by Diane | Feb 11, 2012 | Uncategorised
I say this with only the tiniest trace of bitter jealousy: Kirstine Stewart, CBC’s Executive Vice President of English Services, is a beautiful woman. The kind of woman whose immaculate appearance makes me feel like I have a piece of broccoli stuck in my teeth.
But her appearance is irrelevant. This is a woman who heads our public broadcaster in a precarious time, and led it to its most successful winter launch. She’s paved the way to huge premieres for Arctic Air and Mr. D, and returning stalwarts such as Dragons’ Den and Rick Mercer Report , not to mention — I have to plug this until it’s renewed — fall’s innovative critical darling Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays.
So it’s hard to take it seriously when a random crank tweets to a Sun News personality: “just noticed @KStewartCBC sleevelesstop on her profile picture. She works for the CBC so is she a skank”.
Yes, please, protect us all from sinful upper arms. And semi-literate pundits.
It’s tempting to simply point to the hypocrisy of a society that judges powerful women by appearances. One of the dark sides of the House fandom is the undercurrent of misogyny toward co-showrunner Katie Jacobs, whose hair, fashion sense, and marital status were savaged by a small group of disgruntled fans with each unpopular creative turn. Fellow showrunner David Shore, who runs the writing room, was attacked for the actual words he said or wrote (I’m sure he’s thrilled).
I’ll spare you the rant about what that does to girls and point to the Miss Representation website. Because this isn’t just about women. How often have we heard Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s weight used against him, when his policies should be all the fuel we need? I’m pissed about the playground-level of discourse around serious issues we’ve come to accept all too often.
[pullquote]I’m pissed about the playground-level of discourse around serious issues we’ve come to accept all too often.[/pullquote]One of my favourite quotes in the interviews I did for the intervention article in Canadian Screenwriter was that the CBC was created to give Canadians something to complain about besides the weather. But don’t get me wrong: our public broadcaster is not above criticism. They deserve to be right in the line of fire often enough.
We don’t need to use Stewart’s upper arms against her any more than we need yet another cake joke against Ford. You want to attack the CBC? Or any leader, political or broadcast? Attack them with gusto – reasoned, intelligent gusto – or no one who doesn’t already side with you has any reason to listen to your petty bile. And people who do side with you should demand better.
We learned as kids that playground bullies aren’t equipped to make substantive criticism so they go for the easy target. OK, maybe we don’t learn it in those words, but we’re told something along those lines.
Maybe we need to start demanding more substance of Internet idiots, journalists, our friends and even ourselves. Next time I mock Justin Bieber’s hair, remind me it’s his music I dislike.
by Diane | Jul 8, 2011 | Uncategorised
Last night I was scrounging around the old blog to find the name of the textbook that reprinted one of my articles (fruitlessly – apparently I didn’t post about it – so thanks, Google Books search, for letting me know it was Electronic Media Criticism: Applied Perspectives by Peter B. Orlik .) It was part of my mission to create this still-a-work-in-progress website to collect all my online activities in one place, but it led to me poking around the archives, reliving Edmonton as Egypt and Egypt as Egypt, for example.
And as egotistical as it sounds, I missed me. That is, I miss the me who used to take joy in writing and sharing for no reason, before the Olympic job sucked my life away and then, after a brief reboot, before I let the joy get sucked out of blogging.
So I’m rebooting again and reclaiming the joy. I’ll leave the old blog to collect dust over on Blogspot, but I’ve imported the personal-essay-like-objects here. I won’t continue linking to things I do for TV, eh?, etc. because that’s what the rest of this site does – gives a place for everything, without everything being pushed into one stream. This will be my place for those “random thoughts on life that swirl together in my little brain and try to collide into one cohesive idea,” my unified theory of nothing much, may that name rest in peace.
by Diane | May 29, 2010 | Uncategorised
From Telegraph Cove, Vancouver Island:
When you get a frog to paint your house, you gotta give him a ladder.
by Diane | May 26, 2010 | Uncategorised
I’d been thinking my next post would be a lighthearted rant against grammar snobs who try to train the universe in the lessons they remember from grammar school. I have many dear friends who I love very much who take pride in looking down on people who violate the rules as they see them, and I’d posit they’re not only misguided but often they’re just plain wrong. That rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition? That’s the most nonsensical grammar “rule” that even most modern-day grammarians don’t accept as a rule.
Maybe that’s why I picked a fight with The Big Bang Theory creator Bill Prady on Twitter. That and I love a good debate on nerdy subjects. That and apparently I didn’t really want that interview with him during the Banff World Television Festival after all.
Today, he seemingly randomly started a string of tweets instructing his followers on word usage and pronunciation, one of which was dictating against the use of alright.
Coincidentally, I’d just linked to an article from TV, eh? to the Toronto Star headlined “Murdoch star alright being wrong.” The usage surprised me because most publications avoid it – I avoid it – exactly because of grammar snobs like Prady who see it as a less educated form of all right, despite accepting that altogether and already are already in standard usage.
The man created The Big Bang Theory, not the big bang. If there were a grammar deity, I’d like to think s/he would preach evolution and tolerance of regional differences and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Language evolves. If it didn’t, Prady’s Sheldon and Leonard would be spouting Old English. If Prady wrote all his characters’ dialogue in grammar sanctioned by a style guide, he’d never have made it as a professional TV writer; people don’t talk that way. For the most part, they don’t write that way, either. I’m guessing Sheldon does, but like Data in Star Trek, that in itself is a character tic.
Another person interjected with a link to Stephen Fry – a master of the language himself – who said it better than I ever could:
There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.
Language can be beautiful. It can be messy. Sometimes the beauty is in the mess, and the ugliness is people trying to tame it.
Prady took our disagreement well, though, ending by telling me: “You can have an interview — it will be limited to the correct spelling of ‘all right,’ though.”
by Diane Wild | Mar 14, 2009 | Uncategorised
I know, I know, I never write, I never call. The lack of activity will likely continue until about March 2010, so I will make no promises about rebooting this blog nor will I continue to apologize when I do happen to re-emerge, because I know that just gets annoying. If you happen to still be reading, though, I have to share my laugh of the week:
Non-Potable Water – DO NOT DRINK
Taken at the new speed skating oval. Sorry for the poor image quality but I was taking a picture of a toilet – the haste apparently made my hands shake.
by Diane Wild | Dec 31, 2008 | Uncategorised
