Archive for July, 2010

Is it my imagination or is compassion for Canada’s poor at an all-time low?

I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog that I tend to read the newspaper online most mornings. I don’t read just one for the simple reason that I want to get a variety of opinions. I read mostly Toronto area news, but occasionally I’ll meander to Calgary, or Vancouver news as they have vastly different opinions than those of the Toronto news media. One of the greatest advantages of living in the internet age in my opinion is that there is no excuse for living in a bubble. News used to be so regional, but now you can find out what people are saying in London, or Dubai, or Kitchener. They are all equally accessible. More important to me than the paid writers are the comments left by ordinary people. This is the pulse of our society. It is here that I am noticing a lack of empathy and a “who cares?” type of attitude. I am curious about the origin of this new attitude.

I should begin by making something clear to readers who don’t frequent this blog. People who know me either like my open style of speaking, or they don’t. I’ve been called many things in my life;. “insightful”, “a twit”, “opinionated”, “caring”, depending on the point of view of the listener. But I think most people – whether they like me or not, whether they share my opinions, or rail against them, would agree that I am always honest. Perhaps to a fault. A very long time ago I decided it doesn’t suit me to pretend to be something I am not. I lack the shame that society has tried so very hard to thrust on me for speaking honestly about what it is like to be poor. I grew up poor, I spent most of my adult years poor. It is only in the last 15 years that I have beaten the odds to break that cycle. Perhaps sometime in the future I will write about how I struggled my way out of being a statistic but for today I just want to dispel some of the myths I’ve been reading.

MYTH #1
Poor people are lazy and unmotivated.
Balderdash! Wasaga Beach is full of seasonal and minimum wage earners. There aren’t a lot of good paying jobs here. You have your choice of being a maid for one of the motels or serving up dinner at local restaurants. The majority of jobs in this area are in the low paying service sector. I know plenty of people who work 3 jobs just to earn enough money to keep a roof over their heads, lights on and food on the table. These jobs are unstable at best. They pay as little as they are legally required to do (some less – I’ll talk about that later) and they exploit workers by figuring out clever ways to avoid making anyone “full time”.  I get so tired of hearing this mean spirited generalization. It’s not true. The motivation behind this myth is simple as far as I can tell. It’s easier to blame poor people for their plight than to lean on policy makers to create more stable working conditions.

MYTH #2
Welfare has become a lifestyle choice. Free money for doing nothing.
This kind of comment clearly comes from people who have never had to accept a welfare cheque in their lives. My question to anyone who utters this type of comment is “how many paychecks are you from poverty?” Surprisingly, the average person would admit they couldn’t last more than a month without a steady paycheck. It’s easy if you lose your job to find yourself in line for Government help. Employment Insurance, a fund which workers pay into as a type of “insurance” (as the name implies) is out of reach for too many. More about that later.

MYTH #3
Why don’t they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
It’s hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you don’t even own a pair of boots. The poorest in our society are completely consumed by the task of making enough money to live. Exploitative jobs, poor transportation options, family obligations, illness are just some of the roadblocks to that better life. While some people do manage to break the cycle of poverty, it is the exception to the rule, not the norm. It is exceedingly difficult to get an education when you can’t afford an extra $2 to ride the bus. I will admit to looking for change all over my room just to get the T.T.C. to a job interview. Most people don’t have any idea what it is like to be so strapped for cash that an extra bus ride is a burden.

MYTH #4
People on welfare can always afford cigarettes and booze.
I’ve never been able to afford these things. Foolishly, I smoked when I was a teenager but when I found myself on welfare at the age of 16, cigarettes were the first to go. Call me silly but I thought eating and rent were much more important. I tend to ask people who make this claim how they have determined that the person they see drinking and smoking is actually on welfare? Do they see the cheque? Often people see someone who “looks” poor out on their porch having a mid-day party but my first thought when I hear this is that this individual can’t be on welfare. With the rules today, it is hard to be on welfare for any length of time and believe me, after reading the monthly figures I can’t imagine many people who wouldn’t be desperate to find work. A single person brings home $561 per month. A single mother with a child under the age of two gets $906 per month. Even the most frugal person would have difficulty making ends meet on such a pathetic income.

I should add that in the 1960′s, Canadian Social Services was tightly controlled. If you were a single woman living on Government assistance, you could expect the social worker to open your closets to search for evidence of a man in the home. And, if you were kind enough to offer a cup of tea to the social worker, your reward was to have your children secretly grilled with such gems as “does Mommy have a boyfriend?” or “Are you happy living here with your Mother?“. We weren’t stupid. We knew that the wrong answer would get us a one-way ticket to a foster home. Thankfully, having a boyfriend, a social life or drinking a beer or smoking a cigarette are no longer grounds for termination of benefits.

MYTH #5
If you can’t find a job where you are, why don’t you move?
I’ll refer you back to myth #3. If you can’t afford a couple of dollars to take the bus, just imagine just how daunting a task it would be to move everything to a new city! Unfortunately poverty is paralyzing. It is extremely confining to not be able to afford things that many of us take for granted.  Moving to a new room, apartment or town is something many can only dream of, but finding oneself in a position to pay moving expenses is out of the question. Why do you think there are so many poor people living in violent areas of major cities? They are desperate to get to cleaner and safer neighbourhoods but financially it is not possible.

MYTH #6
Any job is better than welfare.
This is where it starts to get a little mirky. There have been so many changes to the structure of employment in Canada since the 1970′s. Gone are the reliable jobs. Good paying manufacturing jobs are outsourced overseas to countries who allow corporations to pay workers little more than $1 per day. Companies are so concerned about shareholders and paying the highest salaries to executives that they have forgotten who really makes them rich; their workers. Jobs have been dismantled slowly but surely for decades and we are now seeing the result: a small amount of people making obscene money, a shrinking middle class and a new class of “working poor” who are forced to work several low paying jobs just to equal one full job. Gone are the benefits and the security. Gone is the ability to pay into Employment Insurance. Seasonal and part-time work dominate the landscape. And the definition of part-time has changed. It used to be that if you worked 40 hours a week, there were strict rules to make sure you were taken care of. So to skirt this, companies will make sure you never get 40 hours. Companies have found every possible loophole. They hire “contract workers” to whom they can pay less than minimum wage. Yes, that’s right LESS than the lowest legal salary. School bus drivers are contract workers, cab drivers, truck drivers, many seasonal and service industry jobs are as well. Sales jobs are often so exploitative that the hiring/firing ratio amounts to 100% of their workforce every two weeks.  When the new hires are finished calling every friend and family member, they are let go because people don’t buy products from telephone solicitors. Open the newspaper to the “help wanted” section and you’ll find that retail and office jobs are paying the same salary (or less) than they were 20 years ago. Inflation is all around us except in our salaries. Eaton’s, Sears, Bell Canada, Banks and Insurance Companies – all of these were once decent paying jobs but now they pay so little that they are indistinguishable from smaller companies.

SUMMARY

The vernacular in our culture has changed. Jobs that were once considered honest work, are now seen as transient and menial. People used to be able to support a family on a job as a salesman, or a bartender or a truck driver. Some could even afford a home. My entire neighbourhood was comprised of blue collar working class folk. There is no choice for couples who want to have children any more. You can’t have Mother stay home while Dad brings home the bacon. Years of inflation and political neglect has created a situation where both spouses are forced to work to bring home less than one salary used to pay. Why?

And if the reduced pay and status of workers isn’t enough to make you realize that something needs to change, consider this; somebody needs to fill these jobs. Our society is based on a structure where some people graduate high school and get right to work, while some continue on to University to fill the doctor and lawyer positions. It shouldn’t mean that a few years of schooling amounts to a hundred times better pay. The distribution of wealth in our society has gone absolutely awry!

Poor people don’t want hand-outs. What they want is a living wage. In a wealthy society such as ours, there should be no such thing as a person who works 40 hours a week while not being able to afford nutritious food. We closed our eyes for a few years and this is what happened!  It shouldn’t matter that you are a brick layer, or a waiter, or a truck driver. These people are the cogs in the machinery and without them we would collapse. They deserve a little more of the pie than they are currently getting.

I was reading the newspaper (online) this morning and I kept seeing a recurrence of unflattering words which right wing  journalists use to describe Liberals. Before I get into that, I wanted to first say that I do not enjoy this whole right vs left battle that seems to go on in our culture. I have many friends and family members and they all have their own opinions. Of course I am going to have more spirited political and religious discussions with friends who are far right thinkers but during most of our day to day interactions, it doesn’t affect us.

I came across this word which was popular in when I was growing up; “Bleeding Hearts“. It seems to have returned to the vernacular of some journalists. The word itself is meant to convey that Liberals are too soft, too weepy and naive. Conservatives have managed to villainize compassion and empathy.

I’ll bet you are wondering why the words “Bleeding Heart” caused this rant.

I was a child of the 60′s. I was too young to be either a Hippy or a Flower Child, but even at the age of 10, I knew that their message was a good one. Peace on Earth, love one another, make love not war and my favourite; the whole world is watching.

I can remember a time when middle aged, angry, white men with military style haircuts armed with shears would grab long haired young men in the streets and force a haircut on them. I was far too young to understand that this was what we refer to today as “left and right” ideology. The angry men were just “wrong” in my young mind. I had no idea why it bothered them how a young man would wear his hair. It was the fashion of the time and all the kids were doing it. Why was it so important to these men that the young people conform to their ideas?

The wrongness of far right ideology gets much worse than an unwanted haircut. I still remember vividly an incident in 1970 at Kent State, a University in Ohio where unarmed students were gunned down by the U.S. National Guard simply because they were protesting  against the American invasion of Cambodia. An event that was memorialized in the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song “Ohio”.

I grew up watching the events of the time unfold on TV.  My young eyes and ears soaked up information like a sponge. The KKK were still going strong in the South. Segregation was still legal in some States but it was being challenged in ruling after ruling by the Supreme Court. National laws conflicted with local laws and had people on both sides fighting mad. Perhaps this partly explains the anti-Government feeling amongst many right wingers, but TV had the entire world watching and reacting to images of lawlessness and bloodshed. White supremacists brutalized freedom riders simply for daring to ride buses with “Negroes” (we didn’t use the word “blacks” back then). TV exposed their dirty deeds and made it clear that their ideology of white born privilege was  disappearing. Although I was very young, I couldn’t understand why anyone would force a black person to drink out of a separate fountain, sit at a blacks-only section of a diner, or use a different toilet. My young mind wasn’t hardened by the prejudices of the previous generation. As it would turn out, a lot of people knew this was wrong.

So when I read the words “Bleeding Heart” this morning – a word uttered by the right wing to label Liberals as overly soft and naive, I thought back to its origins. It’s a word meant to villainize traits that I have come to admire; compassion, empathy, the ability to walk in someone else’s shoes. I am proudly a bleeding heart.

There is something seriously wrong with these far right wing people. They have always sought conformity in a world of diversity. Even in their own lily white communities, there is always someone who marches to the beat of a different drummer. Those people are inevitably punished to the fullest extent. Homosexuals, feminists, atheists, artists, musicians, free thinkers. The list is long of people to punish for being just a little bit different. The right wing has become a caricature of true conservative values. I can respect conservative values. However, I cannot respect right wing ideology as it is defined by some in the media today. They are two different animals. No self respecting conservative could stand behind the hateful words of people like Pat Robertson, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and their ilk. Being conservative should not be akin to being hateful. The historical reality is that far right thinking has always been wrong. And yes, the argument could be made that far left thinking is wrong too but that is a whole other article. For now I’ll just say that when people are too extreme, in either direction, they tend to meet at the fringes. People have been trying to define and label extreme views since the dawn of time but the reality is that far left and far right look disturbingly similar. It wouldn’t matter whether you were kidnapped by a fascist or an anarchist. The result would be the same. Neither has a whiff of compassion to offer.

Besides “bleeding heart“, there are several other adjectives to define and divide people according to their desire to live in a free and equal society. These words are meant to be insults, and they require a condescending tone or snarky written context to be fully understood. Still, they really tell you more about the utterer. The irony is wasted on them. While touting the virtues of being patriotic in a Country which was founded on embracing differences, these people are afraid of anything different. And just like the bullies who would call you names in the school yard, they have a whole vocabulary of insults for people who don’t fit the narrow definition of a good citizen.

The Right Wing vocabulary is slick. They’ve learned that they can’t just utter insults in mixed company so they have coded regular words which are meant to find others amongst them. Depending on your reaction to these words, you are either one of us, or one of them. As you read through the words, you’ll notice that most of them are just regular words but after years of vitriolic treatment, they are words which define a generation of angry, displaced people. It isn’t the 1950′s any more. Canada has been evolving and the world depicted in early sitcoms doesn’t exist – in reality, it never did. Yet somehow, in 2010, you can still find men and women out there, angry as hell that feminists, gay people, minorities and others have fought and won their own place in our diversified society.

Ultra Right Wing Dictionary:

Feminist: (or Feminazi – the favoured insult to describe feminists.) It was meant to describe a particular type of feminist but these days it’s a blanket term when a woman wants to calmly discuss issues of equal rights. Of course feminists are blamed as the root cause of all that is wrong with our society today. The breakdown of families, the lack of jobs – you name it.

Homosexual: There are at least a half-dozen adjectives to describe this group. An abomination against God is the most offensive. If you wish to be a good bigot, you must firmly believe that Gay people are able to change, they just don’t choose to.

Atheist: The bane of all über-right-wingers. You can believe in any God so long as it is theirs, but being an atheist is the #1 worst thing you can be. Of course every good far right winger must believe (wrongly) that democratic societies are based on the 10 commandments and that we should all fall in line or deport ourselves (to where?)

Commie: Anyone who doesn’t tear up when they see a photo of Ronald Regan, or Brian Mulroney. People who are left of Pat Robertson.

Liberal: (Libtard, Lie-beral) This is just another word for “Communist“. Now that the cold war is over, they would look ridiculous using the word “commie” so this is the updated word. Next to an athiest, a Liberal is the worst thing you can be.

Socialist: See the previous two entries. Commie, Liberal and Socialist are all the same thing even though the differences in ideology are huge. Never mind those pesky facts though. Just do as you are told.

Un-American, Un-Canadian or Unpatriotic: This is levelled at anyone who dares to ask questions of the people in power. Note: This only applies during the years of Conservative rule. It is your duty to question, harass and make governing impossible for Liberal Governments. There is a long line of “authority figures” to whom we must all salute. They include; police, soldiers, the military, firemen, and especially corporations. These people can do no wrong even when they are discovered stomping all over your constitutional rights. In that case it is for your own good and for the security of the country.

Pro-Choice: If you believe that women should have dominion over their own bodies, well you are just a baby murderer. It doesn’t matter how many times that you tell them that you are both in essence “Pro-Life” and you would prefer to see prevention methods and education come before abortions. Of course “Pro-Life” ends with those anti-social pot smokers. We ought to be executing people who smoke dope. So the rule is: killing babies = bad, killing adults=okay.

Pro-Life: You are truly God’s children. Yes you are.  A true right wing Pro-Lifer will stop at nothing to protect innocent zygotes. Zygotes are fetal cells which have not yet developed a nervous system or a brain. They use phrases that are based in non-science like “Partial birth abortion” and employ tactics like murdering doctors, or bombing clinics to scare women and their care-givers away from legal clinics worldwide. To be a true Pro-Life right wing nut, you have to be against third trimester abortions even if the fetus is dead inside the woman, is nonviable beyond the uterus, or will kill her in childbirth. Facts don’t matter to far right wing-nuts. They are appalled that any doctor would abort a 3rd trimester fetus and would surely kill him for his crimes. His crime is usually saving the life of the Mother but those facts are treated as propaganda.

Immigrants: Immigrants are to be feared and loathed. They are usually up to something. Immigrants have heard about free welfare and want in on some of that $500 per month action. It is irrelevant that all of us are children, or grand-children of immigrants. It also escapes them that many born and raised Canadians have used the welfare system during difficult times.

Poverty: Poverty is always preventable. Poor people are just lazy, unmotivated, and anti-social. Again, facts are completely discarded for this one to be swallowed whole. It matters not that most employers are adept at finding every loophole to maximize profits and avoid paying a living wage to their workers. It is irrelevant that food banks are serving more and more “working poor“. Poverty is just as simple as pulling up your bootstraps…. even if you can’t afford boots.

Welfare: This is a fund that is taken forcefully from the pockets of taxpayers and given to people who are lazy and unmotivated. Social safety nets, a distinctly left-wing idea has saved thousands of lives – most of them children, but again you must discard facts to whip yourself into a mouth-frothing, right wing tizzy.  Never mind that many of the people who are against such programs will someday need them themselves. It’s the facade that matters. Righteous anger against Government for daring to help the weaker members of society during their worst moments.

Old Age Pension: This one cracks me up. I argued with someone recently who claimed that Government has no place taking money from our paychecks to help us in old age. We should be deciding for ourselves what pension fund(s) we want to contribute to. Not a single one of these people will refuse the money when they reach the age of 65 but again, those are just pesky facts. A true right winger thinks that everyone has a disposable income after paying rent and utilities which can be used for such things as retirement planning. It is the classic “let them eat cake” type of thinking.  The very idea that many families struggle from paycheck to paycheck is just foreign. Must be nice to be so clueless about the reality of just how close most of us are to bankruptcy. How long can you live without a steady paycheck? One – two weeks? A month?

Employment Insurance: (or rather “Unemployment Insurance” as it should be called) Another safety net that just takes money from the pockets of hard working taxpayers and puts it into the pockets of lazy, unemployed bums. Never mind that we pay directly into this as a form of insurance. Or forget the fact that most of the people who have paid into it will be surprised to find themselves ineligible should they need it. And let’s not mention the fact that women are the biggest losers when it comes to E.I.  Part-time jobs (which women tend to have so they can be flexible for children), seasonal workers, full-time workers (3 x part-time jobs = full-time) will all have difficulty collecting when they need it. The system which works on an archaic “hours worked” model doesn’t take into account that most people work several jobs to get enough hours. If you are let go from two of your three jobs you are just shit out of luck. You are lazy and fat and a burden to society if you need to depend on E.I. at any point in your worthless life. It’s that simple.

Capital Punishment: “Kill the bastard” or “I’d pull the lever myself if I could” are perfectly acceptable ways to express your desire to rid society of people who won’t walk in goose-step. The venom that you might expect to be reserved for child molesters and murders can also be extended to Liberals and Atheists. Pro-Life? Only if it involves forcing women to stay pregnant against their will. Their real feelings about the value of life are interestingly displayed in their thoughts on capitial punishment.

God Fearing: This is one of my favourites. It means a “good person“, someone of strong moral fiber. (also see; man of god, church going man or Christian man) It doesn’t matter that most of the people who sit on death row in U.S. jails claim to be religious, or to have come from religious families. A belief in god simply doesn’t guarantee godliness. But the myth continues in right wing circles and it’s a difficult myth to bust as religion is the only topic I can think of where people just make up their minds and refuse to listen to reason.

Well.. let the comments begin. ;)
Tell me your favourite right-wing words and definitions. I’m sure I missed a whole lot of them.

More on the subject:

• Wikipedia – Employment Insurance in Canada
• Wikipedia’s page on Extremism
• Is hair still a symbol of rebellion?
• The song “Hair” by the Cowsills

I am still in shock and grieving over the events of the G20.

In my lifetime there have been a few events that have caused me to feel this way, but none so close to home. Toronto you see, is my hometown. And no matter how long I live in Wasaga Beach, and no matter where I travel, it will always be a big part of who I am. My identity is so closely tied to that city.

So when I saw police clubbing people, peaceful, law-abiding people their heads bleeding. People begging cops to stop hitting them. Asking why are you doing this? What did I do wrong? Trying to tell them “this is a peaceful protest“. When I read accounts of handicapped people trying to stay out of trouble by sitting on the grass at Queen’s Park being rounded up and roughly arrested; a man’s artificial limb separated from his body. When I heard yet more accounts of the abuses at the detention center on Eastern Avenue; authorities not providing the basic rights that we have come to expect as free citizens, I felt outraged.

There are hundreds of accounts from witnesses which defy the official story of cops under duress trying to make the best of a bad situation. What happens when the people you are supposed to respect become the enemy? Why were some of these police so rude to protesters? Why did they tell a woman that they would gang rape her? Why did they not allow an incarcerated handicapped man to go to the washroom, instead forcing him to urinate in his pants? Why did they refuse to provide toilet paper to detainees? Why did a confined lawyer have to tear off his shirt and allow another man, in one moment of human kindness, use his sleeve as toilet paper? Why were Torontians treated like animals at that detention centre? These dehumanizing tactics that one would expect to be used against a prisoner of war employed right in the heart of a major Canadian metropolitan city! Many of the people rounded up and arrested just lived in the area. It’s a dense, gigantic city. What did they expect of the residents of Toronto?

Why was there no water when people were thirsty? Why the ill treatment of people who were not charged with a single crime? Why were the real trouble makers allowed to run for a full hour and a half with riot police in full regalia just feet away? They could have shut those trouble makers down in 30 seconds. Why did they allow people to use black block tactics to terrorize the citizens of Toronto? Why? What does it all mean and who gave these horrible orders?

We are taught our entire lives to respect  authority. We respect the troops, the police, and firemen. But.. what happens when these people behave like thugs? Do we still support our military when they are caught allowing prisoners to be tortured? Do we support the police when they turn their batons, tear gas and rubber bullets on people who are just trying to make their way home – miles away from the G20 convention?

It’s confusing.

A few days ago I wrote a letter to our local M.P.P. Jim Wilson. This is a man I have met once or twice and he seems like a decent person. I turned to him because I felt as a citizen of a free country, it is our duty to speak up when something doesn’t feel right. In this letter I beseeched him to look into the matter. I wrote to ask him what his official position was. This was his response:

Ms. Watters:  Thank you for your email.  I appreciate your taking the time to bring your concerns to my attention.
Like most Ontario families – I was appalled by the violence we saw from the thugs and hooligans at the G20.  No political point gets made when you throw a brick through a store window or light a police car on fire.  This is nothing less than hooliganism.  In my view, the ringleaders behind this violence must be caught, tried to the fullest extent of the law and held financially responsible for the cost of the damage done.

I stand behind our men and women in uniform.  The police had a very difficult job to do.  There should be a very thorough review about what could have been handled better.  But ultimate responsibility for everything that happened rests with the thugs and hooligans who started the violence.

After the violence and vandalism we have seen during the G20, I certainly can appreciate the importance of ensuring the police have the authority and tools they need to do their job. However, Dalton McGuinty’s actions were a disappointment.  He had plenty of opportunities to announce and inform the public about these new powers but instead kept them secret.  This was an act of cowardice.

There is a formal process for private citizens to launch complaints about specific police action through the Police Services Board; however, I believe any such inquiry deflects attention from the real instigators of the violence during the weekend – the thugs and hooligans caught vandalizing property.

Thank you again for taking the time to write and please accept my best wishes.
Sincerely,
Jim Wilson, MPP
Simcoe-Grey

My heart sank.

Is there a single politician on this planet that speaks the same language as the people they represent? Are they all from Mars? I was asking him why police unleashed all their might on the people of Toronto and he responded by blaming a hundred skinny anarchists – who could have been controlled easily. And then when he was finished blaming them, he turned his guns on the McGuinty Government. No mention of the people of Toronto who were wronged. Not a fucking word.

What’s going on?

Yes there were hooligans as Mr. Wilson puts it. But comon’! Wake up and smell the human rights violations. Doesn’t any of that matter to elected people? I have heard the exact same response from Mayor Miller (NDP), McGuinty (Liberal) and now M.P.P. Wilson (Conservative). WTF? You cannot convince me that all of these people are that stupid. There is a deliberate campaign of misinformation going on here. Didn’t any of them feel any compassion for the people who were hearded like cattle at Queen and Spadina? What about the moment when Police in riot gear charged at a bunch of peaceful people singing O’Canada. What was their crime?

I’m flummoxed.

A facebook friend today called me an eternal optimist. I try to see things from both sides and I try hard to believe in the basic good of people. For the first time in my life I can see nothing to be optimistic or proud of here. I am not proud of any of the leaders; not the politicians of any party, not the police and definitely not the people of Canada who think that carrying a few protest signs sets anyone up to be beaten and thrown into jail. Shame on all of these people. Shame!

And I’m afraid.

I am afraid that the police will get away with it. They were abusive. The politicians were secretive. The people we put our trust in lied. All of them.

It’s another article completely that the G20 is a group of people who are not elected by us deciding major public policies for the entire world. Why are we as a free society allowing them to meet anyhow? In case you were wondering, as it was not discussed much by the media, the G20 participants decided that we should have less social programs, increase taxes and decrease pensions and wages. This is how they plan to help the poor. Brilliant huh?

So enjoy your homes while you can my working class friends. The rich have decided that we are making too much money and not giving enough taxes to them. While banks are making record profits and taking huge government (Remember “Government” is “Us”)  hand-outs. It is us who will pay the price.

And just to make sure that we comply with these new measures, police and politicians beat a few innocent heads to warn us what will happen if we complain.

Welcome to the new order.

Personal accounts: (Read them if you dare)

• http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontog20summit/article/829921–i-will-not-forget-what-they-have-done-to-me
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLt40d_AbU&
• http://rabble.ca/babble/activism/my-experience-g20-detention-centre
• http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/story/conditions-g20-dentention-centre-are-illegal-immoral-and-dangerous/3918
• http://lexgill.com/
• http://www.counterpunch.org/shultz07022010.html
• http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/story/story-my-arrest-detainment/3997
• http://www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/Ontario_2010/8530.html

I read today in the Toronto Star that Lady GaGa has reached 10 million friends on Facebook. That’s the highest recorded amount of friends for a living person on the popular networking site. Michael Jackson has 15 million friends. Gee, does he talk to them from the grave? What sort of updates could he be making? That would be worth reading if he is…. my apologies, I’m falling off topic. ;)

It was a brief article but in just a few sentences, my upside down world was set upright again. It said:

While she handily beats such contemporary pop stars as Justin Bieber (almost 6.5 million) and Taylor Swift (6.2 million), she still trails the Facebook fan list of the late Michael Jackson (almost 15 million).

I have been wondering if the entire world has gone nuts. I wrote in my blog recently complaining about how entertainment writers can’t seem to distinguish between an entertainer and an actual singer. These are two completely different animals, and although Justin is infectiously cute to 10 year old girls, and Taylor Swift seems to write songs that youngsters identify with – they could not be called “singers” as their talent is mainly studio processed. There is a lot of editing and fixing going on with most artists and unfortunately it is designed to trick people into hearing a more polished performance than the artist is capable of singing in a live situation. How would these artists exist if there was no such thing as auto-tune pitch correction? They wouldn’t.

I can remember when Def Leppard fans complained that they sounded nothing like their records live. Ticket buyers were angry because the multi-layered background vocals – a hallmark of producer Mutt Lange, weren’t possible in a live setting. The trend of fixing photogenic performers in the sound studio really began in the 1980′s  with the creation of music videos.

Lady GaGa on the other hand is actually, how do I put this delicately, … um … good. She has a good voice! She is capable of morphing not only her image, which she does gleefully at every opportunity, but she is a versatile singer as well. Like her or not, that’s your prerogative, but she has pipes. Unlike many in her generation, she doesn’t cheat her audience by using pre-recorded tracks for the main event. Instead, she keeps the dance moves simple while she sings. For better or worse Lady GaGa sings live.

I watched with amusement when she appeared on Saturday Night Live. She wore a costume that looked like the solar system. I’m not sure if this was an oversight, or an accident but there was a point in the performance when she is supposed to sit at the piano and sing. The outfit wouldn’t co-operate. But, like a true professional, she dealt with the problem almost seamlessly. She sat down, pulled the microphone closer, tried not to hit it with her solar system hoops, and sang – beautifully I might add. She had power, control, a warm tone and emotion. She did a good job under difficult circumstances.

Although people have compared her to Madonna, Lady GaGa has something Madonna doesn’t have – a real singing voice. Live, Madonna was difficult to listen to. She was “pitchy” as we call it in the industry. Her voice was lacking control and she warbled her way through her pop melodies.

I don’t think it was a secret to insiders that Madonna wasn’t a great singer because when she did the movie Evita, they hired her a vocal coach to handle the material she’d be singing. Entertainment writers were falling all over themselves to applaud her more controlled style of singing although it is unclear, and it will always be an industry secret – if she sang these songs without the aid of studio tricks. The movie was not “live” which means any number of techniques could have cleaned up Madonna’s shaky singing.

Although it is much more pleasing to the ear to hear songs recorded with the technology of today, there was a time when entire bands assembled in one room with one overhead microphone to record them – warts and all! Classic artists like Ray Charles, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder Aretha Franklin. Country legends such as Hank Snow, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn. Jazz greats like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker. All of these people began when there was no way to cheat. If you listen to some of those old records, you can hear the human element; mistakes. In the early days of records, artists had to get it right and quickly. 2″ Recording tape was expensive and artists had to be well rehearsed if they didn’t want to waste record company money.

In 1981, I worked at a recording studio in downtown Toronto where they did many of the commercials that appeared on radio. If my memory serves me correctly, we used Ampex magnetic tape; 1″ wide. I recall ordering a reel of tape. It was $80.00 – almost a week’s salary for an average person. 1″ magnetic tape could record 8 tracks which was typical for radio commercials. 2″ magnetic tape was used for recording artists and could store 16 tracks, athough lower budget artists would sometimes try to get the job done with just 8 tracks.  The studio owner would get very upset if the hired actors, voice-over people, fooled around too much because recording over the tape was a big no-no.

A couple of years later, I worked at factory which produced music cassettes. My job was quality control, although that title was an insult to my intelligence. I ran a master machine which would take the multi-track magnetic tape and run it in a loop while a dozen slaves would create reels of  1/4″ tape. Each of those tapes contained hundreds of copies of the recorded album which would later be cut down into individual cassettes by a handful of machines and their operators. It was a low budget operation. Often the tape would spill out onto the dusty floor (not good for magnetic tape) and be crinkled, or even torn. The technical staff would, against my better judgement – but under orders; iron the tape, and then splice (cut out and re-attach) the tape back together so it could be put back in the master machine. This meant that parts of songs would be missing. Good stuff huh?  Quality control? I wanted to kill myself.

So back to Lady GaGa and her live performance. Technology has progressed to the point where Lady GaGa wouldn’t have to sing a live note if she didn’t want to, but she chooses to. I have a  mountain of respect for that. I’m sure she is pressured by her handlers to save her voice but she gives all she has to her audience. And she gives them something which is rare today; herself. A real human voice. If she sings an off-key note, it would happen too quickly to be corrected. If her wardrobe makes it difficult for her to play the piano and sing, she still gives it a go. Good for her!

The very fact that she has 10 million Facebook followers redeems my faith that maybe live music is not dead. The audience hears something in her voice that they like and even if they don’t know what it is, they come – by the millions. While I realize that some of these people are just there because she is the flavour of the month, I think once they see her perform live, they will be lifelong fans. This woman has “it”. I hope she does well and shows the ailing recording industry that people DO want to hear real, live performances. They don’t buy tickets just to see a bunch of dancers lip syncing to over-processed studio tracks. Perhaps the era of beautiful looking, video friendly performers is at long last ending. Live music enriches our minds and inspires other musicians to create.

Sources:

• http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/article/832486–lady-gaga-books-record-number-of-fans
  The Star article about Lady GaGa’s facebook milestone.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune
  The Auto Tune Plug-In, pitch corrector
• http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/w0001736.html
  Former Ultravox’s frontman Midge Ure praises Lady GaGa’s live singing.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampex
  http://www.ampex.com/
  Ampex Magnetic tape