Just what do I do, Anyway?

I find it funny and telling when people sneer about "the media". Especially when they sneer about it to me, a member of it.

Most people would never mention to their dentist any belief about a possible connection between their child's expensive braces and the doctor's new car, but no one spares much concern or contempt for my profession. Which is cool, since, as a journalist, I prefer openness and honesty.

As newspapers shut down their presses and the future of TV news continues to be debated by the CRTC, a curtain was pulled back recently on journalism as a whole in this country, courtesy of one Ezra Levant, who has previously testified under oath in court that he's not a reporter, but who insists he is one when it comes to his attendance at news events at the Alberta legislature.

The Rachel Notley government admits it made a mistake banning Levant from its newswers. They weren't wrong, entirely, but it was a mistake to give Levant any fodder for his ongoing smearing of anyone with whom he disagrees, or with whom he is paid to disagree.

The imbroglio has raised the question of just what constitutes journalism in a free and pluralistic society like ours, and there have been various and sundry answers, the most oft-quoted one being, "if you say you're a journalist, you are are one". That's as good an answer as any, since there are no rules governing journalism, only traditions, which are in the midst of massive change.

I am profoundly uncomfortable lumping myself in with the likes of Levant as a journalist.
And yet we are both journalists, and here's the secret about why: there is no such thing.

My electrician husband had to do an apprenticeship over the course of several years, and then take a licensing exam before he was genuinely an electrician. Before becoming teachers, my teacher friends had to take a year of college, for which they were eligible only after achieving high enough marks in an undergraduate degree. The plumber who unclogs the poop in your pipes has years of training, a certification exam and a college that can take away his licence if he does a bad job and collects enough complaints.

But we journalists, we who put information and ideas into your head, we need no credentials to do so: no high school diploma, no degree, no licence; there is no governing body, and there isn't even a requirement to display good grammar or syntax, not officially. Unofficially, a degree helps, and so does good syntax and grammar, along with the art of cold calling and being a fearless questioner. But there are no legal or otherwise 'real' requirements, and certainly not if the outlet of your reportage is your very own website, blog or podcast.

Here's another secret: generally, news conferences are open to the public, because we journalists, well, we ARE the public. Nothing more or less, not really.

Journalists act as surrogates for you, Mister and Missus John Q Public, asking the questions you might ask if you had the time or inclination to ask them. We provide information you don't have time to collect for yourself, and in my case, packaging it for you top and bottom of the hour as you get ready for your day.

We find out stuff, some of the very serious ones among us ferreting out information about corruption and graft, others us trying to provide for you some information that will have an impact on you or that might interest you, whether that impact is on your wallet, your heart or your mind, or even if the interest is in your neighbour's kids.

We go to town and township council meetings and tell you what happened, but we also meet with the proprietors of new businesses and talk with the organisers of events and activities. I arrive at work each day aiming to tell you what you need to know as the day goes by, and I try to entertain you a little bit at the same time.

Levant doesn't seem to be interested in edification. He seems to follow the likes of radio shock jocks in the US like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter, in whose commentary high volume and repetition generally take the place of demonstrable facts. Levant used to have one of those ranting shows on Sun TV until the channel shut down for lack of viewers. Now, he has a website, which may or may not have fewer viewers. He was and remains apoplectic at the election of an NDP government in Alberta, and has been railing about what he thinks is the Notley government's incompetence since before it was sworn in. His opinion of Justin Trudeau is even lower. He called Trudeau's father a "slut" on live television. The Sun network apologised, but Levant himself has not.

Levant's list of offensive remarks and half-truths is very, very long. And yet he calls himself a journalist, and this week, many other people who also call themselves journalists, backed him up.

Their reasoning was thus: if we start saying who is and who is not a journalist, and start getting rid of the rules surrounding the openness of our democratic institutions, then we're in the kind of trouble imagined in A Man For All Seasons, where Sir Thomas More argues about providing the devil with the same justice as the rest of us. We need to protect the devil just as much as ourselves, for the safety of all.

I'm tempted to agree, but part of me doesn't. Journalist poseurs trading in half-facts and sorta-truths should be called out.

The question is, who's going to do that job while the 'journalists' are busy trying to uncover the truth about everything else on your behalf? In an open and pluralistic society, citizens have responsibilities, too, and one of them is a little bit of critical thinking. Which, considering SunTV has shut down for lack of viewers and Levant is reduced to ranting on website, seems to be working out just fine here in Canada for now.

Careful What You Wish For

I've been a feminist since I was about 14 and picked up at my high school library Susan Brownmiller's amazing book, Femininity. I was a snaggletoothed, awkward and (I felt at the time), homely child, and had actually been looking for a guidebook to becoming more feminine. Instead, I picked up a polemic on the patriarchy and I was almost immediately a convert to the cause of gender equality. Oh, Irony, thy name is public education.

Later, I took a degree in Women's Studies, with a minor in Canadian history before attending journalism school.

My feminism is of the same variety as my father's, and he acknowledged out loud in the 1990s that he was a feminist when I told him the definition of the sometimes controversial word: a belief that men and women should have the same rights, privileges and responsibilities.

My dad came to his conclusions about fairness while watching his parents navigate their life in the 1940s, 50s and 60s: his mother and sisters toiled in the farm fields alongside my Grandpa, and then back in the house, Grandpa and the boys sat while Grandma and the girls made the meals and tended the house. My dad observed this and thought it wasn't fair that the women had double duty. My mom, with a similar upbringing, tells me they together decided that each of them should only have the one job, and thus was born what looked like a very traditional marriage, but one that was more modern that it might have appeared from the outside.

I give this background as my bona fides as I illustrate my confusion and upset at the sex assault trial of Jian Ghomeshi, as the testimony of three women was parsed on the witness stand, and many pundits suggest a serial predator with bizarre predilections is about to get off (pun intended).

Generally, rapists and beaters have used one or all of three defences in court: "bitches be crazy", "women lie", or "she's a slut". Rape shield laws were created in Canada in the '90s to shut down the last one, but the other two were on very plain display during this trial, and the women testifying gave the defence plenty of fodder.

No, a woman shouldn't have to be a virgin in long pants lept upon from the bushes, calling 911 even while she's being raped to secure a sex assault conviction. Furthermore, four people telling strikingly (pun intended) similar accounts of events involving an accused should add weight to the testimony of each. (although reading accounts of the testimony, the fraction three-fifths kept drifting into my mind...)

And yet.
I go back to the definition of feminism: equal rights, privileges, and responsibilities.

We women can't expect special treatment while also demanding equality. We can't say we're delicate flowers entitled to withhold information in court at the same time we demand pay equity. Some of the commentary on the trial seems to come from people who think we women shouldn't need to be honest on the witness stand, since we're different from men. That's a dangerous argument in a society where 'different' has so often been translated into 'less'.

While there are special circumstances surrounding sex crimes, we must know that demanding less of women is also accepting less for women.

All that said, what kind of creep keeps every communication from every woman he ever dated over the decades, even the ones who he only went out with once or twice? Here's who: the kind of man who knows he might need it. Ghomeshi's hoarding of information tells me he knows damn well what he does is wrong and he has been preparing this defence for decades. Which could explain the small smirk that flashed across Ghomeshi's face as he left court yesterday. He was getting off. (no pun intended)

Regardless

why, hello there,
just fyi,
even if i send you a picture of myself in a bikini
or if our email notes were mostly about comical llamas,

you don't get to hit me.

whether i'm a starfucker,
a dimwit,
young and hot or too old for you;
regardless, you don't get to hit me.

if big ears teddy agrees or wants to hide,
whether you paid for dinner and are a big star
or just some regular guy looking for love;
regardless, you don't get to hit me.

if i have hair extensions
or can't tell a beetle from a gti;
regardless, you don't get to hit me.

you just don't get to hit me.
not ever, no matter what I did beforehand or afterwards.
period.
full stop.

Hope and Regret

I live in constant hope that people will eventually do the right thing, that relationships will be healed and wrongs eventually righted. Once in a while, like a knife in the gut, I am reminded how foolish my hope is. And yet I cling to it still.

A cousin of mine died yesterday. I found out while at the funeral of one of my aunts on the other side of my family.

I hadn't seen Aunt Hazel in person in at least four years, but got updates from her daughters on her deteriorating condition. She started a long decline about ten years ago, and as her daughter eulogized yesterday, she actually left us a long, long time ago; it's just that her body only followed on Tuesday.

I hadn't seen my cousin, David in quite some time, either. Our families became somewhat estranged in the mid-80s when my uncle took exception to my mom's no-booze rule at family gatherings and they stopped coming to see us. It must have been tough for Mom to put that rule in place, knowing full well what the outcome could be, but she felt the need to protect her children. Morris died from the effects of heavy smoking and drinking about 15 years ago; the last time I saw David and his wife and children in person was at that funeral.

I think of them often, though. David was an OPP officer, and in my line of work, we talk about the cops a lot. I was quite taken with his wife the few times we met. His daughter got a big scholarship a few years ago and I wrote her a letter of congratulations, explaining how her Great Grandmother had been denied the chance at an education, had told me to make the most of mine and would have been thrilled at the achievement. The letter came back because they had moved and I didn't have the new address.

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I have always expected that at some point, sometime, there would be a time when we cousins would get together and talk through what happened in our respective childhoods, laugh and joke and become the friends I feel we were meant to be. It's happened with some of my other cousins and I treasure it: adult conversations away from a reunion or funeral when I have discovered my cousin is someone I would choose to hang with even if we weren't related.

But now, it's not going to happen. Detective Constable David Herrington and I will not have that serious talk, we will never laugh about the year he captured every single frog in the creek at my parent's farm. I will not get to tell him the Big Family Secret (maybe he already knew), and I likely won't get to know his brilliant daughter. It's a future I hoped for that I foolishly mourn today.

Puny New Year's Tears

Like you, I spend a lot of time reading facebook instead of Flaubert, but I got a powerful and embarrassing reminder of the power of storytelling over the Christmas holiday.

There I was on New Year's Day, nearly drowning in my own tears as I finished the last 30 pages of Miriam Toews' amazing novel, All My Puny Sorrows.

It's a comedy. About suicide. But really, it's about siblings and family and unshakable love and the ties that bind us together. It's brilliant, and swept me up with the power of its writing.

So powerful, I forgot I was not alone as I sniffled and snorted and tried not to sob out loud. I was at a cottage with nine other people, fire roaring, board games being played and hangovers being recovered from, and yet I was totally alone with the characters Toews created on the page, and I was bawling my face off at her portrayal of their grief.

That's the power of books: whether you read them on screen or on paper, there's a minute after you close a particularly powerful story, when you have to take a minute to adjust back to the 'real' world, knowing you're not really the same person you were when you started.

I am usually a voracious reader, but got away from it over the last year or so, caught up in other things, but my new year's resolution is to find more great stories and curl up with a good book most of this winter. However, I feel like I should maybe keep my ugly-cry face away from the public.

Faux news

You may think the comments made by Donald Trump this week about Muslims came out of left field, but they really came straight off Fox news.

Not a lot us up here see that channel regularly; maybe you've seen clips on John Stewart or a parody on 22 minutes, but it's not included in basic cable or satellite. If you get a chance to watch it the next time you're in the US, I recommend it, not for anything like news, since it certainly is not, but for the study in how the US really is a 'whole nother country' and becoming more divided by the minute.

I notice precious little news on Fox news; it's mostly commentary about the news, commentary that is small minded and vicious, uttered by white folk who appear to think things were pretty good under Jim Crow, and whose every sentence is crafted to insidiously undermine the ideas of those with whom he host disagrees. There's no straight-up 'US foreign policy' mentioned on Fox news, only 'Obama's failed foreign policy' - it's subtle, but it never stops, a never-ending drip of acidic disdain for that black (and possibly muslim) fella elected twice to the White House.

The first time I switched to the channel on vacation recently, my sweetheart suggested he was seeing a comedy special then fell into a state of shocked incredulity when he realized the trolling, angry, entitled, racist rants and gotcha not-really-interviews he was watching, were real, with massive ratings. Within a few hours of the shootings in California last week, one talking head was already positing that the attack was part of the 'war on Christmas', since it took place at a Christmas party, after all.

That guy who shot up a women's health clinic two weeks ago in Colorado? A Fox viewer, taking in a deadly, daily dose of anti-abortion rhetoric until he did exactly what could be expected of a brainwashed loser with easy access to guns.

It's not rocket science, it's hatred served up 24/7 on a flatscreen near you.

Lucky, lucky

My dear Dad used to say, with a twist of his thin lips, "If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all." On the other side of the flipped coin, I have a friend whose favourite phrase is, "The harder I work, the luckier I get!"

I've been thinking about luck a lot lately, after hearing from another friend about the big inheritance she has coming. She was lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family. The money's not coming any time soon, but someday, and she figures there's enough of it that she doesn't have to worry about paying off her line of credit or her mortgage while she takes trips all over the world.

I think about her and then I think about the thousands of people moving to Canada from refugee camps in Turkey and Lebanon over the next month - the lucky ones.

The people in the refugee camps were lucky enough to be able and know how to pay the necessary bribes to get to those camps when the bombs came raining down on their homes and their neighbours and relatives were murdered.

They were lucky enough to survive years in the camp; lucky to have a metabolism that can survive on about 500 calories a day, and now, they have won the lottery and get to come to Canada.

They are lucky to have the chance to come to a safe but cold country where they don't speak the language and the food will be very, very weird. They have lost their families, their homes, everything, likely including any inheritance, and definitely their dignity, but they're the lucky ones, the ones who survived, who got out and get a lucky chance to start again.

All from the luck of where and to whom they were born.