TriumphAnt

Opening zinger: Earlier this evening, a Mazda Miata blew by me in a residential area travelling at about twice the allowable velocity. His licence plate: “MIATATUD”. My mental wrench from anger to applause almost dislocated my brain stem.

Here’s a headline and a few sentences from an August 9th story on the CBC website:

“Ontario SIU probes another Taser death: KINGSTON, ONT. - Ontario's police watchdog is investigating the death of a Kingston man who died hours after being shot with a Taser gun Sunday morning. The Special Investigations Unit has assigned two investigators to look into the death, said Rose Bliss, a spokesperson for the agency… Tasers emit a jolt of 50,000 volts that interrupts the body's electrical impulses, causing involuntary muscle seizures. Last year, Tasers were blamed in about 50 deaths in the United States. In Canada, six people have died from them, four this year.”

(I know I’m dating myself here, but when I hear “SIU”, I hear a reference not to any “Special Investigations Unit”, but rather I think of Hal Banks’s notorious Seafarers’ International Union. And I still earworm the chorus of the old satirical Canadian tune by the Brothers-in-Law, “We’re a mighty fine crew in the SIU when we all go out on strike.” But I, of course, digress.)

But what struck me as I read this is the thought that, had that story headline’s “Taser” been “mad cow”, nationwide – indeed worldwide – panic would have by now erupted. Even our first “probable” case (so far unfatal) of West Nile Virus made headlines around the globe recently.

After all, it took just one suspected case of mad cow disease (no deaths) early last year for the world to drop a ban on Canadian beef-buying that remains partially in effect in many countries – most notably the US – even today. And here we have four people already dead in Canada this year alone because of Tasers! Canadian police forces continue to defend their use vigorously, although a couple of inquiries have been promised. But in the same breath, police spokesmen speak ominously of their best alternative method of suppressing violent offenders – shooting them.

What makes four* confirmed Taser victims the cause of a vastly reduced profile of coverage than that which would be accorded four victims (God forbid, but should such an outcome hypothetically occur) of either of the other above causes of death?

Is it because Tasers are deployed by the police to neutralize people who are, at the moment of their use, customarily behaving in a manner that is anything but sociable? Are we thinking, “They’re probably better off dead… and even if they are not ‘better off’, then society surely is, with them removed”? Maybe the John Howard Society – whose Mission Statement is twelve precisely aligned words: “Effective, just and humane responses to the causes and consequences of crime” – should be asked what they think of all this.

*Update: CBC’s late night website on August 9th carried a note that a preliminary coroner’s report has eliminated the Taser’s 50,000 volts as a cause of death in this most recent case. So change “four” to “three”. Everything else stands.

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Now here’s a concept. (Assuming you consider “Another Sure Sign the Apocalypse is Near!” to be a “concept”. I saw commercials for this on the weekend while watching some TV in an effort to slow time down before requiring my return to work after a week off. For obvious reasons, I chose FOX.) I thought – “No, this has to be a hoax.” But then I did some quick follow-up Googling. And no, it’s most definitely not a hoax. Coming, I’m afraid, to a television near you this Fall:

“GILLIGAN'S ISLAND: TBS will collaborate with the creators
of the original Gilligan's Island sitcom, Lloyd and Sherwood
Schwartz, to shift the concept to the reality genre. It will feature
a real-life skipper, first mate, millionaire couple, movie star,
Kansas farm girl and professor. And, like the original show,
they'll work together to try to get off the island. Episodes will be
modeled after some of the situations that occurred on the
original sitcom. The series is set to premiere in Fourth Quarter
2004.”

You’d’ve thought the networks would have learned their lesson from the collective political blast that was levelled at a similarly floated concept in 2003 to transplant a bunch of genuine Ozark in-breds to the Hills of Beverly to have a heapin’ helpin’ of their hospitality. I don’t believe the Real Beverly Hillbillies made it far beyond storyboarding. Something about perpetuating negative stereotypes of the fine residents of northern Arkansas. But the Real Gilligan’s Island is actually on the schedule. Line up, all ye who want to protest negative stereotypes of movie stars, millionaires and their wives, Kansas farm girls and professors… oh wait, maybe there’s nothing the show could do that would hurt those public images.

Stuff like this is, quite literally, self-satirizing. But boggle your mind for a moment and imagine (Be Very Afraid) if it works, just how swiftly other successful 60s sitcoms will be mined for introduction to the Reality TV genre. Picture, for example, yanking a bunch of former US prisoners of war who were held in Vietnam’s infamous “Hanoi Hilton” from their present lives as corporate CEOs or psychiatric patients, and plunking them down in a Stalag somewhere in Central Europe with a monocled Kommandante and a wacky overweight sergeant, and told that their goal is to escape. Yes, it’s the Hogan’s Heroes Reality Version! (And here’s the reality: the tower guards’ machine guns are loaded with live ammunition.)

Remember F-Troop? For the new millennium: place a bunch of Air Cav troopers in a stockade in the middle of Akwesasne. The Mohawk Warrior Society would probably be delighted to double for the TV show’s Hekawi. The Real Petticoat Junction, unfortunately, would have to be X-rated because hidden cameras would inevitably reveal that, after dark, Uncle Joe was up to… well, X-rated stuff with Billie-Jo, Bobbie-Jo and Betty-Jo. No damn wonder he’s “a-movin’ kinda slow”! As would the real “I Dream of Jeannie”… Sure it would! Take a healthy male astronaut, present him with a diaphonously draped “I’ll grant your every wish, Master” blonde, whose only anatomical failing is the absence of a navel, and just try NOT to be X-rated.

I could go on. But I suspect I’m already in royalty-earning country once these ideas creep (actually, slither is probably a more appropriate form of locomotion) into the network brainstormers’ boardrooms.

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Here's a revisit to something I wrote a few weeks back in the throes of our national election campaign. First, I said that _my_ nationally televised all-candidates’ debate would include reps from all parties, even those traditionally labelled “fringe”. At the time I was thinking that someone like a Rhinoceros candidate might help inject a note of irreverence into what has degenerated into a media handlers-driven shoutfest. But then I moderated that line of reasoning after discovering that my riding (Ottawa South) had fielded no fewer than eight candidates, including one from a party that was running less than 20 candidates nationwide.

Now I’m even less convinced of the need for a wider field after reading some eminently sensible arguments put forward by Anthony Westell in the Globe and Mail on 28 July. In Mr Westell’s world, not even the Bloc Quebecois would have been there. Put simply, his debates would allow only those leaders of national parties, however remote their chances of winning might be.

And for those who point to Mr Duceppe’s great success against the “national” party leaders, Mr Westell has an answer ready.

Of course Gilles Duceppe “won” the debates, he argued. “With no national program to promote and defend, and no concern for the West, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, he went into the debates with a considerable advantage over genuinely national leaders. Mr. Duceppe presented himself to Quebeckers as their defender against Ottawa and was relentless in attacking Mr. Martin for allegedly insulting Quebeckers.”

Mr Westell has no problem with a provincially broadcast debate featuring Bloc and other Quebec candidates on issues purely of relevance to Quebec voters. But on the national stage, he says, “The debates are supposed to be between leaders of national parties seeking a mandate to govern Canada.”

Makes sense to me.

(Of course, I suspect Mr. Westell’s real preference vis-à-vis the national shouting match laughably labelled a “debate” might be more clearly discernable in the brief biographical footnote he provided to the Globe and Mail, and with which he concludes his column: “Anthony Westell is a retired political reporter and columnist who remembers a time when there were no debates.”)

Wishful thinking Tony, I’m afraid.

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And finally, here’s a sentence from a biography of Al Jolson that I am presently reading. It’s a direct quote from an article written by an entertainment reporter of the day and describes the introductory encounter between Jolson and a woman who subsequently became his first press agent. The meeting came after one of his huge early successes in New York’s Winter Garden Theater. (That’s a US “theatre”.) I have read and re-read this sentence about 50 times. And I’ll be darned if I can twist it into anything that makes even a shred of sense. So you try. (It’s the second of these two sentences.): “The dressing room was the scene of the informal production. Nellie had made a way from the stage door through ranks of chorus girls who greeted her with acclaim and flung after petitions to be exploited in airships.” (“Jolson: The Story of Al Jolson”, by Michael Freedland. My edition – Virgin Books 1995. The quote is on p.64)

It’s those last eight words… Best I can do is to insert a hyphen in “flung-after” and suggest that perhaps the chorus girls in question were looking for bookings on the trans-Atlantic airship voyages that were in vogue at the time. This, from a “History of Airships” online site: “The Germans offered trans-Atlantic flights on its luxurious hydrogen-filled Zeppelins until 35 people died in 1937 as the majestic Hindenburg erupted in flames while docking at Lakehurst, N.J.” The Hindenburg was equipped with, among other amenities, a lounge and a piano. So maybe they occasionally booked chorus girls. (Although given the nearness of enormous, thin-skinned bags filled with highly explosive gas, I strongly suspect that spiked heels and spark-inducing tap shoes were strictly verboten.)

Given no further clarification by the author, it will forever remain speculation on my part.

“Let me sing of Dixie’s charms; of cotton fields and mammy’s arms.
And if my song can make you homesick,
I’m happy.”