Paul and I just got back from a lovely three-day stay in a cottage in upstate New York (check out a - we stayed at the Honeoye cabin).
No Bush-bashing here (but oh, it's tempting). I'll leave that for another post.
Here are some foodly things I love about the US that I think we need in Canada:
UNSWEETENED ICED TEA
Ohmigod what a fantastic change from the sickly sweet syrupy glop we get from Snapple and Lipton's here in the north. Just tea. Perhaps lemon. No sugar. Insanely refreshing. Start importing this to Canada!
AN AUTOMATIC GLASS OF WATER AT A RESTAURANT
Why can't Canadian restaurants get this very basic service right? Here, you can't get water unless you ask, and invariably, the server never brings water for the whole table - just the person who specifically asked for it. Now, I don't understand the whole American tip-of-the-straw-wrapper-left-on thing, but at least I get water without asking.
HOT SAUCE AT EVERY TABLE
I'm completely addicted to Frank's hot sauce, and it's everywhere. And hey - I can use my (automatic!) glass of water to extinguish the burn.
CORNED BEEF HASH AND GRITS
Corned beef hash isn't exactly impossible to find on a breakfast menu here, but it's not easy, either. There's no better base for a fried egg, so we need to revive the lost art of hash. Grits - ideally served with butter, salt and pepper - are nowhere to be found in Canada, so much the pity. I know - you can feel your arteries hardening even as you read. What can I say - half my family hails from Wisconsin, and we consider sausage a food group.
FRIDAY NIGHT FISH FRIES
A remnant of strict Vatican invocations against eating meat on Fridays, the Friday night fish fry is a standard event in largely Catholic Buffalo and throughout New York State. We have fish and chips here, true, but it's not exactly a weekly excuse to party. Paul, with his fish allergies, is just as happy to be home before the fish starts fryin'.
Yum.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
Evil can't live in the light
I am posting this a week later than I intended - needed to let it percolate for a while in my little brain.
Enough people have written about the tragedy at Virginia Tech that I don't need to weigh in with my own predictable opinions (shock, horror, and, unfortunately, a small shameful feeling of "here we go again").
What isn't necessarily front and centre in the news is the debate that's going on about NBC's decision to air the gunman's video, and CBC's (somewhat smug and self-righteous, I have to say) decision not to. "The Current" is on at the moment (no Anna Maria today, alas) and I'm listening to a panel of jounalists argue vociferously with each other over the ethics of NBC's decision.
I think perhaps the CBC affords mainstream media a power it doesn't necessarily have anymore - that is, if NBC hadn't aired the "press package," which was, by the account I'm listening to, full of "ridiculous ranting and raving," no-one would have chosen to watch the footage by other means and potential copycats would remain just that - potential.
Nonsense. The videos would have circulated on YouTube, the stills would have been printed in newspapers, and everyone would be wondering what the media was trying to hide by not airing the footage. One of the questions Avi Lewis asked the panelists was whether it was better that, given that the footage was going to be available somewhere, somehow, it air in a journalistic context rather than in the blank, info-less wasteland of YouTube.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. This is precisely what will keep media alive in the coming decades - not getting the scoop, not being exclusive vehicles of information, but providing reputable, credible analysis and context for the pile of facts with which we are steadily bombarded.
I'm also uncomfortable with the media being cast as the emotional watchdogs of society. If we choose not to air things because they might make people uncomfortable, or might have potential negative repercussions, where then do we draw the line? The media's job is to report fact, the truth, what is, for good or evil. The evil - and I do mean evil - side of life must be uncovered, must be highlighted - in no other way are we then able to recognise evil and stop it.
Yes, it's uncomfortable. Yes, evil can beget evil. But the alternative is a lack of reality, and evil allowed to exist and flourish as we conveniently turn the other way.
Evil can't live in the light.
Enough people have written about the tragedy at Virginia Tech that I don't need to weigh in with my own predictable opinions (shock, horror, and, unfortunately, a small shameful feeling of "here we go again").
What isn't necessarily front and centre in the news is the debate that's going on about NBC's decision to air the gunman's video, and CBC's (somewhat smug and self-righteous, I have to say) decision not to. "The Current" is on at the moment (no Anna Maria today, alas) and I'm listening to a panel of jounalists argue vociferously with each other over the ethics of NBC's decision.
I think perhaps the CBC affords mainstream media a power it doesn't necessarily have anymore - that is, if NBC hadn't aired the "press package," which was, by the account I'm listening to, full of "ridiculous ranting and raving," no-one would have chosen to watch the footage by other means and potential copycats would remain just that - potential.
Nonsense. The videos would have circulated on YouTube, the stills would have been printed in newspapers, and everyone would be wondering what the media was trying to hide by not airing the footage. One of the questions Avi Lewis asked the panelists was whether it was better that, given that the footage was going to be available somewhere, somehow, it air in a journalistic context rather than in the blank, info-less wasteland of YouTube.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. This is precisely what will keep media alive in the coming decades - not getting the scoop, not being exclusive vehicles of information, but providing reputable, credible analysis and context for the pile of facts with which we are steadily bombarded.
I'm also uncomfortable with the media being cast as the emotional watchdogs of society. If we choose not to air things because they might make people uncomfortable, or might have potential negative repercussions, where then do we draw the line? The media's job is to report fact, the truth, what is, for good or evil. The evil - and I do mean evil - side of life must be uncovered, must be highlighted - in no other way are we then able to recognise evil and stop it.
Yes, it's uncomfortable. Yes, evil can beget evil. But the alternative is a lack of reality, and evil allowed to exist and flourish as we conveniently turn the other way.
Evil can't live in the light.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
J-RAD Blues
Well, "Eschew Obfuscation" was a little obscure, so I've officially re-named the blog. I'm not really blue at Ryerson - I just liked the way "J-RAD Blues" sounds. For those of you not intimately familiar with Ryerson's journalism programme, the moniker "J-RAD" refers to those of us in the school's two-year undergraduate programme for people who already have a university degree. (It's a confluence of "journalism" and "graduate," in case you hadn't figured that out. And if you hadn't, don't feel bad. I didn't.)
Anywhere else, I would have been in a Master's programme, running the gauntlet through theory courses and final projects - and, if I'd gone to Ryerson a year later, I'd have an MJ to show for my pains. No more two-year undergrads. The venerable J-RAD programme is now the victim of inexorable progress, and, with the last week of school upon us, the last of the J-RADs are set to go their separate ways into streams and specialties next year.
So, no MJ for me, and no more J-RADs for Ryerson. Pity.
When I told an old friend I was going into journalism, he immediately flung me an impassioned e-mail borne of a long family association with journalism and journalists. In it, he wrote, "For god's sake, don't let them cram a pile of hoary old theories down your throat. Practice writing, to deadline, as much as you possibly can - and know that theory means nothing in a newsroom."
Amen to that.
I'm glad I escaped the theory nightmare, even if I don't get a graduate degree. I'm glad I'm one of the last of the J-RADs. I don't think we need journalists who can quote Foucault. We don't need journalists who can wrangle ad nauseam over postmodern deconstructionism. We certainly don't need journalists for whom theory is a replacement for real-life experience.
Especially in the wake of Maher Arar and Scooter Libbey, it's become increasingly obvious that we need journalists who aren't tools of the state, who don't mindlessly repeat government PR spin and call it a "scoop," and who aren't interested in how many letters appear after their names. We need journalists who aren't, to use Kathy Gannon's word, simply "stenographers" for governments and the military. We need journalists who are capable of getting to the truth of a story through tenacity, scrupulous research, and insistent verification - and I don't think you need to study theory or have a Master's degree to do that.
That's not to say you can't be a decent journalist with a Master's. I worry, though, that Ryerson is losing something rare and precious in its quest to be just like all the other legitimate universities, no doubt a symptom of the institutional insecurity left over from the days of "Rye High."
I guess abandoning the J-RAD programme is better for marketability, as education continues along its path of inflation, just like everything else. Pretty soon no-one will be able to work at McDonald's without the benefit of a four-year post-doctoral fellowship in nuclear physics.
Farewell, J-RADs.
Anywhere else, I would have been in a Master's programme, running the gauntlet through theory courses and final projects - and, if I'd gone to Ryerson a year later, I'd have an MJ to show for my pains. No more two-year undergrads. The venerable J-RAD programme is now the victim of inexorable progress, and, with the last week of school upon us, the last of the J-RADs are set to go their separate ways into streams and specialties next year.
So, no MJ for me, and no more J-RADs for Ryerson. Pity.
When I told an old friend I was going into journalism, he immediately flung me an impassioned e-mail borne of a long family association with journalism and journalists. In it, he wrote, "For god's sake, don't let them cram a pile of hoary old theories down your throat. Practice writing, to deadline, as much as you possibly can - and know that theory means nothing in a newsroom."
Amen to that.
I'm glad I escaped the theory nightmare, even if I don't get a graduate degree. I'm glad I'm one of the last of the J-RADs. I don't think we need journalists who can quote Foucault. We don't need journalists who can wrangle ad nauseam over postmodern deconstructionism. We certainly don't need journalists for whom theory is a replacement for real-life experience.
Especially in the wake of Maher Arar and Scooter Libbey, it's become increasingly obvious that we need journalists who aren't tools of the state, who don't mindlessly repeat government PR spin and call it a "scoop," and who aren't interested in how many letters appear after their names. We need journalists who aren't, to use Kathy Gannon's word, simply "stenographers" for governments and the military. We need journalists who are capable of getting to the truth of a story through tenacity, scrupulous research, and insistent verification - and I don't think you need to study theory or have a Master's degree to do that.
That's not to say you can't be a decent journalist with a Master's. I worry, though, that Ryerson is losing something rare and precious in its quest to be just like all the other legitimate universities, no doubt a symptom of the institutional insecurity left over from the days of "Rye High."
I guess abandoning the J-RAD programme is better for marketability, as education continues along its path of inflation, just like everything else. Pretty soon no-one will be able to work at McDonald's without the benefit of a four-year post-doctoral fellowship in nuclear physics.
Farewell, J-RADs.
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