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::wednesday, november the fifth, two thousand and three
ADAM SOBOLAK OF OMNITECTURAL FORUM doesn't blog, but he keeps sending me e-mails like this, that beautifully capture the shades of morphing political persona that have - amazingly enough - emerged beneath the surface of this election:
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If the theme's emerged of David Miller being a Kennedy figure, don't forget the notion of John Tory as a pallid Nixon-by-comparison, if only because he may be only a few years older yet he seems separated by a whole figurative generation, culture, etc. (Though Tory, if not his campaign team,
certainly hasn't the vindictive-guy-with-a-dark-soul part - that, as we all
know, is Jakobek. Who, paradoxically, comes across as significantly younger - chronolologically speaking, that is - than Miller. And in the worst, sheltered-political-geek-from-birth way...)
Frankly, I'm feeling a little sad for Barbara "Vanilla Fudge" Hall, because this whole sodden catastrophe of a campaign is being spun by some sources into a dismissal of her own political history as "undistinguished" - look, facts is facts, and wasn't her 94-97 mayoralty once seen as a gem of a progressive tenure? She may be the wrong person now, but she certainly wasn't then. Get some perspective, folks...
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- Rick McGinnis - 01:52pm - link
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EXCEPT FOR DAVID JANES' COMMENTS SECTION, which has gone all "he said/she said" over immigration (Nazis are being mentioned - big, scary Nazis), things are pretty quiet just at the moment. So here's another one of Brett Lamb's brilliant cartoons, from a time that seems so very, very long ago now:
- Rick McGinnis - 01:43pm - link
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ON THE FRINGE, PART THREE:
ALBERT HOWELL: Why does this year's professional comedian candidate have to be one with such an established reputation for not being funny? Sign of the times, I suppose,
although this half of the improv duo The Devil's Advocates was on Speaker's Corner - same place the Devil's act got propelled to some degree of local half-fame - nattering on about ... well, I can't remember what exactly. There's a campaign song on his site, and a pretty sober platform that I guess would seem quaint were it presented in a delicate Trampoline Hall context, but the whole exercise seems pointless - that is, if it hasn't already been aborted.
JOHN JAHSHAN: Did John Nunziata suddenly gain 40 lbs.? No, that's Jahshan. And don't dare call Nunziata at home in the middle of the night during the campaign, he might be in the
middle of a dream where someone is offering him six figures. Based on the website, Jahshan looks like he wants to be nastier than he is - it's quite a stretch to be repudiating all five frontrunners on the main page, while trotting out the Aristotle quote about oligarchy vs. democracy. Maybe he'll get around to updating the rest of the site in time for the next election Jahshan apparently owns a nightclub called "Bliss" in North York
(which might explain him backing off the attack); among those endorsing his candidacy is
"Mr. Pita".
PAUL LEWIN: This criminal lawyer is the "Province of Toronto" guy, who ran for the Marijuana Party in the 2000 federal election. Well, can the Marijuana Party's platform be considered to have been unheeded in the years since? Huh? Lewin boasts about how his own multi-ethnic heritage means that "compromise and tolerance come naturally" although one might beg to differ - isn't it just as natural to loathe certain aspects of one's own family background? Regardless, here's an arguably level-headed summary of the Province of Toronto schtick, from the op-ed pages of The Toronto Star.
- Marc Weisblott - 03:26am - link
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THE KATHY SHAIDLE/JOEY DE VILLA GRUDGE MATCH apparently went all nuclear in the comments section of David Janes' blog. Here's an excerpt:
Kathy:
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People acuse conservatives of being individualists, but really my concern is for the nation as a whole. To take the Cecilia case as one example, non-assimilation may lead to this girls death. In the name of some uncriticizable cultural taboo.
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Joey:
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Crticizing cultural tendencies is a tricky business, but I'm not enough of a relativist to say it can't or shouldn't be done. There absolutely are absolutes. I have problems with generalization about ethnic groups as applied to immigration policies. They're often wrong, favour the people whom you look like, and fail to account for differences between cultural sub-groupings. You run straight into the classic "the-map-is-not-the-territory"-type problems.
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I don't know about you, but I love this sort of thing. Ideas are like virginity; worth defending until a better option comes along.
- Rick McGinnis - 03:06am - link
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BRETT LAMB ANALYZES LAST NIGHT'S TORONTO ONE DEBATE, candidate by candidate. No wavering on his support for Miller, though he had remarkably positive things to say about Tom Jakobek. Tory, not surprisingly, gets a bit of a pasting:
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At one point Ben Chin asked all of the candidates to name their favourite intersection of the city and Tory mentioned Bayview and York Mills (well-known for its strip mall sitting kitty-corner across from an unhappy, unused park). Our city has a very vibrant, busy street life and Tory picked the blandest, dead stretch of suburbia you could imagine. That confirmed for me something I already felt: Tory is comfortable in the back rooms and in the places of power but he doesn't know the city from the sidewalk. And Toronto is all about the streetcars and the sidewalks.
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- Rick McGinnis - 02:58am - link
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FREELANCE WRITER RYAN BIGGE JOINS THE FRAY with this post on current front-runner David Miller, and the Trampoline Hall love-in that everyone but me managed to attend, sneak into, or get turned away from:
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Miller won the crowd over during his lecture on Beauty and The Aesthetic City, mostly by admitting he had no idea what the topic meant. Like many people my age, I have deep skepticism toward politics, but Miller seems like a decent, intelligent guy. The fact that he actually knew something about Parkdale - citing the success of 1313 Queen West - was impressive.
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- Rick McGinnis - 02:54am - link
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SOMEHOW I KNEW KATHY WOULD TAKE THE BAIT on this one:
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Does Adina mean he (David Miller) was a hypocritical sexually-addicted plagiarist who popped pep pills, wiretapped Martin Luther King, bought an election, brought his movie-star mistress on his honeymoon, lobotomized his daughter, lied about having an incurable disease and let a woman drown in his car?
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- Rick McGinnis - 02:49am - link
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YESTERDAY
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