The Western Canon, The Travails Of ESL & Money Laundering In Real Estate
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
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| The Western Canon |
Sometime around
October of 2008 veteran journalist and editor, Paul Sullivan, while not coining
the expression citizen journalism, wrote and spoke of its new found virtues and
hired (at no or little pay) professionally unqualified (and thus qualified) people,
including two “ladies of the night” to write (subjectivity not objectivity was their
mantra) about city events, in particular about the women who had been
terrorized and brutally murdered by Robert Pickton. The website was called
Orato.
Sullivan was vaunting
the virtues of everyman (person) journalism.
I have never been
inclined to seek the opinion of the woman or man on the street as I grew up
listening to Walter Cronkite or laughing at the acute humour of Nicholas von
Hoffman. I prefer to listen and to watch
on MSNBC the likes of Rachel Maddow who is smart, articulate and has the
credentials to match those rare qualities in this day and age.
Perhaps my views are
to be expected, they come from someone who was born in the first half of the now terribly
defunct 20th century.
The wonders of this
century have brought citizen journalism and opinion to the on-line versions of
paper magazines and newspapers. These unadulterated comments in articles and
essays often bring the worst and most caustic side of human beings. In fact I
was finally turned off from the many pleasures of reading The Tyee, were those citizens, with time in
their hands, and with agendas to chew on, ranted with no tact or diplomacy and spoiled my experience.
The alternative (I am
reluctant to pluralize that word) to that excellent web news magazine The Tyee
with its liberal tendencies (and I am a liberal) is slowly decaying into
redundancy (a fave Brit word for what ails so many of us in this modern world).
Not too many weeks ago
I read one of the best essays I had read in years in my city newspaper, the Vancouver Sun. It was
written by Rick Ouston and I blogged about it here. To my dismay I ran into two
former Sun Staffers and one active one recently. None had read it. If you
consider that in the essay in question Ouston writes about a blundered suicide
attempt a year ago you wonder what happens in the Vancouver newsroom in this age of communication.
I talked to a staffer
today and told him, “I went to the Sun newsroom on Saturday and I saw a paper
tacked to the newsroom door. It said, ‘Please do not declare WWIII or if you
are a famous person don’t succumb until Monday. We are closed on
weekends.’”
When from a facebook
posting (note it must be written in lower case) I found out on late Sunday that
Drew Burns had died on Saturday I was not able to confirm his death by any
media mention. I do know that the Vancouver Sun will have a hard copy obituary
on the Tuesday edition written by perhaps the only man working at the Sun who
knew Burns and dealt with him as John Mackie was a punk band manager at one time
when phone booths were a dime a dozen.
Consider that the Vancouver Sun staffer to
whom I told about the newsroom-door-pinned-bulletin seemed to believe my
statement. Surely he did not believe it to be more than a a prank. Perhaps it is true and our only real city newspaper is out to lunch
on weekends. Obituaries have to wait for Tuesdays.
By now many reading
this will think, “When is this idiot going to get to the point?”
Remember I am one of those Paul Sullivan citizen journalists.
I have not been trained to get to the point or to write well. I am one of those former photographers that in those days, in that other century, were collectively thought to be stupid. What follows will have to do. And what follows I hope nobody considers to be a “The-Tyee-comment-ranter” particularly those who imitated coyotes and other vermin of the hinterland of our province.
Remember I am one of those Paul Sullivan citizen journalists.
I have not been trained to get to the point or to write well. I am one of those former photographers that in those days, in that other century, were collectively thought to be stupid. What follows will have to do. And what follows I hope nobody considers to be a “The-Tyee-comment-ranter” particularly those who imitated coyotes and other vermin of the hinterland of our province.
In the last couple of
months well regarded columnists of the Vancouver Sun have written prominent
articles on the expensive state of our real estate, the ruining (by the influx
of people unwilling to speak English) of
ESL (English as a Second Language) in our public school system, and how:
Asian grip on the
Western Canon – Musical arts: Caucasian students playing piano at a high level
are few and far between.
This last opinion
article published in the Sun on Saturday September 20 and written by Pete
McMartin was followed by another by him on Saturday September 27:
Too much of a good
thing? Theory: Vancouver’s
attractiveness could one day be its undoing.
The crux of this
latter essay drew from a NY Times Sunday Magazine (two Sundays ago) that was
about how people in the US
want to go to live in Portland
because of its beauty, weather and social milieu. McMartin finds that the
so-called Amenity Paradox (people go to Portland
but find few jobs and real estate is becoming more dear) has parallels with our
Vancouver. In Portland we have a
gravitational pull of young college graduates. Who gravitates to our Vancouver is left blurry.
In this article McMartin quoted the noted urban planner Lance Berelowitz. My beef is that I want
to read in a newspaper essays that address in a fair manner how the growth
of Vancouver
can be explained and how solutions to perceived problems by our city rapid
expansion can be found.
When an article (the
one on the Western Canon) prominently uses large type on the word Caucasian
there is some sort of weird reverse racism involved. Somehow when McMartin uses
Asian that term seems milder in my view than Caucasian. When the “red Indian”
ruled the plains in the 19th century (and before) the term Caucasian
was probably not used. Except for the Chinese (not called Asian then) were
building railroads, people in our neck of the woods were either white or were
not. Only now is that NFL team, the Washington Redskins trying to navigate what
really is a losing battle of the insult their name represents to Aboriginal
Americans. Can any future team be called the Dallas Caucasians?
Somehow Caucasian has
a troublesome ring to my ears. I hear it more often from the lips of Chinese
people that I know. They never say, “white”. Caucasian is the politically
correct epithet but to me it grinds and almost offends.
Few know that not too
long ago the inhabitants of the Indian Subcontinent were listed as Caucasians
by scientific journals. Caucasian had nothing to do with skin colour but with
facial features. As far as I can tell India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh are
South Asian countries.
Those Asians who are
not tickling the ivories in our local music schools, are they Filipino,
Indonesian, Indian, Bangladeshi, Borneans, or even Japanese or Korean? Could
Mr. McMartin be skirting the fact that many of them are Chinese? To write that
they could be Chinese, would that be offensive? Would it be racist?
Not too many weeks ago a local
architect of Chinese origin told us at an Abraham Rogatnick memorial lunch that a full time project of
actively trying to keep the flavour, spirit and look of Vancouver’s
China Town alive was most difficult. I could not tell the noted architect (age is
making me polite) that our Chinatown, and many
more in other cities are former ghettos. The inhabitants of those ghettos were
not allowed or could not afford to live anywhere else. Now we have different
China Towns. And they are not ghettos by the old definition.
I would like to read
in the Vancouver Sun balanced articles in which experts such as Vancouver urban
planner Lance Berelowitz (note Vancouver Sun fact checkers that there is a
second e in that surname) and others tell us about our urban problems and offer
solutions. I have been told by two prominent real estate agents that many
houses that change hands in Vancouver
are all about money laundering. Why not bring back the unflinching David Baines
to explore that topic? Rick Ouston, a professional and qualified journalist
could write with objectivity about this Caucasian/Chinese thing we are so
reluctant to discuss. I wonder about those small signs stapled to posts on Granville, Cambie, etc that say, "Quick cash for your home."
To be fair I do believe that Pete McMartin's efforts are laudable in that they are indeed an effort to tackle the issues of our city. I remember with warmth, affection and respect the scion of the Southam newspaper empire, Harvey Southam how in his sorely missed (at least by yours truly) his business monthly Equity Magazine in which he featured two prominent city columnists on adjacent pages (left and right!). One was called From the Left and the other From the Right. They always wrote about the same issue but from a different point of view. I want balanced objective reporting without forgetting what one of the sailors on board Thor Heyerdahl's expeditions Ra I and Ra II, Santiago Genovés once said at a lecture I attended in Mexico City in the early 70s:
"We must remember that objectivity is a subjective invention by man."
To be fair I do believe that Pete McMartin's efforts are laudable in that they are indeed an effort to tackle the issues of our city. I remember with warmth, affection and respect the scion of the Southam newspaper empire, Harvey Southam how in his sorely missed (at least by yours truly) his business monthly Equity Magazine in which he featured two prominent city columnists on adjacent pages (left and right!). One was called From the Left and the other From the Right. They always wrote about the same issue but from a different point of view. I want balanced objective reporting without forgetting what one of the sailors on board Thor Heyerdahl's expeditions Ra I and Ra II, Santiago Genovés once said at a lecture I attended in Mexico City in the early 70s:
"We must remember that objectivity is a subjective invention by man."
If we persist in this
reluctant direction the flames of racism will surely be fanned. I might just
decide to move to Portland.
Or as a friend of mine likes to remind me of something I said to him some years
ago, “Let’s go to White
Town. Let’s see how we maneuver
around our food with one of those forks and knives.”
