from 0 to 2 in only 1 day?

i know, i know. i slack off from posting and then come back with a vengeance. anyway, i know finally have the time to reflect on things, notably, the current canadian election.

essentially, i increasingly feel that this is a 'made by the media' election. in the early days of the campaign, the media focused all of their energies on the crumbling liberal team. most of the major media outlets (including macleans, the globe and ctv) sent their star reporters to the conservatives who covered stephen harper as some sort of demi-god and thereby portrayed paul martin as notable absent. then when their destruction started working and the martin camp really did fall apart (as a camp is known to do when the feel they're not making any gains), the media tried to turn it back into a two-horse race by attacking harper.

as warren kinsella noted a few weeks back, this is when we started to see lines like 'despite excellent voter feedback on his party platform, harper continues to be dogged by his conservative social views'. that being dogged, and those who 'continue to question' were actually reporters- not real, live canadians. essentially, it was an invented story.

now, however, the media realise that their act 1 destruction of martin went too far and he really is crushed. so, they circle like vultures and essentially ruin any chance of recovery. so, he makes a reasonably good performance in the debates which the media turns into, at best, 'a draw', and at worse, 'a clear victory' for harper. this, of course, is assisted by viewers who have had their views shaped by act 1. but now it's just getting silly. don martin's 'news article' in today's winnipeg free press (carried by canwest news service) is beyond reproach essentially passing off spiteful, sarcastic taunting of paul martin as news. "If this was a Monty Python movie, the prime minister was the kicking and screaming old man pleading "but I'm not dead yet" as media carried him out for hurry-up burial.", martin writes and goes on to add "There is no doubt now, these are the most critical days of the entire campaign for Martin as he fights to reverse a death spiral sucking his government down the drain. The obituaries may well be written by week's end as polling firms hired by most major media outlets head into the field for a major blitz of public opinion." this is not news, this is an angry media deciding that they can control electoral outcomes- and the sad thing is they can.

It's rare but I have to agree with Tim Murphy. "After much mocking by journalists watching Martin's pre-programmed non-answers, chief of staff Tim Murphy has had enough. "It's nice of you guys to stop your ascension into heaven long enough to cover the campaign." I think he hates us."

I can understand why.

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endings, beginnings and facing the void

i know, i know- i have been a horrible blog slacker. i can't believe my last post was about my birthday which feels like a decade ago. however, i have many good excuses for my non-updating practices: i finished my dissertation, i went to chicago, i wrote my last exam ever. all of that has been fairly stressful, fairly liberating but, now that it's finished, life feels weird somehow...

this master's degree and this two-year period of my life has forced a lot of thinking. on the one hand, it's been a painful period of coming to terms with my own capabilities. my masters proved to me that i've been given a lot very easily without necessarily working as hard for it as i should. however, i've also learned that i have a lot of scars from some of the crap i've had to deal with privately and that most people don't know or care about. however, on the other hand it's been a two-year period of self-discovery and of amazing hope for where my life is headed. i learnt that i am capable of working very hard. i've learnt that i'm capable of citing my own faults and working on them. i've learnt that some of my 'rock-solid' positions are more maleable than i imagined.

this two years has been really amazing and tough. i've truly come to understand how flawed i am but also how much hope i have for what i can become. rather than being a depressing experience (which it has been at times), i feel now like it's liberating and also promising...

this summer will be a lot of floating around and also beginning to seriously take a crack at my d. phil. the itinerary looks something like this:

june 29 - july 25th: deaning an international baccalaureate course at harvard/mit in boston. also doing a bit of lit. review.

july 25- july 30th: preparing for my parents

july 31st - aug 15th: hanging out with my parents. the plan: oxford, london, berlin, edinburgh, stirling, north scotland, oxford.

august 16 - sept. 26th: canada for research. 2 weeks in winnipeg and the rest in toronto (yet to be determined).

anyway, i'll post again soon... hope to see some of you soon and look forward to hearing what you've been up to

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