Philoillogica

Study in black and white

You can see the four of them above the fold, their hands and faces starkly contrasting against the white background: two middle-aged adults, beaming broadly, their hands lovingly arranged around their two beautiful sons.  The older child has his arms thrown backward around his father's neck in a three-year old's ubiquitous "tickle me" posture, while his younger brother desperately tries to arch himself forward out of the frame, a fourteen-month-old "tornado" momentarily restricted by his mother's solid grasp. 

Oh, and the boys are black.  Their parents are white.

This, I expect, is why the little boys are naked except for diapers, their little brown tummies highlighted against their white parents in their white shirts against a white bed.  In case we might not notice if they were dressed, the Globe and Mail has thoughtfully stripped the children that their explicit blackness may be fully exposed.

Below the fold, I learn that "The United States exports newborns by the hundreds for international adoption each year.  Canada is a preferred destination point..."

"Interesting," I think.  "So now we import black children under NAFTA."  I turn to page 7 anticipating a dose of comparison between the US and Canada, doubtless chock-full of gratuitous Canuck self-congratulation and insufficient analysis of the socio-cultural effects of adoption across national, racial, ethnic and class lines.  1300 words later, Jane Armstrong does not disappoint:

The United States is exporting newborns by the hundreds and Canada is a preferred destination.

Most of the infants are African American or biracial; their birth mothers want them to be raised outside the United States and believe Canada is a land of little racial strife.

Although there are no officials [sic] figures, an estimated 500 African-American babies are adopted abroad each year. In the past 20 years, about 300 have come to British Columbia, where blacks account for less than 0.7 per cent of the population.

Scandalized yet?  Our neighbour to the South is "exporting" African-American babies to Canada "by the hundreds." (It sounds almost like they're being shipped out in UPS boxes, doesn't it?) Clearly, we dutifully self-righteous folk are supposed to react strongly in some way, perhaps with abhorrence and a rousing game of our cherished Canadian sport of America-bashing.

I assume that this must be so, because I can't imagine what else would possess a seasoned journalist like Jane Armstrong to choose to use the word "export" to describe the movement of human beings.    I know that Armstrong must know that "export" means

To send or transport abroad merchandise, especially for sale or trade.

I also know that Armstrong must know that using such a mercantile word to reference children who belong to a race of people that were explicitly defined as property until just over two hundred years ago would be an unbelievably cheap way to tug at a reader's heartstrings.  It would also be belittling and, dare I say it, racist, especially when we have a perfectly valid way to describe the moment of human beings across national borders:

            emigrate:  To leave one country or region to settle in another.

(Quibblers, of course, could argue that babies can't emigrate by themselves, so the application of an intransitive verb would be inappropriate to describe the trans-border movement of the small, helpless, pooping machines that capture our hearts so dearly.  Perhaps they'd be right, too.  I still can't see how this could possibly mitigate Armstrong's use of "export", however.)

After determining through sheer, uncredited speculation that "hundreds" of American children are adopted by Canadians each year (why offer the source of the 500 Fed-Exed babes in arms annually shipped into Canada, really? It's not as if Globe readers might want to check up on that) Armstrong's sensational article continues, profiling the Alexander family of Langley, B.C. who were pictured on the front page.  The parents describe the adoption process they went through to gain their sons through a private Georgia adoption agency, cumulating in the typical but nonetheless sweet recollection of parents seeing their child for the first time:

When the couple first laid eyes on Elias lying in a crib in a foster home near Atlanta, they both burst into tears. The three-month-old infant, who had been crying, suddenly stopped. “It felt like he knew who we were,” Ms. Alexander, 36, said, recalling her first minutes with her elder son.

Fair enough.  Afterward, though, the surreal profiling of saintly white Canadians continues, the following paragraph making their role of saviour quite plain in our post Katrina world:

The Alexanders' rear porch backs onto a wooded marsh threaded with a creek and bicycle paths. In the distance, the snow-capped Coast Mountains gleam in the autumn sunlight. It's light years from the muggy heat and segregation of the Deep South where both boys were born.

In the rhetoric books, they call the act of placing two things close together in contrast to indicate difference "juxtaposition".  In case it's not clear enough, the two things being juxtaposed here are British Columbia (a land of snow-topped mountains, a temperate climate and fresh air) and the Deep South (presumably a swath of humidity and burning crosses as far as the eye can see).  Thank goodness the Alexander boys have been spared from mosquito country!  How altruistic are these Canadians to bring these nonthreatening refugees into our land of deciduous trees!

But it isn't only mildew and frizzy hair that American babies are spared in their flight across international borders - it's racism:

Walter Gilbert, The Open Door's CEO, said Canada appeals to African-American mothers because the culture and language are similar, plus there is a belief that racism in not nearly as prevalent.

“Is the U.S. more racist?” Mr. Gilbert asked in a telephone interview. “We say yes.”

It's all relative, I suppose.  If you're in the business of "exporting" children, you probably have a vested interest in believing that your major trading partner's a pretty fair guy.  I mean, that's what we've got NAFTA for, right?

And so the Canada as a safe space for black people refrain sounds high, reverberating right to the tops of the Rockies as once again our national identity is defined by what we are not: American.  And this makes us feel good about ourselves:

Mr. Gilbert said he recently asked a black 13-year-old whose adoption to British Columbia was arranged by The Open Door to describe his experiences with racism. The boy said he had been taunted and teased at school about five or six times in his life.

“If that child had grown up here, in southeastern United States, he would have been called the ‘n' word every day of his life,” Mr. Gilbert said. “In Canada, it appears like it is just a matter of incidental racism, whereas here, it's a daily occurrence.”

Hmm.  Since when is calling somebody "the 'n' word" EVER "just a matter of incidental racism", unconnected to issues of entitlement, oppression or society's complicit approval?  Gilbert seems to be saying that explicit racism is bearable, so long as it only happens fewer times in grade school as one has fingers. I don't know any Canadian who would be proud of our country after hearing a thirteen-year-old claim to "only" recall being taunted about his skin colour "five or six" times. Call me picky, but that doesn't scream inclusivity or understanding to me, more like an insidious underpinning of racism which only occasionally boils up to the surface in a manner recognizable by a child.  Gilbert's refusal to take this boy's word at anything other than face value demonstrates his willful ignorance of Canada's systemic racism in deferral to our aptly-named Great White North.

This deliberate disregard for the all-too-easily-ignored systemic racism of Canada is continued by Armstrong, who writes as if it's a dismissible phenomenon:

The Alexanders know that racism exists in Canada, although they believe that in a province like British Columbia their children are viewed more as exotic curiosities. While the Lower Mainland is as diverse as any other Canadian urban centre, with large Asian and Indo-Canadian populations, blacks are few and far between on the streets of Vancouver.

Armstrong's use of the word "although" here begs her audience to assume that evidence will follow which mitigates the undeniable claim that "racism exists in Canada."  But we don't actually get that evidence at all - what we are left with instead is an unfinished comparison that begins "their children are viewed more as exotic curiosities."  But what's missing is the "than ____" statement.  The Alexander children are viewed more as "exotic curiosities" than what ? Black people? "Niggers"? Domestic curiosities? What exactly is being excused by the claim that people view the Alexander children as "exotic curiosities?"

Maybe we should look at the term "exotic," which means

        From another part of the world; foreign.

Well, the Alexander boys were foreign, being born Americans, so I suppose that's technically accurate.  But what seems to be significant is that the boys are "viewed" foreign by virtue of their skin colour alone.  After all, only 0.7% of the B.C. population looks like them - they don't "match" this part of the world, and are foreign because they look like they must come from another part.

And so the article might be expected now to discuss the unique aspects of parenting children of a different race, listing the never-ending series of questioned assumptions and self-doubt and confronted biases and more self-doubt and accusations by strangers and reflections on the purpose of parenting and the nature of adoption and more self-doubt and confronting nosy people in supermarkets and a great deal of research.  Maybe we readers might be offered some of the poignant and heartwarming insights of people such as Shannon and Dawn (both linked in my sidebar) who are white mothers raising black daughters while struggling with issues of race in America.

As white parents, they can't live in their children's shoes or identify with the experiences the boys will encounter as they grow up in a predominantly white culture. But the couple have taken pains to expose the youngsters to other black children and adults. Once a month, they take their kids to a nearby playgroup for black children.

Or maybe not.  Maybe instead we'll get a encapsulating idea of "blackness" as a virus that children can be "exposed" to (yet another excellent word choice by Armstrong, who I'll tactfully assume had forgotten that she could also use that obscure verb, "experience", which means "the apprehension of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind" without the belittling connotations of "expose").

Let's be plain: we do not live in a "predominantly white culture," we live in a default white culture, where in the absence of another marker, whiteness is the assumed norm. The Alexander boys are "exotic curiosities" precisely because their black skin is so unequivocally NOTwhite that they stand out in their community as sharply as they do in their photo on the front page.  The self-conscious and artificial playgroup is likewise testament to the fact that black children in BC are NOTwhite, and all the see-saws and sandboxes in the world are not going to make it any easier on the children who are being stared at. 

But it isn't just the practical failings of the monthly play group that are troubling.  What is truly disturbing is the way that all meaningful difference is condensed into the rubric of NOTwhite-ness:

The couple once lived in Senegal and have African friends. “We aren't black and we can't pretend to be or pretend it doesn't matter,” Ms. Alexander said. “We can only hope they won't feel like strangers to this heritage when they are older.”

And what heritage would that be exactly? Black heritage? American heritage? Poverty heritage? Armstrong's implicit assumption here is that the only difference that truly matters in one of skin tone, the divisions between various cultures surmountable by the inclusiveness offered by the notion of universal "black culture".  One cannot fathom even for a moment this sort of fallacy committed about "white culture". Imagine a national newspaper claiming that the lives of Greek citizens and Irish citizens are essentially similar, both sharing a level of melatonin that surpasses any distinctions of language, religion or behaviour!

And yet, Armstrong's article supposes exactly this, her tacit approval of the black playgroup stolidly refuting any notions of diversity within a black community.  The only identified black individual in the article is a man whose race identifier forces him into a position of role model to children whose cultural and economic heritage he doesn't share:

When Elias and Keiran get older, they might turn to someone like Troy Peart for advice on how to live as a black man in a white-dominated culture.

Mr. Peart, 33, is one of a handful of black mentors who gather once a month at a community centre in the Vancouver area to play with black kids. The financial adviser with the Bank of Montreal was born in Sudbury and raised in Scarborough, Ont. His parents came from Jamaica.

Mr. Peart understands the isolation of being black on Canada's West Coast. He helped start the playgroup to be a role model to black youngsters, many of whom don't know any black adults.

And Mr. Peart, it seems, is desperately needed.  Indeed, it is incredibly problematic when the black child asks his white father when he too, is going to "turn white," or when another child believes that black people only work at fast-food restaurants.  Mr Peart's role as a surrogate black man is to divest these kids of those impressions, his mere presence as a professional adult testifying to the false and limiting nature of stereotypes.  But Armstrong fails to examine the questions begged by the presence of this playgroup as well as the abstract "love is all you need" parenting that could allow a child to conclude that his skin colour will change to look like his father's as he grows into adulthood.  What kind of parenting strategy can fail to notice that the only place a child sees adults who look like him is at McDonald's?

And this is where the "love is all you need" article falls in tatters - parenting is not just a matter of love, but a matter of judgment, practicality and a great deal of action.  Part of being a parent is also anticipating and shaping children's perceptions of the world, giving them the strength and independence to view themselves as capable and worthy beings.  It is not, contrary to what the commentators on the online Globe article seem to believe, in "selflessly" giving oneself over needy little beasties who look charming in booties, but in recognising that parenting is also an inherently selfish act that gives adults a great deal of pleasure.

The Alexanders, it seems, are the only ones quoted in the article that get this:   

The Alexanders don't want to be viewed as a middle-class couple flying in to “rescue” two poor black boys. If anything, the reverse is true, Ms. Alexander said.

“They have blessed our lives beyond measure already. We feel privileged to have the honour of raising and sharing their lives with their birth parents.”

And so Armstrong's article ends with the honest gratitude of adoptive parents to the birth families who gave them the children they adore.

But the story of Elias and Keiran Alexander is only beginning.  As babies, it is easy for them now to be mere "exotic curiosities" in Langley, B.C., cherubic pudgy darlings fit to grace the front cover of the Globe and Mail.  Their blackness is sweetly "exotic" to those who see them, a feature of their beings that is pieced out like candy in a monthly playgroup.  But when they are fourteen and sixteen years old, Elias and Keiran will no longer be mere "curiosities" in a white world - they will become "exotic threats".  As the boys grow into adults, the patronizing language used to describe them here will become indefensible - they will no longer be "exports" from the United States, but independent agents capable of independent action.  And their NOTwhiteness will make them suspect.  We know that all the playgroup in the world will not have prepared them adequately for the real Canada of the Somalia Regiment and beating of Jama Jama and "None is too many," and yet our oldest national paper likes to pretend that to overcome these crimes, all you need is love.

Because, you know, we're not as bad as those prejudiced Americans.  Just ask any thirteen-year-old boy.

Harper breathes easy, now that there's only ONE of them

Grit's lead over Tories slimmer: poll

(Now that's what I call a "teachable moment")

That Newfoundlander ritual's not all it's cracked up to be

Sucking a Fishermen's Friend could get you into trouble

If your name was 'Mint head Dingwall', wouldn't you?

Mint head Dingwall resigns, wants to clear his name

Marriage is a contract best undertaken by perfect strangers

Don't get your hopes up, Balki. Larry won't buy the cow if he can get the milk for free.

The National Pest reports today that y'all who are living in sin are really asking for it. 

Anne-Marie Ambert, a sociology professor at York University, said her review of recent research shows that couples who lived together before getting married face as much as double the risk of separation as those who lived apart.

Okay.  This is all very scientific-sounding, and easily proven.  You crunch some numbers, write a report, hypothesize about cause and effect, issue a press release.  The media picks up on it ("Carbohydrates are good for you!" "Carbohydrates are bad for you!"), and people absorb nothing but the headline, make a comment to their partner at breakfast, and promptly forget about it by supper. Pass the rolls, dear.  A researcher's year of work, neatly condensed into six hundred words above the fold.  Typical broadside, well done, you.  But what's with the opening sentence making it all about women?

A woman dreaming of a stable marriage should make sure she gets an engagement ring before moving in with her partner, according to the author of a new study exposing the downside of premarital cohabitation.

Ah.  Classic Post.  Putting the onus for maintaining relationship security on the woman.  Now, I'm not saying that there's a patriarchal imperative influencing the editorial decisions at the Post (hey, blaming the patriarchy isn't MY byline), and I'm certain that the spectacularly sexist opening of the article (by Graeme Hamilton, staff writer - can't blame this one on CP, Mr. Asper) probably has more to do with rhetorical effect than a mandate to endorse a systemic attempt to keep women domesticated.  As a writing teacher, I know that really, what's going on in the above sentence is mere metonymy, the "substitution of something closely related to the thing for the thing itself."

Because, you see, since men don't dream of "stable marriage", and since men aren't the exchanged property in a betrothal contract, there's no classic symbol for exchange as readily understood as the "engagement ring."  It's much easier for Hamilton to slip into a familiar "women like glossy objects before settling down and breeding" mode of journalism than it is for him to, say, actually make an effort to communicate genuine ideas.  Why write something new, after all, when you can just feed recycled images into the public consciousness over and over again?

But for me anyway, Hamilton's lazy writing isn't the main issue here.  What is positively precious is the following quotation from the study's author, Professor Anne-Marie Ambert of York University:

"If I were a young woman who wanted to get married and have children -- which means by definition that I want to have a solid marriage -- I would not cohabit before marriage or would cohabit only once I am engaged,'' she said in an interview yesterday.

Recognizing the dearth of quotable soundbites from ostensible scientists descrying the downfall of the nuclear family, Ambert has thoughtfully offered herself as an expert to bolster any wingnut appraisal of what women are doing wrong now.  In case you hadn't heard, we uterine-cases are going about the marriage thing all wrong if we think "stability" has anything to do with one's relationship to one's partner.  Apparently the definition of "a solid marriage" is "having children", and those of us happily enjoying our ovary-framing devices for other purposes are going about it all wrong. 

Nobody knows what the men think about all this, of course, because nobody thought to ask them.  What do men know about marriage anyway, right?

And of course, the Post article offers us all kinds of gooey statistics and sticky conclusions:

''We used to hear the term trial marriage, but it just isn't that. If living together was really a trial marriage, you would expect that those who lived together before would have a better relationship when they're married ... and therefore would divorce less,'' Prof. Ambert said.

''Well, quite the contrary happens. Those who cohabit have up to twice the rate of divorce after they're married.''

She cited a 2000 Canadian study that found, in the 20-to-30-year-old age group, a 63% separation rate for women whose first relationship was co-habitational compared with 33% among those who married before moving in.

I'm going to assume that Ambert's asinine use of the present tense of "cohabit" is an error. Otherwise, she seems to be suggesting that it's the act of living together which leads to divorce, putting her in the odd position of advocating that married couples who truly take their relationship seriously should live apart (in which case, Sandor and I are totally set).  "Cohabitation leads to problems!  Don't let your husband keep a toothbrush in your bathroom, or you've increased your risk of divorce by 15%!"

So assuming that what Ambert really means is "Those who cohabit[ed before marriage] have up to twice the rate of divorce after they're married," one might expect that she'd cite a study that actually says so.  Now this may be Hamilton's lazy writing appearing again, but it seems that in support of her position that women are asking for trouble if they give away the milk for free, she's  actually citing a study that says no such thing.  What a "a 63% separation rate for women whose first relationship was co-habitational compared with 33% among those who married before moving in" really means is that women in their twenties whose "first relationships" end in marriage are less likely to separate from their partners than those whose relationships don't end in marriage. 

Well knock me over with a feather.  That may be why they call marriage a legal commitment.  I've also heard a rumour that divorce is more complicated than simply divvying up the CDs and hiring a cube van - I wonder if that has something to do with it?

Oh, no, Ambert's got the interpretation of that study covered too.  Thank goodness for experts! 

She identified several factors contributing to the unhappy outcome of relationships that began with cohabitation:

Oh, good.  Now all relationships that "began with cohabitation" are doomed.  Somebody tell Kit Marlowe that his "come live with me an be my love" business is so over.

- Some people choose cohabitation because they do not feel it requires sexual fidelity and, particularly among men, it represents less of a commitment than marriage. ''However, many of these less committed couples do move on to the next stage, which is marriage,'' she writes.

Clearly, polyamory is WRONG, a symbol of "less of a commitment than marriage."  Thank goodness people don't have sex outside of marriage, ever, or things might get complicated for sociologists like Prof. Ambert.

- One study found that in the first two years of marriage, couples who previously lived together tended to be less supportive of each other and worse at solving problems in their relationships than those who had not cohabited.

So, those who had lived together previously, having already solved the "you leave the cap off the toothpaste" problem, and the "your mother's painting is NOT going up in the bedroom, EVER" problem, have moved on to the considerably more complicated series of problems such as "you don't make love to me the way you used to" and "we always hang out with your friends".  In contrast, the happy newlyweds are blissfully laying down "No crackers in bed" rules and filling up their solved-problem dance card faster than you can say "logical fallacy."

- Women who cohabited before marriage report a greater incidence of premarital violence than those who did not cohabit, which in turn leads to more marital violence.

Gee, so women who are around their partners more often are more likely to get abused by them? You think?  And women are somehow to blame for this phenomenon?

- People who have lived together before marriage are more likely to approve of divorce.

Classic retrospective determinism.  If you approve of divorce, you're going to divorce. 

- Couples who cohabit are less religious than those who do not, and several studies show a correlation between religious faith and marital stability.

*Gasp!* A correlation between religious faith and marital stability?  How could that ever happen in a world where the Catholic church still outlaws divorce?

So, does pooling rent money before registering for china necessarily mean inevitable splitsville for childless heathens?  Well, no:

Prof. Ambert acknowledged many relationships that begin with couples shacking up end in long, happy marriages. And even if the statistics argue against cohabitation, she does not expect to reverse a growing trend. In 2001, 16% of all Canadian couples --and 30% of couples in Quebec --were living together outside marriage.

But hang on a minute, this is a BIG PROBLEM, says the sociologist.  It's gonna lead to the downfall of society as we know it, causing the crime rate to rise, and elevating cholesterol levels, and hallmarking a plague on all our houses:

''Who's going to listen to the message these studies give? Let's face it, nobody is,'' she said. ''The trend is that we're going to see more cohabitation.''

The under-25 age group is the most approving of cohabitation, she said, an attitude she predicted could lead to a higher overall divorce rate.

''As a researcher, you look at this for policy implications, and these statistics worry me,'' she said.

''I don't think that the impact on society is very healthy. More children are going to be born in more unstable family structures, so it's going to be costly for the welfare system, for the schools, mental health and even jail."

Stable family structures, it seems, being MARRIAGE.  MARRIAGE is the cure for welfare, for underfunded schools, for mental illness, and for the overwrought justice system.   

Ever hear the phrase, "to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"?  Somehow I think Ambert's a little too eager to martyr the institution of marriage on a cross, a Pilate washing her hands in full view of the multitude.   They brought it all on themselves, after all, those filthy cohabitors - they made the wrong decision, and doomed us all to the whims of that horrible red lady with the goblet riding the dragon.   Her and Satan aren't married, you know.  They just live together.

Finally, some positive news for necrophiliacs

Nuclear fallout helps with dating corpses

Why postmodernism matters

I know; I can't believe I wrote that either. 

Being in a graduate English programme, I can't turn around without tripping over heady mullings of truth, human nature consistently debated into meaninglessness, the gleeful nihilism of twenty-somethings fueled by beer wrecking even the most frivolous of entertainments.

"Yes," said the man wearing a Raggedy Ann costume, as he reached for another pink cupcake.  "But as Baudrillard says, we have only meaning in our imitations, and we exist only for hyperreality.  It's the illusion of perfection."  He had frosting on his nose, but nobody said anything.

And so on.  What might have been fun has been completely derailed by a self-conscious speech of parroting, a handful of buffeting egos swelled like floats in the Macy's Parade.  It's for this reason that I've cultivated a sardonic facade of hating theory, feigning ignorance when the topic comes up and usually claiming that I'd much rather discuss the history of the italic font.   

Because you see, if I have icing on my nose, I want to know - I don't want to endorse a system of belief in no belief, or Matrix-like, declare, "there is no icing.  In fact, there is no nose." 

To use blog lingo, sometimes I just want to "call bullshit."

And because theory is so pervasive in academe that it practically drips down the blackboards like honey - grad students swarming like drunk bees desperately trying to access the queen - I tend to forget that it only appears in the mainstream media if it is couched in the cyberpunk veneer of science fiction film.  Postmodernism or Derrida might come up in an article in Harper's or something, but it's only vague notions that trickle down in much-diluted forms into the daily papers or msn, which is why the Globe and Mail can write articles like this:

Ottawa — Canada's spy agency denied yesterday that it misled a civilian oversight body, but promised new measures to address the "unacceptable" impression that it hides the truth.

These steps include directives to managers to hand over "all relevant information" when the oversight body requests it.

Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, who is responsible for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, issued a statement yesterday indicating she was "concerned" about a report that accuses CSIS of "purposefully" misleading an investigation.

A spokeswoman for the minister said Ms. McLellan will get to the bottom of the issue.

"There are two sides to every story and we're waiting for CSIS to give us their side," Lia Quickert said.

Paule Gauthier, a former chairwoman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, slammed CSIS in a report released this week for cutting corners and giving the false impression that documents embarrassing to CSIS did not exist.

The whole article makes me leery for a host of reasons, not least of which because it smacks of Orwell's Ministry of Truth, what with Ms. Quickert's ambiguous scare quotes and the demented role of a spokeswoman who is unable to say much of anything at all.   "The story" - ie, truth - is presented as having only two sides; in this case, CSIS's and SIRC's, which are at opposite ends of a binary.  One is right and the other is wrong and the honourable member from Edmonton Centre is the one who gets to decide which is which.

But since Anne McLellan is a very busy lady, what with being deputy PM and all, her "truth" (once she decides what it is) will be provided to the media by her aides, and to us by that media, mediated by all those biases and truths before landing its way into our newspapers and homepages.  At this point, its status as "truth" in the Platonic sense is completely lost, even to someone whose credulity is so open that they'd accept anything a politician has to say.

So before we begin to watch obfuscation in action, let's take a look at what is being said here, exactly.  Let's go over what we know:   

* The watchdog committee for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is calling bullshit on CSIS for lying and saying that documents that they destroyed "don't exist."   

* CSIS says that they don't really know what happened, but surely, if things are destroyed they don't really exist anymore, and so technically they're not hiding anything from anyone if they destroy documents that are rather embarrassing and then don't refer to them ever again.

*Though CSIS claims it has done nothing wrong, it promises to divulge "all relevant information" in the future, so long as SIRC doesn't ask for a definition of the words "all," "relevant" or "information".

* Because Anne McLellan is "responsible" for CSIS, she has to play good parent and listen to her child's excuse for dissolving the public trust before she can figure out what sort of punishment will be suitable.

Alright so far? So let's watch the Orwellian politicking begin.

Bhupinder Singh Liddar had requested the review of CSIS's decision to block his Oct. 21, 2003, diplomatic appointment as consul-general to Chandigarh, India, because he had been involved in pro-Arab causes.

Ms. McLellan said in a statement that she has asked CSIS director Jim Judd to review the report, including its criticism that CSIS destroys interview notes.

"The director of CSIS has indicated to the chair of SIRC that, while the service did not believe that it had misled the committee, any such impression is unacceptable," she said.

Ms. McLellan hasn't yet decided what is the truth, Ms. Quickert said. "She doesn't have a view on this. The director [of CSIS] will be coming back to her on this."

Ms. Quickert said she would not speculate about whether there would be disciplinary action if in fact the service "purposefully misled" the committee.

She said the minister was unavailable for an interview because she is in The Matrix Pakistan.

Okay, so I made that last part up.  But you get the general idea of how skewed the idea of "truth" has become, if we let Anne McLellan get to decide what it is, and I'm calling bullshit on the type of journalism that lets politico-Newspeak stand when it is obviously filled with mealy-mouthed nothingness.

It's pretty clear from this that as far as CSIS is concerned, it has carte blanche to do whatever it likes, secure in a semantic blanket of literal truth, while its civilian watchdog agencies have to keep themselves warm with the occasional admittance of their existence in the pages of Canada's oldest daily.  Right after the travesty of a statement by Ms. Quickert that's bolded above, the spokeswoman implies that "truth" will come not from a detailed examination of facts, but from the director of CSIS.   Ms. McLellan must reserve judgment, after all , to determine whether CSIS's error was "intentional" or a mere oversight.

The report's harshest criticism of CSIS focused on the agency's response to requests for information about security screening around the time of Mr. Liddar's appointment in the final weeks of Jean Chrétien's term as prime minister.

Ms. Gauthier wrote that when she and Mr. Liddar's lawyer asked CSIS for documents relating to Mr. Liddar before December of 2003, the agency replied that no "security clearance" was done at that time.

But when Mr. Liddar obtained new files showing CSIS did a security check that fall, the agency told Ms. Gauthier a security clearance is different from a security check.

Technically, CSIS is right:  "check" and "clearance" are in fact two different words (that's what those extra letters after the 'c' mean).

check     ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (chk)
n.  5. A standard for inspecting or evaluating; a test.

clear·ance     ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (klîrns)
n.  1. The act or process of clearing.  6.  Official certification of blamelessness, trustworthiness, or suitability.

Yup.  Totally different.  But gee, I wonder how on Earth Mr. Liddar and his lawyer could've been mislead, given that in order to accept a diplomatic appointment, one has to have security clearance granted by a security check?  I mean, it's not like the two terms are causally related or anything, nor are they frequently used interchangeably.  Don't forget, sexual relations with cigars don't count, and you need to inhale.  Lying by omission isn't technically lying, after all, especially when it's for the public good.

Ron Atkey seems to think that this sort of thing is blasé:

When asked whether there should be consequences such as firings at CSIS, Mr. Atkey said "there may be," but added the agency's behaviour is much improved.

"Security intelligence is a dirty business. There's always room for error," he said.

For the third time in this post, I call bullshit.

Blog round up: better than that stuff that kills weeds

So instead of working, I'm...

...sobbing over Getupgrrl's birth story for Gefilte...

...endorsing this kickass poster over at feministing...

...peeing myself over Dooce's telephone conversations with her sister...

...counterbalancing Getupgrrl's heartwarming account with a much less sentimental version of the birth process from TwistyFaster...

...hoping that Skot's harrassment seminar taught him a few more propositional phrases as good as "I wanna bang you like a screen door"...

...crying, again, thanks to Fussy...

Jesus, that was intense.  Now I'm going back to work.

An entry in which we learn that the Canadian vocabulary is going to H-E-double hockey sticks in a hand basket, and I don't give a fuck

The following entry is periodically interrupted to answer questions from American readers.

The CBC reports today that for the first time ever, the Canadian Press Caps and Spelling guide has seen fit to determine how Canadians are allowed to see the word "fuck" in print. 

(Yes, just now.  2005, why?  What do you mean what year is this?  Hell-lo, Canadian.  We don't allow caffeine in our Mountain Dew, remember?  No Sunday shopping in Halifax? Right. Canada.)

It seems that until today, the editors of Press Caps have seen fit to ignore this obscenity, preferring instead to supply the media with detailed instructions on how to spell "Fudgsicle" (with a capital 'F') and the abbreviation for "son of a bitch" (lower case, with periods, don't count the 'a'). 

According to the editors, "fuck," that glorious catch-all shockword used equally frequently as a noun ("I don't give a fuck"), verb ("We fucked it up"), modifying adjective ("fucking awesome"), intensifier ("what the fuck did you do that for?"), and even as a punctuation mark ("Fuck this fucking fucker, I'm going to fuck him up") has received so little of their attention because up until recently it was hardly used.

(Yes, apparently Canadians use the word "Fudgsicle" more than we use the word "fuck".  I don't know.  Maybe the Prairies.)

Anyway, "fuck" has found its way into the press guide because the term in its various incarnations has found its way into the popular vernacular:

"We found the word was creeping into our news stories on a fairly regular basis, probably because people are saying it more and more in public, and various media pick it up on their microphones and recorders," said Patti Tasko, editor of Caps and Spelling.

And if people say it, the media's supposed to report it.  No editorializing, no censorship. No "effin' " this, or "f*&$" that.  No, no.  Not for Canadians any more - we now we get to see "fucking" in black and white with no metaphors whatsoever.

(Yes, seriously. What do your media do?  Really? And yet you still watch CNN?  FoxNews? Whoa. You people must have really great media literacy programmes that let you filter all that spin out, huh?  What?  Oh, like the WMD stuff.  No they didn't.  They didn't. No. That was made up.  Rove. ROVE. Oh, forget it.)

And of course, it wouldn't be a real article about modern language usage unless it had a tragic "we're fucking up our Anglo heritage!" element attached to it, pace Mrs. Reverend Lovejoy ("would somebody please think of the children!"):

"It's much more socially acceptable than it used to be," says Katherine Barber, the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. "I hear children using it a lot. I hear them walking down the street saying it, and I mean young children who are only nine or 10 years old. Maybe children that age have always been running around yelling it, but I don't think so."

Thank you Ms. Barber. 

Anyway, check out the coyness of the CBC article, which manages to write a whole 300 words on the word "fuck" without actually printing it, choosing instead such trite euphemisms as "the word that rhymes with 'duck' "and "the most infamous four-letter word."

*
Postings will be light this week, as Philoillogica attempts to write a long-overdue paper on the care and feeding of editorial apparatus in the case of radiating texts of indeterminate authorship.  I don't know what any of those words mean, but they sound pretty good, and I have to string about 4,000 or so more together and couple them all with wit and charm that give the impression that I am, in Clayton J Delery's terms: "a subject presumed to know". 

Only $16,000 (U.S.) to feel like a natural woman

Well, Edward Greenspon has outdone himself yet again.  Doubtlessly inspired by the ample news coverage of an LA strip club advertising "Vaginas 'R Us", the Editor-in-Chief of the Glib and Male has decided to expend precious front-page inches keeping us informed on the ins and outs of Los Angeles cunts.  There's nothing like starting your weekend with a cup of coffee and an article that tells you step-by-step how to feel flabby and raggedy in your girly bits:

Women from around the world flock to David Matlock's marble waiting room carrying purses stuffed with porn. The magazines are revealed only in the privacy of his office, where doctor and patient debate the finer points of each glossy photo.

The enterprising gynecologist sees countless images of naked women, but none are more popular than Playboy's fresh-faced playmates. They represent, he says with a knowing smile, the perceived ideal.

“Some women will say, ‘Hey, you take this picture and hang it up in the operating room and refer back to it when you're sculpturing me,'” he said in an interview in his clinic overlooking hazy Los Angeles. “I say, ‘Okay, all right, fine.'”

Dr. Matlock is a colourful pioneer in a controversial — and growing — frontier of plastic surgery: nipping and tucking vaginas. Patients from the United States and more than 30 other countries pay thousands of dollars for his “designer vagina,” a purely esthetic procedure that includes shortening or plumping up the labia, or vaginal lips. He attracts even more women for an operation he claims improves sex by tightening, or “rejuvenating,” the vagina.

See, I when I use the word "rejuvenating," I think of splashing cold water on something.  Dr Matlock obviously uses "rejuvenating" in OED sense 2b: "to take advantage of the lesser gender's insecurity and disadvantage, by carving into the flesh of its primary sex characteristics for fun and profit."

But I shouldn't be so harsh.  Dr. Matlock and his ilk are philanthropists, after all, doing what they do for the good of women everywhere:

“There's a need for this,” he said. “Women are driving this. I didn't create this market, the market was there.”

While doctors have long known how to enhance women's genitals, demand for vaginal surgery has mushroomed in recent years because physicians — led by Dr. Matlock — market it as enhancing sexual satisfaction.

In other words: If you build it, they will come.

Matlock defends his creepy and advantageous vocation by claiming that he's only trying to make women's famously inept naughty bits more useful - not for MEN, you see, but for WOMEN.  And plus, they're asking for it:

“They say, ‘Look, I want to enjoy this. I want to have the best sexual experience possible. It's for me.' That's what they're doing. If a man was pushing a woman to come in, I'm not going to do it.”

See? He's a pretty ethical guy.  If some dude "pushes" his woman through the door bound and gagged, he's not gonna cut her open for the sake of making her cootch all symmetrical.  He'll only do the surgery if the guy's more subtle than that.

Still, a husband of a woman with stress incontinence in the mid-1990s played a large role in Dr. Matlock's inadvertent realization of the demand for vaginal reconstruction, which builds on decades-old surgical techniques. Some physicians have long quietly added an extra stitch “for the husband” while repairing new mothers' episiotomies.

After he treated her, the woman reported that her sex life had dramatically improved. Then her husband telephoned to thank Dr. Matlock profusely, and the couple sent flowers.

See? Send flowers.  Vagina carvers love flowers.

Pardon the pun, but his whole thing gives me the willies.