mr. Chilton

Lua...Bright Eyes

Ballad Of Lou The Welterweight...The Felice Brothers

Nebraska...Not John Wurster

 

 

 

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Image at the top of the post...Fall time by (and from) our friend Theo Nelson...You can enjoy a little more of Theo's stuff...Here.

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Yesterday's Gone...Yesterday's Gone!

Link

Note, above, who the braintrust of yesterday's right sided flag of convenience in Vancouver civic politics was touting as their mayoral candidate in a tweet posted, well...

Yesterday.

Meanwhile, while the rest of us who have no interest in voting for alphabetically named flags of convenience for better living do our best to not stop thinking about tomorrow, there is absolutely no truth to the scurrilous rumour that all CoV employees will be wearing yoga pants by Remembrance Day.


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From the good news side of the ledger...#VanPoli won't have MDG's atrocious tweets to kick around any longer (for those that haven't muted them forever already)...And it would appear that buses and party memberships still can't make the best connected of stalking horses meaningful when it comes to real rather than riding membership and/or leadership elections...

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What I'm Listening To On My Way To The Polling Booth...

InRealLife

WhereRealityLivesVille

Normally, unless we're off travelling somewhere, I only drive the car once a week, tops.

On Saturday mornings.

Because that's when the Whackadoodle II and I get up reasonably early and drive out past the local airport to the beach.

And this morning the snow geese were already there when we got to Iona.

Which was bizarre in the extreme given that, except for the dry, crispy leaves strewn about the sand, it seemed more like late-August than mid-October.

Anyway.

After a whole lot of wave running and stick chasing, mixed with a wee bit of beach guitar strumming, we finished our walk and headed for home.

Given that the 11:00 am Saturday hour is, for me at least, a dead/no go zone on MoCo radio, I  fired up the pod-machine and listened to the latest offering from WNYC's 'On The Media' for the drive home.

 

This week, the OTM folks did an in-depth dive into how a particular online billion dollar verdict-carrying grifter and his rabid followers adversely affect, harass and bully real people in the real world for money, self-validating lulz, and ideological gotcha points. It is an excellent show, especially the part where they talk to a young fellow who worked as a camera person for said grifter until he came to realize the evil he was contributing to after he actually met some of the folks he was affecting one-on-one, in real life.

****

The OTM show wasn't quite done when we got home so I plugged in the earbuds to finish listening while I walked over to the local elementary school gymnasium, voting card in hand, and ridiculously complex mock ballot in pocket. 

As such, I must confess that I wasn't feeling all that good about politics and people, in general, when I finished walking the block-and-a-half to the school.

But all that changed when I walked through the gymnasium door into a clean, well-lighted place where the poll workers were extremely organized, courteous and decorous. 

And all the voters were polite and well-mannered as they sat down in front of little cardboard desktop cubicles to complete the task at hand. 

As I stood in the short line to have my real ballot fed into the machine I was struck dumb, once again, by the realization that this is the way the real world should, and actually does, work.

Despite the legions of grifters lurking out there, online and elsewhere.

OK?

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Many thanks to Bigger E for prodding me into completing the mock ballot last night before I headed home from the lab....And thanks, also, to reader EG for getting me into the civic mood over the last few days...

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Apres Nous...

RainNotReign

O'rWeVille

Why the long drought?

Well...

I can't really explain it except that when we took a short holiday at the end of July I discovered that I enjoyed being unplugged. And then, as soon as we got home, the deluge began that finally culminated last week with two massive grant submissions.

When I told my Dad, when we visited him Labour Day weekend, that the next ten days were going to be hellish and filled with late night data crunching and keyboard banging he looked up from his paper and said, 'Don't you have somebody to do that for you by now?' 

I didn't have an answer for him right away but when I mentioned it to a younger colleague, who is both a sharper scientist and a much better musician than me, he noted that the fact that I'm still coming up with grant ideas means just that. Which, I realized, when I thought about it a little, is a good thing.

Of course, we'll see if anybody thinks the ideas are good ones in a few months - early January to be exact.

****

When I'm spending a lot of time sitting in front of the keyboard I listen to a lot of stuff. Here are a few auditory notes from the last couple of weeks...

'Dead Eyes' - a podcast from a working actor about the time he lost a small part in a big production because Tom Hanks, allegedly, said he had 'dead eyes'

Bob Mackin seems to the be only local media guy who is really digging into the upcoming civic election so far.

Friend of the Blog Glen Clark was on for a full hour with Mo Amir and noted that big money, no matter where it comes from, is a very bad thing for the health of the body politic.

Lastly, I cannot believe that I entirely missed the Replacements back when they, not mention me, were young and bastardly...I blame it on gradual school and microscopes and the excitement of figuring out how to culture subpopulations of adrenocortical cells and all that.

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As for that very sudden cheap 'holiday' on Monday that is resulting in so many people's last minute schedule juggling misery?....This!  (because, as we all know, the rain is coming)....


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