2023-08-21

To paraphrase a famously tedious philosophical question (I leave it to you, dear reader, to determine whether any of that is redundant): if a federal cabinet minister puts their foot in their mouth, figuratively speaking, in the middle of August, does it still matter, even if there’s no one around to notice?

Here’s a real example from Canadian Press last week:

OTTAWA - Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Canada has been considering a “game plan” for how it would respond if the United States takes a far-right, authoritarian shift after next year's presidential elections. “We are certainly working on scenarios,” Joly said in French during an interview with a Montreal radio station Wednesday.

I can think of six issues at first pass:

1. Since the United States of America made the downpayment on the defence of modern democracy in the middle of the last century (which, for the record, still checks my “what have you done for us, lately?” box), we ought to at least grant them the benefit of the doubt until they concretely demonstrate otherwise.

2. Canada’s official diplomatic position on American politics should remain Churchillian at all times—that is, we may not like the route or the means but they do always get there in the end.

3. Not that it’s any of our business, mind. Canada has made absolutely no effort to establish the sort of diplomatic relationship with America that could support this kind of glib public comment. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself how we’d react if the Secretary of State alluded to some sort of “game plan” should the NDP happen to form government and make dental care too affordable.

4. Here’s the big one: Any fundamental change in American constitutional practice, order, and values would, like an earthquake, shake the world and would, like an earthquake, reduce even the most sophisticated “game plan” to a single option: bracing for impact.

5. Canada gets a free ride on continental defence and won’t even commit to meeting the minimum NATO defence spending requirement—so, we could easily imagine a brave member of the press gallery putting this down by asking Minister Joly here, with all due respect, you and what army?

6. This is almost parody—specifically, for example, of an early episode of the West Wing where the deputy chief of staff, filling in for the press secretary, blunders into suggesting there’s a “secret plan to fight inflation” by being a little too glib and loose at the mic.

One’s relationship to their government often mimics the mutual fear parents and children reserve for one another: sometimes they embarrass you. Fortunately, it’s the middle of August and no one noticed.

2023-08-14

I am grateful to a friend for recommending Timothy Snyder’s recent Yale lecture series, “The Making of Modern Ukraine” (2022), because it embodies precisely the type of boundless curiosity and command of context that led me to study history. Here’s a fabulous example from the preamble to the second class:

…when we’re thinking about this social form of the nation, what makes it particularly tricky is that the nation, once it exists, lays claim to the past. So the nation didn’t always exist but once it comes into existence, it tells a story about the past and the story that the nation tells about the past is wrong. That’s the short version. It tells a story which clears out the past and that story calls itself history. Although it’s not really history, it calls itself history.

We forget, for all of our recent tribalism, that the record not only includes what happened but also attempts to tamper or meddle with the record. We also forget, as a culture now obsessed with keeping score, the value of being able to navigate such context. It is so conspicuously absent from our present discourse that it often feels to me as though we’re on the cusp of inventing it.

Comedian Pete Holmes’s You Made It Weird podcast is consistently one of the more thoughtful ways you can spend a few hours. Last week, he sat down with one of my favourite television creators, Bill Lawrence.

2023-08-07

Here’s an extraordinary passage from Steven Wright’s recent novel Harold (2023):

From his conversations with his grandfather and comments he made he learned that being in love with someone was a very tricky thing and was like gambling with the idea of yourself. It was a package deal of positive and negative emotions—a pendulum festival—like being served a birthday cake that might have poison in it.

Yes, that Steven Wright. I can’t recall if Conan O’Brien made a comparison to Vonnegut, during their recent podcast chat (which is where I heard about the book), but I’m sure he would have observed as much eventually because there is a remarkable (unforced) likeness.

No one likes a critic, the Economist noted last week, but they do provide a service to readers and we should all “mourn the death of the hatchet job.” I think we’re plenty cruel to one another all the same but it’s curious to see an argument like this that does not mention participation trophies and a general preference for comfort over curiosity (which has, in part, fuelled the decline in readers). As for criticism, let’s honour Martin Amis’s call to arms about cliché and dispraise in direct proportion to laziness.

2023-07-31

Here is the week that was, care of the Economist, in a single sentence: “Twitter is now officially called X, though everyone still calls it Twitter.”

It was never the worst social network—that honour is held by LinkedIn, for its fad-ridden credentialism and performative revenge fantasies (seriously, if you only did that thing to show up your grade school teacher she wins because you’re still talking about her)—but it did occupy far more space than it ever deserved. The site’s new management have gone ahead and solved that problem for us.

Speaking of the Economist, it’s heartening to see someone take Ottawa to task for their indifference to NATO’s benchmark defence spending requirement. Any country that prides itself on internationalism, like Canada, would do well to make sure it’s not a would-be burden on its allies, in any event from disaster relief to military deterrence, to say nothing of being able to help those in need.

Here’s a remarkable sentence from Fredrik Erixon’s latest column in the Spectator: “Nationalism is not a conservative creed: just as George Orwell observed, it’s inseparable from the hunger for state power.”

2023-07-24

Opinion polling is out of hand. Ask the wrong question and you get the wrong answer. Worse, ask an irrelevant question and you draw focus from the core issue and set the wrong expectations.

Last week, MSNBC cited a negative poll about the Supreme Court—the top of a federal branch of government, firmly ensconced in the separation of powers, and appointed for life. It’s fine to take an opinion on their opinions but any desired change will require going to the source of the problem. You know, I’m starting to think we just like complaining.

I think Stephen King is right, that all writing is essentially telepathy, and I’m consistently amazed at how Jill Lepore always makes her first paragraph feel like you’re already in deep conversation—her latest in the New Yorker is no exception.

Finishing The Power Broker (1974) by Robert Caro is like concluding jury duty. After all, it’s effectively a legal case prosecuted by a journalist using a historian’s toolkit. There’s just nothing like it. If you do jump in, make sure it’s with both feet—and, remember, the only way out is through.

Oppenheimer (2023) confirmed what I felt about Hamilton (2020)—namely, that any subject, however complex, can be relayed to a mass audience, if done deliberately.

2023-07-17

“There is a real chance of [the Liberal Party of Canada] forming a government next time,” writes Andrew Coyne in a recent Globe and Mail column, “even if they don’t win the most seats: finishing behind the Conservatives, that is, not only in the popular vote, but also in seats won.”

Coyne sees this as a potential legitimacy crisis. I share the concern—the next election could play out entirely as he foresees here—but I can’t help but see any discussion about legitimacy that does not also make an effort to reset expectations more generally as a missed opportunity.

Here’s two points about legitimacy that I’d like to see the media do a better job of qualifying for Canadians before the next election:

First, there is no popular vote in Canada. We do not practice direct democracy. Just because we can aggregate the total number of votes per party across the country does not mean that number played a role in determining the overall outcome, nor does that number affirm any sort of national mood and therefore mandate.

Second, legitimacy is maintained by whomever holds the confidence of the House—and, yes, that can include a party who wins fewer seats than another. That may not feel legitimate but it is until the House says otherwise. If a party calls legitimacy itself into question (and perhaps also provokes the Governor-General into intervening) that party can be held to account by voters during the next election.

The concept of legitimacy exists to forestall crises. If we remind ourselves that both rules and recourse exist for a reason, we can reset the bar on what actually qualifies as a crisis and therefore deserves our attention outside of an election.

2023-07-10

I finished Netflix’s relatively new political drama, The Diplomat (2023-), last week. The cast and writing are both excellent but I can get my take it or leave it recommendation down to five simple words: Michael McKean plays the president.

More than a few people mentioned the show to me but none mentioned that. Worse, some suggested it’s like The West Wing (it isn’t) without bothering to point out the glaringly obvious connection (and no, it’s not context). It made me wonder whether, given the overwhelming volume of content available in any medium, the basis of or our recommendations to one another now proceed less from critical taste (or even novelty) and more from a more general need to relate.

That is, you see the thing to see the thing, not to learn, grow, or be challenged. If that’s the case, we’ve become nothing more than extensions of the algorithm.

I think recommendations should aim for two things. First, they should only ever be offered in a take it or leave it way (otherwise, your over-investment makes the other person feel like you’ve assigned homework). Second, they should be concise but relevant. Don’t tell me it’s good, tell me why it’s good. Don’t tell me what it’s like, tell me what it does differently. And, if there’s an inspired choice, in the casting for example, maybe lead with that.

If you read one thing this week, make it Kai Bird’s piece on J. Robert Oppenheimer in the New Yorker. Here’s why:

In 1954, America’s most celebrated scientist was falsely accused and publicly humiliated, sending a warning to all scientists not to engage in the political arena as public intellectuals. This was the real tragedy of the Oppenheimer case. What happened to him damaged our ability as a society to debate honestly about scientific theory—the very foundation of our modern world.

2023-07-03

Canada shares a birthday with its greatest achievement: Elections Canada.

In our constant catastrophizing about the death of democracy, and in our flippant dismissal of our electoral system—either because we haven’t made an effort to understand how it works or because we resent it for not helping our team (and only our team) win—we ignore what our civic institutions get right.

Here’s the institution in its own words:

While countries like Australia had a Chief Electoral Officer before 1920, Canada was the first to make the position independent from government. This makes Elections Canada one of the world's first independent election agencies.

We have the most effective electoral process in the world—which must be where we find all that time to argue about such trivial matters and the comfort to breed the arrogance that encourages some of us to claim the system is broken.

In the Guardian, Steven Poole reminds us that it’s been a decade since the death of author Iain Banks, and offers newcomers a few suggestions about where to start. Let’s have more of this—though, keep in mind, in a broader sense, that the right place to start with Banks or anyone else remains: anywhere.

You know Banks’s science fiction even if you haven’t read him. People who turn their nose up at the genre puzzle me: after all, who did they think was writing the future?

2023-06-26

“In a slow, unfocused sort of way,” writes Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic, “Russia is sliding into what can only be described as a civil war.” Revolutions are indifferent to augury. They never occur when, or how, the self-proclaimed experts predict. Still, for all the punditry over the weekend, and all that to come in the weeks ahead, I think Applebaum’s comment here sets the right tone.

I disagree with the Economist’s Lexington correspondent (or, at least, the editor): our cultural fixation on the multiverse is not an “escape” but a sign of progress. The youngest among us are not obsessed with talking about mental health because they are any more broken than their forebears—though, the damage from helicopter-parenting is unique and will haunt them forever—but because they are the first group of people in our modern civilization to have both the self-awareness and the time to look back over their shoulder, take stock of how we got here, and ask what it means.

Judd Apatow talks to Mel Brooks in the latest issue of the Atlantic.

Don’t blame me for the mayoral byelection result, Toronto—I voted for three racoons in a tench coat.

2023-06-19

Adults are not supposed to take things from children—even though it’s childish things that litter the path to adulthood. I had a remarkable English teacher in high school who once began class by lining up a collection of Disney stories, for summary execution, before dispatching each in front of us for their no longer so secret flaws.

I’ve had both a more critical eye and an aversion to the phrase “I hate to burst your bubble” ever since. This passage, from Elif Batuman’s novel, The Idiot (2017), would have fit right in that day:

The meanest girls, the ones who started secret clubs to ostracize the poorly dressed, delighted to see Cinderella triumph over her stepsisters. They rejoiced when the prince kissed her. Evidently, they not only saw themselves as noble and good, but also wanted to love and be loved. Maybe not by anyone and everyone, the way I wanted to be loved. But, for the right person, they were prepared to form a relation based on mutual kindness. This meant that the Disney portrayal of bullies wasn’t accurate, because the Disney bullies realized they were evil, prided themselves on it, and loved nobody.

I thought the novel itself had something in common with Sally Rooney’s Normal People (2018)—specifically, a quality of young person unable to articulate basic feelings externally. It makes me wonder whether we’ll end up writing-off a whole generation, like a batch of cookies left idle in the oven too long.

Parul Seghal’s lovely review of Lorrie Moore’s latest novel in the New Yorker reminded me that I’ve been neglecting her Collected Stories (2020). I was not prepared for how good or funny the first story, “Agnes of Iowa” (1995), would be.

Speaking of book reviews, here’s a fun sentence from Colin Burrow’s review of Lorraine Daston’s Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (2022) in the London Review of Books:

But a general rule about rules is that one rule breeds another rule developed to catch an exception to the first rule, and so (potentially) ad infinitum, until there are so many darn rules that nobody can be bothered to grasp or obey most of them.

There’s no better send-off for Robert Gottleib than his daughter’s documentary, Turn Every Page (2022), but do read David Remnick’s piece in the New Yorker.

2023-06-12

There is a new lightning bolt icon, on the word processing toolbar, wobbling at me, as I type this—my content management system is desperate to remind me, once every three seconds no less, that artificial intelligence has been conveniently integrated to provide suggestions.

Say hello to our next decade, friends: less the obvious doomsaying foretold and more a perpetual omni-marketed nuisancing. Death by help, in other words.

We have to find a way to talk about inflation that does not make either employment or growth sound like a pox upon the land—especially, one worse than the actual pox upon the land that led us here. The Canadian economy grew more than expected in Q1 and so the Bank of Canada responded by raising rates. What if we spent less time hoping for different data and more time developing better science—or, at least, competent scientists to mind it? Do you think AI could help with that? Just kidding, Hal. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

Daily Show alum and national treasure Samantha Bee has a new podcast, called Choice Words. If you have not read her collection of essays, I Know I Am, But What Are You? (2010), but consider yourself a comedy fan, the joke is on you.

2023-06-05

My second visit to British Columbia affirmed the conclusion of my first: it’s where Canada goes to recuse itself, from the rest of Canada, while Canada bickers about itself. It’s not just at the edge of the map, the landscape really does invite one to narrow their issues.

I read the first obituaries for Martin Amis just before departing. Having since read nearly all of them, I can say that the Spectator’s Sam Leith got it right from his first paragraph:

Over the next few days, people will be reaching for certain set phrases about Martin Amis. That he was ‘era-defining’ (though he defined more than one era); that he was ‘genre-defying’ (he defied more than one genre); that he was an ‘enfant terrible’ (it will be wryly noted that he remained an enfant terrible, somehow, into his eighth decade). It’s poignant, I think, that a writer who vigilantly waged the career-long battle he called ‘the war against cliché’ will go to his grave heaped with the garlands of the old enemy. 

Here’s Amis in his own words from forward to War Against Cliché (2001):

To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart. When I dispraise, I am usually quoting clichés. When I praise, I am usually quoting the opposed qualities of freshness, energy, and reverberation of voice.

2023-05-15

You don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to think about it—hell, he probably didn’t want to think about it, either—but, Niall Ferguson, in his recent Spectator feature, is absolutely right about the 2024 US presidential election having just as much potential to repeat 2016 as 2020.

What I most enjoyed about Charlie Foran’s memoir, Just Once, No More (2023), besides the creative vulnerability, was a more thoughtful take on the form itself. Living in the age of the self encourages us to offer up every page of our resume for credentialist approval and completionist triumph—which, of course, makes it easier for us to hide ourselves.

I confess that, having recently enjoyed the Robert Caro documentary, Turn Every Page (2022), I am now wading through The Power Broker (1974), his famous biography of Robert Moses. I can’t wait to discuss it with the three other three people who have finished it.

Here’s an anecdote about Alfred E. Smith, former governor of New York, that ought to make us rethink the current trend of zero-sum idealism in our present politics:

He had no patience for reformers who…didn’t understand the importance of practical politics in getting things done, who refused to compromise, who insisted on having the bill as it was written, who raged loudly at injustice, who fought single-mindedly for an unattainable ideal. Their pigheadedness had the effect of dragging to political destruction politicians who listened to them, of ruining careers men had taken years to build. He had seen it happen. And, more important, what was the inevitable result of their efforts? Since they refused to compromise and operate within the political framework—the only framework within which their proposals could become reality—the laws they proposed were never enacted, and therefore at the end of their efforts the people they had wanted to help, the people who he knew so well needed help, hadn’t been helped at all. If anything, they had been hurt; the stirring up of hard feelings and bitterness delayed less dramatic but still useful reforms that might have been enacted.

Also: for all the talk about the bias and subjectivity of the author, it would be nice to hear a little more talk about the empathy and command of subject of the author, as well.

2023-05-08

Here is the first sentence from the lead story in the Britain section of the current edition of the Economist: “On May 6th, in London, a man will be given a hat.”

This concludes the competition for commentary. We thank everyone for their interest.

Actually, I found Robert Tombs’s Spectator article, a concise effort to contextualize the event using a very old spoon, most insightful:

The coronation ceremony, with all its mysteries and oddities, dates back before the Norman Conquest, and it is something that we can all – however diverse our backgrounds – choose to accept and celebrate as above and beyond our present discontents.

It may be that the monarchy has overstayed its welcome, but so has the mindset that values polling the public for their opinion of it. History is an account of the steps we take from past to present. It does not require personal endorsement or rejection, through the rearview mirror of generational self-awareness now available to us, of all manner of pretension, inefficiency, and injustice.

It just is. The question is: where do we want to go from here? Answering that is difficult enough on its own, never mind if we neglect the path that led us here.

While I admire all changes of heart, however late, the declaration last week, from the so-called grandfather of artificial intelligence, that his life’s work is now our foremost clear and present danger, felt a little like yelling fire in a crowded room—from the guy who started the fire. Methinks the good Dr. Frankenstein doth protest too much.

Speaking of lapses in character, if you’re not a fan of comedian Roy Wood Jr., let his recent chat with Kara Swisher, on her eponymous podcast, redeem you from further embarrassment.

2023-05-01

The Toronto Star reported last week that 40 percent of municipal voters prefer the now-former mayor in the now-forthcoming byelection to replace him on 26 June.

Lest that sound significant, note that said former mayor is not a candidate and that voter turnout in the last election was 29 percent. Living here is pleasant, provided you’re willing to endure vague layers of abstraction that no one wants to talk about.

The most remarkable thing I read all week was Katy Balls’s Spectator feature about the quiet but comprehensive reorganization of the UK Labour Party (“The Starmtroopers: how Labour’s centrists took back control”)—not least of which because it feels outright impossible, for all the entrenchment, in any other context.

Richard Russo’s exceptional novel, Straight Man (1997), is a gentle sendup of academia through “the lens” (to pile on) of a bitterly divided English Literature department (that’s redundant—to pile on, again). It’s also the source material for the new AMC+ television series, Lucky Hank. I re-read the book last week ahead of diving into the series, which concludes this week.

I am generally agnostic about adaptations. First, they are as likely to disappoint as they are to further appreciation of the source material. Second, they cannot, despite what nostalgic literalists will tell you, actually threaten the source material. With any luck, interest in one raises interest in another.

Straight Man is not a polemic, the following is a throwaway observation, but I thought, since it’s aged extremely well, it offers an ideal “I’ll just leave this here” opportunity (and to also pile one last time):

Students…have learned from their professors that persuasion—reasoned argument—no longer holds a favored position in university life. If their professors—feminists, Marxists, historicists, other assorted theorists—belong to suspicious, gated intellectual communities that are less interested in talking to each other than staking out territory and furthering agendas, then why learn to debate? Despite having endured endless faculty meetings, I can’t remember the last time anyone changed his (or her!) mind as a result of reasoned discourse. Anyone who observed us would conclude the purpose of all academic discussion was to provide grounds for becoming further entrenched in our original positions.

2023-04-24

Rumour has it that President Biden will announce his intention to seek a second term this week. Before the media inaugurate an exhausting 18 months of Groundhog Day, beginning no doubt with a punditry pageant about his age, keep two things in mind: the right candidate is the one who can win (this is true of all elections) and, even if he does win, he needn’t serve more than a minute of that second term to have still won.

Last week offers three exceptional quotes to share. The first is from Adam Gopnik’s review of Jonathan Healey’s The Blazing World (2023), a history of the English Revolution, in the New Yorker (“What Happens When You Kill Your King”):

History is written by the victors, we’re told. In truth, history is written by the romantics, as stories are won by storytellers. Anyone who can spin lore and chivalry, higher calling and mystic purpose, from the ugliness of warfare can claim the tale, even in defeat.

The second comes from Jaron Lanier’s point of order about artificial intelligence from the online edition of the New Yorker (“There Is No A.I.”):

The most pragmatic position is to think of A.I. as a tool, not a creature. My attitude doesn’t eliminate the possibility of peril: however we think about it, we can still design and operate our new tech badly, in ways that can hurt us or even lead to our extinction. Mythologizing the technology only makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well—and this kind of thinking limits our imaginations, tying them to yesterday’s dreams. We can work better under the assumption that there is no such thing as A.I. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we’ll start managing our new technology intelligently.

The third is a bad data blooper observed by the Economist’s Bagehot columnist in celebration of St. George’s Day (“If English nationalism is on the rise, no one has told the English”):

Chroniclers of English nationalism leapt on the 2011 census, which showed that a whopping 58% of residents in England identified as English only. Skip forward a decade and this number plunged to 15%. What caused this shift? A botched survey. In 2011 “English” was the first option and “British” was the fifth; in 2021 “Britain” came top of the list. If the patriotism of Englishmen does not extend to the lower box of a census form, it may not run deep.

Finally, a podcast recommendation: Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Wiser Than Me improves on the now well-established form. I am not a member of the intended demographic but here’s to learning beyond the safe confines of that which is produced exclusively for your own personal context and comfort.

2023-04-17

Here’s a post-pandemic milestone that seems to have flown under the radar: have you noticed the confluence of high-profile television currently airing? At least for a few weeks, like a rare alignment of the planets, we have: Mandalorian, Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, Picard, Succession, and Ted Lasso—and those are just the ones that I’m following.

Kevin Systrom’s news app Artifact can’t make up for the dubious demise of Google Reader (what could?) but it’s elegant and has potential. I’ve been using it for about a month and have noticed my reading habits are entirely different from similar apps.

Specifically, I’m seeing a lot more science content—which would be great but for the fact that it has fallen victim to the same catastrophizing trend as every other section of the not-quite newspaper. Every new discovery is a threat to current assumptions, theories, or models. When did science become as insecure as religion? Remember when being wrong was just another set of data and an opportunity to try a different variable? Anyway, a new app is nice but it can’t fix the underlying rot.

While we’re on the subject of catastrophizing, the Economist had a great feature last week underscoring the inherent strength of the US economy (“America’s economic outperformance is a marvel to behold”). That’s good news for everyone—well, unless you and your chatbot are trying to make compelling clickbait.

Have you ever discovered a chat between two people you wouldn’t immediately associate but, on further reflection, concede was inevitable and exactly the sort of thing you wanted but didn’t know you could have? May I submit the latest example: Lex Fridman’s recent chat with Simone Giertz.

2023-04-10

Amazon announced last week that it will be closing its UK-based subsidiary Book Depository at the end of the month. The online book retailer launched in 2004 and was acquired by the ravenous “everything store” in 2011. I am not certain where I first heard about them but I am certain that I have sourced a third of my library from their exceptional inventory over the majority of their 19 years in business.

Their absence will be a loss to readers everywhere. I’d like to express my gratitude to their entire team for countless happy returns from the mailbox. When a recent order arrived soaked, for example, they not only replaced it but sent me a signed copy.

Let’s all take heart from the fact that scattering is the inevitable universal consequence of all forms of aggregation.

We would have a much healthier relationship with art if all critics were as thoughtful as Jerry Saltz. I just finished his book, How to Be an Artist (2020), and it’s precisely the sort of thing that one hopes guidance councillors keep handy for curious students who wander into their offices looking for something deeper than STEM courses—or just something to nudge that creative spark or make them feel less alone in the universe.

Saltz reminds us that paying deference to pretension is not a price of admission to make art or even just enjoy it. You’re free to start anytime and you can always try again, learn more, look at something differently.

My favourite rule is 24: There Are No Wasted Days—“Your artist’s mind is always working, even when you think it’s idling.” Indeed, it is. I practice something in the spirit of this that I call “everything is research”—where even objectively bad art, or things that are not my preference, or that fail to entertain me, have something to offer.

That is, you can learn something from everything—even things you don’t like or find comfortable. We seem to have lost this plot in our quest to transform the entire culture into a faithful recreation of our childhoods.

2023-04-03

A Manhattan grand jury made history last week by indicting a former president. That’s never happened before. While we’re handing out indictments, I’d like to charge the progressive group, who used the news as an opportunity to register their disappointment, with being out of touch.

This president, they argue, should be made to answer for far more serious offences. Take what you can get—and then keep at it. That used to be the soul of progressive politics. Why does it feel like the goal today isn’t so much one foot in front of the other toward a righteous cause as perfection immediately rendered?

Lizzie Gottlieb’s documentary, Turn Every Page (2022), which chronicles the extraordinary half-century publishing relationship between her father, editor Robert Gottlieb and writer Robert Caro, made its streaming (retail) debut last week. You can turn every one of their pages together and still miss the full significance of their achievement in the way the documentary joyfully conveys. Father and daughter each offer an ending—no spoiler, but hers is better.

Government House Leader Mark Holland (MP for Ajax, Ontario) was a recent guest of the Paul Wells Show podcast. Their remarkably candid conversation is unlike anything I can recall. In fact, I would be curious to hear what Americans think of it—it’s just about the furthest thing from their own political tone. More of this, please.

I am not sure who the joke is on in the latest episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart, which breaks format with a field trip to the respective UN and EU headquarters, but I was surprised to learn that Europe have significantly understated their potential for clarity on important matters. This is a good thing.

2023-03-27

I am fairly certain that I once heard Cory Doctorow remark that it’s the act of reading a book that makes it real. He’s right, of course—though, there is a magic moment before a book gets to readers, where the author has a chance to hold their own work for the first time.

An unexpected knock on my door early last week put the latest edition of our civics textbook, Canadian Political Structure and Public Administration, in my very own hands. The review of the final draft before they send it to the printer punctuates the completion of the journey but it’s just not real until you can hold it for yourself.

In this (sixth) edition, we took great care to anchor core concepts and themes in practical engagement. After all, how do we expect to produce more engaged citizens if their earliest contact with our political institutions is influenced by our cynical discourse? We’re really proud of this one. Endless gratitude to everyone at Emond for their hard work and support.

I read in the Economist last week that Australia is to hold a “national referendum about recognizing Aboriginal people in the country’s constitution” which brought two things to mind. First, I do not believe the spirit of gift-giving applies to one’s constitutional fabric: it’s not the thought that counts.

Second, did we learn nothing about referenda from Brexit? Don’t take vague existential questions to the people. If you absolutely must appeal directly to the people, keep it limited to issues like how you should invest a surprise windfall from your sovereign wealth fund. There are some things beyond the wisdom of the crowd.

Despite the embarrassing glut of expensive and entertaining television airing currently, I made time for Casimir Nozkowski’s charming movie, The Outside Story (2020). A man locks himself out of his house and life ensues. The tone is elegant and the cast are each exceptional. More of this, please.