HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2001-01-24, Page 5Final Thought
We should all be concerned about the
future because we will have to spend the
rest of our lives there.
— Charles Franklin Kettering
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2001. PAGE 5.
Other Views
If we had to kick all the tourists out of
Canada except for one group, I'd vote to
keep the Japanese. They're wonderful
guests.
I like them because they bring lots of money
and thoughtfully cram themselves into tour
buses and group charters, leaving more room
for the rest of us. I like them because they're
never loud or slovenly; they don't bull their
way to the front of queues or yell across a
restaurant "YEAH, YEAH, HONEY...BUT
HOW MUCH IS THAT IN REAL MONEY?"
I like them because they actually believe
Anne of Green Gables was a real person.
And I love them because they're beginning
to hate cell phones.
It wasn't always that way. Japan has had a
torrid love affair with that wretched gizmo and
it's not over yet. There are still some 55 million
cell phones in Japan - just about one for every
second man, woman and child.
They come in fluorescent colours, with wrist
straps, even blinking antennas.
And Japanese use their cell phones
everywhere - in their cars, in restaurants,
walking, even cycling.
Which is ironic, because if there's one
culture where the cell phone should be doomed
to be named Public Enemy Number One,
Economics is frequently called the
dismal science partly, I think, because,
we remind you all too frequently that
there are both good and bad sides to every
business cycle. All people ever want to hear is
the good side such as how wonderful the
prosperity stage of the cycle is and that it never
is going to end.
Just so I don't fall into this rut too often, now
and again I like to bring you what I consider to
be the lighter side of the news, if only to cheer
you up for a short while just after you have
tried to balance your budget and failed.
Or you could be wondering why
governments always want to take credit for the
good economic news but blame bad news on
faulty statistics as something else totally
beyond their control.
We read a great deal about incompetence,
etc. in Canada but I have to laugh at a lot of this
since I run across far worse examples in other
countries. The news I have been reading on
France lately makes that country look like
amateurs when it comes to such things as
fountains in the prime minister's home town.
Right now the French are investigating for
criminal activities one president, one former
prime minister, four former finance ministers,
the governor of the Bank of France and his
predecessor as well, the mayor of Paris, the
former head of the French national railways
and the head of the Communist Party.
Some have already gone to jail for their
misdeeds. Fortunately for the president of the
country, Jacques Chirac, under the current law
he is immune from prosecution arising from
any investigation. The others aren't so lucky.
In Arab countries feelings about Israel are
running understandally high. This is quite
evident in the stores in Cairo where anything
remotely connected with Israel is being
targeted for a boycott by consumers. Messages
circulated in Egyptian high schools have
demanded students not to drink Pepsi because,
it was claimed, the five letters of that product
really stand for Pay Every Penny to Save
Israel.
you'd think it would be in Japan. They are an
incredibly polite people. You don't hear
Japanese shouting or honking their horns in
traffic jams. They don't gossip on the subway
or play boom boxes at the beach. They are
respectful of silence and of other peoples'
space- so how come they went nuts for ,the
most notorious shatterer of silence and solitude
mankind has ever invented?
I don't know, but there's plenty of evidence
that the ardour is cooling.
Japanese restaurants are beginning to ban the
use of cell phones in their dining areas. Some
Japanese trains now carry electronic signs that
flash an angry red when anyone uses g cell
phone within 25 feet.
Cell phones are so voted-off-the-island that
Japanese citizens are taking the unheard-of
step of walking up to cell-phone-using
strangers in public and asking them to turn the
#%*^&*ing things off.
Raymond
Canon
The
International
Scene
Also coming under attack was McDonald's
since, as an American company, it is closely,
associated with Israel's ally.
This is not the only place where McDonald's
finds itself in the firing line. An Italian
theologian, writing in a newspaper in his home
country, claimed that hamburgers were, in fact,
a "Protestant" food and unsuitable for
Catholics.
The theologian, Massimo Salani, pointed
out, "At McDonald's ... hunger is satisfied as
fast as possible so no one can do something
else, and one loses the sense of community."
While this stretches the use of religion to
incredulous limits, I doubt that consumers in
Italy will be moved by it when they suffer a
Big Mac attack.
I can only shudder when Signor Salani
comes to Canada and starts examining Tim
Horton's. Will Canada be categorized as
another purgatory?
A "Caught in the Act" award should go to
Murat Demirel, a nephew of a former president
of Turkey, who was arrested just as he was
getting on his yacht with his girlfriend to leave
the country. That in itself might not be grounds
Other countries are following suit, England,
Spain, Italy, Israel, Brazil, Australia - all have
either restricted or banned outright the use of
cell phones while driving. They're also looking
at measures to at least curtail their use in public
places.
Here in Canada cell phone fever continues to
run amok. More than seven million Canucks
own one. That's a whopping 30 percent
increase in just one year.
There's no question that the cell phone is
here to stay - and a good thing, too. But we do
need to come up with some kind of protocol
for using them in public. I'm sick of hearing
one-sided yaks between Yuppies and their
brokers when I'm riding on a bus or sitting in a
restaurant.
My personal hero in the Cell Phone Wars?
Judge Michael Martone, a district magistrate in
Mount Clemens, Missouri. Judge Martone was
trying a case in which the prosecuting attorney,
one Michael L. Steinberg, repeatedly ignored
the judge's instruction to turn off his cell
phone. When Steinberg interrupted his
questioning of a witness to take a call, Judge
Martone's gavel came crashing down. Ten days
in jail for contempt of court.
Nowadays Steinberg has a cell, but no
phone.
for arrest if it were not for the fact that security
cameras at the bank he owned showed him
leaving the building with a bulging suitcase
full of cash.
This little tidbit has been shown repeatedly
on Turkish television to the delight of viewers.
Mr. Demirel is now awaiting trial in a jail in
Ankara, the capital of Turkey.
I have, finally, reluctantly concluded that
Florida contains more experts on any subject
than any other locality on this planet. First
there was the Elian Gonzalez case, when the
airwaves and print media were flooded by
people expressing infinite wisdom on how to
handle the poor boy.
This has been followed by the presidential
election where the workings of the electoral
college have come under scrutiny. Again we
were swamped by a similar number of experts.
It got so bad that even Fidel Castro offered to
come to mediate the dispute.
It's nice to know that there is so much
ultimate truth in one state waiting to be tapped.
We should transfer all these people to the
United Nations.
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So we compromise
/t took awhile, but it was Saturday night and
I was finally, after labourious ministrations
to myself, good to go.
Tie-dyed, bell-bottomed, moccasined and
head-banded, my efforts had paid off. As I
prepared to launch myself out into the fashion
netherworld inhabited by adolescents in 1969,
I thought I looked pretty cool. Mom, on the
other, didn't seem to see it.
"You're not going out like that?" was the cry
that heralded my departure virtually every
time I left the house. Her comments didn't
offend me but I didn't get it either. After all, I
had spent forever making my hair straight
enough, finding the right shirt to wear with the
right jeans. This was not haphazard, this was a
well thought-out fashion statement. I was
confident in my appearance and sure she was
just not with it.
In retrospect, however, and now with some
30 years separating the girl I was with the gal
I am, I suppose I'd have to admit my friends
and I did look a little odd. That is to say by
societal standards. We did not under those
terms look normal.
Nor have many teenagers since.
Normal is a term that will raise the ire of the
young folk at our house. With their baggy
clothes, odd hair styles and body piercings,
they are, some might say, rebelling against
the norm. They, however, prefer to think of it
as being themselves. Their argument is by
whose terms is the word normal defined. "It is
not anyone's business how I choose to dress,"
I'm told time and again.
I absolutely have to agree, with one
unfortunate addendum. Most of society is
uncomfortable with the abnormal. Thus, when
one wants to be taken seriously, they will
probably have to conform to the acceptable. It
may not be right, it may not be fair, but it is
reality.
Kids should be able to make their own
fashion statement. From 13-18 anything goes.
But, with the twilight of the teen years comes
an interesting development, a need to be
accepted as an adult, yet a reluctance to dress
the part.
With growing up comes the knowledge that
you can still make your statement without
stepping outside the norm. For example, I
wear my hair longer and plainer than some
may think fashionably acceptable for one of
my years. (Bad news for teens everywhere —
moms never give up. Mine is still telling me to
get my hair cut) Also, many of the ideas that
went into my clothing style three decades ago
can still be seen in the way I dress today.
These are my choices.
My kids are right. There is no normal. I
make choices as a somewhere-near-middle-
aged-woman, with which my peers might not
agree and vice-versa. Each person is unique
and thus cannot be typical.
However, society has set certain standards, I
must believe, for certain reasons. As a
teenager, I refused to be shaped to someone
else's ideals of. what was right and wrong.
There is a melancholy when I look back at that
freer spirit. But, you can't always open a
closed mind, and an adult wouldn't likely let
something as insignificant as the way they
look sabotage being taken seriously.
And so we compromise.
It can be a painful transition, when
encroaching adulthood forces an
acquiescence, an alteration in beliefs. But, one
which often signifies the first step to maturity.
Talkin about the cell phone wars
The lighter side of the news