Lowering Myself to Boston's Level

(I hope you appreciate this)



It's always great to get some vindication from the outside world. A big underlying theme to this little blog (yep, I'm going to admit it) is my deep love for my own hometown - Toronto. And, accordingly, my attempts to acclimatize myself to the Bostonian way of being. In no way shape or form, do I hate living in Boston. But I always did feel something was missing. Or, put more to the point, that this town was missing out.

Its a hard thing to put a finger on, but all too often I find myself comparing Toronto and Boston all too openly. My "Hmmm...well that is interesting, but in Toronto we do things differently" has become an all too common refrain in my life.

So truth be told there are times, many times, when I have thought to myself that we do not just do it differently in Toronto, but that we do it better. Toronto is no perfect city. But I constantly feel I'm missing out in Boston.

And so I did feel vindicated by Foreign Policy magazine's ranking of Global Cities 2008. And as you've probably guessed, yep - Toronto is not number one. Why should it be? But, it did rank #10 on the overall ranking as opposed to Boston's #29 ranking.

Toronto gets kudos in the magazine for both its human capital and the cultural experiences it can offer citizens. I do miss that - art and stuff. Boston, Foreign Policy notes, is a great place to get a degree. Well...yes...but there is quite the variations in quality in that aspect in my experience.

So I've been lowering myself to Boston's level over the past 3+ years? Apparently. Isn't that nice of me.

And the embers never fade,
In the city by the lake.
The place where you were born.

Toronto Rant: Rosie DiManno is off her rocker

As the 2-5 people know who read this blog, the stated purpose of Torontonian/Bostonian is to enlighten elements odd, kooky or strange on both sides of the border. This blog entry will take a break from that by instead focusing on a homegrown problem: Rosie DiManno.

Rosie DiManno is a columnist for the Toronto Star newspaper in Toronto. To my estimation she covers nothing specifically, just everything generally. Her columns range from reportage on the Academy Awards ceremonies, to the war in Afghanistan. Seriously - the woman puts a finger in the air everyday writes about whichever way the wind is blowing. If she was a good writer, I'd say "no problem let the woman's mind run free." Unfortunately however her writing sucks large.

Without a stance (conservative, business, etc) or a beat (parliament, the city, healthcare, etc) the woman lacks complete conviction about anything in her writing. She has no perspective, except her own, and therefore her writing suffers and often seems unorganized, unthoughtful and just ludicrous.

That does not stop people from across Toronto from loving her. Including my mother. Why, I do not know.

This all came to a head for me recently with a piece she wrote on the trial of Jane Creba's accused killers. Creba was an innocent bystander shot dead in broad daylight while shopping with her family during the busy post-Christmas sales in 2005. It is undoubtedly a horrible event. One that deserves investigation, and conviction of those responsible.

Rosie DiManno wrote this column this week in the Toronto Star. As per usual it is a horrible piece of writing.

To begin it lacks anything - organization, theme, style, etc. It does have voice - I'll give her that. But to my mind it is otherwise horribly pointless. It basically can be summed up as "Bad stuff happens to good people." That to my mind is not a new idea. In fact, that has been the vernacular with which the Creba incident has been discussed since the crime took place. As a reader there is absolutely no revelation, moment of enlightenment or unique perspective DiManno brings to this piece. It sucks.

Moreover however, I MUST disagree with a number of ill-made points she brings to light in the piece:

People taking cellphone pictures of the incident's aftermath showed a lack of "decency." I think the better word would be that the picture taking was showed conflicting morals. Think about it - taking the pictures in and of itself isn't about decency. In fact how many times have pictures or video of a crime or crime scene actually helped convict people or provided evidence for criminal investigations? Lots. And, as DiManno later alludes to, most of the photo-takers were young ("kids" in the piece), who may not have known to do otherwise without parental guidance. DiManno makes the horrid assumption that photo takers were doing this for some personal gain - financial, or personal. She even goes so far as to assume that Creba's death on that Toronto street might have served as a screensaver for someone. Yeah it MIGHT have, but I'm pretty doubtful that the majority did this. What Ms. DiManno fails to recognize is that MOST of modern society has been trained to gawk at these sorts of incidents and, yes, even record them. It's not a decency thing anymore. It's about conditioning and what are presumed natural reactions.

Rosie's rant on the marksmanship of the shooters. OK, this to me shows a total lack of decency. How dare DiManno suggest that had the bullets hit its intended victim that the shooting would have been far more legitimate. Only by hitting an Innocent bystander does this shooting become a crime, implies the author. Yeah - no. Actually if we really wanted to get to the heart of what happened to Ms. Creba one might instead consider the cause of the shooting among the offending parties to begin with. What was the cause of the dispute that led to violence? Is this unique to a particular cultural group? How did a handgun become available to the offender? And the hardest question of all to resolve - what was in the shooters background (poverty, abuse, etc) that ultimately led him to gang involvement and this crime? These are REAL questions that get us to real, often hard to deal with, answers.

The ethnicity of the shooter "Its not a black thing." Rosie you racist bitch. The fact that you even felt it relevant to mention the stance of the shooter, associate his actions with "bad boy cool,"and associate the scene as something "out of a gangsta rap video" pretty much damn well implies that you DO see this as a black thing. And here is the real problem I have with this article, and the whole story.

It's a well known fact that Creba was Caucasian. Her shooter black. Unfortunately the story as a whole as been therefore portrayed as poor innocent white girl, in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets violently gunned down by a black man in the middle of a gangland dispute. And you know what - that's a problem. Beyond the ethnicity of the parties its a very bad portrayal. The fact is we know little about Creba - probably not enough to play her up as the innocent and abashed young female that the media often cites her as. We know less of the shooter - he was black and in a gang. These are horrible stereotypes on both sides that actually do nothing to resolve the crime or provide solutions to prevent such an occurrence from happening again.

In a perfect world we wouldn't have the Rosie DiManno types who fall victim to media stereotypes and so easily point fingers. In fact, it's highly disappointing that as a member of the media that is all she can do. I personally like my journalists a little more thoughtful and well rounded in their work. The struggle that the media should be investigating is how to stop these acts of violence. I understand that isn't an easy job. It's hard. But why on earth do we have a media (much less a columnist) unless they are adding perspective, thought or idea to the 'regular' reporting of news.

We deserve better - especially in Toronto. So Rosie stop writing to pay the rent, because clearly that is the only reason you write. Start saying something. Please.

Labor/Labour Pains

Its been an odd couple of months for JenInBoston. Regardless of the personal situation, the current economic showdown...meltdown...er...downturn requires some thoughts on labor/labour relations betwixt the two countries. To this end, I mean to place the emphasis on the worker themselves - how they are treated. This will not devolve into the discussion of the proletariat versus the overlords, but instead I want to explore the socioeconomic ends of labor in both countries (thank you LSE!).

In so many ways the two countries could not be more different - at least from an organizational point of view. The old story goes that Canada's socialist strains has been much more genteel with the worker, whereas the Americans are worked to the bone. Although my research points to American organized labor being older than Canadian (the National Labor Union in the US was formed in 1866), today Canadians appear to unionize and organize in larger proportions than Americans. This, it is often pointed out, is proof positive that Canada is a safe place for the worker.

And I say balderdash - unions in Canada are good work if you can get 'em and it's often hard to get 'em even if you try. Proof positive is the upsurge in both part time (often retail) employment and temp agencies. Both of these 'industries' aim to get around exactly the wonderful protections that unions have tried to harness for workers. Benefits, cost-of-living wages and other protections are largely denied to these workers precisely for the reason of the cost of employing full-time workers. So while at the one end of the market sits the protected unionized worker in Canada, at the other is the temp.

In the US, it is largely true that today fewer American workers are part of unions. In some cases this has been detrimental to the worker, with many lacking the organization and power to insist on basic benefits such as health care coverage. Yet, it has also been the US labor movement that has pushed so hard for workers rights that they are often identified as contributing to current economic problems. If one looks to some of the strongest historical unionized industries in the US, such as the automobile manufacturing industry, one can quickly see the potential hazards in tying large and robust benefits packages to operational costs especially in declining industries. Certainly the costs of retiree benefit packages have been under the microscope by the automotive industry over the last few years in the wake of declining US car sales.

Which gets precisely to the problem of unions in both countries - like the Cheshire cats of Wall Street, the unions too have become greedy. Far beyond pushing for equal pay and equal rights, they have instead started to demand payback and profits from the companies for which they work. But this has lead to greed - "if the boss makes a million on my back I want some of that pay too!" Yet, in reality, there is hardly enough to go all the way around.

How else but by greed can one explain how high school teachers just a few years into their employment in Ontario can make $70,000 a year for the equivalent of 9 months work each year? I'm not arguing that what teachers do isn't valuable socially - its just not that valuable fiscally. While unions have been busy getting greedy and protecting their own, they have neglected to realize that the 7.5% + inflation YOY they get their members means -5% to workers in other industries. That is how we find ourselves with temp agencies and part time work galore.

Also while the kinder-gentler social Canadian approach has been busy empowering the union, the lack of this support has been busy empowering a worker themselves in the US. Obviously, no man is an island (as Nick Hornby...er...Hugh Grant likes to say) and undoubtedly for those lacking awareness, skills or knowledge the deunionization approach can cause a problem and lead abuse of workers. But for the knowledgeable, hardy and confident worker a lack of unions can in fact lead to the power of personal choice (over jobs, salaries, benefits). What US workers seem to have inherently understood that their Canadian brethren haven't is that companies need workers, just as much as workers need jobs. Both are equal parties in the exchange and open to negotiation.

While unions used to protect the unprotected, today's worker must know how to look out for themselves. While trade deals between the two countries used to work to protect workers on both sides of the border, today that is simply too costly.

No man may be an island, but it is everyman for himself.

Workers of the world there is no need to unite - just stand back and think about it for a few moments and you can figure it out for yourself.

Maybe all they need is a round table

I hate Tom Brokaw and so should everyone in the US. Mr. Brokaw did the American people a huge disservice during his moderating of the most recent Presidential Nominee Debates. The role of a moderator is to control the speakers of a debate so that one is not heard exclusively over the others. It is NOT however to squash the actual debate among representatives, as Mr. Brokaw so aptly did. If there is one thing that Saturday Night Live's odd mid-week and misplaced 30 minute indulgence in good ratings did well last Thursday was point out the foibles of debates in which time was simply not of the essence, but the entire content of the discussion.

Mr. Brokaw's rod-up-the-you-know-where-sports-referee approach to moderation was far from refreshing. If anything it did a lot to stifle, mislead and distract the American public from the real issues of the day. Unlike, prior moderator, Jim Lehrer's continued insistence that the candidates should NOT in fact speak to him BUT to each other, Mr. Brokaw's approach led to one of the most dry discussions in the history of television. Dry discussion isn't exactly what is called for at the moment.

Contrast this with the Canadian Federal Election debates among the leaders of the large parties. There are some big differences. First of all the "I'm right and you're wrong" mentality is depleted through the varied opinion that not two but five leaders bring to a debate. The nuance in opinion, idea and discussion that must take place in an environment in which a variety of parties participate make topics far wider and varied than the US debate will allow.

This environment of discussion is not just a problem with this debate season in the US, it is systemic as Katherine Hall Jamieson has been want to make a career of pointing out. The narrowness of opinion usually expressed in debate situations in the US leaves much of the American public unable or unwilling to vocally and expressly discuss their own politics and opinions, much less their leaders and parties.

The Canadian leaders DO talk to (and at) one another. The moderator makes sure they get a chance to talk but doesn't unnecessarily limit or reduce conversation. The issues are clear. The opinions of the leaders is clear. Canadian leaders discuss and debate issues openly. The topics of debate too go far beyond the mind numbing "What are you going to do about the economy?" (how does anyone answer that in 1 minute), to specifics about environmental policy and the economy, trade and taxes. It's a much more robust conversation than is allowed to take place in the US.

And the conversation therefore elevated.

And that's what the US presidential debates need - elevated conversations. The onus of which usually falls to the moderator to introduce new, interesting and important topics, not to constantly say "One minute - these were the rules the parties agreed to in discussions.'

In other words, American Presidential debates NEED discussion to succeed - and it must usually be injected in by third parties.

Either that or a round table.