The Citizen, 2006-03-09, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2006. PAGE 5.
Other Views
It was a dark and stormy night
I t took me 15 years to discover 1 had no
talent for writing, but 1 couldn't give it up
because by that time 1 was too famous.
— Robert Benchley
Some career advice to those among you who
are Writing Impaired but nonetheless aspire to
a career in literature: --
Go for it. The fact that you can't cobble a
decent sentence together should never stand in
the way of your becoming a rich and famous
writer. Harold Robbins couldn't write worth a
lick, but that didn't stop him from turning out
a string of bestsellers.
Grace Metalious was a 'horrible writer, but
back in the 1950s she pecked out a pot boiler
that became the most popular paperback in
North America in its day and eventually a TV
series. It was called Peyton Place.
You want some contemporary bad writing?
Check this out: .
"Vernet turned to throw full shoulder into
the door, but this time the door exploded
outward, striking Vernet in the face and
sending him reeling backward on the ground,
his nose shattering in pain."
His nose...shattering? In pain?
Who the hell wrote that — an ESL student?
Nope. Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code.
The best-selling book of 2005 and soon to be
a movie possibly lousier than the book.
Ah, well. Bad writing is like a low-grade 'flu
bug — it's always going around. Herewith,
some wretched writing culled from essays
penned by (sob) university undergraduates:
John and Mary had never met. They were
The people who regularly advise
politicians free of charge how to do
their jobs have not had much success
getting themselves elected and this pattern is
unlikely to change soon.'
A former television reporter and
commentator, Ben Chin, who did his job
competently but is not a household name, has
been chosen by the governing Liberals to run
in a by-election in this city's east end.
But no one else wanted to run for the
Liberals and the riding has been New
Democrat for four decades, so he might have a
better chance of being picked to succeed
Oprah Winfrey. ,
Few journalists have been elected over the
past half-century compared to, say, lawyers.
Eight of the last 10 premiers have been
lawyers and the recent trend has been to elect
a lot of teachers.
The Liberals elected a TV news anchor from
'Hamilton, Jennifer Mossop, last election, but
have not given her any role where she would
have an edge, such as projecting policies,
although they need to explain them better.
The Progressive Conservatives under
premier Mike Harris had a minister, Isabel
Bassett, who had been a reporter and
interviewer on a newspaper and TV station run
by her husband, John Bassett. But she
overcame this start to do these jobs well and
was a passable minister.
Conservative Frank Drea "is the best-
remembered minister from journalism,
because he was the epitome of the hard-living
newspapermen seen in movies.
Drea, who had written an Action Line
column helping consumers, drank heavily,
often had a cigarette dangling from his lips
and hat tilted back. Once, after imbibing, he
spoke .to condo owners believing they were
wine-growers, saying he hoped this year's
vintages had been good.
But Drea also knew what voters wanted and
improved labour and consumer laws. His
government kept him on because he was
like two hummingbirds who had also never
met.
He was as lame as a duck. Not the
metaphorical duck either, but a real duck that
was. actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a
land mine or something.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and
extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog
at a lamppost.
The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze,
like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair
after a sneeze.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he
thought he heard bells, as if she was a garbage
truck reversing.
And my favourite:
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like,
whatever.
Nice to know the old literary standards are
being maintained. I'm sure Edward Bulwer-
Lytton would approve.
Bulwer-Lytton? Only the dean of bad
writing. He was a contemporary of Charles
Dickens, living from 1803 until 1873, and he
gave us the very epitaph that epitomizes lousy
among its few ministers who showed a human
touch.
New Democrat Evelyn Gigantes had been a
TV public affairs, commentator in Ottawa and
like many journalists was impatient with rules.
She became the first minister fired twice from
a cabinet.
She first named a drug addict sent abroad for
costly treatment and secondly intervened
trying to persuade officials squabbling over a
government-subsidized housing project to
drop accusations, which was deemed a
conflict.
Bill Wrye was a TV public affairs producer
in Windsor and when he ran for the Liberals
his station fired him because it prohibited
employees in sensitive posts running. But this
helped him become ever better known, and he
won and headed three ministries and many
years later he is back as a senior adviser to
current Liberal House Leader Jim Bradley.
Conservative John Rhodes had been a radio
and TV announcer and sports director in Sault
Ste. Marie and was minister of industry when
he died of a heart attack on a trade mission to
Iran, the only minister in memory to die on
Final Thought
A life spent making mistakes is not only
more honourable but more useful than a life
spent doing nothing.
— George Bernard Shaw
lit.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton is the man who
penned the phrase "It was a dark and stormy
night".
In his (dis)honour there is an annual Edward
Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest in which
scribes vie to create the single most inane,
vapid, pompous and altogether ludicrous
sentence of the year.
And now, confession time: I never
understood why the phrase was considered so
execrable. I've read worse. Hell, I've written
worse. It just didn't sound all that bad to me.
At least it didn't until I looked up the rest of
the sentence Bulwer-Lytton wrote. The entire
sentence reads: "It was a dark and stormy
night, the rain fell in torrents — except at
occasional intervals when it was checked by a
violent gust of wind which swept it up the
streets (for it is in London that our scene lies)
rattling along the housetops and fiercely
agitating the scanty flames that struggled
against the darkness."
Yup, that's bad enough to qualify Bulwer-
Lytton as the patron saint of puffery.
Except. I said that Bulwer-Lytton was a
contemporary of Dickens. He was also, in his
lifetime, second only to Dickens as a popular
writer.
And he wasn't always bad. Bulwer-Lytton'
gave us the phrase 'the great unwashed'. He's
also the author who wrote: 'the pen is mightier
than the sword'.
See? Just because you're bad doesn't mean
you can't be great.
government business abroad.
Long-time Liberal MPP Murray Gaunt was
a farming reporter for a TV station at
Wingham — the list shows TV and radio
journalists are more inclined to run,
presumably because they are , more
comfortable with the spoken word than
newspaper reporters.
Conservative MPP Gordon Smith ran a radio
station at Orillia, where a local singer named
Gordon Lightfoot gave his first on-air
performance. Ron Knight, a TV and radio
station director in Thunder Bay, was elected
for the Liberals, bul quickly left them, saying
he wanted to vote as he saw fit.
Other journalists have run and lost, but not
many have run considering their numbers.
Some journalists may feel they can get all
the inside view of politics they want by
reporting without the longer hours of work and
uncertainties of being elected.
Some may feel they can influence politics
more than they could if they were elected.
The vast majority of voters also at some time
have felt affronted by the media — they may
take it out on any journalist who asks for their
vote.
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your letters brief and concise.
Bonnie
Gropp
The short of it
The country life s ilence does have a sound. It is the distant
rumble of a tractor, the rustle 9,f leaves in
a gentle breeze, the bawl of a cow, the
staccato moments of kitchen activity.
That 'silence' was one of the things I
remember most about my visits as a child to
the farm. It was part of all the ambiance that
my country mouse cousin took for granted but
which to me was magic.
My memories of farm life are of an idyllic
existence. Sundays at my grandparents when I
was very young introduced me to an amazing
world, full of things that buzzed and
squawked. There were wonders to be found in
that yard and in that old farmhouse. A pond,
rudimentary by today's standards of outdoor
design, was home to a 'family' of goldfish,
whose sole purpose I believed then was simply
as an object of fascination for me.
Likewise was the back kitchen, a spacious
room that seemed largely ignored by the
grown-ups, and in which we would run and
holler until being reminded that we were still
indoors.
Summer holidays at my cousins' homes also
provided me with an opportunity to enjoy farm
life. Vast fields and clear skies were • the
backdrop for a sense of freedom one just
doesn't have surrounded by buildings. It was a
world of adventure and mystery. I always felt
on the return visits from them, that I had
nothing to offer them nearly as exciting or
perfect.
But I've grown up now. And if there's one
thing I've learned over the years, it's that farm
life isn't perfect. In the years since, I have seen
the struggles caused by too much or too little
rain, of pests or disasters. Back in my
childhood I didn't give a thought to the
struggles of making a living from the land, a
land governed by Mother Nature.
Watching town people come and go,
changing jobs or even losing them, neither of
which would necessarily impact how they
lived, I used to think how nice it would be to
work at home. Farming, for instance wasn't
just making a living, but making a way of life.
Then as a young adult, I watched as the
recession robbed some farmers not just of their
livelihood but of their homes. As a child I
hadn't thought about farming as business, with
overhead and debt.
The persistent insidiousness of increasing
rules and regulations, the trend to factory
farms and the political battles have definitely
removed any notion about agriculture as the
idyllic life. Certainly, over the years there have
been those who have done well as farmers. As
well, they still have the magic that I saw
through ingenuous eyes so much years ago.
Working with nature, the earth, the air, the
animals is satisfying. Open spaces and a
slower pace are good for the soul.
But in working on stories for our upcoming
farm issue this past few weeks, I got the sense
that for many of them, it may not be worth it
anymore. Those doing well, in supply-
managed sectors, are battling to keep the
system that's made it work. And the question
remains as to whether anyone could afford to
take over for them in the future.
A need for parity with their U.S.
counterparts, low price on commodities, costs
of implementing legislation on their farms and
the on-going impact of the BSE crisis are only
a few of the challenges added on to the natural
ones facing farmers these days.
The rest of us should pay attention to what
they're saying. City mice don't always see the
real story.
Few journalists ever get elected