Incongruity

We've been talking a lot about the importance of incongruity as a structuring principle of comedy in one of my classes this summer. Here are a few of the political incongruities that gave me a chuckle this past weekend:

1. Just in time for the 42nd edition of New York City's Pride Parade yesterday (at which a chastened Tracy Morgan served as honorary marshall--kidding!), Governor Cuomo signed a bill on Friday making New York the sixth state in the US (plus the District of Columbia) legalizing same-sex marriage. As the lead article in Sunday's New York Times pointed out, "the biggest and most influential donors to the New York campaign were Republicans." But as the paper's former restaurant critic Frank Bruni put it elsewhere in a very personal (and movingly written) op-ed piece--with what I take to be only the slightest whiff of irony--perhaps the greater incongruity is that this is a victory that the LGBT community is celebrating in the first place: "Why such widespread backing, from such surprising quarters? One major reason is that the wish and push to be married cast gay men and lesbians in the most benign, conservative light imaginable, not as enemies of tradition but as aspirants to it. In the quest for integration and validation, saying “I do” to “I do” is much more effective — not to mention more reflective of the way most gay people live — than strutting in leather on a parade float. We’re not trying to undermine the institution of marriage, a task ably handled by the likes of Tiger Woods, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards and too many other onetime role models to mention. We’re paying it an enormous compliment."

2. Meanwhile, here at home, after nearly a year investigating across party lines allegations of Canadian troops' complicity in detainee torture in Afghanistan, Stephen Harper's government has released thousands more pages of transcripts. Once again, most of the information on those pages is blacked out. Word is that some of it has to do with asbestos being used to build the prisons where the alleged torture took place.

3. In Saturday's Globe and Mail, Mayor Gregor Robertson admitted that he didn't know how many police were on the streets the night of the the Stanley Cup riots, and that Police Chief Jim Chu wouldn't tell him. Apparently last year's release of the same information was a "mistake" and that as Chair of the Police Board, the mayor has no input into operations, only for "police and budget." But wouldn't both of those things--personnel and money--fall into the category of operations in most organizations? At least Robertson agrees with Premier Clark that those responsible for the worst of the mayhem should be duly punished. As the above photo details, they are starting with bad spellers.

P.

Should Old Acquaintance, or, For Naught

Hard to believe how quickly the end of this year snuck up on me, let alone the end of an entire decade. I can get quite maudlin on such occasions, so I'll keep my comments in this final post of 2009 as terse as possible.

Images on the news last night reminded me how this decade began--with the manufactured panic over Y2K and the mass computer meltdown that never happened. Of course, here on the west coast of North America, where we're virtually the last to ring in the new year, the story was already old news by the time fireworks exploded without a hitch over Sydney's Harbour Bridge.

I think I had forgotten about Y2K because, as I'm sure is the case with most people the world over, I really mark the start of the past decade with 9/11. Fitting, then, that we should be leaving it more or less the way it began, the recent attempted terrorist attack over the skies of Detroit on Christmas Day having sent airport security around the world into full lockdown mode.

As for Canada, while we politely declined to join George W's "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, we were soon enough embroiled in Afghanistan, deploying our first combat troops since the Korean War, and fighting an insurgency for the first time since the Boer War! Yesterday turned out to be one of the deadliest days of the mission so far, with four soldiers and one journalist killed by yet another roadside IED--bringing this country's total war dead in Afghanistan to 138.

Meanwhile, back at home our benevolent dictator of a prime minister, Stephen Harper, has prorogued parliament for the second time in less than a year, the better to avoid more embarrassing and probing questions about the Afghan detainee scandal, no doubt. Has anyone noticed? Our government has effectively absconded with democracy, and won't be back until after the Olympics, in March.

Speaking of the Olympics, while the event itself will technically be registered as belonging to the next decade, for Vancouver, and for better or worse, this past decade has largely been about preparing for a certain five-ring circus. Readers of this blog know by now my own position on this interminable exercise in place promotion (and my conscience is clean--I voted "no" in the referendum back in 2003), and the promises (such as ending homelessness in the city) as yet lived up to from the original Bid Book and the flurry of official "agreements" signed in conjunction with it. Come tomorrow I will be laying off the slagging somewhat and concentrating--hopefully together with some of my students in a related blog--instead on simply reporting what's going on Olympics-wise in the city over the next three months. And I'm sure some of that reporting will even be laudatory--I mean Laurie Anderson's coming to town, for heaven's sake!

Still, as the final 17 hours tick down on this decade, it's hard not to feel cynical. And I haven't even mentioned the environment yet. The recent toothless deal brokered in Copenhagen at the last minute by an increasingly concessionary and compromising President Obama seems to me symptomatic of the opportunities lost during the past 10 years (from using our shared grief over lives lost to violence to forge bonds across religious and ethnic and economic difference, to using the recent financial meltdown to rethink our dependence on automobiles). It's also a slap in the face to the victims of the devastating tsunami that struck Southeast Asia almost exactly five years ago, not to mention those killed and displaced by Hurricane Katrina less than a year later. The oceans will rise, and while I'm not saying I subscribe to certain recent theories divined from the ancient Mayan calendar, I am saying that's it's not too difficult to predict, climate skeptics and University of East Anglia researchers notwithstanding, what the next decade will bring weather-wise.

As of yet, this first decade of the second millennium is without an official catchy shorthand name, media pundits unable to decide what to come up with from its zero-sum middle digits. I say leave it that way. These past 10 years have been for naught.

P.

A Miscellany

In the spirit of gearing up for the holiday season, here is a miscellany of thoughts based on recent local and global headlines that have grabbed my attention:

1. “I wonder if Carla Bruni can get me a walk-on in Woody Allen’s new film?”/ “I bet Nelson Mandela will be pissed.”/ “What’s everyone so worked up about? It’s not like I head-butted anyone.”: Possible thoughts running through French football captain Thierry Henry’s head following revelations he committed a handball violation in advance of the winning goal in a World Cup qualifying match with Ireland.

2. With friends like these…: Poor Richard Colvin—nothing like going from a respected high-level diplomat to a government pariah overnight. PM Harper and his various minions were lining up to outdo each other in heaping scorn on the former point man in Afghanistan for testifying before a parliamentary committee that his emails warning that Taliban detainees transferred from Canadian to Afghan custody faced likely torture were ignored. And how would we know anyway, given the mostly blacked-out versions of those emails that have been provided to the committee, and to the media? (Actually, the resurfacing of the detainee issue, coming on the heels of Henry's World Cup imbroglio, reminded me a lot of my chapter on David Beckham and Tony Kushner in my forthcoming book with Manchester UP. I'd say more about how, exactly, I connect football with Afghanistan in the context of my larger argument about performance, place, and politics in the book, but I'd rather you buy a copy instead! It's out at the beginning of February, but you can pre-order--apologies for the exorbitant UK academic pricing--here.)

3. “Okay, I’ll go. But I’m not going to have fun, and I’m not going to talk to anyone.”: Stephen Harper commits to attending upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen after Barack Obama and China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, announce they’re going. Unlike Obama and Wen, however, Harper will arrive with no concrete pledge from Canada to cut carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. One doesn’t hold out much hope for some sort of universally ratified post-Kyoto protocol emerging from the Copenhagen meetings, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Harper will at least be shamed into coming on side with Obama. (As a side note to this item, one wonders if our famously grumpy PM is even more out of sorts these days because of the rumours swirling that motorcycle-riding wife Laureen may be about to dump him for her RCMP boy-toy. They have not been traveling together recently, and she has been spotted sans wedding ring in several recent photos…)

4. What Mayor Gregor giveth with one hand, he taketh away with the other: Okay, so City Hall has backed down on its ridiculous proposal regarding the ratio of food and alcohol pricing in Vancouver restaurants. And it has also amended its anti-Olympic sign bylaw to apply only to commercial properties. But the same municipal government that is spending feverishly to gussy up the city in advance of the Olympics is also slashing public library budgets (forcing several branches to slash hours and one perhaps to close permanently), and closing popular amenities like the petting farm in Stanley Park and the Bloedel Conservatory atop Queen Elizabeth Park. Meanwhile, the nearby Little Mountain social housing community is officially no more, razed by bulldozers (with a little help from a freak blaze that erupted one afternoon) this past month. What happens next is anyone’s guess because BC Housing, the provincial agency mandated to ensure a provision of replacement subsidized housing in the redevelopment of the site, claims that a confidential non-disclosure agreement prevents it from releasing details of the contract of purchase and sale that is being negotiated with private partner Holborn Properties. With the official Olympic curling venue only a block away, and all available space around Nat Bailey Stadium already spoken for, who says that they can’t—at least in the short-term, pave paradise and put up a parking lot?

5. Yeah, but only until the end of March: My reaction upon reading that VANOC CEO John Furlong topped the list of Vancouver magazine’s Power 50 issue.

6. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet: I was sorry I couldn’t get to the Wrecking Ball event at the Vogue on Monday (work and life conspired to intervene). But I was please to hear—courtesy PuSh Managing Director Minna Schendlinger at a Board retreat last weekend—that Kevin Krueger had received so many emails protesting the cuts to arts and culture in the province, that his ministry account had recently crashed. Apparently his staff has quietly put out the word, via the Alliance for Arts and Culture, asking members of the community to stop sending emails, that the message has been heard. Of course we’ve all interpreted this as license to send even more!

That’s it for now. Back next month (which is Tuesday!) with what I hope will be more performance reviews. The new Murakami play; Headlines Theatre’s After homelessness…; EDAM’s new program; MachineNoisy at the Dance Centre: all things I want to see.

P.