This is the first in what I hope will become a regular feature on this blog, in which I critically examine news stories within a political economic, discourse and narrative analysis framework.
Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s weekly, cum bi-weekly, Cut the Waist weigh-ins were nothing more than a transparent means of keeping the mayor in the media without putting him in the line of fire and the Toronto media blithely took the bait. However, the efficacy of the campy sideshow was just as resilient as Ford’s resolve, which is why Ford officially jettisoned the project this past Sunday. The optics of this public capitulation demands some consideration.
Unlike trials that have seen Ford bested in council, the only person who could have fouled this ploy was Ford himself. His failure cannot be blamed on “socialists”, the Toronto Star or turncoats, and he can’t call upon one of his loyalists to lose weight on his behalf. Taken with his recent loses, it implies that he can’t be taken on his word and that he lacks the tenacity to put ambitious plans into action. Simply put, this is an allegory for a mayoralty where big, ill-conceived goals are declared with little forethought towards what it takes to achieve them.
Don’t expect this story to grow legs, but you can expect it to become a lasting touchstone. This will be especially true if, in three weeks time, Ford falls well short of his original goal.
Anxious to ride it out until the end of the week, Ford’s people would like to spin this as another instance of Ford’s everyman charm. He, “like so many of you,” struggles with his weight, is the preferred framing. However, they know that Ford’s weight is a political liability that they can’t control by limiting his public exposure.
In politics, being obese is like being a woman; it unjustly narrows a politician’s credibility by providing fodder for partisan attacks. Such attacks will only be redoubled at a time when Ford needs to win broader support.
It seems unlikely that Ford has the support on council to enact any more of the disruptive policy initiatives that he had originally promised to his base. The people who put Ford in the mayor’s chair were mostly first time, “low information”, voters who didn’t know that being the mayor of Toronto is mostly a ceremonial position with little power. Without tangible results this constituency is likely to become disillusioned and simply abstain from voting in two years time.
If Ford wants to stay in office, he’ll have to do more than promise Scarborough voters subways that will never arrive. Specifically, he’ll need to assemble the support of a still fractious liberal (by which I mean “right-of-centre”) majority, both in and out of council, before someone else does. Ford can count his blessing that none of the “Centrists” on council are kilometers from electable form, but he would be remiss to think that the city’s influence class isn’t already scouting a contender.
“To race bicycles is to drink greedily from a bottomless chalice of agony”
(from a piece on Hesjedal in last July’s Walrus Magazine)
(Source: bedboundboredom)
A short documentary questioning the location, not motives, of the Occupy movement in New York City.
This Will Not Appear on TED: Nick Hanauer on Income Inequality
Last week TED, the smarty conference series for the well-healed set, faced accusations of censorship when it came out that they were not going to publish Nick Hanauer’s recent talk on income inequality.
The reason given for its omission by Chris Anderson, TED’s curator, was twofold: the talk was too political for an election year despite the fact that the words “Democrats” and “Republicans” are used only once, and in the same breath and the same vein; and that the organization only posts one video a day from a pool of 250 TED Talks and another ten thousand TEDx Talks (the conference’s licensed third-party conferences from around the world).
However Anderson tried to spin it, you can’t really say the talk was censored. Hanauer, a very wealthy, serial entrepreneur, did appear, did talk and the video — as seen above — is available online. It’s just not featured at TED.com.
In light of that, Salon’s Alex Pareene has an interesting critique of TED as currently constructed. At it’s most blunt:
At this point TED is a massive, money-soaked orgy of self-congratulatory futurism, with multiple events worldwide, awards and grants to TED-certified high achievers, and a list of speakers that would cost a fortune if they didn’t agree to do it for free out of public-spiritedness.
I don’t agree that TED is as worthless as Alex makes it sound, but his article has important ideas about what constitutes partisanship today, and how political and economic consensus is created by ruling classes today. Well worth the read. — Michael
Basically, this is my grade twelve economics major paper in five minutes, but more polemical and ten times better. Shame on TED for censoring this.
Wow. This photo essay is amazing.
Jeanie, Will and Adina at the supermarket, 2011 — Isadora Kosofsky
Meet Jeanie, 82, Will, 84, and Adina, 90— the three are bound together in a relationship, you could call it a love triangle of sorts. 18 year old photographer Isadora Kosofsky documents their relationship — read more about it here.
“I still can’t believe we got them to say ‘blogosphere’.”
Via XKCD.
I still can’t believe that no one has pointed out that the term “social media” doesn’t make any sense.
If Facebook were invented in the ’90s
The background music and sound effects certainly make this clip worth watching.
Η Γενιά των 592 Ευρώ” (which loosely translates to Generation 592€) is a sociological comedy that examines the lives of underemployed and unemployed twenty-somethings living in Greece under the austerity measures. Generation 592€ is the colloquial term given to educated, twenty-something Greeks who earn only the minimum wage of 592€ a month. It has since been canceled, for lack of an available budget, but it’s nice to see a show that deals with this staggering social problem without resorting to Two Broke Girls stereotyping and nonsense.
