NORTH BURNABY

BASEMENT WALL — 2010
BY BERNIE LYON

WEST BROADWAY — 2010

IS THIS THE NEW POLITICS?

“Is this the new politics?” The Globe's Gary Mason asks (Juvenile blogosphere war turns partisan websites into smear machines — Sept. 14), concluding his condemnation of biased Vancouver civic-affairs bloggers who throw agenda-ridden reportage into cyberspace like spaghettini against the wall for other media to gobble up.
His theme, by now yesterday’s news among online regulars, is that many blogs are about “settling scores” and “axes to grind.” And the result is a “corrosive” effect on “reasonable” debate and reportage.
“Maybe I’m old-fashioned,” Mr. Mason reflects, “ but I don’t see how any of this benefits local government.”
Mr. Mason may be right. But only because the bloggers that irk his sanctimonious principles play by the same rules as almost all conventional media.
Since the yellow journalism days of William Randolph Hearst up and through the conservative regimes lorded over by such modern newspaper barons as Conrad Black, Leonard Asper and Rupert Murdoch (who recently purchased the Wall Street Journal to provide a hardcore right-wing counterpunch to the New York Times), newspapers and other mainstream media have staked a claim to “objectivity” that is as transparently partisan as the virgin-white winter jackets emblazoned with both the Olympic and CTV logos worn by Vancouver news anchors Bill Good and Pamela Martin during their tenure as “objective” news providers for the Winter Olympics (CTV was the official Canadian broadcaster).
This is not to say good and useful journalism does not exist that valiantly strives toward (but can never arrive) at “objectivity.” But this noble enterprise is almost always thwarted isomewhat by the elitist, statist and corporate entities who exert a silent agenda that is largely implicit (and reporters self-censor either consciously or not in order to stay employed) and occasional audibly explicit.
I did my tour of duty for both of Vancouver’s major daily newspapers for more than 20 years (as a reporter, sportswriter, film and TV critic, and pop-culture columnist). I can recall many times when myself or others were instructed either to cover something to satisfy the cravings of power elites, or were, conversely, commanded to not follow a lead because it would upset those same ethereal entities who exert an invisible power in the same way our everyday culture wields an invisible violence to maintain a semblance of social order.
You want specifics? I remember more than a decade ago a reporter being turned away from a story on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside because “no one wants to read depressing stuff,” or something to that effect.
As a news writer I had a story turned down because its subjects were seniors and the paper was on a youth-oriented marketing campaign.
During my time as a film critic, I was summoned to a boardroom, where a slick theatre-chain rep not-so-subtlety encouraged me to write more positive reviews.
I have seen political cartoons poignant but so edgy that they were spiked (dispatched to the trash can).
I could cite dozens of examples like these. Some laughable, others tragic.
Talk about corrosive.
So where are my sources? My accountablility? Maybe they’re hiding behind the same unnamed sources and convenient, agenda-based news selection employed consistently by what Mr. Mason would call respectable “news organizations.”

Maybe I’m new-fashioned, but I like the fact that bloggers of all bits and bytes have found voices not necessarily tethered to a largely white, upper-middle class, free enterprise theatre of “truthiness,” as Stephen Colbert once put it.
Yes, some bloggers dish out tasty “facts” while they feed off rumor and innuendo. My God, stop the presses!
Simply put, blogs have offered a voice to individuals and micro-communities most often shunned by major media — unless relegated to the letters-to-the-editor, or if they’re lucky, the opinion page. Some voices are reasoned, some irrational, some hysterical.
But it’s up to me (and all of us) as sovereign individuals — not the gate-keepers of mainstream media — to make the call.
Is this the new politics?
I hope so.
LEE BACCHUS

STATE OF AFFAIRS

SPEAKEASY 2010

(click to enlarge)

SOME RECENT IPHONE SNAPS
(daughter has Nikon in Montreal)

BY BRITTA BACCHUS
(Her blog here)

The Yearling, 1946, should come with a disclaimer: "Animals were offed in the making of this so-called classic, which incidentally is shown regularly on Turner Classic Movies." And The Yearling isn't the only one. There's also Old Yeller and let's not even talk about Bambi.
These are the bring-downs of all time since in each one, an adorable animal is "killed", and why? So we can learn a life-lesson. So children can pick up some tips about "coming of age", though if they're like me, they're more likely to run screaming from the theatre and bear the trauma for life.
What was the point of these exercises in sadism?
Suppressed feelings perhaps, if you note the time when they were made. There was a cold war going on that you could feel even domestically. Toughness made you good. Kids could be kids but only up to a point and not for too long. And nothing could spell out the death of innocence like the death of an animal — the cuter the better. It's funny kittens didn't come in for it.
But there is a stunning exception to the use of animals as propagandistic devices in Leos Janacek's opera, The Cunning Little Vixen from 1924.
This has everything — talking, singing, dancing animals, gaiety, sadness, exquisite music that seems to have come from the very forest, and tears that have been earned.
— Lloyd Dykk
(Lloyd's blog can be seen here)

BY BERNIE LYON
AN ILLUSTRATION FROM THIS BOOK

BY BERNIE LYON
THIS AND THE PREVIOUS ILLUSTRATION FROM THE BOOK
COOKING FOR ME AND SOMETIMES YOU
A Parisienne Romance with Recipes
MORE INFO HERE

BY BERNIE LYON (2010)

I should make clear that by the word politics, I do not mean "statecraft," which is what people ordinarily mean by politics and its practitioners, politicians. Nor do I regard the state simply as a form of administration: rather I view it (as did so many socialists and anarchists of my generation some 60 years ago) as a professional apparatus with a monopoly of violence that is used by ruling classes to control meddlesome lower classes.
— Murray Bookchin (1921-2006)

FOURTH AVENUE

BY BERNIE LYON
FROM BARBARA-JO MCINTOSH'S NEW BOOK
COOKING FOR ME AND SOMETIMES YOU.

RICHMOND

CORNER

BY BERNIE LYON

DITCH

MY DAD WAS PROUD OF OUR FIRST HOUSE.
AND HIS KODACHROMES.

FOR L.D., WHO LIKES THESE
AESTHETISIZED RUINS OF THE NEAR PAST