March 6, 2008
City Sells McLand, Memo McBumbled, Ryerson Says Facebook McBad
City sells "the McDonald's site" on Bloor for a fairly low price. However, Adam Vaughan insists there are upsides to the deal, such as being able to limit the height of the condo development that will take its place, because who would want tall buildings in the downtown core?
Patrick Swayze has pancreatic cancer. Although initial reports that he has "weeks to live" were apparently false, pancreatic cancer is still one of the deadliest forms of cancer. Additionally, after the death of Jeff Healey earlier this week, the rest of the cast of Road House all signed up for appointments with their local oncologist.
Leak of the diplomatic memo that probably had something to do with Barack Obama losing Ohio yesterday the result of "bumbling." Of course, that assumes that nobody wanted the memo leaked, which is of course unthinkable because why would Stephen Harper or anybody else in his party want to help political allies to the south?
Ryerson student faces expulsion for creating a Facebook study group. The first-year student maintains that creating the study group, where people helped each other answer homework questions worth credit, is no different from any other study group. The university responded by arguing that the Internet is scary and bad, and what if they download some illegal MP3s or something, what then, huh?
United Nations admits it can't afford to keep feeding the world's hungry. Using the basic logic that if the world's poorest people are only starting to feel the squeeze now, it follows that in about ten years, we're all completely fucked, except for Dick Cheney, who will have an underwater fortress with laser death octopuses.
And the Raptors smacked around the Heat.
Photo by Alfred Ng from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Or to do it in such a meat-headedly obvious way, when they're clearly all such clever and trustworthy people.
(By having brought the question up, of course, you demonstrate your moral failings. Stephen Harper will now have to fire, sue, refuse you federal funding, or fail to protest your unjust imprisonment and/or impending execution, as applicable.)
It might be also a ploy to screw extra money out of the developers if they want to build above the height limit.
Why is the leak story about Canada, and not about the fact that Obama may have been lying about his stance on free trade? One of his eoncomic advisors is a strong supporter of free trade and open markets (link). If he is just buying votes with less than truthful comments, make that the issue. (I like the guy and would like to see him win, but the problem is not the Canadian diplomat.)
I've read it elsewhere too, but seeing Harper's vilification of the bureaucracy as a sop to the GOP is a bit tortured. If these headlines help anybody, its Hilary, and I don't think Harper could be described as Clintonian.
Why the Canadian government should be apologetic for speaking in defence of its largest and most vital trading relationship is beyond me.
the goggles: Not sure why the Canadian media isn't asking the larger question of whether or not Obama was lying. Maybe they think those sorts of questions are better handled by the American media. Has anyone seen any stories in the American press addressing this issue? I haven't, but then, I don't read any American newspapers or watch American news programs (other than Andy Rooney's weekly whine-fest on 60 Minutes; the guy basically gets a couple minutes every Sunday night to complain about the weirdest, most mundane things).
X: The furor over the leak isn't about the Tories trying to defend NAFTA. It's about the leak over government documents that many see as strategically timed to manipulate electoral results in another country and hurt specific candidates.
goggles: How about because Obama wasn't lying? This is a nonstory; at the Ohio debate, he said "I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced." In the memo, Austin Goolsbee is described as saying "that Obama is less about fundamentally changing the agreement and more in favour of strengthening/clarifying language on labour mobility and environment and trying to establish these as more "core" principles of the agreement."
This would be a case of Obama articulating exactly the same policy positions to both parties, except in one case he's in fiery elect-me mode and in the other he's in diplomatic talk-to-another-country mode.
x: Helping Hillary helps McCain in that the GOP clearly wants to run against Hillary, considering her the more beatable candidate, what with her maximum attainable vote percentage considered to be around 52%.
As for NAFTA, there are plenty of reasons not to defend it; it's been a terrible agreement for Canada on any number of levels, ceding economic sovereignty and damaging our manufacturing sector for no practical increase in trade benefits and further tying our economic fortunes entirely to those of the United States.
"Swayze is McScrewed" is classy. I'm glad you think cancer is hilarious.
Fabulous, cancer jokes. I really need to stop reading your articles.
x the x: the theory is that the Republicans would prefer to run against Clinton, so hurting Obama would be a pro-Republican move.
mark0: this CBC item quotes Clinton's "top campaign aide" saying, "It had a significant impact ... It raised serious questions about Obama." Of course, he'd say that about the weather, wouldn't he? But it does imply that there's been U.S. coverage of the matter.
Here's the thing: not every news headline has to have a quasi-"edgy" sentence appended to it.
What is the editorial stance of Torontoist these days, anyway? Is it:
a) talking about things going on in the city
b) making patently unfunny jokes about Actual People, Not Abstract Entities dying of cancer!
c) the UN can't feed people! let's treat this with about one trillionth of the gravity it deserves!
Parts b) and c) are embarrassing. Jesus.
I used to read Torontoist in order to keep abreast of things going on in the city, and I appreciated it more when everything posted on it wasn't passed through an ultra-hipster-let's-be-jaded-and-snark-about-everything filter.
One of the items in the title ("Swayze Is McScrewed") was in poor taste, and has been changed.
On the Swayze front, Best Week Ever published a poorly-timed post a few days ago called Top 20 Stupid Faces Made by Patrick Swayze in Ghost right before news came out that he had cancer. When they found out, they put together a really genuinely nice and sweet post about the Top 5 Most Handsomest Well-Acted Faces of Patrick Swayze in Ghost.
It seems anytime it starts to look like blogs are actually being written by grown-ups,, some self-styled humorist hits "publish" on a post like this and sets us all back by a year.
Would it really kill you to treat Swayze's disease and Jeff Healey's death as the lamentable human situations they are, and not as the set-up for a humourless one-liner?
Sarcasm is cheap.
Goggles - I think the leak story is about Canada because we're in Canada. The pressing concerns here are seemingly loose lips by the PM's Chief of Staff in the budget lockup and the (possibly criminal) leaking of a sensitive document by someone on Foreign Affairs. This is the kind of tempest that both reporters and the opposition enjoy, hence the focus.
The question of whether or not Obama was telling a fib, and whether his fine speeches correlate to his planned policies, is of more pressing concern to Americans. And that is being covered by the press there.
Talented Bird - I respectfully disagree with your full exoneration of Obama. See, for instance,The Washington Post:
The point made there is that Obama "parsed" at first, rather than coming clean. As the author concludes:
So there was - at least at first - a shortage of the truth which got the ball rolling.
But, that's not really where the trouble for him comes from. The "scandalous" issue is the political strategy aspect his advisor (Goolsbee) allegedly discussed. As the The New York Times has it:
It's the "political maneuvering" comment that Clinton seized upon, using it in radio commercials and so on.
I never realized until checking out David's Swayze links how much Toronto's Ashmore twins resemble him in his Ghost days.
Sarcasm works only for certain targets (Hitler, for example). To say Jeff Healey and Patrick Swayze are beloved is an understatement. I remember "comedian" Norm MacDonald making a Christopher Reeve joke at the time of Reeves's horseriding accident. This was at Just for Laughs in Montreal, and guess what? The joke bombed. Cancer and misfortune are rarely funny, unless the person being struck down is a monster.
You should rename this blog to Seriousist. Or Dourist. Instead of talking about stuff going on in Toronto, you could publish in-depth analysis of grave and dire events around the world, really driving home just how terrible everything is.
...
Either this is a blog, with all the personal opinions and mannerisms you'd expect, or it's a Serious News Site For Adults. Please pick one finally and stop apologizing
Can't it be a blog that avoids mocking cancer victims? I didn't realize the choice was binary, rek.
It doesn't have to be serious or dour. Humour, satire, and sarcasm are still more than welcome.
But most humourous and sarcastic satirists know about things like boundaries, self-censorship (that little voice inside you that says, "stop being a dick"), and lines that should probably not be crossed.
Others .... don't.
And then it can be a blog that avoids being critical of anything soldier-related, and a blog that reports vandalism to the police instead of inviting discussion about it, and then a blog that avoids personal opinion, and then maybe they could just assign stories instead of leaving it up to the writers to be interested in things.
This isn't just about cancer "jokes".
I'm happy the title was changed. I actually really like the jokey news briefs, which are funny and informative and basically like a mini Daily Show episode. Patrick Metzger's pieces are probably my favourite part of Torontoist. They frequently make me laugh, and I see no reason why a website can't be both humorous and intelligent.
But I thought the title "Swayze is McScrewed" was in incredibly poor taste. This is a man dying from cancer. Let's treat the situation with a little respect, shall we?
Rek:
Then it would be like the US News media, all you would need is some soap commercials thrown in. Like Meredith Viera said after Jane Fonda dropped the "C" word on "The Today Show", or "Good Morning, America" (whichever of those brain-dead shows).
"We would NEVER do anything to offend our audience", but they'll run erectile dysfunction commercials to pay the bills. You can insult the Puritans, but offend them? Heavens, never. Besides, those are potential consumers.
My dad died of cancer, I wasn't offended, granted, it's not something I usually joke about, but there are plenty of other things to be offended about.
From some of the cancer patients I've seen and heard, they have more of a sense of humor about it than we do.
Rek more or less echoes my opinion here. The Canadian media - and Canadian culture in general - tends to self-censor more than it should, tends to be a bit overly leery of power. (John Doyle wrote an excellent column on this in the Globe yesterday when he was discussing Bill C-10.)
Let me be clear: I'm not going to apologize for either the headline or the jokes in today's update that have gotten people riled. I will say that the headline wasn't intended to be disrespectful, but simply that where possible I like to insert rythmic cadence into the headline, and the "Mc" usage was intended in that light, rather than being a gag in its own right. (I actually like "McBumbled" better, for the record.)
As for the jokes, the Swayze one isn't about Swayze or Jeff Healey, for crissake - it's making very light fun of a twenty-year-old movie that happens to star both of them, after being quite clear that pancreatic cancer sucks. If anything, today' surfing made me notice that a lot of other people made the same gag, and thus I wonder if it was overly predictable.
shastasheen's complaint about the world hunger story is, to me, weird, because I think the blurb sets out the situation pretty simply: commodity prices are gradually destroying the ability of the world to feed itself, and we're all going to be feeling the pinch eventually. I added the silly Dick Cheney thing because my original joke was too dark even for my tastes and I felt it needed a lighter touch. Your mileage may vary.
And finally, I resent being called a "hipster," because I'm not a frigging hipster. I haven't been to a concert in years, I own zero trucker hats (assuming trucker hats are still cool - are they?) and I spend most Friday nights at home studying. So, if you take away nothing else from this, I am not a hipster. Thank you and good night.
Doesn't matter what your intentions were, it was offensive. Period. I enjoy most of the sarcasm in the news roundups, but sometimes you really have to learn to put a filter on it. There's a difference between funny and extreme poor taste. That one made me want to puke.
For the record, I wasn't offended. Therefore, it was not universally offensive. (I'll go out on a limb and say that it didn't really want to "make you puke" either, Carrie, but I'll allow some hyperbole.)
What bothers me is that Torontoist even bothers with the international news/general interest/celebrity arse-kissing "Hey Marthas" at all. It's a Toronto-centric blog, why bother throwing in the same news items you can find anywhere and everywhere? (And don't tell me it's because the Toronto Star does it, that's different.)
Maybe it's a Gothamist policy, but personally, it makes me violently sick to my stomach. Umm...rather, I find it mildly annoying.
The extra-spicy Burrito Boyz burrito I just ate, on the other hand...
Cancer is hip, much cooler than dying on a toilet like Elvis.
(25)I go by their ability to dish it out far exceeding their ability to take it.
OK, I know this is totally unrelated, but I couldn't resist: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/06/nlamppost106.xml
There are really two issues here for me.
One is schadenfreude - it just isn't cool to treat other people's terrible misfortune with apparent delight. That's true whether you're making jokes about Patrick Swayze getting cancer or the possibility of Conrad Black getting raped in prison.
The other issue is that it just doesn't amount to good writing to follow a formula like this:
"So and so, who did such and such, suffered the following. We imagine he will now (insert careless, snarky joke here)." I wouldn't worry so much about making people puke - you're likelier to make them yawn to death.
Just to be clear then, you think Christopher Bird really hates Patrick Swayze and delights in the fact that Swayze has pancreatic cancer and is in all likelihood going to die in a matter of months (the median survival period is 3-6 months).
I disagree about Conrad Black being someone's bum-buddy in prison. He deserves to be made to moo like a cow. Has Black ever given money away to charity, or made any philanthropic gesture, other than buy Babs a new facelift? People may pick on Bill Gates, but at least Gates gives away billions through his foundation. Conrad Black cares about one person: Conrad Black. He doesn't give a shit about his investors, or most of his former employees. He is a despicable man who shat on Canada and took great pride in doing so. So yes, if there's someone who deserves to get a rear-funnling this year, it's Conrad Black.
I'm not accusing anyone here of schadenfreude when it comes to Swayze getting cancer, or Black getting raped in prison...but maybe it comes from this...
Celebrities especially (and I'm not accusing Swayze of this)...when things are going well for them, we don't hear the end of it, and we get these endless tours of their ka-jillion dollar homes, or their fleet of Hummers or their helio-pad in the back yard. When they want us to spend 10 bucks on their latest "movie" that they made a cool $20 million on and especially when they have zero talent (ie. Jessica Simpson) ...Life is just grand, "look at me now, look at you now"..so, yeah, when they do fall from grace, I admit to feeling a little bit like..."yeah, look at you now" (like Pacino said it in "Scarface"). That doesn't seem to be the case with Swayze, I'm not a fan of his movies, but he seems (seems) like a decent guy and hardly deserving of this...whereas someone like Black (Or say, Bush or Cheney) who have caused a lot of grief/death/misery for others...I have no sympathy for. If George Bush got cancer, I gotta admit, I'd be buying drinks for all.