In Lieu of Content

Until I find the time/patience/ability to blog effectively I'm just going to leave this handsome picture of Yul Brynner up. It's probably going be up here for a long time.

The Real Palin Problem

It would have seemed unthinkable just a few weeks ago, but in her brief time in the national political spotlight Sarah Palin has managed to make Barack Obama look downright dull. Everyone, from local talk radio to national print and television pundits, is talking about her, about her influence on the Presidential race, on what she means for and about American politics, about whether she's a role model or a step backward for women, and a hundred other things.

What they aren't talking about - at least, not nearly enough - is the fact that she is so remarkably, perhaps historically, unqualified for office. So far, she has expressed an ignorance of the role of the vice-president, the contents of the Bush Doctrine, the origins of the Pledge of Allegiance, to name but a few of her intellectual shortcomings. Yet the media responded to these mistakes not with outrage or even criticism but condescending praise, the kind normally reserved for special athletes or slow-witted relatives. Sure, she got a few of the details wrong, they said, but she should be praised for doing the interview in the first place. She's trying, after all.

This is what American politics has come to. Somebody running for the second most important office in the land is being congratulated for doing an interview. Merit, it seems, is no longer an important criteria for higher office in the United States. Folksy authenticity, earnestness, and the ability to invoke September 11th as often as possible are, apparently, far more desirable. Sarah Palin is a vivid example of the worst kind of populism, the belief that mediocrity is somehow a virtue. She is the result of the growing anti-intellectualism that has infected the United States over the last twenty years, and if she and John McCain win the White House, there may be no going back.

One Hell of a Book

I'm a little late to this party - well, half a decade late, technically - but I couldn't resist mentioning what a great book "Down to This" by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall is. The book, for those of you who either haven't read it or don't know about it, describes his experience living in Tent City, the shanty that sprang up on Home Depot's then-undeveloped lot down on the waterfront. But this isn't a book about the politics of homelessness, and it's not about a privileged guy parachuting himself into a difficult situation in order to artificially extract insight and information (which, I confess, is what I thought it was before reading it.)

Instead, it's an immaculate piece of writing, blending the energy of Kerouac's "On the Road" with the exquisite attention to detail of Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London." It's a book that doesn't pull any punches but also gives the people with whom he shared almost a year of his life in tent city the dignity and attention they deserve. Sure, many of them are drug addicts, some of them are prostitutes, and all of them have some major form of social dysfunction, but they're also interesting and complex people with needs and desires that aren't all that different from yours or mine. One of the most interesting things Bishop-Stall accomplishes is to treat a group of people - the homeless, broadly writ - like the diverse group of individuals that they are, a need that is almost as important as food and shelter.

Then there's the humour, which you wouldn't expect in a book dominated by scenes of deprivation, humiliation, violence, and poverty. There's his goldfish, Dude, who dies of a crack overdose after one of Bishop-Stall's pals gives him some figurines to put in the tank that, he later discovered, were covered in crack resin. Or there's the time where Jackie, the first person he met in Tent City, waves off her diagnosis of Lyme Disease by proclaiming that she will simply avoid eating citrus fruits for the forseeable future. Most of this is black comedy, to be sure, but it's there all the same.

I could go on for pages here, and I won't. Suffice it to say that anybody reading this who hasn't bought the book should go do so. But I think, before I go, it's important to make an observation about what this book says about the state of literature in Canada. That it hasn't received the acclaim it deserves - and it has received acclaim, mind you - is indicative of the fact that it doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of Canadian literature, of bucolic scenes of quiet angst, preferably in a rural setting and, if possible, at least fifty years ago. His, in contrast, is gritty, urbane, and unpretentious - hell, half of the protagonists, if you can call them that, are crackheads who routinely steal, fight, and abuse other human beings. But that's the beauty of Bishop-Stall's book; it's real.

More importantly, he doesn't hide from that reality or the often unpleasant aspects of it. He doesn't proselytize about homelessness and he doesn't trade in the cheap stereotypes and anti-government propaganda that so many anti-poverty advocates rely upon, some of whom show up as well meaning but hopelessly naive characters in his book. Instead, he describes a bunch of particular human beings, each screwed up in their own particular ways, and while that kind of approach might not be conducive to government programs or other top-down fixes it's also the only honest way to approach the situation.

I hope he writes another book soon. I hope that this experience hasn't destroyed him the way it would so many others, too, because he's a great talent.

Trying Again

So, not that anybody gives a damn, but I'm going to give this blogging thing another shot, for what it's worth. I readily concede that I have neither the interests nor the aptitudes required to be a good blogger - that is, an unnatural attention to superfluous superficialities and cultural minuteae, a desire to share each and every though that passes through my dopey head, and lots of time on my hands - but the good news is that I'm currently living in a basement, so I do meet at least one of the trade's criteria.

In all seriousness, though, I'll give this another try. For the seven or so of you who have expressed disappointment that my old website went down, enjoy the unfiltered idiocy that may (or may not) be forthcoming on these pages.