|
The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, April 06, 2003
If
only all those anti-American Canadians could see the light
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - The day after the war started, the
People in Favour of the Continuation of One of the World's Most Brutal
Dictatorships made me an hour late for dinner with my brother. They managed
to shut down Toronto's downtown core. Stuck on a streetcar, I had time to
read the placards of Saddam's fans, many of which read "Bush is a Moron,"
"America is the Real Threat" and similar slobber.
The anti-America/anti-Bush message is endemic
in the peace-at-any-cost movement. The idea that not liking the United
States, or George W. Bush, has nothing to do with whether one ought to
support this war, is clearly too nuanced a thought for the minds of the
anti-warniks to grasp. But they really should exercise their underused grey
matter and think this one through.
Last week in this paper, a columnist raided the
great crypt of the 1960s, and -- never letting the facts get in the way of
her "arguments" -- opined that "we" Canadians hate Americans. The reasons
she listed were only vaguely related to the situation in Iraq. She included,
of course, the requisite digs at Bush and the 2000 election. The fact that
the events around Florida 2000 have nothing to do with this war is, again, a
shade of grey beyond the reach of the anti-war crowd. As is the fact that
most of us who are "pro-war" are simply so because we see the risk of not
dealing with Saddam as being greater than the risk of dealing with him.
Susan McMaster, one of Ottawa's Poets Against
the War, a group that threatens far more painful punishment than a Massive
Ordnance Air Blast ever could, included in her opus, Against the War, the
following lines: "Against the war I'll laugh/ at Bush's foot-in-mouth."
Against the war, she continued,
mercilessly and in blatant disregard for my pain at having to read such
efforts, she would learn to spell "Qur'an."
Ah yes, there it is, Americans are bigots. One
wonders whether the anti-war crowd on the left sees how embarrassing its
carriage is, right in goose-step with the anti-war right. No western boys
and girls, no sir, should ever die to improve the lives of Arabs. For one
thing I noticed about the crowd in Toronto was its shining whiteness. No
crosses to bear for the pasty. We should only be willing to die for our own
spoiled selves.
Do these people, most of whom call themselves
"liberal," not see their hypocrisy? They scream about Iraqi babies being
killed this week, scarce giving a thought to the hundreds of thousands of
babies who have died at the hands of Saddam. Should we have not intervened
in Kosovo? Milosevic did nothing to us. Should our soldiers (including an
uncle of mine) not have stopped and helped Holocaust victims on their march
into Germany? Should we have been there at all? Germany never attacked North
America.
The same crowd that lambasts the United States
for interventions in Latin America --which, arguably, made people's lives
worse -- now denounce it for an intervention that will make the Iraqi
people's lives better and ours safer. I wonder how these munificents feel
about being allied with the Vatican which, probably thrilled at the fact
that we've stopped discussing child molestation, has kept up its tradition
of sidestepping confrontations with anti-Semitic dictators.
What sickens me most is the attempt to portray
the Bush administration as a force more sinister than Saddam or the
Islamonazis. One wonders how long the Poets Against the War would last in
Baghdad if any of them tried to write anything with a title other than
"Saddam is Great" and "I Hate America."
Sadly, one suspects many of them wouldn't mind
writing such a poem, if they haven't already.
The contempt many Canadians feel for the United
States is nowhere more evident than on the CBC, which, after Sept. 11, I
began to refer to as "the al-Qaeda Broadcasting Corporation." Watching CBC
coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I think "the Baath Party Broadcasting
Corporation" would be fitting.
The barely concealed gloating with every
(small) setback, the complete trivialization of genuine gains, the lack of
shame in regards our own lily-livered leader's lack of commitment to the
United States ... it's all there. Our military may be emasculated, but
whatever we have to offer -- one tank, one troop, one ball -- ought to be
offered.
I was once anti-American. I grew out of it when
I lived overseas and realized that in my ideals I was American, and that
that was a good thing. I grew out of it when I realized that American values
far outweigh American flaws, and that those values, when possible, should be
exported.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, March 23, 2003
Let's
Forget the Past and Welcome Polanski Back to Hollywood
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - Kilometres away, as the crow flies, from Operation Iraqi Freedom,
is the land of Oscar. The Academy Awards will, barring something unforeseen,
take place tonight. I would like to see The Pianist take a troika -- best
picture, best director and best actor. It is only a shame the director in
question, Roman Polanski, cannot attend the ceremonies without fear of
arrest.
In my first year in Paris, I worked as a jeune fille au pair (a horror story
unto itself) and I lived in the same quartier as the great director. As I
walked my young charges home from school, we would often run into Polanski,
and he would playfully, somewhat suggestively, ruffle the hair of the nearly
teenage girl I looked after. She was not many years younger than myself at
the time. It was hilarious, done with a wink and knowing smile in my
direction. Boy, was he a cutie pie.
It was clear he was making light of his reputation, playing up to the crowd.
His sense of humour was, I felt, mutinous and
admirable (two things that so often go together), something best displayed
only in select company. He was lucky for my dark and realistic (amazing,
given my tender age back then) view of the universe. Another girl may have
gone screaming to the
authorities.
In my second year in Paris, I was liberated from my employers/oppressors and
began working as a teacher. One night, out at a dance club with friends, we
began to hear shouts of "C'est Polanski!" It was Polanski, all right,
showing up at three or so in the morning with the French actress Emmanuelle
Seignier, a woman who has since become his wife and the mother of his
children. That night, he struck me as looking, well, debauched. Maybe it was
the environment, but on his forehead could have been written "I am a man who
has done everything, imbibed and snorted everything, slept with everything
and been through everything."
But he also seemed vulnerable.
All these years later, I have been devastated by The Pianist, a movie scarce
seen on this continent as people queue up for the
imcomprehensibly popular Chicago, the puerile The Two Towers and the
tedious, tedious display that is The Hours. Only Gangs of New York comes
close to rivalling The Pianist. Yet because people seem unable to separate
art from artist, The Pianist probably won't score big tonight.
Polanski, for those of you from Mars, was charged with raping a 13-year-old
girl in 1977. The girl was not a 13-year-old girl the way most of us were.
She was sexually active (with her 17-year-old boyfriend), she could identify
a quaalude and she had a mother who apparently thought it was acceptable for
her daughter to pose topless.
Her mother also felt it sensible to leave her alone with the man who made
Repulsion, the bloody decapitation fest, MacBeth, and Rosemary's Baby.
Polanski said he believed the girl consented. She says she said "no."
Whether she did or not does not change the fact that
he did something wrong. But this case represents one of the few times
celebrity justice seems to have worked against the celebrity. Polanski
agreed to a plea bargain and was promised he would be sentenced to time
already served. At the last
minute, under public pressure, the judge decided to make an example of
Polanski and put him behind bars for years. Polanski fled to France, where,
ever the rebel, he made the lyrical and romantic Tess and took up with its
star, the then teenage Nastassja Kinski.
But there are other things to know about Roman Polanski. His family was
interned in death camps during the Second World War. His pregnant mother
died in Auschwitz. Only he escaped the camps and the Krakow ghetto and spent
the war hiding and being hid, crawling through sewage pipes, on the lam and
afraid. Decades later, his eight-months-pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was
killed by members of the Manson family. After his exile in France, Steven
Spielberg offered him the chance to direct Schindler's List and Polanski
turned it down because the movie, set in the Krakow ghetto, hit too close to
home. The Pianist, set in Warsaw, offered him catharsis with a slight
distance. The film is painful -- and necessary -- viewing, and given the
director's past, must have been sheer hell to make.
Lucky for us, he walked through the fire. Surely the time has come not only
to reward him for that, but for the Los Angeles
district attorney to drop the warrant for Polanski's arrest and allow him
safe passage.
|
Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, March 08, 2003Look How
Far We've, Er, Come
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO -- For International Woman's Day, my sister e-mailed me a list of
tips for hiring women, dated July 1943, taken from Transportation Magazine.
It was written for supervisors of potential Rosie the Riveters, and my
sister attached a note
suggesting that by today's standards, these tips were patronizing. But not
only are most of them still relevant, many of the supposedly sexist
standards of the 1940s have simply morphed themselves into politically
correct standards for the new
millennium.
Tip 1. "Pick young married women. They have more of a sense of
responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be
flirtatious and they have the pep to work hard and deal with the public
efficiently." Well, I should hope married women would be less flirtatious
than unmarried women, be it 1943 or 2003. And as for pep, there is nothing
outmoded about
suggesting that single women lack it. There's nothing like dating to kill a
girl's pep.
Tip 2. "General experience indicates that 'husky' girls --those who are a
little on the heavy side -- are more even-tempered." This is true. I have
gained 15 pounds in the last five years and I am much sweeter now than I was
in 1998. And you can just tell that Anne McLellan is nicer than Adrienne
Clarkson.
Tip 3. "Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical
examination -- one covering female conditions. This
step not only protects the property against lawsuits, but also reveals
whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her
mentally or physically unfit for the job." How is this sexist? The whole
lawsuit issue is timeless, not to
mention how frequently feminists whinge because "female conditions" are not
taken seriously. And all wise employers should take into consideration that
women, up until menopause, anyway, only have one good week a month.
Tip 4. "Stress at the outset the importance of time, the fact that a minute
or two lost makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is got
across, service is likely to be slowed up." Again, isn't this a
consideration for the ages? All the more since the people addressed here
were hiring mostly women who weren't accustomed to a factory environment,
and people who managed production lines, not poetry workshops.
Tip 5. "Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day.
You have to make some allowances for feminine
psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep
her hair tidied and apply fresh lipstick several times a day." This is very
true. For some women, it's all about lipstick. For me, it's all about hair.
If my hair isn't working, I'm
not working. Better to allot time for insecurity/vanity from the get-go.
Tip 6. "Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women
are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never
ridicule a woman -- it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency." I'm
not sure why this is laughable. I would love it if bosses nowadays would
take cues from this tip. I am definitely sensitive, and I can't shrug off
harsh words. A few years ago, I worked at a magazine where my boss had as
much empathy as an SS torturer, and my spirit has yet to recover fully. I
hold that man personally responsible for my weight gain (see Tip 2). Not to
mention that if you ridicule someone, you can damage their self-esteem, and
that's against the law.
Tip 7. "Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women.
Even though a girl's husband or father may
swear vociferously, she'll grow to dislike a place of business where she
hears too much of this." In 2003, you can sue a man or cry "hostile work
environment" if he tells a risqué joke or uses strong language. We have gone
from the over-protectiveness of the 1940s, which at least was somewhat
endearing, to Victorian feminist political correctness, which is just
tiresome.
Tip 8. "Get enough size variety in operator's uniforms so that each girl can
have a proper fit. This point can't be stressed too
much in keeping women happy." Hey, I wouldn't want to have to squeeze myself
into a size 4. And if Erin Brockovich had only had bigger shirts and baggier
skirts, she wouldn't have had so much conflict with her dowdy female
colleagues. Which would seem to indicate that her crime was not wearing a
short skirt, but looking good in one.
You see what "sisterhood" has wrought? Boy, oh boy. We have come a long way
(baby).
|
Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, February 23, 2003Peaceniks
should grow up instead of just pretending to
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - There has been harsh criticism in the print media of last
weekend's protests against a war with Iraq. The protesters have been mocked
and picked apart as though they were subjects of vivisection at some sick
laboratory, and I think that's unfair. Those protesters were adorable.
Simply adorable.
Listen to what little 11-year-old Barbara Merasty of Saskatchewan's Flying
Dust reserve said on a network news report: "I came out to stop the war so
no one will die." That's darling, Barbara, just darling. And with young
people like you, there's hope for mankind.
And I think it's appalling for grizzled, old, drunken journalists to take
the mickey out of pre-pubescent children in ... Oops!
Someone just informed me that not all of the marchers were in the fifth
grade! Apparently some of them were adults. Most, even.
Now that's scary. For it would never occur to me that people over the age of
11 would think it necessary to carry a placard saying they were "for peace."
What sane human isn't "for peace"?
And it would never occur to me that anyone over the age of 11 would not be
able to clearly think through to their logical conclusion the implications
of attending a rally that essentially attacks the leader of the free world
in favour of a vicious tyrant.
Had any of the protesters been carrying placards saying things that
constituted arguments against a war, those "peace rallies" might have been
worth the while. There are arguments against this war -- there are none that
convince me this war is not necessary for us, or that it will not be
beneficial to the Iraqi people, but there are arguments, nonetheless.
What I saw, however, were a lot of banners that insulted President George
Bush, that insulted the United States and American "imperialism," that
called Bush and Rumsfeld "terrorists." There was even a group of people
carrying a large photo of Bush with a Hitler moustache. In Ottawa,
protesters carried signs that said "Morons make War" and "Terrorists wear
Suits." I guess this kind of nonsense is what passes for polemics these
days, as morons also attend anti-war protests and terrorists wear bandannas
and drum and dance their way to Parliament Hill and the U.S. Embassy. It's a
new movement called "Terror Through Mind-Numbing Stupidity and Knee-Jerk
America Bashing."
Another news report featured an Ontario protester who said the protest
reminded her of the good old days. "I protested in the border area of
Windsor-Detroit 30 years ago to help draft dodgers. We're just going to have
to keep doing this every 30 years or every 10 years until there's no more
war. We can't have war in the 21st century."
This kind of infantile posturing would be funny were it not so terrifying.
That folks who may have smoked a little too much dope or gone to one too
many love-ins might still like to fight the establishment is cute. Except
that in this case it does not simply represent an opinion. It represents, I
think, a frightening set of values -- and by that I don't mean the belief
that tie-dyed shirts or the Grateful Dead are fashionable. I mean values
that have convinced these people that peace is preferable to
freedom, and that the protector of our freedom, the United States, deserves
only to be loathed.
On what terms, one would like to ask them, are you willing to have "peace."
On whose dictates? In fact, what is going on here is not a movement for
peace but a movement to win a few more days of denial, nothing more. It is
also indicative of some odd kind of guilt about what we in this part of the
world ought to represent.
For the world would not be a better place if the United States had less
power. It would be an infinitely worse place. For those who say the United
States should listen to the UN, perhaps it would be more fitting to suggest
that the UN do its job and respect its own resolutions. Hans and Mohammed
can take permanent suites at the Tikrit Marriott if they wish; after 12
years, we ought to know that "more time" is a joke.
Most of the marchers "for peace" could not tell you which countries border
Iraq, who the main ethnic and religious groups in
that country are or how long Saddam Hussein has been in power. Nor, for that
matter, could most of them see the irony in the fact that one of their own
in the U.K. held a banner saying "Peace in Our Time." But then, that's to be
expected ... of 11-year-olds.
|
Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, February 09, 2003
The Bachelorette can teach the UN a few lessons
about Saddam
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - Trista is the Hans Blix of reality television. She talks tough but
does she ever let a lot of infractions get by. It takes her forever to act
on something she should have taken care of weeks ago. I speak, of course, of
Trista Rehn, the lovely
physical therapist/Miami Heat dancer/Bachelorette, and the Saddam Hussein to
her Herr Doktor Blix has got to be that awful stalker guy, Russ.
Trista finally gave old Russ, the, um, "writer," the heave-ho this week, and
it was high time. It was time for a change of regime ... and it has been
time for, if not 12 years, then at least since Jan. 8, when glistening,
slimy Russ showed up, Tiffany-box bribe in hand, and declared his refusal to
give up without first putting up the mother of all cockfights.
From the first episode, Russ has worn his true colours like a peacock in
raging heat. He sweats like a crack addict waiting
for his dealer in one of those dingy alleyways behind my apartment building.
He has shown about as much respect for Trista's boundaries as Saddam has for
the borders of his neighbours and for the Kurds who live within his own
nation. He has accepted criticisms and attempts at reason with a Saddam-esque
level of equanimity. Without asking Trista's permission, Russ stuck his
tongue halfway down to her knees during the second epi-sode, in much the
same way that a certain despot stuck his troops on someone else's sand once
upon a time.
It's lucky for our friend, Trista, that Russ didn't manage to smuggle a vial
of nerve gas or smallpox along with him on their trip to Arizona this week.
Anyone who saw the rage and desperate need for control in Russ's eyes when
Trista put the kaibosh on the possibility of nookie with him had to know
that she was fortunate to have a camera crew around to protect her. Trista
may be a trained cheerleader and all, but I doubt if one of those high kicks
she learned to do in Florida could take down anyone as furious and loopy as
Russ -- any more than a team of timorous, Coke-bottle-eyeglass-wearing UN
"inspectors" can put the fear of our Lord into the crazy mustachioed,
beret-wearing one.
Like Blix, frustrated by Saddam's tricks and dishonesty, Trista, has -- up
until now -- ignored the signs and fallen for every
ruse Russ has put before her. A couple of weeks back, Trista's best
girlfriends joined her in her candle-laden Bachelorette pad to help her suss
out which fella she should trust. Her pals resoundingly dissed Russ, telling
Trista to lose him or live to
rue the day. But did she listen? Noooo. Proclaiming a "connection" with
psycho-guy, she allowed Russ and his numerous
contraventions to thrive.
Sound familiar? Reminds me of a certain Saddam whose myriad transgressions
haven't seemed to cause much concern to certain Eurotypes and geekish UN
employees who look much like boys we wouldn't have dated in high school.
Reminds me of listening to Colin Powell on Wednesday, speaking before a
crowd of UN representatives who were so fascinated, many of them were
yawning, rolling their eyes or looking as bored as if they were at a
screening of The Hours. For heaven's sake,
people -- the man had a teaspoon of anthrax in his pocket! Pay attention!
The poor U.S. secretary of state was preaching, I fear, to the opposite of
the choir (the tone-deaf?). A shame, really, since he made sense. One
argument Powell tried to put to rest was the oft-repeated assertion that
Saddam would never link up with al-Qaeda, since the former is secular and
the latter fundamentalist. Of course, the best rebuttal to that weak logic
is this: Hitler and Stalin in 1939.
OK, Trista probably wouldn't get that reference, but I'm still glad she came
to her senses, however belatedly. As a result of her early unfortunate
choices, Russ got too confident and behaved so abominably this week that he
self-destructed, imploded, so much so that even the slow-witted cheerleader
had to face the truth. It is quite possible that if we leave Saddam Hussein
alone, he, too, will self-destruct. But waiting for that to happen may allow
him time to develop weapons of mass destruction and get up to other lethal
endeavours.
I am not a hawk any more than I want people to kill their babies. I am,
however, pro-choice, because I believe that abortion,
like war and dumping icky guys, is sometimes necessary. How foolish would we
look if the Bachelorette were smarter than us?
|
The Ottawa Citizen
January 26, 2003
Learning Some Lessons about Tolerance from George Clooney
|
The Ottawa Citizen
January 14, 2003, Final Edition, p.C4
All
Canadians, but particularly Ottawans, need fashion help
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - As Yves Saint Laurent says goodbye to the fashion world, he is
leaving French women with nothing but their cigarettes, scowls and hairy
armpits to guide them.The 65-year-old
Saint Laurent was a fashion radical, popularizing the pantsuit for women and
using his name as a brand on perfume and makeup. His very un-French openness
about his dependence on alcohol and anti-depressants set him apart in a
culture mercifully unfettered by the Barbara Walters special.
Above all, he understood that fashion was
important. Sadly, in Ottawa that point of view is treated with all the
respect given polyester and stretch pants at Calvin Klein's house.
Ottawans use the city's climate as a perfect
excuse for not looking good. I noticed, when I visited my mum at Christmas,
that I had to break out my "lesbian boots," as I call them, to walk a block
without falling over and breaking my neck.
My lesbian boots are from Roots -- big, clunky,
tough urban-chick things with massive tread and no heels, totally necessary
for an Ottawa winter. You won't get far on ice, at least not upright, with
four-inch heels and no tread.
In Ottawa, you have to accept looking "blobby"
in winter, unless you're willing to lose your fingers and ears to frostbite.
You need layers and hats and mittens -- gloves won't do when it's wickedly
cold -- to survive. Bulky coats are the order du jour, and mere tights won't
protect your legs from the wind.
So that explains the winter.
But what about Ottawa fashion in the other
season(s)? In the other six months of the year, I have noticed three
distinct looks. The first is what I like to call "aging hippie" and is the
result, I figure, of what seems to be the disproportionate number of aging
hippies in the Ottawa Valley. The Valley is, I believe, second only to
Vancouver in this regard. It's the silver ponytail (on men and women),
Indian cotton, silver jewelry, Birkenstocks, bulky sweaters, "I work in a
health-food store" statement, and it does have its charm.
Then there's the "I'm going on a hike/public
servant" look, favoured by the many outdoorsy types among you who, thanks to
your impressive salaries working for our government, can afford canoes and
cottages. Your style comes from Roots, Eddie Bauer and the like. And
finally, the most offensive of the three, the "high tech/I never have sex
and I can't match my shirt to my pants" look. Sadly, this is the one
favoured by those among you who could probably afford to shop at Yves Saint
Laurent. Ah, the irony.
I lived in France for more than four years, and
I learned much there for which I am eternally grateful. I learned about
wine, cheese, Jerry Lewis, the importance of maintaining Everest levels of
denial about national behaviour during the Second World War, and, of course,
fashion. When I moved to France, I was just out of university and attired in
the North American college student uniform: jeans, Nikes, Polo sweater and
windbreaker. What a vision I was.
Within a few weeks, my Nikes were relegated to
the gym, which is the only place a woman should wear them, the sweater and
windbreaker were shamefully stuffed in my closet for trips back to Canada,
and the jeans were worn only with smart tops and peacoats.
In Ottawa this past summer, I winced at the
sight of adult women in business suits and ... it was tragique ... Nikes.
For heaven's sake, women, I would think, how can you stand to be seen in
public like that? Don't you know how you look? Put some grown-up shoes on
and learn to navigate Elgin Street in heels. If French women can do it, you
can too. You're at least as clever as them.
Lest you think I'm Ottawa-bashing, 'tis not so.
Toronto only has two looks: "I think I'm cool, so I wear black" and "I'm
incredibly uptight." (I alternate, depending on my mood).
The bottom line is, all Canadians need fashion
help. Our prime minister should strike while the iron is hot and make a
personal appeal to Mr. Saint Laurent to spend his retirement on this side of
the Atlantic.
In fact, there's a little town called
Shawinigan, with a beautiful resort and golf course ...
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
January 12, 2003
Support Your Global Sweatshop and make Third World Kids Happy
|
The Ottawa Citizen
December 29, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A16
Better to have chequebook journalism than no journalism at
all
by Rondi Adamson
Rene Michaud, one of the accused killers of Ottawa couple
Robert and Bonnie Dagenais, recently made an offer to the media. He
said he would sell us his story. The Citizen turned his offer down,
and that is a good thing. But I don't believe it is always
objectionable for journalists to pay their sources.
We are told that "real" journalists don't pay sources, that no one
serious would do such a thing, and that serious issues would never
be discussed as a result of chequebook journalism. Leave that to the
Enquirer and don't taint the sacred world of "serious" media with
such talk.
People have short memories. The late William Bradford Huie, a
prominent Alabama journalist and novelist from the 1940s to the
1960s, was famous for the use of his chequebook. Huie's book, The
Execution of Private Slovik, about the only U.S. serviceman to be
executed for desertion and cowardice in the Second World War, is
considered to be one of the two best American non-fiction reportage
books, along with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Huie also held the
sales record for three of the news-magazines that published his
articles. He was no tabloid reporter. He was able to give the public
information about important stories -- information that others were
not able to provide.
In 1955, Emmett Till, a teenage African-American from Chicago was
visiting family in Mississippi and became, tragically, the victim of
a hate crime, long before we called them hate crimes. Two white men
had seen him talking to a white woman and deemed his behaviour too
forward. They tracked him down, beat, tortured and shot him, tied
him to a cotton gin fan and tossed him in the Tallahatchie River.
The men were tried for the case, and acquitted by an all-white
jury. After their trial, Huie paid them $4,000 for an interview
which was published in the then widely read Look magazine. In the
interview they confessed to the murders, knowing that because of
double jeopardy, they could not be tried again. And they did not
simply confess. They described, with some pride, what they had done.
The story was shocking and was said to have brought about awareness
to many Americans of just how bad race relations were in the South.
The Look magazine in question sold off the stands.
However, many fellow journalists denounced Huie, as he had paid the
men. Huie defended himself: The truth would never have been revealed
otherwise, he said. The FBI frequently pays for information, he
said. He was not, however, cavalier about it. He was a cold, hard
realist: "A lot of people resent using informers. I don't recommend
it. I just don't know any better way."
Huie continued his work, continued to expose civil rights
violations and continued, unapologetically, to pay sources. In 1964
he co-wrote, along with Martin Luther King Jr., Three Lives for
Mississippi, a book about the young civil rights workers who had
been killed in that state. In spite of his tactics, Huie had become
known as a courageous journalist who helped the civil rights
movement along by revealing brutal truths.
Huie, however, lost many of his supporters when he paid James Earl
Ray, the convicted killer of Martin Luther King Jr., $40,000 for an
in-prison interview in 1968. (He concluded, after speaking with Ray,
that he had acted alone in killing King.) After this, Huie was
ostracized more than ever and his work for civil rights had earned
him enemies in the Ku Klux Klan. On one occasion he defended himself
with a shotgun as the Klan burned a cross in his yard.
It's a long way from that world to Monica Lewinsky, but two years
ago the Washington Post accused ABC of compensating Lewinsky
indirectly for her 1999 interview with Barbara Walters by paying one
of her legal bills. The lawyer who was paid had apparently convinced
Ken Starr to allow Lewinsky to appear on the broadcast.
Whatever happened there, I'm not sure Monica Lewinsky was worth the
money. I don't think we need to know what Rene Michaud has to say.
I'm not suggesting that it is a good thing for criminals to be given
money for their time. But few things are as cut and dried as we
would like, least of all the line between "serious" journalism and
the tabloid world. The Enquirer, after all, gets a lot right. "I'm
in the truth business," said William Bradford Huie, a most serious
journalist. He may have let the ends blind him to the means, but his
contributions were invaluable.
Too few journalists, tabloid or "serious," can claim the latter
about themselves.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
December 15, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
It's the height of folly to worry about your date's high
heels
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - A recent study at Britain's Open University
indicates that shorter women are more likely to be married and have
children than their taller peers.
For men, on the other hand, greater height means greater success in
both the financial and romantic fields of the Darwinian struggle.
Scientists who conducted the survey say there is no reason to
believe shorter women are more intelligent, attractive or fertile
than taller women. It appears that the issue is simply that most men
and women prefer that the man be taller.
In other words, most of the people procreating out there are
insecure men and shallow women. Is it any wonder mankind seems to be
devolving, rather than evolving? I am, for a woman, fairly tall --
though I have young nieces who are well on their way to towering
over me -- and I would love to be taller, which is why I often wear
high heels. My mother is 5' 10" and my brothers are all over six
feet tall. My father was just an inch taller than my mother. But dad
was secure enough to not be intimidated by that fact, and I think
that's why in my family we all have triple-digit IQs and good values. We
weren't co-produced by a superficial woman and a
frightened, quivering man who needed to feel closer to the clouds
than his wife.
I have dated many men who are shorter than me and invariably
friends will comment on how "nice" I am to do so, or they'll say
something like "good for you, Rondi," as though I am donating to a
charity. Call me crazy, but what matters to me in a romantic partner
is that he be kind, that he make an honest living, that he not abuse
any substances, that he know how to read (and that he actually do
so) and that I feel lust for him. Only one of my boyfriends has ever
said anything negative to me about my height, and he was a fellow
who was taller than me. He deemed me "too tall" and a big red flag
went up in my mind, one that had "insecure, pathetic loser" written
on it. All his previous girlfriends had been dowdy little twerps,
and I guess girls like that made him feel like a big, strong man.
Real men are not afraid to have a girlfriend who is tall or taller
than them. This is how we separate the men from the boys. Diana,
Princess of Wa-les, was 5'10" and Prince Char-les, a bit taller,
apparently had some "issues" with that. He didn't like her to wear
high heels and he left her for a shorter woman who looked like she
was related to the Royal Family via their horses. Now that's
depressing.
In sharp contrast, American historian Arthur Schlesinger is married
to a taller woman, the six-foot-plus Alexandra Cushing. In a recent
issue of Vogue, he commented that he was "all in favour of tall
women" and that he wished his wife would wear heels higher than her
customary two inches. Sigh. He's brainy and self-confident. Not too
many men like that around. And of all of Woody Allen's wives and
girlfriends, the pick of the crop -- Diane Keaton --was taller than
him.
For a famous tale of real cojones, think of the first ever meeting
between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, on the set of the 1942
film Woman of the Year. "I fear," said Hepburn, "that I may be a
little too tall for you, Mr. Tracy." "Don't worry, Miss Hepburn,"
Tracy replied, "I'll cut you down to size." Now there was the start
of a great love story, and for the strong-willed and proud Hepburn,
it was surely a sign that she had met her match. OK, her match
happened to be married, but her other options were probably single,
short men who wanted her to walk in a ditch so they could feel
superior, or single, tall men who felt threatened.
I could be catty and suggest that shorter women are, in every
sense, average, and that therein lies their appeal, but that would
be so unlike me. And it wouldn't be constructive. So, instead, I'll
suggest that if we want to turn the tide on the dumbing-down of the
universe, you men ought to wake up and figure out that your strength
does not come from the fact that your girlfriend can't reach the top
shelf.
And girls -- wouldn't you rather be with a man whose spine was in
working order, even if it was a spine on a short body?
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
December 1, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
Don't blame the beauty queens, blame radical Muslims
by Rondi Adamson
Ottawa's Lynsey Bennett came back from the Miss World pageant
in Nigeria saying the violence she saw there was not something with
which she wanted to be associated. With that comment, young Lynsey
shows how much she has been suckered into the received wisdom on the
matter, as have some writers at this paper, where an editorial about
Bennett's participation recently asserted that "allowing one's good
name to be associated with such acts (human-rights abuses in
Nigeria) ... was a bad idea." Ah yes. Let's put the blame squarely
on the pageant and on the contestants.
The Miss World pageant was surrounded by controversy from the
start, because of the case of Amina Lawal. Lawal is the Nigerian
woman who was sentenced, under Islamic law, to be stoned to death
for bearing a child outside of wedlock. (But she won't be stoned
until her child is weaned in 2004. I'll say this for Nigeria's
Islamic law: At least it recognizes the importance of breastfeeding,
which is more than I can say for us.)
Bennett hemmed and hawed about the matter and finally decided to go
to Nigeria, saying that the pageant had drawn, and would continue to
draw, more attention to Lawal's plight than holding the competition
elsewhere would. I believe she was right about that. I doubt most of
us would have heard of Lawal were it not for Miss World, a show that
more than 1.5 billion people (and far more women than men) watch.
So the beauties descended upon Abuja and things broke loose. Isioma
Daniel, a female journalist at the Nigerian newspaper ThisDay, wrote
a comment piece suggesting that the Prophet Mohammed would not only
have approved of the pageant, but might have chosen one of the
lovelies to be his bride. A protest erupted in a mosque in Kaduna,
which turned into a riot, which ended up killing hundreds of people.
Christians are said to be fleeing the area altogether. Kaduna is a
city in the north of Nigeria, which is predominantly Muslim. The
pageant has been relocated to London, and a death sentence -- a
"fatwa," like the one placed on Salman Rushdie years ago -- was
placed on Daniel.
The fatwa was just removed by the provincial Nigerian government
that placed it, though one wonders whether true believers will care.
What frightens me is where we are focusing our attention. This paper
talked about the contestants whose good names were associated with
the goings-on in Nigeria. Bennett herself bravely said that she
didn't "agree" with the violence and didn't want to be affiliated
with it. As though anyone with even a double-digit IQ would hold
Miss Canada, Miss Israel, Miss Scotland or Miss Anywhere Else
responsible for either what may happen to Lawal, or for the violence
that has gone on in the past 10 days.
Speaking of double-digit IQs, Jurassic feminists -- never ones to
ignore slights against women, real or imagined -- haven't been much
better. Germaine Greer and a number of other commentators tried to
suggest a moral equivalence between the pageant itself and Islamic
law. Yes, a spectacle where girls prance about in a bikini and talk
about world peace may be silly, but comparing the fact that some
women freely choose to participate in it with the facts of harsh
sharia law -- under which there is sweet little a woman can choose
to do or not do -- is absurd. British Labour Party
politician/actress Glenda Jackson said that, considering the
bloodshed, the competition should be cancelled. Writer Muriel Gray
said that should the show go on, the girls involved would be wearing
"swimwear dripping with blood." Say again? The girls are responsible
for the bloodshed?
The CEO of Miss World, Julia Morley, hasn't made things better,
saying of Daniel that "a journalist has made this problem and we
hope journalists can put it right." So Daniel should have written
something toeing the party line, rather than challenge Nigerians to
reframe things? The media started the riots. One wonders whether
Morley, Gray, Greer or any of the other old darlings understand who
created this problem (violent Islamists). Do they "get" what the
real problem is? (Violent Islam). What's worse is how many
mainstream newspapers, including a number of Canadian dailies, have
referred to the "Christian/Muslim riots" in Nigeria, when the
responsibility for them lies within the radical Muslim movement. If
a Christian loony shoots an abortion doctor, we don't blame the
abortion doctor. We blame the Christian loony, as well we should.
Let's talk about who is truly responsible here, and about what truly
matters.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
November 26, 2002, Final
Edition, p.B4
Life lessons from Monsieur Dagenais
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - To us he was Bobby D, Daggy, Bob or, when we were
being well-behaved, Monsieur Dagenais. I had the great fortune to be
taught by Robert Dagenais when I attended Glebe Collegiate and was,
like many who knew him and many who didn't, heartbroken to hear of
his slaying on the weekend. His wife, Bonnie, was also killed when
two burglars broke into their West Quebec cottage and shot the
couple at point-blank range.
It was the tail end of the Trudeau era when I attended French
literature and language courses taught by Dagenais. And like our
prime minister at the time, Dagenais loved red roses and wore them
in his lapel almost every day. I realize now how young he was at the
time -- 33 or so -- but to us he seemed like a venerable, and funny,
sage.
As is often the case in language courses, the desks were mostly
filled by girls, and I don't believe it would be an exaggeration to
say we all had a crush on Monsieur Dagenais. In fact, it used to
make us ill, yet very pleased, to hear him gush (as he often did)
about Bonnie.
With his big limpid eyes, his slight and very cute accent, he was
utterly charming. He was also a natty dresser and considerably
slimmer back then than his recent pictures reveal. I remember one
Valentine's Day when a classmate of mine made me extremely jealous
with her nerve -- she walked up to Bobby, handed him a red rose and
gave him a kiss on the cheek. I'm not sure whether he blushed more
than her, but as usual, he treated her and the situation with the
utmost grace.
For there is nothing so insufferably pretentious as a group full of
teenagers living through its first exposure to Sartre, Camus and
Malraux. With Dagenais, we read La Nausee, L'Etranger and La
Condition Humaine, and he navigated us all through those heady
waters with ease, and in a second language, yet. Like teens
everywhere, we thought we were the first people on the planet, apart
from the old French guys whose books we were reading, to come up
with deep thoughts about man, the existence of God, our place in the
world and responsibility toward each other.
The height of teen cool for us, thanks to the influence of our
French literature class, was dressing in black and going to cafes in
the Byward Market and talking about existentialism. Pretty tame next
to raves and ecstasy, but I do not once remember feeling that
Monsieur Dagenais took all of us anything but completely seriously.
(I wish I could say as much for all my other teachers at the time).
No smirks from him, no rolling of the eyes, just an ear and a
challenge when we needed it. His catch- phrase was "Questions,
suggestions, opinions, commentaires, objections?" And he listened to
every one of them.
It was my first experience learning to debate and speak publicly in
French, and to write clear and logical arguments in that language.
As someone who is fairly shy even in her own language, it could have
been an ordeal, but it wasn't, because of the sense of confidence we
had in our teacher. Still, he never let us out of our assignments. I
can remember, on one occasion, trying to get out of having to talk
in front of the class and Bobby giving me a steadfast "no. You can
do it, and you will do it if you want to pass." Good for him. For
though he was friendly, he wasn't there to be our friend, and he
knew that. I read that he and Bonnie did not have children and part
of me thinks they didn't need to, since they gave away so much of
themselves to kids each day.
After university, I went to Paris, where I stayed for a number of
years. There I learned French without the Quebecois accent and
vocabulary, and came home all snobby and pleased with myself. On the
weekend, I remembered the man who made me want to go to Paris in the
first place. He was the man who gave us an assignment about
L'Etranger, titled "Meursault, est-il coupable?" (Is Meursault
guilty?). The irony of that question, and of the topics we discussed
with Robert Dagenais years ago, cannot be lost on anyone thinking
about how he and Bonnie died, the nihilism and stupidity of the act,
and the number of young minds influenced by Monsieur et Madame
Dagenais.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
November 17, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
Mistry's finished with border checks. Now he needs a
reality check
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - In various Canadian newspaper columns this week,
Rohinton Mistry was declared a modern-day Rosa Parks, a modern-day
Jew under the Nuremberg laws, a modern-day merchant in Munich having
his windows smashed on Kristallnacht while neighbours turned a blind
eye. Oh, please. These comments represent the kind of righteous
hysteria many Canadians have been spouting since Mistry announced
the cancellation of his U.S. book tour earlier this month. The
Indian-born Mistry decided to renege on promises to stop in six
American cities because of what he felt was discriminatory treatment
at airports. Mistry was touring the United States to promote his new
book, Family Matters.
I do not doubt that Mistry had to undergo embarrassing questioning
and luggage checks, even rude comments, while travelling in the U.S.
But comparing him to Rosa Parks? Aren't we getting a bit carried
away? First of all, that means Jean Chretien is Ike. I think not.
But for a shared love of golf, I would not compare our leader to
Eisenhower, who was a war hero, a superior military strategist, an
enemy of communism and a man who showed, time and time again, that
he would overlook his own beliefs and feelings in order to uphold
his country's constitution.
Rosa Parks lived in a world where her rights were not upheld, where
indeed, by law, she did not have equal rights with a white woman.
Mistry lives in a world, where, because of the unfortunate
vicissitudes of history, his luggage is likely to be checked. But if
nothing untoward is discovered on his being or in his belongings, he
can go back to his life, back to his book tour, back to nice hotels
and appearances on Oprah, one of the most popular TV shows in the
world. A show, need I point out, hosted by a woman of colour.
A Jew under the Nuremberg laws found his rights fast dwindling to
nothing, friends and neighbours turning on him and, ultimately, he
found himself on a train to a death camp, if he lasted that long. Is
this what Mistry's life is like? Somehow I doubt it. He experienced
the unpleasant experience of a security check and, perhaps a few
unkind words, and then he was sent on his way. A Jew on
Kristallnacht found himself under merciless attack from a mob, while
"good" people closed their shutters and hunkered down until it was
over. Is this what Mistry has gone through? Again, no. He found
himself questioned by authorities and then let go. And not only have
people not looked away, but most of his compatriots have rallied to
his defence and made absurd and histrionic declarations.
Mistry is being, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit whiny. He
commented that "when it (the security check) keeps happening every
single time, you get into this convoluted logic, trying to convince
yourself about why it's happening. 'Perhaps it's something about my
beard, maybe I should change my beard.' " He characterized this line
of thinking as "trying to appease a bad policy."
I'm not so sure this policy is bad. Unfair? Certainly. Foolproof?
No way. But the fact is that the next terrorist will probably not be
ethnic Japanese or Finnish or Scottish. And we should stop
pretending otherwise. We should also stop pretending that the U.S.
does not have good reason to be concerned about people from certain
countries who currently live in Canada, given the number of
terrorist operatives found living within our borders after Sept. 11.
Sadly for Canadians and Americans of Arab or Muslim backgrounds, or
immigrants from Arab countries who are not yet citizens, we must ask
them to tolerate a period of forbearance.
As a foreigner living in Japan, I was fingerprinted. It was an odd
experience. What was odd was that my German colleague was spared the
ordeal -- nostalgia for the Axis, I gathered. Countries pick and
choose, based on their history, who they trust and who they don't.
On a trip to Israel, I was hauled out of the check-in line for a
rather unforgiving search and questioning. But the El Al people had
their reasons. I resembled the Scandinavian girlfriend of an Arab
terrorist, a woman who had been helping her beau blow people up. It
was humiliating, to be sure. But El Al has not had a hijacking in
more than 30 years.
During the part of the book tour he did finish, Mistry was not sent
to segregated hotels or made to drink from a separate water
fountain. He should have kept things in perspective and honoured his
commitments.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
November 3, 2002, Final Edition, p.A14
Yes, politically correct
professionals, there is a Christmas
by Rondi Adamson
I was recently invited to spend an afternoon with a group of
teachers. I've long had issues with teachers, because they always
seem to be whining. And while I have been known to whine myself, I
don't have a job where I get a good salary, finish work at 4 p.m.
each day and get three months' holiday. So I hoped the teachers I
was meeting with would change my mind. And ... they didn't.
Plaid-shirted and earnest to a man, they spent the first half-hour
of our time together whin-ging about Mike Harris. Who? Isn't he long
gone? Time to join a support group, people. Time to meet in church
basements and work through the pain.
Anyway, after the Harris-bashing died down, one of the teachers
told a story about how he had explained to a student-teacher that
the phrase "Christmas is coming" was "culturally insensitive." Huh?
Trustingly, as I had been told my questions were welcome, I put up
my hand and said "excuse me, but how is it culturally insensitive to
say Christmas is coming?" I added that it wasn't as though what was
being said was "Christmas is coming and it's way better than anyone
else's holiday!" That would be culturally insensitive, I said.
The wrath that then fell upon me was a shock until I realized -- at
my advanced age -- that when people say your feedback is "welcome,"
what they really mean is "we want you to sit there and nod." One of
the plaid-shirted crowd then spelled out for me, pointing a finger
in my face, that "Christmas is coming" was a culturally insensitive
phrase because "one-third of Canadians aren't Christian and that is
reflected in the classroom. We want to be inclusive."
Now that's a point. I don't know if it's a good one, but it is a
point. If that one-third of Canadians who aren't Christian were all
of the same faith or background, then perhaps it would be a good
point. Because then they would represent some kind of lobby and
might have more reason to insist that their holidays be included on
Canadian calendars and so forth. But the one-third of Canadians who
aren't Christian are of many different backgrounds. And while I
believe they deserve freedom of religious practice, and respect from
other Canadians, I don't think they ought to feel that the mention
of Christmas is some kind of attack on them. And I rather doubt that
they do.
It has been my experience that most of the people who kvetch and
carry on about diversity and inclusivity are white people.
Immigrants to Canada generally have more important things to worry
about and don't need to be patronized by the condescending majority.
And, if one-third of Canadians are not Christian, then that leaves
two-thirds who are, at least in name. And in a democracy, I think it
is the majority that is supposed to rule, not the politically
correct.
Even if the majority of Canadians were not Christian, this country
remains one that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and
immigrants to this country know as much. They are not going to be
surprised or traumatized by the fact that we talk about Christmas.
The idea of a decorated tree or Santa Claus oughtn't send them
reeling. They know they are not coming to Saudi Arabia. It should be
noted, as well, that Judeo-Christian countries are probably the only
ones in the world where we have this kind of debate.
I challenged my plaid-shirted friends with the aforementioned
ideas, and was met first with a long silence, and then a with
question from a woman who looked positively shell-shocked. "Are you
saying," she asked, "that immigrants to Canada should adapt to our
culture?" Um, yeah. When I lived in Turkey, I put away my miniskirts
and made sure my hair was covered before entering mosques. In Japan,
I tried not to blow my nose in public. In France, I argued with
people a lot.
Here in Canada, we have reached new levels of the absurd. A friend
of mine works in an office where she is not allowed to wish anyone a
Merry Christmas. She has been instructed to wish people a happy
"winter holiday," as though they were all headed off to St. Moritz
for a week's skiing. And on that note, I'd like to wish my Druid
readers a happy new moon ceremony tomorrow -- Oops! Sorry, that
wasn't very inclusive of me. My werewolf readers -- who prefer the
full moon -- may feel excluded.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
October 20, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
Belafonte hits a sour note when he sings the blues at Colin
Powell
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - Harry Belafonte and Colin Powell have much in
common. They are both impossibly handsome men who seem to get more
handsome with each new silver hair. They both look great in uniform.
They are both of Jamaican background, both well-read and articulate.
They are both high achievers, idealists, men of integrity who have
risen to the heights of their chosen fields and who aren't finished
yet. And they have both worked within the system to get to where
they are, to help pave the way for other visible minorities.
And that final point is one everyone seems to have missed in the
furore surrounding Belafonte's recent dismissive comments concerning
Powell. Belafonte has gone too far, we have heard, confusing
political disagreement with below-the-belt blows and name-calling.
And those things are probably true. But above all, Belafonte should
keep in mind that if Powell is the house slave, then he is the house
calypso singer, who married the master's daughter (his second wife
is white) and helped organize the biggest, most mainstream, most
cloying smarmfest known to mankind, the "We are the World" atrocity
of the mid- 1980s. Powell may no longer live in the 'hood, but
Belafonte has moved to Sesame Street.
Belafonte is a man who has spent his career wearing tight pants,
low-cut floral print shirts and gold medallions and singing
counterfeit Caribbean music in an affected accent for well-off white
people at Carnegie Hall. Not to downplay his mellifluous voice and
shining charisma, but Belafonte's career in music and film has
largely benefited from his appearance -- not just his good looks,
but his light complexion. He was acceptable to American audiences in
the 1950s and '60s in a way that his darker-skinned contemporary,
Sidney Poitier, was not -- though decades later the
always-opinionated Belafonte would accuse Poitier of kowtowing to
the white psyche.
A part in the very bad 1957 movie Island in the Sun, in which a
romance between the Belafonte character and Joan Fontaine was
suggested, would not have been given to a darker-skinned actor at
the time, movie historians agree. And while Nat King Cole, about 10
years Belafonte's senior and also darker skinned, suffered from a
lack of sponsors on his 1956-57 variety show (the first ever
primetime television show in the U.S. hosted by an
African-American), Belafonte took home an Emmy for his 1960 variety
special. He was the first African-American to win that award. It has
often been suggested that Belafonte was able to become popular
across the board in the United States because he seemed "foreign,"
not a threat, not a black from home. The long-suffering Cole was the
latter, a gentle man who got hell from the Klan for being on TV and
hell from blacks for living in Beverly Hills.
Ironically, the same criticism that Belafonte directed at Powell
has plagued him throughout his own career. He was accused of being
an "Uncle Tom" by some civil-rights workers and by folk-music
purists in the 1960s. His music -- and his manners and appearance --
were criticized virulently for being too "assimilationist" and, that
most biting of insults, "too white." Such claims actually placed far
too much importance not just on Belafonte's relatively light skin
but also on his considerable popularity. Belafonte is successful --
the first recording artist of any colour to sell more than a million
copies of an album -- the mantra went, therefore he has sold out.
Sound familiar? Sound like something we heard last week?
For this is at the root of the Belafonte-Powell kerfuffle: the
belief that if you are successful, you have forgotten your own.
After the civil war, Frederick Douglass gave some famous advice to
African-Americans and newly freed slaves: "Agitate, agitate,
agitate." Back then, that was what was needed. And it is sometimes
needed now. But there are other ways to succeed and help others do
the same. A cursory look at both Powell and Belafonte's careers
should make it crystal-clear that neither gentleman could have
avoided working well within the system.
In the antebellum South, slaves who were musicians were granted
privileges other slaves could only dream of, including travel,
getting to stay inside the master's house, eat the master's food and
bathe and dress in fancy clothes before performing at plantation
balls. If Powell weren't such a class act, he could throw out a
choice insult or two along those lines in Belafonte's direction.
Because the latter's comments are really only a case of the calypso
singer calling the general black.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
October 8, 2002, Final Edition, p.A16
In praise of all the Earth's living
creatures, great and small
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - I took my kitties to church on Sunday. It was the day the
animals are blessed, following the feast of St. Francis -- a man who was
very nice to the critters -- on Oct. 4. I have never done this before and
rarely go to church. I am concerned about one of my cats, Pushkin, who
suffers from kitty bulimia, and I thought this might help. Besides, I have a
friend who is an Anglican minister and she told me the high point of her
year is the day the animals are blessed. It's a lot more pleasant, she says,
to look out and see animals in the pews than a sea of people.
Woody Allen once announced that if five more years of therapy didn't help
him, he was going to Lourdes. Pushkin is in the same boat. She lived on the
streets until I took her in, and according to her favourite vet -- a man she
has only hissed at a dozen or so times -- she has no "off" switch when she
eats and there's not much to be done. But I figured a blessing couldn't hurt
(beyond all the scratches I got sticking her and her brother in their
carrier).
This week is World Animal Day in many countries, some on Oct. 6, some on the
7th and so forth. It's not co-ordinated but I think it's important. I'm an
animal lover and an animal advocate, as much as I can be. This does not
mean, contrary to what some might think, that I hold vigils in the forest
with my little woodland creature friends, or that I think animals should
have the vote. Though they probably wouldn't make worse choices than we do.
It means I think animals are living creatures who feel fear and pain and
should benefit from the same legal and moral protections as us. It means I
do not believe animals are here to entertain us, or to serve us without
getting proper reward, kindness and respect for that service, or for that
matter, to be eaten by us. I accept that some people are going to eat
animals, however, and I have never given anyone grief for doing so. I simply
suggest, when they do so, that they take care the animal in question had a
decent life and humane death before they decided to fill their faces with
him or her.
My pilgrimage on Sunday was interesting. I am an atheist and I have a hard
time with the arrogant notion that humans are the sum of all creation and
therefore deserve to lord it over everything else because of our superior
intelligence. This is an argument often put forward by those who think
animals are here to serve and entertain us.
If we took that argument literally, then I guess it would be all right for
me to abuse and torture people who weren't as smart as me. What fun!
According to that line of thinking, I guess people can beat their kids and
make them jump through hoops when they're babies because they aren't very
smart then.
I used to have a Christian friend who would roll her eyes at me and snicker
when I would tell her about the volunteer work I do for animals. I pointed
out to her that I never rolled my eyes or snickered when she talked about
church. I also pointed out that if Jesus came back, I had a sneaking feeling
that not only would he approve of my helping animals, he would probably join
me in my work.
And he would probably give the thumbs up (if Jesus did stuff like that) to
Pope John Paul II, who has said that animals are imbued with the same spirit
as man, that animals have souls.
I just wish more of Christ's followers would reflect on the words of one of
their fellow believers, pastor/medical missionary/vegetarian Albert
Schweitzer, who wrote that "the human spirit can only attain its full
breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit
itself to man-kind."
On Sunday, my Anglican minister friend read from Ecclesiastes: "I said in
mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest
them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that
which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ... as the one dieth, so
dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no
pre-eminence above a beast." It was really beautiful.
Except for when Pushkin barfed all over the hymnal.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002
All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
September 22, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
Abolish craven thinking about the guilt of the white race
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - It's a scary world where a novel by Alice Walker or
Amy Tan is on the reading list of a university student's
20th-century English-language literature course, and books by
William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway are nowhere to be seen. And yet
this is so often the case, as a young friend just starting
university revealed to me.
I knew things were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad. That
third-rate writers (and I think I'm being generous) should take
precedence over first-rate writers because the latter happen to be
white and male -- and in the case of Hemingway, a macho, hunting,
fishing and womanizing white male -- is something I knew had been
happening for the past 10 years, but I had hoped the tide was
turning.
Then I heard about a magazine called Race Traitor, founded by
Harvard academic Dr. Noel Ignatiev. Ignatiev found himself in the
news last week for an article he penned in the current issue of
Harvard magazine titled "Abolish the White Race." "Every group
within white America," wrote Ignatiev, "has advanced its particular
and narrowly defined interests at the expense of black people as a
race." He goes on to say that abolishing the white race --
culturally, psychologically and emotionally on campuses and in
corporations -- would rectify imbalances of the past. The article is
sort of a composite version of what you'd find if you went to the
Race Traitor Web site. Ignatiev, who seems to think white people are
responsible for everything bad on this planet, is really no
different from those who would have you believe white people are
responsible for everything worthy of praise on this planet.
That aspects of North American history, specifically slavery and
segregation, have led to deep schisms and "success gaps" if you
will, is indisputable. What is objectionable is Ignatiev's
"solution." How encouraging people to hate other people based on
race, class or political passion, and to see themselves as members
of a group or "community" (Lord, how I hate that word) rather than
citizens of a country, capable of making choices, gains and losses
on their own strengths, is ever going to help them is beyond me.
When you find yourself in a hole, the saying goes, stop digging.
History is full of proponents of Ignatiev's philosophy -- Hitler,
Stalin, Pol Pot, Milosevic -- if not his methods, and we all know
how well those worked out. But Ignatiev encourages us to dig away,
all the same.
Also objectionable, not to mention hopelessly naive, is Ignatiev's
seeming belief that white people all stand side-by-side, unified in
our goals and looking out for each other. Take a look around.
There's enough hatred between various white people to fill a death camp. Many famous wars have been fought because of, and between,
white people, often to the benefit of non-white people. Ignatiev has
probably heard of the Civil War, just for starters.
Look at the current situation in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe is doing
what he can to abolish whites (literally) in that country, but he is
also doing what he can to destroy his considerable black opposition.
Not to mention that, as American journalist Paul Craig Roberts noted
this week, "if whites had race loyalty or even racial awareness,
wouldn't they do something about Mugabe's decimation of their
brothers and sisters? One British regiment or one U.S. Marine
division could topple Mugabe in a few hours. However, instead of
displaying race loyalty, white governments are enabling Mugabe by
sending him food."
White people are not all equal. And all whites are not
"privileged," a word that is so often carelessly thrown about in
these discussions. Ignatiev says he wants African-Americans to
destroy the white "social construct" without having much to say
about what social construct would be left. The ideas that Ignatiev
puts forward deserve to be hooted out of polite society. It makes
one wonder, at what price hate? And under the aegis of the esteemed
Harvard, no less.
But should that really surprise us? North American universities,
for the past decade or so, have not only become home to the quota
and places where one reads Alice Walker over William Faulkner, but
environments almost Stalinistic in their intolerance of
"unpalatable" viewpoints. Unpalatable, that is, to the
diverso-fascists, the feminazis and the politically correct pod
people -- most of whom, interestingly, are white. (Ignatiev himself
received two degrees from Harvard.)
Because he has provoked debate, we should thank Dr. Ignatiev. Let's
make sure we also challenge and "deconstruct" what he has to say.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
September 8, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
And so, too, will Sept. 11 pass when a new tragedy takes its place
by Rondi Adamson
On March 11 this year, my mother called to tell me that she
had been feeling sad. "You know," she said, "it's the anniversary."
The anniversary ... my mind immediately wandered to what I had seen
on the morning shows that day, a Monday: memorial services for the
six-month anniversary of Sept. 11. "It would be 55 years," mum
continued. And I realized she was talking about my parents' wedding
anniversary. My father died seven years ago, four months after my
parents' 48th anniversary, also on the 11th of a month, in July.
To borrow a line from George W. Bush, the 11th has been hijacked.
This is understandable. And not just Sept. 11, but the 11th of every
month. Each month this year, we have been reminded, in case we have
forgotten, that it is two, six, nine, 11 months since that day last
fall. And now at the one-year mark, the shock is fading to facts.
We know now the number of casualties is not what we had thought --
down from almost 7,000 to closer to 3,000, not many more deaths, in
fact, than at Pearl Harbor, and less than at Antietam, Maryland.
What was called "the deadliest day on U.S. soil" is now not that,
coming second behind a battle that took place another September, in
1862. The Civil War still provides Americans with so many
watersheds.
I know a man who was born on Pearl Harbor Day, and by that I mean
he was actually born on Dec. 7, 1941. He is Czech, and never felt
his birthday had any significance beyond the fact that it was his
birthday, until he moved to North America at age 27. All of a
sudden, he told me, his birthday meant something to other people --
something that got patriotic blood boiling and stirred up angry
memories. Something that was marked with ceremonies and not just a
cake.
This summer, I taught cross-cultural skills to a group of educated
and intelligent Asian businessmen. When I first used the phrase
"9/11" with them, they didn't understand. And not because their
English was lacking. It was simply not on their radar. Important,
yes. But their internal compasses were not forever jammed on Sept.
11. (Not to mention that for much of the world, it would be "11/9,"
since we do the dates backwards here.) Dec. 7, 1941 on the other
hand, never needed to be explained to the Japanese among them.
Now, Dec. 7 takes a backseat to Sept. 11, as do June 6, May 8, Aug.
14 and another 11th, one in November. My Czech friend told me that
on Dec. 7, 2001, his 60th birthday and the 60th anniversary of Pearl
Harbor, he noticed that he heard more speeches referring to Sept. 11
than talk about the United States' forced entry into the Second
World War. My friend still enjoys hearing "Day of Infamy" jokes when
he tells people his birthday, but that does not happen so often
anymore.
John Still, in his book, The Jungle Tide, wrote that "the memories
of men are too frail a thread to hang history from." But we can hang
something more personal from them.
For my mother, there are many significant 11ths. There was her
wedding day, of course, and the death of my father. But long before
that, there were others: Her favourite brother was born on April 11,
1919. He died on Aug. 11, 1944, at the Falaise Gap, some two months
after being part of Canada's D-Day effort on Juno Beach. He is
buried in a Canadian war cemetery in Normandy, and the dates are
engraved there: the 11th to the 11th. This year, those days did not
belong to her. They were seven- and 11-month anniversaries.
I have a friend whose birthday is Sept. 11. I was sending her a
birthday e-mail greeting last year when I saw the news in its early
stages and thought -- momentarily -- that perhaps a Cessna pilot had
goofed. I mentioned it to her in the e-mail, and no sooner had I
clicked on "send" than I knew it was no Cessna. "My birthday has
been ruined," she announced shortly thereafter.
But a lot can change in 12 months. People are talking about
celebrities and feeling free to hate each other openly again. And
while the world tilted a year ago, it will tilt again. This year,
the 11th of each month will not be singled out. And in 28 years,
when my friend is 60, she will probably find, like my Czech buddy,
that some other atrocity has bumped her birthday out of the top
spot.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
August 25, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A12
Why are we so afraid to learn about the faiths of others?
by Rondi Adamson
|
The Ottawa Citizen
August 11, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A12
It's not fair but it is her call
by Rondi Adamson
Mother Nature made the final decision, it turns out. Tanya
Meyers suffered a miscarriage Monday night.
Meyers is the 23-year-old Pennsylvania woman who, during her 10th
week of pregnancy, found herself in the spotlight and embroiled in a
legal battle with the baby's father over her decision to end her
pregnancy. In late July, her ex-boyfriend, 27-year-old John
Stachokus, won a temporary injunction to prevent her from having an
abortion. Both she and Stachokus agreed that he was the father; that
was not the issue. The issue was who got to decide whether the baby
should even be born.
Stachokus's legal action galvanized anti-abortion activists as well
as fathers' rights groups. Luzerne County Common Pleas Court Judge
Michael Conahan, soon after Stach-okus's legal success, ruled, after
hearing both arguments, that the baby's father had no grounds to
interfere with Meyers's constitutional right to terminate her
pregnancy before the fetus could survive on its own. In spite of the
ruling, Meyers, according to her mother, was having second thoughts
about her choice. And then she miscarried.
It's a really sad story. The fathers' rights advocates who
supported Stachokus throughout the saga said that it was not fair
that Meyers alone should have been able to make the decision about
her and Stachokus's unborn child. Don't men who don't want to be
fathers, they argued, often have to pay child support to a woman who
got pregnant and gave birth without consulting them? Well, yes. That
happens and it's not fair. But it is a chance anyone, male or
female, takes when they become intimately involved with someone
else.
What is really not "fair" is that women get to live through the
wonders of carrying the children during gestation and get to
experience so many of the joys of childrearing -- breastfeeding,
just for example -- all alone. It is also not fair that women,
frequently, are left alone to raise their children when some loser
decides to bail rather than accept his responsibilities. We all have
our crosses to bear, we all have things that work to our advantage.
Still, anyone who has ever been romantically involved with anyone
can tell you that the easiest part of any relationship is the
not-getting-pregnant part (it's the rest of relationships that are a
massive challenge). It's quite simple to remain childless. In fact,
it's so simple I don't understand why anyone in the West -- except
for a rape victim -- would ever become pregnant without wanting as
much to happen. There are any number of birth control methods
available out there, without a prescription, and the combination of
two or more of them will pretty much always prevent conception.
In an ideal world, Stachokus and Meyers would have been married
before Meyers got pregnant. In an ideal world, they would have both
discussed things and planned on this child. But Stachokus and
Meyers, it seems, have both behaved in far from ideal ways. Meyers,
at her tender age, already has a two-year- child from another man, a
man she is not married to. She only met Stachokus last fall and got
pregnant this spring. Stachokus, clearly, has "issues." He is, by
many accounts, abusive and certainly, his legal action would
indicate, is manipulative in the extreme. In a way they seem like a
match made in hell, curiously well-suited.
Having said all of that, it seems clear that Stachokus should not
have won the right to force Meyers to have their baby. In China this
week, the government introduced its new law on family planning and
population, to take effect in September. In it, husbands will be
able to take legal action against their wives if the latter are
planning to have an abortion. I doubt if Americans or Canadians want
to model themselves on a decision from a government not exactly
famous for its consideration of human rights.
What is particularly distressing is how much the Meyers case has
galvanized both sides of the abortion debate. Both sides seem
unreasonable. And it brings home how nice it would be if we had an
actual abortion law in this country. One where we could face the
facts: The woman is the one who bears the weight during pregnancy,
for better or for worse, and therefore should make the decision. And
yet, it should be apparent, even if you are of the belief that life
begins precisely at the moment of conception, that there is a
difference between a four-week-old fetus and a 16-week-old fetus,
that even an abortion law that favours choice should have limits.
For many of the pro-choice persuasion, however, admitting as much
would be inconceivable.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
August 1, 2002, Final Edition, p.C2
Ottawa, where cab
travel can be taxing
by Rondi Adamson
Taxis are a necessity for the car-challenged in Ottawa.
Unless, that is, you are willing to wait three hours for a bus, then
pay a $17 fare and then transfer seven times in order to get to your
destination, which is probably about three yards away. Slow boats to
China would be faster.
Ottawa has no subway, no dogsleds, no flying carpets. Without a
car, it's the buses you must take, and for me, in the heat, that's a
hellish thing to contemplate.
So during a recent trip to Ottawa, I personally contributed more
money to Ottawa cabs then I generally spend on FancyFeast for my
kitties in a year -- and that's a lot. To make matters worse, my,
like, very best friend in the world, a girl I've known since high
school, a girl with whom I immediately regress into teenspeak, had
her car in the shop. Like, oh my God!
The first mistake I made was thinking you could hail a cab on the
street, like one can do anywhere in Toronto. Ottawa cabs only seem
readily available at one in the morning in Centretown. One afternoon
I stood on a busy stretch of Bank Street and watched about a dozen
busy cabs fly by. So I took out my cell, called the easy-to-remember
Blue Line number and sweet Jesus, within 20 minutes a kind gentleman
showed up.
Calling for a cab certainly improves your chances of getting one in
Ottawa, but within what time frame? One night I phoned for a cab and
the woman who answered -- Doreen, if I recall correctly -- greeted
me with a perky, "I believe you, honey," when I said, "I need a
cab." Ah, I thought, it's that wonderful Ottawa Valley chirpiness,
that down-home friendliness that you can find nowhere else.
After being assured there would be a cab outside my mother's
building "soon," I went down to the lobby and waited. And waited.
And waited. When I called back, Doreen answered. "Hi," I said. "I
just called, well, not 'just.' About 25 minutes ago. I asked for a
cab and it hasn't arrived."
"Oh," said the ever cheery Doreen. "Are you in a hurry?"
I toyed with the idea of answering sarcastically, of saying, "Oh
no, I just felt like talking to you again, Doreen. I'd be perfectly
happy to sit here for the next three or so hours, until, you know,
one of your cabbies can be bothered to drive along this way." But I
fought back the urge and said, "Well, I wasn't in a hurry when I
first called you, but I am now." The cab showed about 15 minutes
later.
The day after that, I felt I had learned my lesson and called for
another cab to take me from Mum's place to a friend's place barely a
kilometre away. "I need the cab very soon," I said, not to Doreen
this time. The cab arrived quickly and off we went. But the driver
did not know the way to my friend's house. He had not heard of the
street and asked: "Can you give me directions?"
"Well," I hesitated, "I don't live here and I haven't for years ...um, shouldn't you know your way around?"
The cabbie reached for a map of Ottawa and handed it back to me.
"You tell me the way." OK, I thought, do I get a discount? I read
out the instructions and as he drove along each street he read the
names out loud.
"And now we're going on along Hunt Club Road ... and now I'm
turning on Paul Anka Drive ... and now we're heading up to the A & P
..." The play-by-play was amusing.
On the way back I asked the cabbie (a different one) if he had air conditioning.
"It doesn't work," he said. "Could you try," I pleaded, suffering
in the humidity. He turned it on and lo, it worked, though not well
since he left the windows open. Don't you think you ought to close
the windows, I suggested. Begrudgingly, he complied, and the
non-functioning air-conditioning worked just fine. "You're pretty
demanding, ma'am," he concluded.
On my trip to the train station to return to Toronto, the driver
was my little friend who didn't know his way around, the one who
liked to say the names of the streets aloud. It was a fitting bon
voyage for me but as nice he was, I just hope my girlfriend's car is
like, so totally out of the shop next time I visit.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
July 28, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A12
Sometimes the sins of the parents are visited on their
children
by Rondi Adamson
I'm hooked on Court TV. And since early June I've been
following California vs. David Westerfield, the trial of the
50-year-old engineer charged with the kidnap and murder of
seven-year-old Danielle van Dam.
It is believed that Westerfield also raped the little girl, but her
body was so decomposed when it was discovered -- a month after she
disappeared -- that there could not be a charge. Westerfield, it is
alleged, took Danielle from her home some time in the early hours of
Feb. 2, assaulted her, killed her, put her body in his motorhome and
took a trip to dump the blond Girl Guide like yesterday's trash.
Westerfield has also been charged with a misdemeanour for possessing
child pornography.
The trial is drawing to a close and will probably be sent to jury
this week. If Westerfield is guilty, as DNA evidence indicates, he
should at least be locked away forever, at most given the death
penalty. One thing that may be considered a mitigating factor in the
penalty phase of this trial, should Westerfield be convicted, is the
relative role of Danielle's parents in her disappearance.
Brenda and Damon van Dam, it seems, have a "swinging" lifestyle,
and the issue of whether that lifestyle should have been considered
during the trial caused a furore in March. Many cried that it was an
invasion of the van Dams' privacy, others said it was "irrelevant."
Danielle, people said, was the victim of a random act of violence.
It is an invasion of their privacy, but unfortunately, once your
child goes missing, your privacy does as well.
What it is not, is irrelevant. According to U.S. crime statistics,
under one per cent of the 850,000 children gone missing in 2001 were
taken by total strangers. Samantha Runnion appears to be one of
those rare cases. Most children are taken by a divorced parent and
many by other relatives or family acquaintances. In other words, the
decisions you make in terms of keeping your family together, and in
terms of who you associate with, may haunt you -- and your child.
Judge William Mudd decided in favour of allowing some evidence of
the parents' private life into the trial. And much of the testimony
so far makes their neighbourhood of Sabre Springs seem like a
regular "Peyton Place." We have Brenda and Damon, a good-looking
pair in their late 30s, who, in spite of their wedding vows (and the
fact that they had three children) saw fit to bring strangers home
from bars for the purpose of wife-swapping. They smoked a lot of
marijuana and had their sex parties in a locked- from-the-inside
garage, presumably so their children couldn't accidentally stumble
upon them in flagrante. Brenda, on the stand, told Westerfield's
defence attorney that an evening during which she, her husband, and
two other couples had group sex did not qualify as a "sex party."
Denise Kemal, a friend of the van Dams, was defensive when it was
suggested she had slept with two people other than her husband one
night. "No," she said, "I only slept with one -- Damon."
The night Danielle was taken, Brenda was out partying with her
girlfriends until 2 a.m. One witness testified that Brenda said of
her and her boyfriend, "boy, I'd really like to take those two
home." Brenda also, by many witness accounts, danced suggestively
with Westerfield that night, though she denies it. Once home, Brenda
did not check on her daughter but sat by as her husband "cuddled"
with another woman. They had all smoked marijuana and had all been
drinking. One of the doors was unlocked, the alarm system was
tripped and their gate was open.
One theory as to Westerfield's alleged motivation is that he wanted
to punish the van Dams for excluding him from their "fun," as he did
not have a partner to bring to their garage get-togethers. It is not
difficult to believe that Westerfield was titillated by their
lifestyle. He also had good reason to speculate that he could get
away with it, as there would be plenty of other suspects, given the
number of low- lives and unsavoury characters the van Dams welcomed
into their home.
Do not misunderstand. Brenda and Damon van Dam need compassion and sympathy, for not only have they lost their daughter, but they also
must surely feel burdened by their choices. The only person who
should be held responsible for the death of Danielle van Dam is
whoever killed her. But these things are not always beyond our
control. The greatest shame is that some of the van Dams' sins were
visited on Danielle.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
July 24, 2002, Final Edition, p.A16
A
drink or smoke during pregnancy shouldn't get you all puffed up
by Rondi Adamson
Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London (England),
found himself in the headlines recently for a reason unrelated to politics.
At a party, he saw his pregnant girlfriend smoking, and intervened. Some
sort of fight ensued and gossip columnists gleefully reported. A few months
back, a pregnant Kate Moss caught it from the press and general public when
she was photographed at a party with a drink in her hand.
And unknown women are judged. A six-months pregnant friend of mine, two
weeks short of 41, recently found herself harangued by a waitress (who
looked about 22) when she ordered a beer with lunch. She said, "Listen
honey, I'm probably two decades older than you, I'm easily 10 times smarter
than you and I have an ob-gyn. So I don't need advice from a waitress." She
got her beer.
That we should intervene when we see a pregnant woman sniffing gallons of
glue, shooting up heroin, guzzling cases of muscatel, smoking packs of
cigarettes or bungee-jumping goes without saying. Yes, a woman's body is her
own ... up to a point. But Livingstone's girlfriend was having one
cigarette, and by all accounts it was the first one she'd had in weeks.
Livingstone's behaviour proved he has some "control issues," not that he is
a caring father.
Of course, smoking at any time, but especially during pregnancy, is stupid
and self-destructive. Smoking is in no way good for you, is vulgar, costly,
makes your teeth and fingers turn yellow, increases your chances of getting
several diseases and gives you extra wrinkles.
Regular smoking during pregnancy increases chances of miscarriage and crib
death, among other things. But there is no proof that a pregnant woman
smoking, say, two cigarettes a month, especially when she is beyond the
first eight weeks of her pregnancy, is putting her baby at risk.
Drinking, on the other hand, is not stupid or self-destructive. In
moderation it is widely agreed to be beneficial to one's health.
And the hysteria around fetal alcohol syndrome is just that. Even the
physicians who did the initial research and coined the term have said as
much. The initial work, done by Ernest Abel and Robert Sokol in the early
1980s, seemed to suggest that even a drop of liquor during gestation would
turn a baby into a slobbering, handicapped basket case. That became the
received wisdom. The good doctors themselves, though, in 1991, issued a
statement saying that "we now estimate that the incidence of FAS in the
western world ... is about six times lower than our previous estimate." No
one seems to have read that.
In studies since, Abel and Sokol have pointed out that FAS is most likely
not related to drinking alone, but to combined factors, such as the mother's
level of nutrition before and during her pregnancy, her education level, IQ,
social class, previous health history, genetic susceptibility to disease,
use of drugs and/or frequent smoking. In other words, if a pregnant woman
drinks moderately, but also smokes, has an IQ of 80, eats a steady diet of
meat and Cheetos and cohabits with a crack addict in a tenement in an
inner-city, she is probably at a higher risk of giving birth to an FAS baby
than is a pregnant woman who drinks a couple of glasses of wine a week,
doesn't smoke, eats well, has an IQ of 125 and lives with her husband in an
apartment on a nice enough street.
Well, duh.
No one knows what a safe amount of alcohol during pregnancy is. And if you
want to err on the side of caution and not drink at all, more power to you.
But even that is not a guarantee your child will be healthy. Preaching to a
woman who has a drink or two during pregnancy is unseemly, especially as --
I would argue -- there are far worse things women do to their children after
giving birth to them. Not breast-feeding them and sticking them in daycare
are but two.
Anecdotal evidence alone should show us that light to moderate drinking
during pregnancy is not a cause for concern. Most of our mothers drank
during pregnancy. Mine had the occasional martini or brandy Alexander during
all seven of hers. And none of us were born with that dreaded "low-birth
weight" FAS fearmongers love to talk about.
Or were we? Four of us weighed nine pounds, three (including me) weighed in
at 10. As mum likes to say, "I'm so glad I drank when I was carrying you
all, because just imagine what you would have weighed otherwise."
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
July 14, 2002, Final Edition, p.A12
Welcome to Toronto: Sorry about the garbage, rats and politicians
by Rondi Adamson
|
The Ottawa Citizen
June 30, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
Martha Stewart: Don't stir the pot before you try her
recipes
by Rondi Adamson
Judging from the headlines, the news shows, the jokes about
the possible feng-shuiing of death row and crafts in the prison
yard, the most important thing happening in the world right now is
the ongoing investigation of Martha Stewart. My Lordy, it's splashed
on the cover of bloody Newsweek. The possibility that the high
profile CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. may have
profited from insider trading has overtaken Arafat, Sharon, Osama,
India and even JLo's divorce as today's top story. Most insider
trading accusations get into very tiny print. But Stewart is not
just a celebrity, she is an unprecedented phenomenon, and a woman.
People hate Stewart. I don't. The recipes in her popular magazine,
contrary to the received wisdom, are not complicated and made up of
foods no one but kings and gay men would want to eat. They are
usually simple and healthy. Stewart's television show is uneven --
at times it seems like a parody of itself, but at other times you
can actually learn something. A recent episode was devoted to pet
care, something I found informative and hilarious to watch (as the
ever calm Stewart gave a bath to a very concerned and not so calm
kitten). Don't get me wrong. I seriously doubt Stewart bathes her
own pets or does her own gardening or shopping. But that isn't the
issue. People shred Stewart without ever having tried one of her
recipes or listened to her speak. By many accounts, Stewart is not
the most patient woman. And perhaps some of the glee out there is
fuelled by people she snapped at while stirring one of her many
pots.
What people don't get about her is her edge. They don't get the
sarcasm in her voice -- even though her intonation never actually
varies -- or the mockery in her eyes. They can't have seen her on
David Letterman's Late Show where she willingly pokes fun at herself
by reading Top Ten lists that take the mickey out of her entire
persona. Stewart is a woman whose husband left her for a bimbo, and
Stewart, apparently devastated, did the sensible thing. She took her
hurt and anger and channelled them into linens, phyllo pastry,
making decorative thumb tacks out of old buttons and becoming a
millionairess many times over. You go, sister.
The centre of the current tempest in a teapot is under 4,000 shares
of ImClone stock worth $228,000 U.S. To you and me that sounds
impressive. To a woman worth hundreds of millions of dollars, it is
insignificant. Consider the last large insider trading scandal in
the late 1980s, where financiers were holding stock under hidden
ownership and planting false rumours to help their cause and get
rich. And here we have the already beyond-wealthy Stewart, who
(maybe) heard from a friend that a certain stock might be in trouble
and tried to avoid a loss. For the stock market to function
properly, people need to act on information. Further, Stewart has
been portrayed as the ultimate insider, when in fact she is not even
a director at ImClone. What is being discussed is not years of
conduct, but a single trade. Stewart has a good professional
reputation, having stood by K-Mart when they declared bankruptcy.
So much of the anti-Stewartisms spring, I think, from snobbery. For
Stewart has made tasteful housewares available to all through her
inexpensive products. Having a nice livingroom is no longer
something for a select few. She has succeeded in making life
prettier for nearly all. Also, much anti- Stewart backlash comes from
feminists who dislike what her very success seems to scream out:
that looking after a home is something to take pride in. And, I
suspect, a lot of women who feel mighty guilty about doing a bad job
in their own kitchens aren't convinced Stewart is such a good thing.
The allegations -- and at this point that is all they are -- are
serious. But even if they're true, put them in perspective. The
focus should be on the person who may have told her secrets he
shouldn't have, rather than on Martha who (maybe) did what most of
us would have done.
I don't know if Stewart is guilty. But the notion that she may not
be does not seem to have been entertained.
Martha Stewart stock has tumbled 34 per cent since the ImClone
furor began and Stewart watchers, the ones who buy stock -- and not
linens -- are worried and wondering how much she knew and when she
knew it. But don't count Stewart out. Remember, Martha is a buy
right now.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
June 16, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
Don't turn a blind eye when boys are sexually exploited by
women
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - All people make a connection in their minds between
sex and love. Except for men. Nah, I'm just kidding ... although
reading about a recent legal decision in New Jersey could certainly
give one that impression. However, I have been blessed with four
brothers and I know from years of observation that they do have
actual emotions, and a couple of the more evolved among them can
even occasionally identify and quantify those emotions. And I'm sure
my brothers aren't the only males out there with feelings.
Which makes last week's lenient sentencing of Pamela Diehl-Moore,
the now 43-year-old New Jersey teacher accused of having a sexual
relationship with one of her 13-year-old students, worthy of
scrutiny and criticism. Many people in Diehl-Moore's community are
angry that Judge Bruce Gaeta sentenced her to a mere five years'
probation. "I really don't see the harm that was done here," the
judge said. "And certainly society doesn't need to be worried." He
also said the relationship may have helped the youngster "satisfy
his sexual needs ... It's just something that clicked between two
people beyond the teacher-student relationship."
I'll say. According to trial records, Diehl-Moore began inviting
the boy, now 16, to her home during the spring of 1999. Over a
period of six months, they carried on a "consensual" sexual
relationship. Can a 13- year-old "consent" to sex with an adult? If
the 13-year-old is male, apparently he can. For there can be little
doubt that were Diehl-Moore male and the student a girl, Diehl-Moore
would have been sentenced to prison, lest all hell break loose. The
judge in this case seems to have fallen into the "nudge, wink" line
of thinking, as though boys are by nature callous, as though somehow
the fledgling emotional life and vulnerabilities of young males are
not to be protected.
It is true that there are many teenagers, male and female, who
would happily engage in sexual relations with certain adults. But
that doesn't mean the adults should allow it to happen. It is also
true that there is a difference between a 13-year-old and a
16-year-old. But we seem to forget that when the 13-year-old is
male.
Consider the reaction five years ago when popular Tacoma,
Washington teacher Mary Kay Letourneau became pregnant during an
affair with one of her 13-year-old students. There was also a
considerable nudge-wink chorus then, and she was given a short
prison term. Even the victim's mother defended Letourneau. And it
seems mere seconds after Letourneau was released, she became
pregnant again by the same boy. She was subsequently locked away for
a long time. Only now is Vili Fualaau, the father of Letourneau's
second "family" (she already had four children with her husband)
speaking openly about the negative emotional effects the
relationship has had on him, not to mention that he became the
father of two before he turned 16. Fualaau and his mother recently
filed a lawsuit against their school district and local police for
failing to protect him. (The jurors awarded the Fualaaus no damages,
suggesting that perhaps Mrs. Fualaau was the one who ought to have
been looking out for her son.)
There is currently considerable and justifiable outrage over the
Catholic Church sex scandal. Boston Bernard Cardinal Law's failing
memory -- his I-don't-recalls could challenge Bill Clinton's -- is
reported on a regular basis. And every day it seems, another priest
is accused, shot or kills himself. The priests in question have not
behaved in a way very far off from Diehl-Moore or Letourneau. But
because they engaged in relations many are uncomfortable even
contemplating, we treat it like the outrage it is. No nudging or
winking.
We are appalled that people in positions of trust took advantage
while the church turned the other cheek. But the suicides of priests
offer at least an indication that these people knew they had done
something wrong. By all accounts, neither Diehl-Moore nor Letourneau
thinks she has. In a way, it is difficult to blame the frisky
teachers.
Reaction when an adult male has sex with a young girl or boy is one
of outrage. But a grown woman with a young boy ... the prevailing
sentiment seems to be that this is not a big deal.
Have we watched too many French films? I don't know. What I do
believe is that if we start treating young males as though their
emotional life matters, perhaps when they grow up they won't be so
clueless when it comes to their own hearts.
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
June 2, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
When the creator joins the ranks of the politically correct
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - Alan Watts wrote that you "can't get wet from the
word 'water.' " I wish the people at Zondervan Publishing House had
thought about that before they capitulated to politically correct
gender-equity loony-tunes, creating a new edition of their already
popular New International Version Bible.
Zondervan is the world's largest publisher of Bibles and it has
recently decided to replace words such as "men," "son," and "he"
with words such as "people," "children," and "they" in its just
released Today's New International Version New Testament. The
complete "inclusive" version is planned for a 2005 release.
I hate that I agree with people like James Dobson, Pat Robertson
and Jerry Falwell on this topic, but I do. Dobson is a radio
personality and psychologist who advocates swatting your children
when they misbehave and, like Robertson and Falwell, has that
patronizing "love the sinner, hate the sin" attitude about
homosexuals.
True, Dobson's reason for railing against the changes in the
Zondervan Bible are not the same as mine. In an interview in USA
Today, he recently said that the new words "dilute the masculinity
intended by the authors of Scripture." I wouldn't pretend to know
what the authors of Scripture intended. But I think I'm more
qualified to talk about this than Dobson and his posse because I do
not believe in God. Therefore, I have no stake here, no
romanticized, childlike notions about some guy in the sky who had
his son killed to make up for our sins or who apparently made us in
his image. Hard to believe when I look around me. As Woody Allen
said in Love and Death, "You think God wears glasses?" (To which
Diane Keaton replied "not with those frames.")
Organized religion is something I find tiresome, divisive and a
hotbed of hypocrisy and violence. But for the openness and
discussion allowed in Judaism and the vegetarianism of the Hare
Krishna, little of it attracts me. So I am able to look at the Bible
as exactly what it is: a book, a piece of fictionalized history with
some magnificent poetry, worthwhile philosophy and cool ideas thrown
in for good measure.
Ezra Pound called Ecclesiastes the most beautiful piece of poetry
ever written (I concur) and I don't see how it could be improved by
making the language in it gender-neutral. Would we make Shakespeare
gender-neutral? Well, there are probably people out there who would,
and, who, Horatio forbid, already have.
What I would say to them is what I've often said to feminist
friends of mine (yes, I do have those, I just don't see them very
often) who go all hormonal when someone says "he" in a story instead
of "he or she": If you can be so profoundly traumatized, if you can
be made to feel excluded, offended or lacking because of a pronoun,
then you must have bigger problems to contend with in your life than
a few measly gender-equity "issues." (Sweet Jesus, I hate that
word). Run, don't walk, to your nearest therapist and work on that
self-esteem.
Zondervan is actually an admirable holdout in the gender-equity
wars, being one of the last to crumble. Even the usually gloriously
intransigent Catholics have, in some North American congregations,
used "inclusive" Bible versions, though the Vatican opposes that.
But Zondervan's New International Version, with more than 150
million Bibles out there, is second only to the King James Version
(which, praise be given, reads exactly as it did the day it first
went to print in 1611) in terms of circulation, and therefore its
newspeakisms are worth talking about.
A religious friend of mine (yep, I've got those, too), who also
happens to have been indoctrinated into pc-ism, told me he felt the
changes could help communicate "biblical truth" to readers. Biblical
truth? Isn't that something like "male sensitivity," "Canadian
military" or "jumbo shrimp"? An oxymoron, I mean. According to
Biblical truth, insects have four legs, bats are birds and Noah was
able to get two of all the animals in the world (that's 50 million
species, so 100 million critters) onto his ark in one day, even
though even with the kind of boats and loading equipment we have
today, that wouldn't be possible.
Which makes me wonder: If you can buy all of that, if you can check
your IQ at the door and drop money into the collection plate, if you
can suspend reality in such an impressive fashion, why on earth do
you need "our Father" to be turned into "our Gender Neutral Parent
Figure" or anything else?
Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.
|
The Ottawa Citizen
May 19, 2002, Final
Edition, p.A14
No one ever said that fighting a war was going to be a
picnic
by Rondi Adamson
TORONTO - That we should honour our soldiers and veterans,
dead or alive, goes without saying. I am proud of the sacrifice my
uncle made in the Second World War, being part of the D-Day invasion
and, ultimately, giving his life at Falaise Gap in August 1944. I do
my best to make sure he isn't forgotten. I am proud of my other
uncles, who served as medics with our forces in Europe, also in the
Second World War.
But the reaction to the deaths of four Canadian soldiers as the
result of a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan almost a month ago
was unprecedented. Even over the top. Not dignified, as soldiers
deserve.
All four funerals were covered live on the major Canadian networks,
as were the arrivals of the coffins beforehand and the memorial
service afterwards. At the latter, our Governor General spoke and my
brother asked, quite rightly, "Haven't the relatives of those poor
guys suffered enough?"
Our reaction these past weeks stands in stark contrast to our
apathy at the deaths of more than 100 Canadian soldiers in
peacekeeping operations in the last 50 years. In the Balkans alone,
more than 20 died, and some died from enemy fire. No funeral
coverage, no governor general, no flag-waving or hysterical
headlines.
I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that these
four young men died in a friendly fire incident, not in battle. We
have so overly romanticized our vision of ourselves as the great
peacekeepers of the world (surely you've all seen the Heritage
Moment about that? Excuse me while I choke back tears) that we don't
like it when we have to admit that Canadian soldiers might actually
be in a battle, or worse, be trying to kill someone.
Shortly after Sept. 11, the great military strategist Svend
Robinson said that yes, perhaps Canadians |