HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-07-02, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2009. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Who’s Kanye West?” I asked my
son. He looked at me like I’d just
tumbled off the back of a turnip
truck from Sheep Tracks, Alberta.
“You’re kidding, right?” he responded.
I wasn’t kidding. I’d never heard of the guy
until I read the story in the newspaper about
his brand new book.
So I Googled him. Turns out Kanye West is
famous. A pop music star, born in Chicago in
1978 and currently a household name (not
counting my household) around the world as a
rapper, record producer and hip hop phenom.
What can I tell you – I’m an old fart. I
know as many nuclear physicists as I do hip
hopsters – and I don’t know any nuclear
physicists.
But I found out about Kanye when he swam
into my ken, if you will. The guy’s just
authored a book called Thank You And You’re
Welcome. It’s described as his ‘personal
philosophy’.
It is 52 pages long.
What’s more some of the pages are blank;
others are just sprinkled with a handful of
words.
Like the page that carries the sentence: “I
HATE THE WORD HATE!”
Or the two-page spread that informs readers:
“LIFE IS FIVE PER CENT WHAT
HAPPENS AND 95 PER CENT HOW YOU
REACT!”
My, that’s original. I haven’t heard that
bromide since my Boy Scout troop leader laid
it on us during a wienie roast at Camp Calumet
about half a century ago.
Call me a cynic, but 52 pages of blank space
interspersed with recycled clichés strikes me
as a tad effervescent as philosophical treatises
go.
Deep sledding for Kanye though – so much
so that he had a co-author, one J. Sakiya
Sandifer, to help him slog through the really
heavy stuff.
Seems as if the whole world of books and
writing is deeply distasteful to Kanye. Even
though he condescended to take questions
from reporters about his new book, he clearly
wasn’t keen about it.
“I am not a fan of books,” he said. “I would
never want a book’s autograph.”
Probably just as well. It’s hard to find a book
with legible handwriting skills.
Kanye went on to tell reporters he was “a
proud non-reader of books. I like to get
information from doing stuff like actually
talking to people and living real life.”
Google informs me that Kanye got a pretty
gritty slice of real life at the MTV Awards a
while back. He was nominated in five different
categories including Best Male Artist. He
whiffed in every category.
And did not take it well. Kanye had a five-
alarm hissy fit right in front of the cameras.
Shook his fist, stamped up and down, laid
down a cluster of F-bombs, denounced the
judges and the competition and declared that
he would “not come back to MTV ever again.”
If Kanye ever does change his mind about
reading he might find it profitable to glance
through a chapter or two by Emily Post. She
had some helpful things to say about public
etiquette.
Probably never happen. There is a thread of
anti-egghead defiance that runs through
Kanye’s musical repertoire as well. His first
album was called Dropout. The next one was
Late Registration, followed by Graduation.
Which Kanye didn’t – he’s a college flunkee
and proud of it. He claims being a non-reader
of other authors was helpful in ‘writing’ his
book because it gave him “a childlike purity.”
I prefer another entertainer’s take on books.
Walt Disney said: “There is more treasure in
books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure
Island…and best of all, you can enjoy these
riches every day of your life.”
I also like what a chap named Gilbert Highet
had to say when a visitor dismissed his
collection of ‘mere books’.
Highet retorted, “These are not books,
lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the
shelves. From each of them goes out its own
voice…and just as the touch of a button on our
set will fill the room with music, so by taking
down one of these volumes and opening it,
one can call into range the voice of a man
far distant in time and space, and hear
him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to
heart.”
Amen, Gilbert.
Kanye dig it, Kanye?
Arthur
Black
Other Views Kanye judge a book by its cover?
If Health Minister David Caplan was a
doctor, he would be barred for mal-
practice.
But instead Liberal Premier Dalton
McGuinty has continued to keep his most
trouble-prone minister in his post, ironically
even while shuffling other, more useful
members of his cabinet.
McGuinty is keeping alive what to many
must appear the biggest mystery in Ontario
politics.
Caplan as health minister allowed millions
of dollars in excessive payments to be steered
to consultants, including political friends, and
earlier, as minister responsible for lotteries,
failed miserably to protect ticket buyers from
fraud.
Caplan by now should be kaput. Another
minister thought to have steered much smaller
funds to immigrant groups connected to
Liberals, Mike Colle, was fired from cabinet,
apparently forever.
But McGuinty, who is asked constantly why
he keeps Caplan, has replied he has confidence
in him, and no plan to remove him. He
confirmed this by leaving him out of his latest
shuffle.
McGuinty has added, when announcing
tighter restrictions on hiring consultants, “the
buck stops with me,” which sounds contrite
and unselfish and some media sycophants
have even praised him.
But a government should not be allowed to
wipe the slate clean of gross misuse of public
money merely by claiming it has brought in a
rule to prevent it happening again.
Ontario also had a doctrine called
“ministerial responsibility” that meant
ministers took responsibility for actions by
their ministries and resigned when their faults
were considered substantial enough.
McGuinty seems to be abandoning this;
although he has not replaced it; by promising
the premier will resign if substantial faults are
found in a ministry.
This also is a province governed by so many
rules and procedures an MPP was almost
thrown out of the legislature recently for
calling another’s comment “disingenuous.”
But it has no hard and fast rules on when a
minister should resign and would have
some difficulties writing any. A rule would
find it difficult to draw a line, for example,
between a minister wasting millions and
one using his government car to pick up
groceries.
Some failings by ministers are clearer-cut. A
New Democrat, Evelyn Gigantes, in the 1990s
blurted out under questioning the name of a
drug addict, which violated his privacy. She
resigned.
Later, a Progressive Conservative minister,
Bob Runciman, resigned after his staff
contributed information to a throne speech
that identified a young offender. And another
Tory minister, Jim Wilson, resigned be-
cause an aide revealed a doctor who
criticized government billed more than most
doctors.
It has since become accepted a minister who
violates privacy laws even through staff should
resign.
A Conservative minister, Cam Jackson, was
forced out after he was accused of spending
lavishly in hotels and restaurants, but nowhere
in the same league as the payments to
consultants. The legislature’s integrity
commissioner ruled his expenses were
reasonable, but too late to get his job back.
Some premiers have been more reluctant
than others to fire ministers being criticized,
because this would admit they made mistakes.
Bob Rae, as NDP premier, became so
anxious to prove he would not tolerate
anything that sounded like an error he
fired Mike Farnan as solicitor general after his
staff wrote to a court on his letter-head that a
constituent had been given a parking ticket
by mistake, although Farnan never saw the
letter.
McGuinty has held on longer trying to avoid
losing ministers. He refused for two years to
yield to demands he fire Harinder Takhar, who
was spotted at his former private business and
raised suspicion he still worked there, which is
against the rules. Takhar is still in cabinet.
Whether a premier drops a minister in the
end depends mostly on how long he is
prepared to hang in and take the heat.
But if critics get Caplan’s scalp, they will go
after deputy premier George Smitherman, who
as a previous health minister also approved
some questionable spending and is someone
McGuinty cannot afford to lose. This is a
battle for high stakes.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Another year, another graduating class.
And for some of the schools in the
area, it seems it will be one of the
last.
June 23 the Avon Maitland District School
Board voted to close two schools in our
readership area, Blyth and East Wawanosh
Central Public School, along with the
elementary schools in Wingham and Turnberry
by 2011. The plan is to build a new
kindergarten to Grade 6 facility, with Grades 7
and 8 students integrated into F.E. Madill
Secondary School in Wingham.
While the plan for a new school doesn’t fly
in the face of the wishes and desires expressed
by the Hot Stove Group, putting senior
elementary students in a high school does. The
group, comprised of parents and community
representatives of the Central East North
Huron Accommodation Review Committee,
came up with the idea of a centre for
educational excellence that would include all
elementary grades. Through surveys and
public input the message was clear that people
were not comfortable seeing Grade 7 and 8
students moved to Madill.
Frustration with the board’s decision has
come, not simply from having their worst fears
realized, but also as they perceive the ARC
process as seriously flawed, the board and
trustees as underhanded.
There are bureaucratic decisions based on
reasons that may not be obvious to us. I remain
enough of an idealist to think the AMDSB
believes it’s making all the right moves.
However, elected officials and civil servants
should never lose sight of who they work for. If
the decision is truly in the best interest of the
children, it should be easy to prove.
I’m not sure I see the problem with putting
kids into a high school environment early. My
doubts actually are with regards to why it’s
happening in the first place. In 1989 I began
covering the board of education for Huron
County. Some time later, talks began about
needing more space in our schools. Trustees
argued against portables saying they weren’t
suitable or safe. I remember thinking of my
portable days, and really didn’t see the
problem. But, again, one must trust that the
right decision will be made.
Additions were built, including a much-
needed gym and library at Walton Public
School. A few years later, the school closed.
And now, others face the same fate because
of capital costs, but also empty space. Board
‘projections’ show that the number of students
will continue to decline over the next five
years. I have no problem with the idea of
looking to the future to prepare for eventuality,
but I do with basing present decisions on
forecasts, regardless of how they are achieved.
One only needs to look back to see why.
I suppose I’m meant to trust again, that the
people who know, know best. But the board
has for years said numbers show enrollment is
declining, and well, I just wish I could see it.
Each September when The Citizen calls the
schools for enrollment figures, there have been
only slight variations in both directions. Also,
when we visit schools, we don’t notice empty
rooms, we don’t notice smaller classes.
And as Grade 8 graduation arrives, as the
challenge of clustering and posing a group of
rambunctious adolescents into some sem-
blance of order for a picture is at hand, we
wonder year after year, when the crowd will be
smaller. Even on those occasions when it has
happened, the number’s back up the next June.
History has made me nervous. Closing
schools to build a new one, based on what data
predicts, has me shaking my head.
It’s a mystery why Caplan stays
Shaking my head
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