HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2019-03-07, Page 5Other Views
Not doing the constituents any favours
I have no taste in movies, apparently Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Currently, Shawn and I are just coming
to the end of our preparation for this
year’s annual Salute to Agriculture
special issue and it will be short one story
regarding recent court findings and research
papers have pointed to the problems with
the Ontario Society for the Protection of
Animals (OSPCA) needing transparency and
oversight.
The story first came up when I saw, within a
day or two of each other, stories about the
OSPCA’s police powers being deemed
unconstitutional and a report from animal
rights groups echoing that sentiment. It fits a
narrative I’ve been told several times over the
years covering agricultural events for The
Citizen: the OSPCA has absolute power and,
as the old saying goes, that it’s absolutely
corrupted the organization.
I’m on the fence about the corruption part,
but having any kind of organization with
police powers that isn’t transparent and
doesn’t answer to the powers-that-be is a
dangerous combination, at best.
I figured it would be a good idea to reach out
to two of the most prominent producer groups
in our area (Ontario Pork and the Beef
Producers of Ontario) to find out their
executives’ stances on the issue. To that end, I
reached out to the upper echelons of the
agricultural producer groups to set up
interviews about it.
Unfortunately for me (and anyone who
would be interested in the story that might
have resulted from it) the latter just plain and
simple never got back to me which is
frustrating.
What’s more frustrating, however, is that
the former’s chair directed my request to
a communications manager who explained
that the chair was busy and provided me
with a boilerplate response touting the
organization’s “long-standing and positive
working agreement with the OSPCA.”
That response frustrated me because it
doesn’t really answer the questions I have. It
also frustrated me because it wasn’t the first
time in recent memory that I’ve been given the
old “here’s a response you can print” schtick.
A few weeks back I covered a protest
in front of Huron-Bruce MPP and Minister
of Education Lisa Thompson’s Blyth
constituency office. Local support staff were
protesting possible changes to the education
funding formula which they felt was a
dangerous proposal.
When I reached out to Thompson’s office, I
was told to get in touch with a representative
of Thompson at the Ministry of Education
who told me Thompson didn’t have time to
chat (three days after I had sent the initial e-
mail) and provided me with a comment I was
allowed to “attribute” to Thompson.
I don’t do second-hand quotes. I’ll put
that out there right now. If I don’t hear it from
the person I need to hear it from, it won’t go in
the story. Sometimes, that means the story
won’t go. It’s a matter of doing the job
correctly.
In this day and age, being a real journalist
means doing your damndest to try and capture
both sides of a story. There are countless
people out there claiming to be journalists who
are happy boosting up opinions that align with
their own or striking down those who speak
against, but they aren’t real journalists.
These people who slander politicians for
personal gain, run biased content or align
themselves with particular ideologies stain the
news media which then all gets painted with
the same brush and make it all the easier for
other politicians to use terms like “Fake
News”.
It’s because of those people that I put such
an effort into trying to present both sides of a
story: it sets what we do here at The Citizen
apart from gossip and fear mongering and
elevates what we do to a community service.
That’s why you won’t see the story about the
OSPCA in this year’s edition of our Salute to
Agriculture because, while I’m sure I could
find a great number of local people who have
had negative interactions with the organization
(because they have told me about them
before), I don’t have someone in a position of
power able to discuss the issue with. All I have
are these boilerplate responses which say
nothing, answer no questions and leave
everyone wanting more.
It would be irresponsible of me to run a
story without as balanced a view of the issue
as possible and, when people decide they
would rather send some kind of ridiculous
statement generated as much by a thesaurus
and a marketing manager as their own
thoughts, the story suffers.
As angry as I am with the people who
provide these boilerplate responses, if I was
presenting this as a balanced and fair story, I
would also have to point out that those
aforementioned unscrupulous, so-called
journalists are also to blame, as are the people
who support them by reading their stories and
generating advertising revenue for them.
I’m not saying only read The Citizen, but
remember, every time you give the time of day
to these pseudo-journalists, you make it harder
for the real ones to do their jobs.
Answer the questions, verify your news
sources and keep real journalism alive.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019. PAGE 5.
Pretty in pink
Anti-Bullying Day, also known as Pink
Shirt Day, was never going to be a
good day for Huron-Bruce MPP and
Minister of Education Lisa Thompson. That’s
not to say that she directly condones bullying,
but her party, which she doggedly supports,
failed to set her up for success on Feb. 28.
Wearing a pink blouse, Thompson made a
statement condemning bullying in all its forms
last week at Queen’s Park, much to the
delirious delight of her party. She told the story
of the creation of Pink Shirt Day in Nova
Scotia, its impact across the country and the
message that bullying, whether it be at school,
work or on the street, is always unacceptable.
In the months since Premier Doug Ford took
office, it has been clear that bullying people
into submission will be a tactic of the party.
Ford and his cronies have demonstrated this
through their combative relationship with the
media; refusing to make MPPs available,
MPPs refusing to answer questions once made
available, refusing media access to events,
referring to the media as the “Official
Opposition” and even launching the state-
sponsored “media outlet” Ontario News Now.
And now, with the dismissal of OPP Deputy-
Commissioner and Ford critic Brad Blair,
Ford’s made it clear that if you raise your voice
against him, you will be cut down.
But it was Minister of Children, Community
and Social Services Lisa MacLeod who really
put a spanner in Thompson’s works with her
shameless bullying. And, thanks to the party’s
unwavering support of MacLeod, what she’s
done has painted them as schoolyard bullies.
For those who don’t know, MacLeod, in her
quest to revamp autism care in Ontario, told
the Ontario Association for Behaviour
Analysis that it would be “four long years” for
the organization if it failed to publicly support
the government’s autism reforms. Since then,
MacLeod has not denied making the statement
(though she has not owned up to it either) and
she has not apologized (though she did
apologize if her comments “made anyone feel
threatened or uncomfortable”).
I’m pretty sure what MacLeod did falls
under the Merriam-Webster definition of using
political power and influence to intimidate
and, yes, bully someone into getting your way.
There is also a new story coming out of
MacLeod’s camp that she misrepresented
Sherri Taylor, a mother of five from Windsor,
as being supportive of the government’s
autism changes, putting a positive spin on a
quote from her and including a suggestion that
the Ford government is “on the right track”,
something Taylor never said. Taylor has since
claimed MacLeod misrepresented her, saying
she “has not owned up to the deception”
involved in significantly altering her quote.
Altering a quote is a big no-no; take it from a
reporter, or, rather, the “Official Opposition”.
And while MacLeod has thumbed her nose
at Pink Shirt Day, Thompson has her own
issues. As Ford and Thompson turned their
backs on the LGBTQ community with the
archaic rollback of the sexual education
curriculum, they will make life harder for
some of Ontario’s most vulnerable students.
Worldwide and local statistics show that
bullying and suicide are far more prevalent in
the lives of those in the LGBTQ community.
And by failing to educate students about their
LGBTQ classmates, the government is putting
LGBTQ students in danger, whether it be
through bullying or a lack of preparedness for
a world that is evolving, despite the efforts of
Ford, Thompson and MacLeod to pull it back.
Nice shirt though.
Well, the Academy Awards have come
and gone for another year and once
again I’ve been reminded that I
have no artistic taste.
Every year before and after the Oscars are
handed out, the critics and talking heads on
television (probably on social media too, but
I’m anti-social) speculate as to whether the
awards are still relevant, pointing to declining
numbers of people watching the awards
extravaganza on TV. For the movie critics, the
problem is that the pictures they regard as the
very best aren’t rewarded when the prizes are
handed out. I suspect regular people are
simply worn out by being endlessly told that
the movies they really like aren’t worthy of
consideration.
The movies that keep the movie studios
humming and the movie theatres in business
are spectacular portrayals of comic-book
superheroes that attract primarily young men.
This is not the sort of audience that serious
critics and movie afficionados deem worthy of
consideration. They want audience members
who are discerning about the sort of motion
picture that would bore these young people to
death and have them stay home watching
Netflix.
Many producers who have created movies
they think have a shot at winning an Oscar
choose to debut their picture at the Toronto
International Film Festival (TIFF) in
September. Quite a number of movies that
have won the Audience Award for the movie
best-liked by the Toronto audience have gone
on to win the Academy Award for best picture.
So last September, when Green Book was
picked as the audience favourite at TIFF, it
automatically became the favourite to win the
Oscar.
Green Book takes place in 1962 and is
based on a true story. Black pianist Dr. Don
Shirley is booked by his recording company
on an extended tour of towns and cities across
the southern U.S. at a time when there were
regular attacks by local bigots on both blacks
and whites who were campaigning for civil
rights for blacks. To protect Dr. Shirley, a
driver is hired, a former nightclub bouncer
named Tony “Lip” Vallelonga. The “Green
Book” of the title is a listing of
accommodations and restaurants across the
south that black travellers could use.
The movie is an odd-couple road story,
based on a book Vallelonga wrote years later.
Dr. Shirley is a cultivated man, although a bit
of a stuffed shirt at times. Tony is racist, crude
and rude, always filling his face with junk
food. Dr. Shirley tries to refine Tony. Tony
tries to get Dr. Shirley to loosen up.
Because blacks and whites must stay
separated, often Tony would drop his boss off
at an inferior hotel, then travel to a much better
“white” hotel where he stayed the night.
That’s the minor racism involved. Elsewhere
Dr. Shirley is greeted with delight by the
whites who booked him to perform, but as a
black man is not allowed to eat at the same
venue.
On one occasion the two men are arrested
and thrown in a southern jail. Dr. Shirley
demands his right to make a phone call and
one somewhat decent cop among those
present allows him to make it. Rather than call
a lawyer, he calls Robert F. Kennedy who he
knows personally and who was U.S. Attorney
General at the time. One of the highlights of
the movie is when the local sheriff gets a
phone call from the state governor, (whom
Kennedy has called), telling him to release the
prisoners.
By the time the trip is over, Tony and Dr.
Shirley become life-long friends.
Movies today are not just entertainment. In
the age of “Oscars So White” and the “Me
Too” movement, each movie carries a political
burden too. So when some expert writing in
the New York Times late last year questioned
Green Book’s worthiness and wondered if the
world really needed another movie where a
white person learned tolerance from a black
person, other critics jumped on board. Soon
Green Book had gone from being the expected
best picture winner, to having an outside chance.
So when the Academy Awards were
actually handed out last week and Green Book
took the prize for best picture, all those critics
who thought they had shamed people into
voting for more worthy movies were appalled.
There were several more days of abuse being
heaped on the movie and all the morally-
deficient Academy members who had voted
for it.
So I admit to being morally-deficient, too,
because of the nominated pictures I’ve seen,
Green Book is my favourite. Some of the other
more artistically superior movies seemed to
challenge you to be able to sit through them
until the end to prove your worthiness. I just
wasn’t up to it.
Does the world really need one more movie
of a white man learning racial tolerance? Hey,
it seems to me that in this age of Donald
Trump we can use all the tolerance we can get.
Keith
Roulston
From the
cluttered desk