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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-03-14, Page 5Arthur Black There are still a few looneys around It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: these are fabulous times for millions of fortunate folk in Eastern Europe. The tyrannical yokes of evil despots from Eric Honecker to Nicolae Ceausescu have been shucked off and slung in the cobbled gutter of history. Many a heart bubbles over with the heady froth of freedom. Most particularly are the thoroughbred hearts that beat within the patrician breasts of Michael, Otto, Alex, Nicholas, Simeon and Leka. The aforementioned chappies constitute a royal six-pack, currently drumming their fingers, whistling under their breath and marking time in various five star hotels and blue-blood spas around the world. Michael is King Michael of Romania. Otto is Archduke Otto Von Hapsburg. Alex is Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia. Nicholas is King Nicholas II of Montene­ gro. Simeon is King Simeon II of Bulgaria. Leka is King of Albania. They are mighty monarchs, every one. The International Scene Campeau's follies or hybris revisited BY RAYMOND CANON I think that most Canadians are acquain­ ted with the efforts of one Canadian real estate developer, Robert Campeau, who was considered to be from the wrong side of the tracks and proceeded to do something about it. At any rate, those of my readers who have or who are about to visit what is known as “The Galleria” in downtown London will have seen one of his less noteworthy efforts. I say noteworthy for the simple reason that the money which Mr. Campeau poured into this effort pales beside what he spent in his efforts to acquire two well known American depart­ ment stores, Federated and Allied, paying close to $12 billion for the 260 stores in these two chains. How the mighty have fallen seems to be the most common thought as both of these chains have just filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of American bankruptcy laws. A great deal has been written about Mr. Campeau and I do not want to give him any more publicity. However, it might be interesting to look at the situation into which he so confidently thrust himself. At one time in our lives department Letter Do adults know what they’re doing? THE EDITOR, Our Government bought a painting for $1,800,000. On the painting there is a blue back­ ground and a red stripe down the middle. Now, I have a painting that looks like it. Who can paint a painting like this? 1 bet most of you. So why did our Government buy this painting? Anybody could paint it. Isn’t this a little complicated? So if anybody could paint it why did they buy it? CRYSTAL SEMPLE AGE - 8 ETHEL, ONT. They possess loyal subjects, palatial man­ sions, fabulous treasuries and all the pomp, splendour and pageantry that customarily accrue to sovereign leaders. They think. All they need to become royalty in reality is to convince their countries to take them back. Otto, Mike, Nick, Alex, Simeon and Leka are what you might call royalty in waiting. Mothballed monarchy, if you will. They don’t actually wear crowns or sit on thrones because their predecessors were thrown out of their jobs when the Communists took over the reins. (Or reigns). Since then, they’ve been rules in absentia, marking time in exile, casting wistful glances at their rightful kingdoms. Strange thing, this royalty business, when you think about it. What perverse quirk of human nature compels some nations to single out a family of mortals and give them semi-divine powers? It’s not as if the royals are ennobled by the preferential treatment. Look at some of the blueblood bozos of history: We’ve had winners like Pepin the Short and Joanna the Mad, Charles the Simple and Karl the Fat. Not to mention Ethelred the Unready, and of course Ivan the Terrible. Bright? Henry III slept with raw veal chops on his cheeks, his hands lathered in pomade so that they would be white in the morning. Sane? Prince Otto of Bavaria barked like stores were big business in both Canada and the United States. I recall the first time after I came to Canada that I set foot in Eaton’s and Simpson’s in Toronto. You could buy anything (or almost anything) there and they were certainly the place to shop. The United States, too, had its Macy’s, Bloomingdales and the like and their popularity with the buyers was every bit as great as were the Canadian department stores in this country. However, for any person who wants to take an overview of the history of department stores, it is easy to notice that for the last quarter of a century these stores have been finding themselves in a contracting business. This relentless com­ petition in the United States has come from three main sources: speciality stores that offer an attractive and wide range of particular category of goods and at a lower price than the department stores. There are also the mass discounters and super­ markets that sell consumer durables at low prices in the same way that the large grocery chains sell their products. Finally there are the mail-order retailers which are especially liked by those families where both parents hold full time jobs. Most shopping malls of any size built in the United States have tended to depend on a well known department store to attract people to the mall. Given all the above competition, these stores, in order to stay alive, are going to have to offer their customers services that discounters and speciality stores cannot match. In short, they are going to have to shape up or ship out. One store designer, in commenting on Mabel’s Grill Continued from page 4 they have to promise to keep Mulroney when the country splits. Getting rid of him might almost be worth the price.” WEDNESDAY: Billie was saying that we may have our tax revolt here but we’re pretty tame compared to the British. Over there Mrs. Thatcher wants to change the property tax system and people are rioting. One old timer gave back his war medals in protest. “Yeh,” said Hank, “we go along like sheep to the slaughter in this country. We may yell a lot but you know we’re still not going to get really upset.” Billie wondered why we can’t get as worked up as the British. You’d never hear of something happening in Canada like the 25-year-old model who chained herself a dog and once kept his boots on for two months. Cultured? Carlos II of Parma collected pornographic watches. Tasteful? King Leopold of Belgium wore a black wig, a feather boa, rouge, and shoes with three-inch-thick soles. Then of course there are the royal losers thrown up in this century - the gluttonous King Farouk, the reptilian Shah of Iran, the dithering Dagwoodian Duke of Windsor. Truth to tell, the six Men Who Would Be Kings now poised to reclaim their birth­ rights in Eastern Europe seem to be more equipped for the task than the average royal. Only Leka I of Albania shows definite signs of the loopy, off-the-palace- wall behaviour we’ve come to expect from kooky kings. He’s nearly seven feet tall, lives in South Africa, likes to walk around wearing a pistol and a dagger and is given to making pronouncements that begin: “We, King Leka and I ...” Vintage imperial looniness. Which is maybe the only real job description that out-of-work sovereigns have a reasonable shot at these days. To quote an expert: “Royal personages are like clowns. They amuse the people, even with their funerals, and keep them contented.” I didn’t say that - Marie did. Queen Marie. The last Queen of Ro­ mania. the changes, recalled how, at the beginn­ ing of the century, the big department stores attracted people by having reading and sitting rooms, sections of the store where customers could relax in silence and even rooms that were equipped with special lighting so that women could see how their ball gowns looked in gaslight. In order to compete today, he suggested, the same department stores should have dining areas, lounges, changing rooms, creches, valet parking, personal-shopping and gift-buying services, exhibitions, in­ structional programs and concierge ser­ vices. Given that so many of the depart­ ment stores are either on the brink of bankruptcy or not far away from it, there is little chance of any of this happening. The Americans are not very happy with the likes of Robt. Campeau. They feel that he let his ego run away with him and failed to face the fact that the department stores simply do not generate enough revenue these days in the States to service the bank debt and junk-bond borrowings that were required to finance the takeover. Further­ more, he is accused of putting at risk the livelihoods of 100,000 employees, not to mention 300,000 suppliers. This is one situation where the gloom in the United States is matched by that in Canada. The competitors of the endanger­ ed department stores are not only circling like vultures to hire away all the good employees but to persuade suppliers to give them preference over their less fortunate rivals. Robt. Campeau may have a great deal of anger focused on him; he is sure to be joined by others in the last decade of the 20th century. naked to the Parliament buildings. Canad­ ians really are dull, he said. Well, said Julia, at least we’d have to wait until summer for that kind of protest. THURSDAY: Billie says he’s taking up painting after seeing the National Gallery spent $1.8 million on a painting. “I figure I could even do that one with rollers,” he said. Tim said the thing he wanted to know is how come these paintings only get to be valuable after the artist dies. “Some guy struggles to make a living painting all his life and then he dies and some business­ men who just brought the thing for an investment make a fortune off it.” Listen, Ward said, there are so many people upset about this painting that it’s lucky the painter is already dead. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14. 1090. PAGE 5. Letter from the editor Don’t sweat the little things BY KEITH ROULSTON Karl Marx once said that religion is the opium of the people and in his planning for a utopian society he banned religion. The capitalist society he scorned may now be less religious than the communist one he espoused and one wonders if we couldn’t use a little more of that opium these days. Marx, and a lot of other theoreticians, felt that religion had been used to keep people down over the years. The church had talked to the poor people about finding their place, not on earth, but in the afterlife, they felt. It seemed to them that the people in power, the landlords and the nobles, kept people from worrying about their rights by making them feel their reward in heaven. Well people aren’t thinking much about their reward in heaven these days and they seemed totally consumed with looking out for their rights. Women worry about not having the right to live as well as men while some divorced fathers worry because they feel they don’t have as many rights as their wives over raising the children. Women in turn feel the men’s attempts to get more rights is an anti-feminist move aimed at exerting power over women and children. We have gay rights and children’s rights and minority rights. We have some groups that want the right to practice their religions more openly while others protest that their rights are being abused by Christians wanting to use their religion openly in the schools. We have the right to life versus the right to control your body by having an abortion whenever you please. The pursuit of rights has tied our courts up in knots with appeals to the Supreme Court. South of the border the pursuit of my rights over your rights has turned the country into one where everybody seems to be sueing someone else. There’s no doubt we need protection of the rights and freedoms of our citizens but somewhere along the way we seemed to have lost sight of the point. We seem to be walking around with a chip on our shoulder waiting for someone to knock it off and interfere with our rights. Our society reminds me of teenagers, always looking for and finding injustices to be angry at. And are we really any happier? Do many of these things really matter? Does it really matter a heck of a lot if people wear turbans in the RCMP? We have women in the mounties now and it doesn’t seem to have sent the world to hell. It used to be you had to be over six feet tall and unmarried to be a Mountie but we changed that and the world went on. Is it going to hurt someone in Quebec to have English on a store sign or is it going to hurt anybody much in the rest of Canada to have French spoken in government offices? There are so many big concerns in life. We can see in eastern Europe the joy people have in a freedom that still isn’t as great as the one we enjoy everyday but take for granted. Imagine what our life would seem like to a black person in South Africa? Imagine living in a country where the military kills anyone it sees as an opponent as happens in many parts of the world. Sometimes I think we make ourselves miserable finding new battles to fight that don’t really matter. Maybe we’d be better off if we had a little more of the attitude of the peasants of old who felt they were powerless so they’d just wait for a better life next time around. Yes we must continue to fight. We have seen the fight for civil rights in the southern U.S. We have seen the horrors of the Haulocast and other tragedies. We cannot let that kind of thing happen again. And yet getting ourselves all worked up about things that don’t really matter a lot, even if they can be perceived as an injustice, isn’t helping ourselves much. Maybe we should be more like the expression people used when I was a kid: “Don’t sweat the little things”.