Great Moments In British Journalism: "What's That On His Head?"

A sobering glimpse into the state of religious education in modern Great Britain, courtesy of two British reporters baffled by the sight of Catholic Vice-President Joe Biden giving a press conference on Ash Wednesday.



Notice the little dig they try to get in at Vancouver's expense, in the following transcribed excerpt:

[0:28] British reporterette: "What's happened to his head? I'm sure that's what everyone is asking at home."

British reporter: "Yes, I don't know. That's the simple answer."

British reporterette: "It looks like he's walked into a door, doesn't he! [laughs] Yeah, I'm sure that's one of the questions that the networks will be asking."

British reporter: "He's been up in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics, and was the face of the administration there, so whether there was some accident on what little ice there's been up in Vancouver, we don't know. But no doubt as a result of this appearance, we will get an opportunity to ask his spokespeople, what the cause of that is."

British reporterette: [giggles]

I'd make a snide comment of my own, but the weather is so beautiful today, I'm instead going to take advantage of the "little ice there's been up in Vancouver", debate which sweater I should wear as I go for a walk under yet another cloudless sky, bask in the warm sunshine and buy a hotdog from the friendly couple on the corner.

[Hat Tip to this morning's episode of my favorite Minnesota radio show, the First Team of the Patriot's Northern Alliance Radio Network]

Olympic Thoughts

I have no interest in the Olympic Games, haven't watched a second of them on tv, don't care if Canada wins one medal or one thousand, and bemoan the expenses as a colossal waste of time and money. Olympics? Bah Humbug.

Having said that, I should be honest and confess that part of me, nevertheless, is having a wonderful time.

If you are a people-watcher, that is, someone who loves parking himself on a park bench in order to enjoy the parade of personalities that strolls by, you will find the Olympics as a city-wide art gallery, an endless exposition on the art of being human.

There are so many fascinating vignettes playing themselves out everywhere you look, so many riveting scenes to study, and absorb, so many fun tableaus that reveal all the little quirks and bemusements that are such a part of the contradiction of folly and glory involved in living a human life.

There is so much change occurring to such a wide range of people, placed in so many new situations, that surely there is drama and conflict enough for any novelist to find material for a dozen stories, for a painter to fill a hundred canvases.

It's the small things that stick out in my mind. I will definitely remember the sight of lifeguards at city streetcorners, barking advice into loudspeakers for the sake of tourists drowning in confusion.

The mecca for people-watchers these days must be the barrier surrounding the Olympic Flame; whether they know what awaits them or not, everyone arrives with a hopeful look, which melts away once in view of the controversial barrier. How do they handle their disappointment? Some put on a brave face and make the best of it, clowning around with theatrical poses making it look like they are themselves holding the flame high atop the scenic Burrard Inlet. Others complain to anyone within earshot, and one guy left without taking a single photo, he was so disillusioned.

People tend to pause and wonder: what would I have done here, to resolve the contradictory needs of security and access. Eavesdropping on the resulting conversations, the bystander will be feasted to an endlessly varied series of opinions and counter-proposals; it's too bad the event planners didn't start a blog, or other interactive outreach effort ahead of time, to let the public get all these ideas on the record much earlier, so that many of the better suggestions coming from the common sense of the common man could have been included within the smaller number of ideas that a small number of "official" minds had on the boards.

Maybe that fence will bring one good change to the world: a clearer appreciation of the perils of total top-down planning.

I have no love for the Olympic Games, but I admit that a small part of me will be sad when the last tourist leaves after the last ceremony, and we go back to the less-crowded, emptier streets of old, giving us our Seawall back... as gorgeous as the view of the mountains may be, it pales in fascination to the feelings invoked by the view of a bubbling sea of humanity.

Olympic Diary Day 1 - A Golden Reverie

I've spent a little time watching Vancouver Olympic fever and I'm sure I will have something to write before long about the morality of this grand festival. But my mind remains unfocussed. So a few impressions... Downtown, the streets are bathed in Canadian red, with the accessory of choice, as pushed by the people and the powers that be, being red mittens with white maple leaves.

So popular is this item that they have even begun to outfit the summer athletes, like Harry Jerome.



Call me queer; but what, with all the national obsession with mittens and "going for gold", I couldn't help but think of Archibald Lampan's classic Canadian poem, In November:

With loitering step and quiet eye,
Beneath the low November sky,
I wandered in the woods, and found
A clearing, where the broken ground
Was scattered with black stumps and briers,
And the old wreck of forest fires.
It was a bleak and sandy spot,
And, all about, the vacant plot,
Was peopled and inhabited
By scores of mulleins long since dead.
A silent and forsaken brood
In that mute opening of the wood,
So shrivelled and so thin they were,
So gray, so haggard, and austere,
Not plants at all they seemed to me,
But rather some spare company
Of hermit folk, who long ago,
Wandering in bodies to and fro,
Had chanced upon this lonely way,
And rested thus, till death one day
Surprised them at their compline prayer,
And left them standing lifeless there.

There was no sound about the wood
Save the wind's secret stir. I stood
Among the mullein-stalks as still
As if myself had grown to be
One of their sombre company,
A body without wish or will
And as I stood, quite suddenly,
Down from a furrow in the sky
The sun shone out a little space
Across that silent sober place,
Over the sand heaps and brown sod,
The mulleins and dead goldenrod,
And passed beyond the thickets gray,
And lit the fallen leaves that lay,
Level and deep within the wood,
A rustling yellow multitude.

And all around me the thin light,
So sere, so melancholy bright,
Fell like the half-reflected gleam
Or shadow of some former dream;
A moment's golden reverie
Poured out on every plant and tree
A semblance of weird joy, or less,
A sort of spectral happiness;
And I, too, standing idly there,
With muffled hands in the chill air,
Felt the warm glow about my feet,
And shuddering betwixt cold and heat,
Drew my thoughts closer, like a cloak,
While something in my blood awoke,
A nameless and unnatural cheer,
A pleasure secret and austere.

Meanwhile, in the quiet neighbourhoods of the city, life as art goes on...

The Olympic flame passes through Burnaby

No insect protection officers stop the event!

B'nai Brith beclowns itself

Whatever you think of the International Olympic Committee's decision not to allow women to compete in ski jumping at the upcoming Vancouver games - the IOC claims the women's sport is not yet sufficiently established - it is surely not a decision that merits comparison to the Nazis. B'nai Brith Canada does all Jews a disservice in demonstrating an inability to move their political discourse beyond the Nazi-Jew model of victimhood (a now much abused revelation, as evidenced by the fact that antisemites currently invoke it to "Nazify" Israel and other Western enemies of Islamofascism). Here's what B'nai Brith says in its latest press release

TORONTO, January 4, 2010 – The League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada, has called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) to reconsider the continued exclusion of Women’s Ski Jumping from the upcoming Olympic Games. According to the League’s National Chair Allan Adel, and its National Director, Ruth Klein, although the recent Supreme Court decision technically places the IOC outside the ambit of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the position taken on women’s ski jumping violates the spirit of the Charter, which prohibits discrimination based on gender.

In a letter to John Furlong, CEO of VANOC, the League recalled the 1936 Berlin Olympics when the OIC turned a blind eye to Hitler’s fascist regime, which was even then implementing discriminatory policies against Jews that impacted Games that year. The League asks the OIC and the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) to focus on its policies and practices relating to discrimination, “and that includes eliminating discrimination against women now, just as it should have included resistance to discrimination against Jews then”.

B'nai Brith can't be taken seriously as a voice for real human rights if it indulges in the ultimate tyranny of making it imperative to label every institutionalized recognition of human differences as Nazi-like.

Two months after Maclean's magazine subjected to Maoist show trial by the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal, at Robson Square, Vancouver...

Does Premier Campbell pay attention to the news and what actually happens in our province?

Premier Gordon Campbell stopped by Beijing's Main Press Centre Tuesday to sell his message about the state-of-the-art media centre the province is building in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Games.

Instead, he found himself in a political discussion with reporters from some of China's government-run media who wanted to use his press conference to focus on problems affecting the Vancouver Olympics.

But the questions seemed to have more to do with political positioning than with eliciting information.

When one reporter from the China Daily, considered by Westerners to be a government mouthpiece, zeroed in how Campbell will handle "anti-Olympic groups such as the Anti-Poverty Coalition," Campbell gave a political lesson of his own.

"In Canada we will be open to opportunities for people to express whatever views they have," he said. "There will not be opportunities to break the law, [but] we will make sure there will be full and equal expression throughout the 2010 Olympics."
[...]
It clearly wasn't what he was expecting when he announced that the new media centre, which will be built at a cost of $2.5 million, will serve upwards of 3,000 reporters and editors who can't get International Olympic Committee accreditation to the 2010 Winter Games.

In fact, none of the questions he received dealt with the 2,600 square-metre facility, which will be built at Robson Square.

He gave a terse "no" when asked if he was surprised that government-run media would zero in on the issues of poverty and free speech in Canada.

But the premier also didn't shirk from answering the questions, even though he knew that these issues would overtake his good-news message.

Campbell fires back at Chinese critics

Covenant Zone is considering joining the growing boycott of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, to be lifted only when Canada does away with Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and its equivalent in the provincial "human rights" codes. Dear Readers, do you think that a good idea?