Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘gazette’

The headline: Half think Harper too pro-Israel.

The article:

[The poll] said 45 per cent agree Harper’s position is “fair and balanced and completely appropriate,” while 44 per cent say it is “decidedly too pro-Israel and is not appropriate.” Eleven per cent say he has not supported Israel strongly enough.

Hmmm, by my calculation, that means that more than half of people think Harper is either “fair” or not pro-Israel enough, while less than half think he’s “too pro-Israel”.

Leaving aside the issue of leading questions, unbalanced media coverage, or, you know, those pesky actual facts, who taught the editors how to do math?

Update: Oh, it gets better: the story is linked from the Gazette homepage with the headline “Harper too pro-Israel: poll”. When in fact, the opposite is true; 56% of people have said they don’t think he’s too pro-Israel. *Sigh*.

My friend Iris was interviewed by the Gazette for a piece on what it’s like to be here in Montreal and be worrying about family in Haifa:

“They’re okay, a little frightened but okay,” Meshoulam said yesterday.

“Part of me would like my mom to come back to Canada, but she and my stepfather feel they should stay to support Israel.

“On the other hand, I feel guilty being here in Montreal while they are going through all of that over there,” she said.

It’s more than that, of course. This is the first time she has had to watch a war or conflict involving Israel from the “outside” in over a decade. All the things we take for granted – the biased media coverage, the sensationalist headlines, the twisting around of the facts – are, well, I can’t say they’re new to her, because she’s not that naive, but they are things that she hasn’t had to experience directly until now. We’ve been trying to keep her sane by not allowing her to sit and scream angrily at CNN on TV for more than a few hours a day.

The Gazette also interviewed the mother of one of her best friends, who also lives in Haifa:

“People say to me, why do you let your daughter stay in Israel? Bring her home! I tell them, ‘She is home.’ I have no sense she should come back to Montreal.

“It is easy for people here to talk, but Israel on a daily basis is a good place. People here don’t get that. You don’t just get up and run away.”

For the moment, the article doesn’t require subscription to read, so read the whole thing.

The latest summer fluff exercise from the Montreal Gazette took the form of a survey about Montreal, which, by design, generated the sort of stereotypical answers you might expect from a Montreal of perhaps 20 years ago. I mean, who would really elect Leonard Cohen mayor? Nobody, except that even less people would choose the other three options. According to the survey, we love Old Montreal and hate potholes (duh) and we prefer smoked meat to poutine or Orange Julep (well, some of us, I suppose).

The Gazette may try, but it’s still got nothing on the Mirror’s Best of Montreal. After all, who can resist lines like “here’s to the Big O, finally paid off 30 years after a man had a baby.” And it says a lot that in the Montrealer closest to hell category, Karla Homolka was beaten out by Gerald Tremblay AND Jean Charest. (The latter is particularly ironic in light of this).

Editorials all over the place today decrying Concordia’s decision:

From the Gazette:

“We were pleased to hear,” Lowy told us, “that it was Barak who was invited. Barak is quite different from Netanyahu. We were surprised to learn that there wasn’t a distinction made,” by some Muslim students and their allies.

Oh really? Then Concordia’s “risk-assessment team” is in for more surprises each time the extremists who won another round this week decide to escalate. How long will it be until some hapless professor who happens to be Jewish is deemed “a provocation” or “offensive” or “a supporter of war criminals”? When that happens will Concordia cave in again? No? Then why cave in this time?

From the Globe and Mail (subscription required):

Concordia University in Montreal has handed a stunning victory to the forces of violence and intimidation. By refusing to allow Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, to give a speech on campus, it has in effect handed a veto over free speech to those who would riot to make a point.

And from Monday’s Toronto Star:

But forced silence on controversial issues is a much greater threat to the university than protesters ever could be. By supplanting freedom of speech by forced silence, Concordia’s administrators have made a mockery of the university’s motto: “Real education for the real world.”

In a scathing opinion piece in today’s Gazette, McGill profs Reuven Brenner and Gil Troy tear apart academia:

We don’t have today a “free marketplace of ideas” – not by any stretch of the imagination. What we have is a heavily subsidized production of “obscure jargons” – much noise, that is – with academics carving out, then jealously guarding, their turf.

Pompous wording, circuitous sentences and flaccid prose protect prerogatives and bamboozle students with buzz-words, elaborate models and unverifiable theories, leaving a trail of confusion that mediocre followers – in academia, media and politics, too – either mistake for profundity or just misuse when convenient.

I think that’s a little harsh. There are some very good professors out there, and I took more than my share of excellent, thought-provoking classes.

But Brenner and Troy aren’t attacking individual professors so much as the entire system of academia. And here, they aren’t too far off the mark. While their analysis is more bleak than anything, there is no denying that academia can be full of narrow-minded people who are oftentimes out of touch with reality. The overuse of jargon should be obvious to any first-year arts student. Too many professors have voiced concerns about the sacred cow of “publish or perish” being replaced by “toe the line or you’re out”. If your opinions are unfashionable, you’ll have precious little success finding a position anywhere.

I’d like to say things are getting better, but it seems that they are getting worse. Too many classes, instead of teaching students to become independent thinkers, instead require regurgitation of the professor’s ideas. It’s obvious this can lead nowhere positive, and maybe some soul-searching in academics is long overdue.

A few surprisingly on-point Gazette editorials today:

Here’s Norman Webster on the Khadr family and Canada’s welcoming of terrorists:

In his book, Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World, [author Stuart] Bell sums up: “Canada has tried to smother terrorism with kindness. … It is perhaps a typically Canadian approach. But it is wrong, dead wrong.”

And here’s Ian Mulgrew on Svend Robinson:

The 52-year-old New Democrat MP always has had a flair for the dramatic and a penchant for look-at-me stunts. But this televised mea culpa topped them all. In one stroke, Robinson created the impression he was leaving politics because of serious psychiatric issues, while simultaneously wedging the door open for his return.

And back to hockey, on the national anthem booing saga:

Let’s see what happens tonight when the series resumes in Montreal. We hope those Bell Centre louts who have booed the U.S. anthem in the past will take a cue from the class showed in Boston on Thursday, and at the very least stand in respectful silence.

On that last one, let’s hope there’s no booing at the game tonight at all – whether for an anthem, or for the game itself. Go Habs!

The Gazette thinks that Svend Robinson, by admitting his error, was “dignified” and “courageous”.

Here’s what Terry and Ted have to say about that: bullshit. And I agree.

Robinson didn’t own up to the theft because he’s such a great person. He did it because it was most likely caught on security camera. The guy has been a politician for 25 years – you don’t think he knows a thing or two about spin?

His emotional, over-the-top news conference was self-serving claptrap – a way to control the story before it hit the media in a less-than-favourable way.

As for his medical problems, I would never belittle that, and I do hope he gets help working through it. But a lot of people go through worse every day, and by trying to make excuses, Svend is belittling the true courage of many of them. If you want to talk about “dignity” or “courage”, one needn’t travel far to find true examples of it. Michele is acting with enormous amounts dignity and courage. What she’s going through ain’t easy, and I wish her nothing but the best.

But Svend? Desipte what Damian or Burnside thinks, I’m sticking with my opinion: The way he acted wasn’t about dignity, or courage. It was just about knowledge that the shit was about to hit the fan, and that he’d better do something to redirect it.

The Gazette is going to start charging to access stories online.

Sure, it’s not wonderful journalism… but the Gazette is still the main English-language daily in Montreal. As such, it’s my primary news source.

The content will remain free only to people who subscribe 7 days a week. And no, I don’t subscribe. Not only is it insanely expensive and a waste of paper, but it would also mean I’d have to go down to the lobby each morning to fetch the paper and bring it back upstairs to read it. Considering how my morning routine usually consists of rolling out of bed and rushing to work, the chances of me doing this are slim-to-none.

And now I won’t even be able to read it online! If this keeps up, sooner or later I’ll have no more free news sources to go to.

I wrote the Gazette a long angry e-mail to their posted address, feedback@thegazette.canwest.com – which I assume is an alias for “trashbin@dontcareaboutreaders.com”.

Dammit. I was already mad enough about the hockey game. I’m not having a good night here.

Josh Freed on multitasking. So true.

People who know me know that I’m not exactly the militant feminist type. I don’t go around looking for patriarchal conspiracies, or getting all worked up over someone calling women “chicks”.

But even I was offended by George Jonas’s latest column in the Gazette last week (no link – I guess even the Gazette was embarrassed), in which he claimed that women should be flattered, not offended, to be groped by Arnold Schwarzenegger, because he’s a good-looking movie star.

Several letter-writers to the Gazette shared my sentiment:

There’s a difference between the kind of sexual advances Schwarzenegger has been accused of and a mere sexual invitation. Hollywood good looks are not a licence to behave inappropriately – and possibly criminally – without repercussions.

I couldn’t agree more. And I can’t believe that Jonas can still get away with publishing such crap. It’s 2003, not 1903, and he – and the paper’s editors – really ought to know better.

I’m not saying Arnold’s guilty. There was an icky feel to the smear campaign that conveniently materialized just days before the recall vote. And didn’t work, I might add. If there’s actual evidence against Arnold, then charge him. If not, he’s innocent unless proven guilty.

But to suggest that a movie star can’t be guilty of sexual harrassment because women would be flattered to be groped by him? That kind of dark ages mentality should have no place in print.