The Citizen, 2013-05-30, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2013. PAGE 5.
Here’s some breaking news – the
cupcake is dead. Well, it is in New
York anyway.
Crumbs Bake Shop, one of the heavy hitters
in the Gotham gourmet cupcake business, saw
the value of its shares plunge 34 per cent last
month to an all time-low. At one time it
fetched $13 a share; now you can pick one up
for $1.70.
I can’t say I’m astonished. The cupcake
craze had ‘passing fad a la Hula Hoop’ written
all over it from the time the first shops opened
back in the early years of the millennium.
Imagine: a phenomenon that owed its
existence to a single episode of the TV soap
opera Sex and the City which happened to
feature a cupcake shop. Talk about a flimsy
foundation.
For the discerning observer cupcakes were
always a mere flash in the baking pan. They
never grew the commercial legs of, say,
doughnuts.
The doughnut. Now there is a gustatory
delectation you can take to the bank. Not only
is the humble doughnut hale and hearty, it’s
spawning new and exotic offspring faster than
a Kardashian collects grooms. The cupcake
craze may be cratering in New York, but
doughnut hybrids are rising in the ashes. A
Lower East Side enterprise called Doughnut
Plant (motto: We Doan Need No Steenkin Sex
and the City) – is doing turn-away business
offering items such as a number crested
with roasted chestnuts and creme brûlée. They
fly off the shelves as fast as they can bake
them.
Meanwhile in Washington there’s a joint
called Zeke’s DC Donutz which offers a blitz
of blintzes that you’d never find at Tim
Hortons. Exhibit A: a peanut-butter frosted
doughnut topped with a slice of undercooked
bacon.
Which is tame stuff compared to what’s on
the menu at Glam Doll Donuts of
Minneapolis. At Glam Doll, Goth-clad
servers with stainless steel implants in
locations you don’t want to know about
dish up pricey sliders with names like
Femme Fatale, Bombshell and Chart Topper,
which is described as an “unexpectedly
perfect topping blend of peanut butter and
sriracha...”
Sriracha? Sounds like a skin disease.
Clearly there are some major mutations
going on in the world of baked buns. Take
McDonald’s. The world-famous franchise is
rolling out a new version of its Egg McMuffin
that is, um, egg-free. Well, yolk-free anyway.
It still features a whole-grain muffin, Canadian
bacon and white cheese, but the rest is only
egg whites, which means the all new ‘Egg
White Delight’ contains about 50 fewer
calories than the regular Egg McMuffin.
You don’t have to order the new version by
the way; the always popular, belly-busting Egg
McMuffin is still on the menu.
But the most disheartening news on the
snack front has to come from Wonton Foods, a
New York company that happens to
manufacture most of the fortune cookies in the
world.
And Wonton Food, alas, has been bitten by
the Political Correctness bug.
It seems the company has been receiving
complaints from consumers about the
‘romantic messages’ found in their fortune
cookies. You know – messages like ‘One who
admires you greatly is hidden before your
eyes’?
Well, some consumers (clearly people
without actual lives) have deemed such
messages ‘offensive’ and ‘sexist’. Wonton
Food is bowing to the public pressure and
replacing such sentiments with treacly, Happy
Face pronouncements like “You make every
day special”.
Gag me with a wonton soup spoon.
Arthur
Black
Other Views
It’s all over: the cupcake’s last days
Some jobs are just thankless. One of them
tends to be the one that I have chosen for
myself. Indeed, reporting the news
sometimes irritates those who tend to ‘make’
the news, but for all the wrong reasons.
Take Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. In the last
few weeks Ford has become an international
disgrace (before that he was just a Greater
Toronto Area disgrace) by being accused of
smoking crack in a video with some of
Toronto’s premier drug dealers. Whether it’s
true or not, the world now knows Ford’s name
and people are doing their research.
So late night show hosts like Jay Leno and
Jimmy Kimmel now know about Ford’s
trouble with the law in Florida in 1999, the
time the police were called in the wee hours of
the morning because he was drunk and wanted
to drive his children to Florida (great memories
I suppose?) and of course his sexist, racist and
homophobic comments. (My favourite has
always been “those Oriental people work like
dogs, they sleep beside their machines.”)
So whether it’s true or not that Ford smoked
crack, now that the rest of the world can see
who Torontonians elected to represent them.
It’s like Toronto had been trying to hold a
curtain closed and the rest of the world finally
ripped it out of their hands and now everyone
is embarrassed with what they saw.
So it was no surprise on Sunday that the
Fords (Rob and his brother, Councillor Doug
Ford), referred to the media as “maggots”.
Charming.
Ford has never liked the media, but they have
consistently proven themselves to be right
about him. I’m guessing he’s just annoyed that
they’ve found the skeletons in his closet.
Ford is a type and everyone knows the type.
He is chesty, he is arrogant and he’s always the
smartest guy in the room.
There had been times where I tried to stick
up for Ford. He wasn’t uptight about going out
in Toronto. He would get his picture snapped
by people when he was out celebrating St.
Patrick’s Day, or at a Toronto Maple Leafs
game. He was doing what most of us would do
at these events, but he just happens to be the
mayor of Toronto and everyone is trying to
photograph him.
And despite being a member of the media, I
have, at times, felt that the media has been too
harsh on him. There have been biting criticisms
of Ford’s weight, jokes that should have never
left the school yard, but when a fat man is in
power, all of a sudden they make their return.
However, while I felt he may have got picked
on for the wrong reasons at times, Ford has not
conducted himself the way most leaders do.
Now, the whole world knows what kind of
mayor Toronto has, and, as Canada’s most
famous city, Toronto’s idiocy paints us all with
the same brush.
Political satirist Jon Stewart produced a
segment on Ford using his “Canadian
correspondents”. The piece was funny for the
most part, until it started discussing smoking
crack as a cherished Canadian pastime. On the
world stage, Toronto became Canada pretty
quick to an audience of people who likely
couldn’t point out either on a world map.
So while the world waits to see how the Ford
situation will develop, it continues to get
stranger every day. Last week Ford parted
ways with his chief of staff, on Monday both of
his press secretaries quit (honestly, wouldn’t
you?). But don’t worry, the maggots with note
pads and cameras will continue to bring you
the story as best they can because their job is to
find the truth and with Ford, that can be easier
said than done.
Built Ford tough
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Displaying a lack of bias in non-
editorial writing is a necessity for
newspaper reporters and editors.
We have to try to eliminate any of our personal
opinions from our writing because it could
taint the information we provide to people.
Once readers have that information, it’s up to
them to decide what to do with it.
Avid readers of The Citizen and my column
may have picked up a few of my beliefs
including my political leanings, my stance
on Justin Bieber and how I feel about people
like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. However, if the
time ever comes that I have to write a political
story against my leanings, or interview
someone I’ve previously displayed an
opinion for, I will do everything short of self-
lobotomy to make sure that my views don’t
colour the story I tell or the information people
receive.
I’ve always felt that journalists were alone in
that boat; they couldn’t have a preference and
they had to deal with the lonely existence of
limiting their opinions on things to the
opinions of the person they are interviewing.
I was wrong to feel that way.
There are many people who have to forget
their bias when they present information
including analysts, chief administrative
officers and teachers. The latter has recently
become a cause for concern.
While the catalyst for this editorial is a story
that is unfolding in British Columbia where
teachers, through a campaign entitled “When
Will They Learn” took over the halls of local
schools, teachers may have been sending a
greater message across the country than they
know.
The B.C. teachers, hoping to shine light on
what they felt were irresponsible decisions in
education spending policy, wore buttons and
placed posters until, in some areas, they were
asked to remove them while on the school
grounds.
When one such teacher was interviewed, she
explained that it was a non-partisan campaign
to shine light on the decisions made by the
Liberal Party. She then went on to explain how
teachers had been “at odds” with the Liberal
Party for a very long time and that the cuts the
Liberals made were the root cause of the
problem.
Now, I’m not sure where that teacher
was educated, but I’m pretty sure that she
doesn’t understand the meaning of non-
partisan.
That would be like me saying, “I’m opposed
to the gas plant scandal in a non-partisan way.
I know that the Liberals did it, and it’s their
fault, but I’m not attacking them specifically.”
You can’t claim something is non-partisan if
you go on a national forum and try to explain
that it is a non-partisan campaign brought
about by a very partisan view.
The situation got me thinking about what
students are being taught by teachers, someone
who, depending on the students’ age, could be
seen as beyond reproach.
In my youth, upon reflection, I picked up a
lot of attitudes, beliefs and biases from my
teachers on things that didn’t necessarily have
to do with my education.
For example, I have always thought that
J.R.R. Tolkien is the pinnacle author in fantasy
writers because I overheard a primary school
teacher of mine discussing the books with an
older student. I found the books in my
mother’s collection and read them and loved
them. Now, I’m not saying I loved them
because of what I heard, I did, however, seek
them out because of that.
I use Nikon over Canon because a teacher of
mine convinced me Nikons are better. While I
have found anecdotal evidence to support that
theory, it doesn’t make it accurate.
I find Apples more user friendly than their
PC counterparts and, while part of that is
undoubtedly because Apple computers are the
norm in my industry, it all goes back to
something a teacher taught me.
It makes me wonder what other lessons
teachers are imparting that they aren’t aware
of.
For example, when a teacher walks into a
room wearing a button that draws reference to
something that, with minimal research, can be
traced back to a site that vilifies the Liberal
Party, it does have an effect on a student and it
could make that student more open to seeing
the flaws of the Liberal Party and the strengths
of, say, the New Democratic Party.
The influence that an authority figure can
have on an underling, or a teacher on a student,
can be something as major as helping them
choose their future or as minor as sharing a
bias, but that bias may form the basis for
decisions later in life.
CBC’s The Current discussed the issue as
well and welcomed representatives of the
teacher’s union in B.C. who said that, while
the buttons and posters were in the school, and
quite prevalently displayed, they weren’t there
for the students, they were there for parents
and trustees to see.
It took me back to those artists who claim
their art isn’t for the critics, it’s for the public.
That art is going to be criticized and those
posters are going to be observed, day-in, day-
out by the students and there will be an effect.
Teachers, like journalists, can raise or fell an
army with the right words. We need to be held
to a higher accountability. (I say we because of
the Fox News and the Sun TVs of the world).
There needs to be an onus on us to be careful
about how we affect other people.
It’s an interesting dichotomy really where an
old adage is actually proven to be false.
All my life I’ve been taught that history is
written by the victors but, in today’s day and
age, history is written by the teachers.
Fortunately, we’re in a place where things like
evolution are beyond recriminations of
falsehood, however we are not in an area
where the whole truth may always be
presented.
So when it comes to providing information
in any forum beyond a commercial one, there
needs to be responsibility, there need to be
tempered attitudes and, most importantly,
there needs to be a fair view given to both
sides of every argument.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Educational bias needs to end