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9
Jan
2021
n all the hoopla about the U.S. election last week, a couple of significant events sneaked by. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that corporations are not persons. And the U.S. media acknowledged that they have ethical responsibilities.
First, the media. Friday night after the U.S. election, still-president Donald Trump ranted for 16 minutes of outright falsehoods and accusations without evidence, that he had won the election. At least six American networks cut him off in mid-sentence.
For the networks to pull the plug on a sitting president is an unprecedented act.
In the second piece of overlooked news, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that, in certain situations, corporations are not persons.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Trump, corporations, networks
29
Aug
2020
Over the last ten days I have watched -- reluctantly, I admit -- parts of the Democratic and Republican national conventions in the U.S.
Long ago, I had to write essays to “compare and contrast” Shakespeare’s sonnets with, say, Wordsworth’s. Or John Milton’s metaphors versus T.S. Eliot’s.
It can be an illuminating exercise. But it’s easier when you can lay out two manuscripts side by side.
I wish technology enabled me to compare the two political conventions side by side. Perhaps with 30 seconds of this audio, then 30 seconds of that one. So that I could flip back and forth, instead of relying on memory of two separate events.
Still, the most obvious difference was visual. The Republican convention paid lip service to the COVID-19 pandemic, but its body language didn’t. During the speeches by both Melania and Donald Trump, Republican dignitaries sat cheek-to-cheek, buttwise. No physical separation. No masks that I could see. Lots of handshaking and back-patting.
The Democratic convention didn’t have masks either. But they didn’t need them. No one else in the room – they actually practiced isolation.
Tags: Trump, Democratic, Republican, Biden
27
Oct
2019
Today’s word, for those of you who view life as an episode of Sesame Street, is “schadenfreude.” Pronounced “shah-den-froy-duh.” It means “taking delight in Donald Trump’s impeachment.”
Oops, there’s another big word. “Impeachment” -- pronounced im-peach-ment -- means “humiliating the president.”
And that’s about all it means.
Canadians don’t have impeachment. We have no procedures for impeaching prime ministers, regardless of their lack of popularity. Instead, parliament can pass a vote of “no confidence,” which means, basically, that the members of parliament want another election, whether or not Canadians as a whole have lost confidence in the ability of the government to govern.
The big difference is that when a Canadian parliament votes “no confidence,” the government falls.
When the American House of Representatives votes for impeachment, it does little more than splat the president with a banana-cream pie.
Tags: Trump, Impeachment, Congress
11
Three million years ago, a distant ancestor of mine lived in Ethiopia. Since then, we humans have grown taller, stronger, more intelligent and, I would hope, more compassionate.
After three million years of evolution, is Donald Trump the best we can achieve?
Trump is the world’s number-one human, the colossus who sits bestride the world (to borrow a line from historian Robert Payne). President of the world’s most powerful nation. Chief executive officer of the world’s richest economy, who can make stock markets around the world crash with a single Tweet. Commander-in-chief of the world’s largest military force, with the biggest nuclear arsenal.
A while ago, I resolved that I would not waste any more columns on Trump. It’s difficult to keep that resolution, when he declares himself “the least racist person in the world.” Or condemns the entire city of Baltimore as a “rat and rodent infested mess.”
But I cannot continue to avoid writing about him.
Tags: Trump, National Cathedral, Joe McCarthy, send her back
3
Apr
The news has not been good recently – unless you’re a Trump supporter. The media have been filled with incidents of hate, violence, death, and disaster.
The world is still reeling from the mass murders at the mosques in New Zealand. Followed by the copycat defacing of five mosques in the U.K. Where Brexit seems headed for disaster, taking Theresa May with it. And disaster aptly describes typhoon Idai’s effect on Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi.
And that’s not counting an endless parade of house fires, vehicle accidents, thefts, and political conflicts.
I admit to contributing to this flood of bad news. Ironically, journalists focus on bad news precisely because it’s an exception to the norm. It is news because it is out of the ordinary.
So we hear all about the accident where the bus full of young hockey players collides with a semi-trailer whose driver failed to stop at a stop sign. We never hear about the thousands of trucks, every day, that do stop.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Trump, bad news, Brexit, Mozambique, Princess Diana, joy