Great Television

Thanks to the magic of the Internets, I've been catching up on old episodes of Northern Exposure, one of the sharpest TV series of the past twenty years. Though the first two seasons are available on DVD (wrapped in smart parka jackets) and a third is due this spring, NX seems to have missed the TV revival boat. Perhaps North Americans are still not ready for a show that's principally about a pushy New York Jew doctor forced to spend the first years of his post-med school career practicing in the backwater Alaska town of Cicely. Though Ally MacBeal is credited with innovating the genre of the 60-minute dramedy, NX was the real deal. Created by the duo of Joshua Brand and John Falsey, and executive produced by David Chase, who's Sopranos is the best thing to happen to TV since colour, the show was a modest hit for CBS in the nineties. Known for its fish-out-of-water premise, which may have turned off many potential fans, NX featured the deepest, sharpest cast of characters on television. It presented a unique take on modern American life, engaging issues of nature and technology, the meaning of community and the clear-eyed warmth that makes any day above ground great.

Surprisingly, Brand and Falsey haven't done much show biz work since leaving the show partway through its run. While Chase has found a niche with the Sopranos, B&F couldn't make smart succeed the way it should have.

In the age of the DVD, when television is seen as a unique cultural identifier and audience segmentation means a success doesn't have to be huge, Northern Exposure, with its warm, talented cast and razor sharp writing, should stand out. That it made it to network television in prime time - odd for a show as kooky as NX - has always made it somewhat unique. That nothing like it has come since is both a shame and obvious. In a medium that craves uniqueness but rewards bland mimicry more than any other, there will never be anything quite like Northern Exposure.

New Music Monday

A sampling of what we're listening to these days:

• Madeleine Peyroux, Careless Love - Billie Holliday may have died and gone to heaven, but Madeleine inherited her voice. Whether tackling Leonard Cohen ("Dance Me to the End of Love"), Bob Dylan (a sublime "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go") or W.C. Handy (the infectious title track), Peyroux effortlessly demonstrates what it takes to be a great singer. It helps to have a great voice. It can't work if you haven't got a love for the song, and Peyroux has a lot of love to sprinkle on each of these twelve greats. Perfect dinner music.
• Bruce Springsteen, Devils and Dust - Tom Joad meets The Rising. It's too bad that Springsteen hasn't gotten stingier as he's aged. While the Boss cranked out the hits in the eighties, his recent work has suffered from too little editing. The Rising's fifteen tracks should have been ten, and on Devils, Springsteen lets a couple of dullards slip through. Nevertheless, the record's brightest moments are really great, including "Black Cowboys," "All I'm Thinking About" (on which Bruce shows off his country soul) and "Maria's Bed," a Tex-Mex take on The Rising's "Mary's Place." Those who enjoyed The Ghost of Tom Joad and Nebraska will dig the stories, which benefit from the full development of Springsteen's literary voice, though Devils is a much sunnier, livelier record. And at $10, Amazon is a full third cheaper than HMV. Serious fans will devour the bonus DVD.

Doofus

The leader of the free world, in South Carolina today:

President Bush raised eyebrows on Tuesday when he asked locals in Galveston, Texas: "Do you still have Splash Day?"

["Splash Day" is the annual "adult oriented enormous beach party" celebration on the Gulf Coast.]

BUSH: Do you still have Splash Day?

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: You have to be a baby boomer to know what I'm talking about.

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: I'm not saying whether I came or not on Splash Day. I'm just saying, Do you have Splash Day?

(LAUGHTER)

You'd think he'd remember if he came.

Whither Weather?

If some Canadian conservatives are thinking about following in the footsteps of the reverse douchebag in chief in the United States, they'd better think again. Sen. Rick Santorum (he of the "gay marriage leads to 'man-on-dog'" school of rights) has drafted a bill that would prevent the National Weather Service from competing with for-profit weather information providers, like the Weather Channel and AccuWeather. Apparently, the aim is to enable the NWS to spend more time providing info on hurricanes and tsunamis, according to bill suppporter and AccuWeather's Executive Vice President Barry Myers.

Two things: First, here's hoping Santorum throws his hat into the 2008 presidential race. Please please please. Second, don't even think about tinkering with what just might be the best service the Government of Canada provides online (though I don't know why they think it's proper to forecast so much rain). A rigid, scientific survey (I asked my friend Abba once) led me to find that Environment Canada does a better job of predicting the weather than, say, the Weather Channel. Why? EC is simply bearish. The Weather Channel will tell you that there's an 80% chance of rain or that it's going to be 27 when, in realtiy, EC's more tempered 60% and 25 win the point.

In the meantime, let's not ponder the notion that everything would be better if we just privatized it and charged a small user fee (even if it consisted of nothing more than watching an ad before you get your forecast). Let's just will it away.

Worth Preserving

A story about my grandather's family told at last night's Passover Seder reminded me why this country is better than its political options these days.

It's 1939, the war has just begun and the Kaplan family of Memel (Klaipeda), Lithuania, has managed to escape Europe. The clan headed for Canada (though some came by way of Japan), and wound up on a small farm in a small town called Williamstown, Ontario, about an hour and a bit from Montreal.

In their first days in their new country, my grandfather's family was visited by the local Christian clergymen, which might have been a frightening prospect. It was not. The Kaplans were told plain and simple, We know you don't share the same faith as us, and we know there aren't many Jews around. Montreal is too far to go to practice your religion. Our church is open to you for your own religious use, whenever you need it.

At the end of each Seder, we sing le-shana haba-ah biyerushalayim - next year in Jeruslaem. It seems to me that Canada has always done right enough by us. As Jews around the world celebrate the enabling story of our people - the exodus from Egypt, the redemption from slavery, the birth of freedom - it bears noting that those of us north of the 49th parallel are blessed.

My Kind of Cardinal

***

The International Herald-Tribune has the story of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, aka Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, aka one of two guys who have never been in my kitchen (thanks Shaky). One of the things that's always struck me as odd about the selection of the Pope is that the Cardinals, through a very bizarre process (white smoke, black smoke, bells, secret oaths), make the decision. I understand that they are supposed to be divinely inspired, which is a nice concept. So I can't imagine I'm the only one who finds the details of their (s)election to be so jarring from the way things are supposed to go. The Herald-Tribune's detailed account of the supposedly secret balloting reminded me of the special editions of Time and Newsweek that follow each American presidential election - full of all the teeny-tiny behind-the-scenes details of each campaign's successes and failures.

Cardinal Ratzinger's blatant political posturing was enabled by his "vice-Pope" status and cemented by his convincing performance officiating over his peers following the death of his predecessor. Ratzinger's campaign, as it were, came down Politics 101 - vote for the guy endorsed by the popular predecessor, and don't worry about things changing too much.

Ah, change. Tuesday night's National featured quite a bit of grumpy reaction on behalf of liberal Catholics. It seems that there was an expectation that the Cardinals - almost all those who could vote named by the hard-right John Paul II - would choose a liberal among them to guide the next phase of church doctrine. Presumably, many were surprised with the choice of the ultra-conservative Ratzinger (one Italian used the sly headline, "The German Shepherd," Wednesday morning). Still more seem to be disappointed.

That's where things stop adding up for me. Though the only purpose served by the church's stance on women's right and homosexuality is to perfectly exemplify how not to behave, and though its position on birth control in the developing world is terribly reprehensible, that should be no surprise. The Catholic church, it's seems to be forgotten, is not supposed to change.

Recently I've been thinking about a film called Trembling Before G-d which tells the sad story of a handful of gay Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. Forced to lead double lives or shunned by their families and communities, the individuals profiled in the documentary let it all hang out. Though it's been quite well received for its iconoclastic look at the intolerance of the ultra-religious Jewish world, the film failed to deliver.

The ordinary viewer is supposed to think that things would be better if only those pesky Orthodox Rabbis would give in and welcome the few homosexuals in the flock. We are supposed to feel terribly for people whose singular purpose seems to be to be gay and Orthodox at the same time. Well, it doesn't work because it can't.

The principle of Orthodox Judaism - and Catholicism as well - in the year 2005 is simple: to preserve ancient rules for daily life in opposition to the shifting borders of our secular world. If you want to be a good Orthodox Jew you've got play by the rules. Sadly, the rules are not going to change. So the viewer is left wondering what to make of the excluded homosexuals. Surely they are entitled to lead a Jewish life in a Jewish community.

Sadly, the film frames the issue in very narrow terms. If gay Hasidim can no longer be Hasidim then there must be something wrong with Judaism. Like Christianity, which is not limited to the doctrinal rulings of the Catholic Pope, Judaism consists of streams, each catering to the needs of certain kinds of Jews. While ultra-Orthodox Jews are about as likely to eagerly welcome homosexuals as is Benedict XVI, other viable options exist. Reconstructionist Judaism, Reform Judaism and even Conservative Judaism get short shrift in Trembling, much the way non-Catholic Christianity has since John Paull II died.

It's futile to insist that Orthodox Judaism and the Catholic Church flip-flop on fundamental stances. It's worthwhile to create a thriving system of faith options. To whine about the first and neglect the second is to reveal a desire to complain and not to build.

Extra! Extra!

Hey! CTV's Rosemary Thompson has got the goods on Benoit Corbeil's super hot Gomery testimony! What? Radio-Canada had this yesterday evening?

Should've had Ben Mulroney on the case.

Paul Martin's Last Stand?

Jack Layton had a great night - shifting the focus even a little from the Liberal scandal flogged to death by each of his predecessors, including the prime minister, to the business of governance, even adding a shout out to past minority governments. Then again, he also acknowledged that this minority government hasn't worked. But, of course, he thinks it could (and for the New Democrats, it could theoretically work a lot better than a Conservative minority government).

On the CBC, Layton tries to talk about the environment (smog season is here). Peter will have none of that, browbeats him, condescends and changes the subject. If Layton can dig in and fight back a little and show a little bit of the aggressiveness that can make a political heavyweight, the NDP might be the belle of the election ball. Then again, he'll have to overcome the media narrative of the next election as a two-horse race that. Them's the breaks.

In just under seven pre-recorded minutes of videotape, Paul Martin provided something of an awkward start to what will be an unwanted but unavoidable election campaign. The only question now is whether we'll be in campaign mode for two months (oy) or for eight (oy vey). Judging by Stephen Harper's notable quotable: "But how can we continue - politically, ethically, or morally - to prop up a government that is under criminal investigation and accusation of criminal conspiracy?"

Well, since you put it that way.

The prime minister's plea to postpone the writ drop until Justice Gomery wraps up Montreal's second circus will only push the Conservatives over the edge. Like a kid who can hear his mom coming up the stairs but has almost got his hand in the cookie jar, Stephen Harper and his gang couldn't possibly resist the temptation to call a spring campaign.

Actually, Martin's offer (which turned out to be not quite ready for prime time, clocking in early at 7:02 EST) leaves Harper with no choice. If the government can barely get anything done without an expiry date, why would - why should - the opposition enable it once it appears? It pains me to write it, but if not now, when?

Sadly, the clearest message from Canadians the past two weeks has been the utter lack of anything resembling a desire to go to the polls. The Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc just don't want to listen, either by forcing the government down, in the case of Harper and Duceppe, or by forcing the opposition's hand, as the PM did this evening.

Let it be noted that the only parliamentary leader who seems genuinely troubled by the fact that where we are headed is where we do not want to be is Jack Layton.

A Chilling Vision of Things to Come

On the National, aka the funniest show on TV today, Peter asks Stephen Harper if he thinks Paul Martin and his government is corrupt. Harper answers with a two-minute complaint about about Martin not giving straight answers. Note that he never answers the question.

He's got some work to do, but if Stephen plays his cards right (it might even take a roll of the dice), he could wind up being the next Paul Martin.

Silver Lining?

Paul Martin's recent flirtation with the idea that a vote for the Conservatives/NDP is a vote against Canada is not a reassuring sign for Liberals. The idea that some other party could do more for the Quebec (heck, and Alberta) separatism movement than the Sponsorship Squad is on a plane of absurdity worthy of Ionesco. If the Tories weren't so seemingly reactionary (is it fair to say they have any real policy perspectives on social issues?), the Liberals would be in serious danger. If the NDP could get itself together and get on the map, federalist Quebecers wouldn't be so reluctant to see the next election as anything other than a two-horse race. And in that race, the suddenly not-a-joke-anymore Gilles Duceppe is going to be a lot harder to fight than the old we're-the-lesser-of-all-these-evils line that Martin has been road-testing.

The always excellent Chantal Hébert provides aid and comfort to those of us not interested in living through another exhausting and frightening referendum season (especially since we went and bought property in downtown Montreal). In Friday's Toronto Star (memo to Le Devoir: give it up online already), Hébert writes that, as much of a godsend the Liberals have been to the indépendantistes, the support (like Stephen Harper's surge in the polls?) is ephemeral: "In the case of the sponsorship scandal, it is the Liberal party that they are turning their backs on in disgust. But that feeling has, so far, not translated into an outburst of referendum fever."

A Tory sweep to minority - or even majority - power may not be much worse for Canadian unity than another lacklustre Liberal victory (though it would open the door to new blood on both sides). Though that's about as grey as a silver lining can be, for the moment, I'll take it.

As it happens, and as Hébert wrote a month ago, Quebec separatists may be getting all they need from the ailing provincial Liberal government. The conventional wisdom seems to be that Jean Charest's days are numbered, and that the party just might be able to turn things around enough in the next two years to neutralize a Parti Québecois whose house is not exactly in order either. Another grey lining, but, again, I'll take it.

Gosh

I watched Napoleon Dynamite for the second time yesterday, which turned out to be a good thing. The first time I saw it, about three weeks ago, I could barely sit through its eighty-or-so minutes. There's not much of a story here, but that seems intentional. The film is quite stylish, so no problems there. And the acting is superb - though I don't know how much range the principals have. Their futures may not be as bright as they think.

The eponymous hero of the film is so backwards he's just about forward again. His precious older brother Kip is touchingly portrayed, as is Uncle Rico, who's stuck in the third quarter of a championship football game in 1982. These losers are sad losers, not like the asshole losers who torment Napoleon all day long.

What drove me nuts the first time around was the fact that, though stuff happens in the movie, nothing really happens. And in between the bits of something that amount to nothing is a bunch of nothing that's always been nothing and will forever be nothing. Think of a Wes Anderson movie minus the charm and the weight.

On second viewing, with the knowledge that I was in for 80 minutes of nothing, I was able to enjoy the film. It occurred to me about twenty minutes in that everything that came out of Napoleon's, Kip's or Rico's mouths was basically funny. From childish insults (Deb: "I'm selling these so I can save some money and go to college." Kip, off-screen: "Your mom goes to college.") to frustrated grunts ("Idiot!") to the idiosyncracies that make or break characters ("It's pretty much my favourite animal"), the dialogue was crisp and funny. Let me qualify that further - lots of things are funny in a reflective or ironic way. This film had us laughing out loud throughout.

So it's unfortunate that, pace a second chance, I find myself sharing Napoleon's own frustration. What could have been a dynamite recurring skit on Saturday Night Live, or a great vehicle for a hipster "retro" sitcom, got stretched to a feature-length film. Twenty-two minutes of concentrated Napoleon would be, indeed, dynamite. By making a movie out of it, Jared (director, writer) and wife Jerusha (writer) Hess tried to infuse the story with affection for a North American world as distant from pop sensibility as possible. In so doing, they set themselves up for failure. As New Yorker critic David Denby put it, "The movie might have worked if it weren't so dead-aired, malicious, and cool." By expressing their own strong feelings for a world they may not quite have left behind using an ultra-cool, ironic sensibility, the Hesses end up undermining the film's soul.

But dammit if I haven't been walking around saying, Gosh! for three weeks now.

Think

In today's New York Times, Barbara Whitaker writes about the first results from the new and improved Scholastic Aptitude Test, administered by the College Board in the United States. Until recently, the SAT consisted of two equal parts: reading and math. Each section, scored out of a possible 800 points and graded electronically, was worth 800 points. The new portion, blogging writing, is also scored out of 800, and includes an essay worth 25% of one's final score.

Whitaker, I think, makes too much of a deal about the newness of the SAT - students who took it seem to be unimpressed with the notion that the writing component was being administered for the first on them. (So much for progress, I suppose.) Presumably, Kaplan and all those other SAT consultants will require a couple of more years to fine-tune their preparatory materials. In the meantime, a whole bunch of not-quite-college-bound students decided to use the good ol' five-paragraph essay format (Kevin Drum gives it the treatment it deserves here) to guarantee a spot in the mediocre middle. Let's also presume that this group of students overlaps considerably with what can only be another bloated bunch who share the thoughts of one Anya Kanflo, who told Whitaker, "It's difficult to know how they graded the essay, since it's the only part of the test not done through a machine.... There's always going to be a certain amount of bias on the part of the grader, even though there are two readers." (For the record, Anya supports the new section of the test: "You can't fake good writing. If you can't write a complete sentence, that's going to show, and I think that's a good thing for colleges to know." She scored a 9/12 on her essay.)

On the whole, the addition of a writing component to the SAT probably does more good than harm. Yes, enormous swaths of the high school student population might wind up revealing their inadequate writing skills. And yes, certain college programs - and, by extension, careers - require little in the way of decent prose. However, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine one of the new SAT's residual effects being the recognition that the ability to write reasonably well is undervalued and underappreciated, often only recognized when it's absent. If the SAT inspires young people (and their parents) to want to learn how to write, and forces teachers to dedicate already scarce time and resources to teach them, the Board should declare victory and go home.

***

There are certainly those who see the latest evolution of the SAT as another chapter in an already too controversial history. Almost since its introduction, the SAT has been accused of making higher education - and social mobility - out of the reach of those who need it the most. For many Americans who saw in a post-secondary system endless opportunity for all children - black or white, rich or poor - the SAT did nothing but institutionalize an inequitable pecking order. While the question of access to education in Canada tends to focus on family income and the idea of the first-generation student (whose parents never went to college or university), the language and politics of higher studies in the United States is shrouded in the culture of racial awareness. Talk of Affirmative Action, quotas and the Supreme Court is heavily weighted in deeply personal feelings of an individual's identity within his own community and the greater America.

In his wonderful book, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, New Yorker writer and Columbia Journalism Dean Nicholas Lemann (who authored a brilliant profile of Karl Rove available here) chronicles the development of the SAT. In mid-century America, men like Henry Chauncey and James Bryant Conant, empowered by the new science of intelligence testing and a super-secretive organization called the Educational Testing Service, looked to the future, realized that the continued success of American society would depend on the careful stewardship of its institutions, and came up with a plan. The SAT, a test designed to accurately predict who would and would not succeed at college, would allow those who deserved it to assume positions of great responsibility - running the organizations and agenices that would keep America strong. (It's important to underscore the goal of the SAT. As a scientific test, it sought to provide its takers with scores that would correlate with their first-year college grades - not to test nascent ability, though the distinction remains contentious.)

In short, the founders sought to nurture, if not outright create, a large bureaucratic class based on nothing short of absolute merit.

Lemann's account of the devoutness with which the founders of the SAT brought to their work is deeply moving. A small group of men, inspired by those who came before them, sought to eliminate a class system (that handed down wealth, responsibility and power from one generation to another without regard to ability) with a mobile, fluid structure designed to enable progress, not entrench luck. Lemann details the rise and fall of Affirmative Action, and reluctantly dismisses the dream of the SAT's founders ("you can't undermine social rank by setting up an elaborate process of ranking"). With a heavy heart, he acknowledges that standardized intelligence testing has done little more than replace one imperfect system with another.

If an equitable and equal division of wealth, responsibility and power were supposed to be the byproducts of the SAT, they have proven terribly elusive. Assessed on its face, it's easy to see why testing late teenagers may do little more than rubber stamp the pathways they're already on. After all, the horizons of our lives are not set at eighteen - they're set during childhood. The dream of Bryant and Chauncey was decent, respectable - to encourage the development of a society that can be left in the capable hands of a dedicated class - think of the Biblical Levites or Plato's Philosopher Kings. However, concentrating opportunity on a precious few doesn't fit with modern notions of equality and egalitarianism. In our day and age, we must raise the tide, so that all boats may be lifted.

And now the News

Sometimes, I really wish I still had cable. Though I've got more DVDs than I can watch for now (will I ever get through the three Woody Allen box sets? That's more of a pleasant problem) none of them are ever on when I'm surfing the Web. So it's early evening on a Saturday and the local news is on (that's CFCF, by the way). Before I realize that Seinfeld is probably on another one of the five stations I get (crap, why didn't I switch?!), I settle in.

Is there a more annoying aspect of modern life than the weekend evening newscast duo? The following is a word-for-word account of a real live exchange this evening, following a tearjerker of a story about a group of kids marching together against drunk driving. At the end of the shmaltzy report, the anchorpeople summed it up:

Anchorwoman: Good story.
Anchorman (not missing a beat): Great cause.

Ugh.

The 22 minutes of "news" wraps up and the thirty-minute sports panel sausagefest begins. While I'm hunting for the damned remote, this week's panel of barely-literate morons begins to discuss Tiger Woods's <insert excessively hyperbolic adjective here> performance at the Masters last week. The shmuck panel starts goes into Tiger Woods Fan Club mode, discussing his godlike characteristics, both on and off the course. Actual quote:

"He was one of the most charming guys I've ever interviewed. We [a group of reporters] had his back to the wall and he said, politely, 'if everybody could just step back a bit.' Wonderful."

Indeed. "Wonderful" is the best word to describe a guy who asks you to move two spaces. And kudos on treating your interview subject with such dignity. The same reporter added the following, referring to the thought of picking up a $59 pack of Woods's signature balls (ho ho ho): "You're intrigued to buy it."

***

Sadly, local news really matters. And while inanity is fine when it comes to the weekly sports wrap-up, the actual news, delivered by the plastic-heads who inhabit the anchor desk, counts for a lot these days. The cynicism that many North Americans feel about the news media tends to stick to the big shots alone - whether you're at least grade-three literate and you find Fox news to be the Republican wankfest that it is, or whether you're a mad-as-hell GOP wealthmonger who can't understand why the New York Times won't rag on homosexuals and immigrants. The major TV nets have done a particularly good job at heralding their lack of depth and credibility, simply by attacking each other and turning the volume up on their own supposedly good qualities. (Just how, exactly, is CNN's claim to be "the most trusted name in news" supposed to have meaning?)

National newspapers take a lot more shit than they get, but that's mostly because the neanderthals on Fox like nothing more than to lob feces at the "liberal" New York Times and Washington Post. Major dailies, though, are not nearly as tarnished (though there's quite a bit of nonsense going on at both the wire level - Google the AP's Nedra Pickler - and in your typical city daily - one doesn't have to look far).

While synergy may have worked at the accounting level (an economist can tell you whether AOL owning a whole chunk of media companies at various stages along the assembly line is worthwhile), it's rendered the news as we know terminal. And yet.

The local TV news, which has always been heavy on fluff, continues to matter (like the smalltown newspaper editorial page). At the very local level, outside the eye of those who delight in criticizing the press (including, sadly, me), many North Americans get their news. With the bullshit detector turned off and stored away in the bedroom closet, local news audiences are fed a super-sized portion of fast food. Some important stories get covered (local fires, missing children, municipal politics, etc.), but the amount of Santorum processed through the PR machine and delivered into your living room, is terribly disheartening.

As network TV executives are almost ready to realize that young people are so over the news, government is getting in on the act of pre-fabbing news. The Bush administration has been criticized for its fake news delivery a number of times in the past year, and the president, in one of his prouder moments, asserts that no laws have been broken, thank you very much, now get the fuck out of my way. CNN operates a video news release service for local stations, providing content to resource-poor affiliates. It also makes money accepting and distributing phony video releases. Naturally, the network is mum about the whole thing. The good folks at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting lay it all out in their recent annual report. Like the portrait of Dorian Gray, the picture ain't pretty and it's on a way-one ride to Ugly Town.

***

It's understandable to throw your hands up in the air. Hell, you can announce the death of the worst parts of traditional media, get your info from blogs and the Daily Show and feel pretty good about yourself.

But remember, if you should find yourself at home on an early Saturday evening with the TV on, for the love of all that is good, try and find a Seinfeld rerun, because the cocky plastic people who deliver the "news" have got a half dozen cute little quips just aching to come out.

Bear in Mind

Think Paul Martin's a megalomaniac? Does Stephen Harper creep you out but good? Think Jack Layton's head is too big for his body? Not one for a Bloc party?

Remember.

At least we're not stuck with this guy.




Him too:



Oops - time to watch TV!

Film at Eleven

On the heel's of last night's entry about the apparent lack of decent investigative journalism in Canada, I was reminded today of Aaron Derfel's excellent reporting for the Gazette this February about the state of - you guessed it! - private health care in Quebec.

With regard to his reporting, Derfel makes clear something that may not be as obvious as it should: the mere opening of private clinics (in Quebec or elsewhere) doesn't really take the strain off of public health care in Canada. While we do need more MRI machines, we do not need radiologists abandoning the publicly-funded kind for the expensive variety reserved for, in Derfel's words, "queue-jumpers." (Why is English Canadian journalism so full of Britishisms?)

If two-tier care is the way to go in this country, let's be upfront about it. The gist of Derfel's series is that private care can prosper in Quebec because Ottawa's finest lack the courage to shut it down. In so doing, they're paving the way for private care in the rest of the country (though you get the feeling that, if only because it can really afford it, Alberta is just dying to jump the queue, as I suppose I should say) and allowing the public system to atrophy and fester along the way.

If we are ultimately to reject private health care, Ottaw ought to enforce the Canada Health Act as strongly as possible, put Quebec in its place (setting an altogether different example) and find a real solution.

That's FYI's Frank Fontana

This guy:



Not this guy:

Where have you gone, Frank Fontana?

Mason Wright and John_D over at This Magazine want to know why there isn't more investigative journalism going on in Canada.

Tonight's National had an interesting piece on what smacks of an awfully lazy coverup by the folks at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Seems the brain samples of two deeply sick, deeply suspicious cows were misplaced, lost, left in an envelope on a table during a bathroom trip at Restaurant Frank or simply made to disappear. Kelly Crowe has done a decent job on this story, and it makes you wonder if Mason's thinking about the media is begging the question, so to speak.

Could it be that there's lots of decent, inquisitive reporting going on in this country that the blogosphere can't bother to comment on? At This, Andrew Potter and Tu Than Ha point out that the Sponsorship Sadness began with a group of journalists - lacking subpoena power and giant commission budgets - who followed some leads and uncovered a shmozzle, as Shaky might put it.

Paul Wells may just be right: if the mainstream Canadian media (from the Globe/CTV to CanWest to CBC) got its head out of Paul Martin's butt, we might just be able to learn something about the state of our country that isn't connected to a crooked Quebec ad firm. In that sense, Mason is spot on: the news about the news is not really about news, but about who's going to call chicken and head us all back to the polls (against the general will, but points for being opportunistic).

So maybe the news isn't so lame - only the news about the news. In the meantime, when is somebody going to look into the mess that is the stretch of Sherbrooke Street in front of McGill University? Even more importantly, just how the hell are 514 and 438 going to get along?

Even more importantly: when is this gang going to make it back to Montreal?

This Kid Has Some Serious Issues

Go watch (not so work safe).

Un regard vers l'avenir

Yesterday's post about health care in Quebec must have been written in the stars, for the New York Times's great Paul Krugman weighed in on U.S. health care today, sparking comments from Kevin Drum, Kash and more. In short, the French system is the envy of the world - and yet it costs about $200 less per person that ours. So what gives? Could it be that the French are just much better organized at delivering decent medical care than us Canadians? Is it a population density issue? Is our crisis more of the manufactured kind? Could things actually be better than we are certain they are?

Not that the French have got it down to a perfect science. It seems that a system that encourages consumption causes, well, overconsumption - of pills and doctor visits. And, like any big government program, French health care is probably bloated and somewhat unaccountable. This primer on couverture maladie comes to the rescue of La France, highlighting the effectiveness of its blatant two-tier system. Les Français are entitled to visit public physicians and hopsitals, or pay a premium for private care. Though the system enables, and is saddled with, doctor-shopping, one assumes a small copay ($10 per visit?) would nudge patients to pick a doctor and end the browsing.

French doctors, I might add, don't appear to be unhappy with their wages and their substantial degree of professional freedom (I don't know how many would want to be stationed in Kujuuaq at the start of their careers). I can't imagine they're any worse off than my med-school friends will be in about ten years when they start to earn a living. Right now, they routinely work insane 28-hour shifts, somehow doing a little bit of learning while miraculously not butchering some straightforward procedure. In a year's time, they'll be shipped off to the far reaches of our country on an almost purely random basis.

The price of all this, though taking its toll on the country's budget, seems to be worth it to the French. I defy anyone to show me a poll saying only one in five Canadians are dissatisfied with medicare as we know it.

Yesterday's lesson was that adequate health care coverage is a fundamental human right in the developed world. Caring for each other noursihes the fundamental sensibility of our collective identity. Today's lesson, I suppose, is that it can be done.

I Heard the News Today

Mason over at This Magazine raises an interesting question: what's wrong with Canadian investigative journalism? Among others, the Globe & Mail's Tu Than Ha weighs in. Let us all pause and remember that a small but important group of reporters paved the way for the auditor general's scathing report on the sponsorship filth.

Whither medical care?

The affaire Terri Schiavo, which the death of the Pope finally took off media life support last week, raised important questions among many North Americans about living wills and what constitutes life, not at its beginning, but at its end. Many of these recent arrivals to the house of thanatophilia, including, doubtless, a host of self-affirmed culture warriors invigorated by a "debate" manufactured and encouraged by the news networks, would do well to consider the end of an individual's life, not merely the end of times and the inevitable redemption of the strong.

The death of John Paul II (the Hebrew niftar, signalling the completion of one's life, seems a more appropriate term in this case), marked by the Pope's refusal to be propped alive by machine (to the dismay of the zealots across the Atlantic who invoked his name), is worth another look. As is Les Invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions), Denys Arcand's fine 2003 film, which I happened to watch yesterday afternoon.

Arcand reunites the principals from his 1986 succès Le Déclin de l'empire américain (The Decline of the American Empire), who have grown apart, as friends do, to celebrate the end of one friend's life. Reunited by the son of paliative Rémy, the group gathers to reminisce, catch up and reflect on the meaning of their own lives. The conversation, generally consisting of a delightfully embracing wit, eventually turns to the subject of intelligence, which we are told doesn't exist in a vaccum: the grouping of Michelangelo and Leonardo, coupled with Raphael and Machiavelli, is invoked, as is the trio of Plato, Socrates and Euripides. In fact, the experience is so genuine and loving that you hardly remember that Rémy's life is coming to an end. Intelligence can be thoughtful after all.

It doesn't hurt that Rémy's estranged son Sébastien has returned from Europe under the pretense of easing his mother's burden (though she's Rémy's ex) to leap at the role of prodigal son, using his self-made wealth and inherited smarts to secure his ailing dad the kind of care ordinary Quebecers could never dream of. Rémy's death is touchingly self-prescribed (a series of heroin doses) and delivered by the junkie-with-a-heart-of-gold-turning-the-corner estranged daughter (another!) of Rémy's friend (who also serves as a near foil to Sébastien's perfect fiancée, though fils has not inherited dad's lust for just any woman).

Though Arcand overdoes the chaos that is public health care in Quebec, perhaps to underscore the meaning of Sébastien's act of love, the real thing isn't that much better. At best, when the stars line up and loved ones are capable of making the right kind of effort, Québécois medicare can be reasonably quick and comprehensive. At worst, patients who shouldn't die are left to perish for no good reason. Generally, the rest of us find ourselves in the middle. If Rémy's death - painless, loving and on his own terms - is the best we can hope for, and Terri Schiavo's is of a kind so dreadful we are urged to plan for it in great detail, what must be done?

Canadians are hesitant to accept "two-tier" medical care (while Americans, if only due to incomplete coverage, inadequate insurance options and the unneeded burden on small businesses, are moving toward a single-payer system - surely there must be some middle ground). Arcand makes it quite clear that, by traveling to the U.S. to get a PET scan or greasing the right pockets to open up a long-shutdown wing of a crumbling hospital, accept it or not, we're already there. (Interestingly, Quebec - where we're all supposedly in it together - is home to the most private-pay health care options in Canada.)

Meanwhile, public spending on health care continues to grow, eating up badly-needed funds for education and infrastructure (and if schools are unfunded, the tax base of tomorrow will be unable to sustain the quality of health care aging Baby Boomers will demand). The future, it seems, is pretty grim. Our options are limited: to accept a private-public system and install it across the board (and fast) or continue to invest in our aging system and hope things come out alright. Somehow I don't think this is what Tommy Douglass had in mind.

***

John Paul II, whose brave stance against Communism helped usher in real live freedom to Eastern Europe (and whose rigid opposition to liberalism inside the Church is tough to accept), chose to eschew the route of feeding tubes, unproductive surgeries and life-by-machine. Much like Rémy, he set the broad terms of his life's ending, and in so doing weighed in on the ugly Schiavo nonsense in the U.S. Deuteronomy tells us that there is a choice we must make between life and death - and that we must choose life. In the end, though, life does not always choose us back. Much like Rémy, the Pope knew when the choice could no longer be made; the opportunists who used Terri Schiavo so viciously did not. Each story, though, imparts a similar, powerful lesson. Life, life that is lived, is precious, and it isn't permanent. In guiding our way through the challenges that await a nation that will be demaning more and more from a system that can no longer sustain itself, we must bear that in mind. Through care and comfort do we honour the living and sanctify the dying. The devil is in the details, so remember Rabbi Akiva: the rest is commentary, now go and study.