Marni Soupcoff 2013-05-23T05:51:22-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=marni-soupcoff Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Marni Soupcoff Good old fashioned elbow grease. The Week In Review: What Mike Duffy, Rob Ford, and a Bulldozed Pyramid Have In Common tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3300383 2013-05-18T21:38:31-04:00 2013-05-18T23:41:52-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ was bulldozed in an effort to obtain crushed rock for a road-building project. In Toronto, Gawker and The Toronto Star published details of a video alleged to show the city's mayor, Rob Ford, inhaling from what two Star reporters who saw the video say "appears to be a glass crack pipe." Meanwhile, in Ottawa, expense scandals led to Senators Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy leaving the Conservative caucus.

What's a defeated HuffPost reader to do? Seek refuge in sports in the arts, perhaps. Fortunately, there was plenty on offer on those fronts too. On the blog, native Torontonian and former NHLer Anson Carter provided his latest NHL playoff predictions, while filmmaker Kyle Thomas shared his first-hand impressions of the Cannes Film Festival. Combine those pieces with author Evan Munday's entertaining but practical tips on beating writer's block and there you have enough quality distractions to keep you buoyant amid life's latest disappointments.

]]> The Agony and the Ecstasy of Cottaging tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3288458 2013-05-16T17:08:02-04:00 2013-05-16T18:03:49-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/
Some of the best times of my life have happened at "the cottage." (There were actually two cottages -- one on Ada Lake that my parents bought when I was three years old, then another about 15 minutes away on the Moon River, which we moved to when I was 16 and which is currently having the toilet issues -- but in my mind, they pretty much meld together as "the cottage.")

As a kid, I spent whole summers up there, swimming by day and playing Ghost In the Graveyard with my friends by warm evening. In high school, I studied for my exams up at the cottage -- the rustling trees and cheerful bird calls alleviated some of the monotony of memorizing the date of the Wilmot Proviso. And I took full advantage of my new driver's license by cruising the windy Moon River Road over and over again. (I only ended up in the ditch twice.)

I got married at the cottage. Or at least very close to it. And my husband and I spent our honeymoon there during a heatwave, which we handled by making frequent trips into town to get sundaes. A couple years later, our baby son hung out on a blanket on the cottage deck, cooing happily at the canopy of leaves above him. Four years after that, our twin baby daughters did the same thing.

So, I have wonderful memories of the cottage. Absolutely. It's just that I also have other memories of the cottage. Like the time it got hit by a hurricane (trees crushed the roof and deck). Or the time someone robbed it and stole my worthless model car collection that I still happened to like a lot. Or the time I got into bed and found that an uninvited creature had left a neat pile of acorns under my pillow, which led to my spending the rest of the night half-awake, expecting him to return and mistake my head for a nest.

Uninvited creatures actually make up a good part of my problem with the cottage. On several different occasions, mosquito bites to the face have caused my eyes to swell completely, painfully shut. The first time it happened, my parents drove me to the emergency room an hour away, but I subsequently learned to just rely on Benadryl and time. Yet those dramatic puffed out eyes were nothing compared to the mundane agony of having a mosquito buzzing in my ear all night, which is a regular occurrence at the cottage (though only during the months that the weather is pleasant). I've gotten into the habit of thrusting my arm in the air, pointing to my flesh, and yelling, "Just take what you want and leave me alone!" Which is about as helpful as you'd expect.

Birds -- phoebes I think -- often made nests in or near the garage of our old cottage. That resulted in jumpy mama birds swooping down and attacking my head every time I ventured onto our lawn. The screams those blitzkriegs elicited from me were rivalled only by the ones I let out the time my next-door neighbour and I made the mistake of heading out on the water in our old runabout at dusk -- and got dive-bombed by what felt like dozens of bats. Creepiest feeling ever? I thought so. Until later that summer when my legs got head-butted and nibbled at by fish who apparently didn't appreciate my swimming near their eggs. Pretty sure I screeched then too. But I didn't scream the time I saw a bullfrog sitting casually and contentedly with a smaller frog's leg hanging out of its mouth. I was so grossed out, I lost my voice entirely.

Couple those encounters with the near heart attacks I've suffered every time a mouse has scrambled toward me while I was minding my own business on the cottage couch (Why always toward me? Why do I attract kamikaze mice?), or a stick I've been looking at in the water has started to slither and revealed itself to be a snake, and you should be getting some idea of my ambivalence about my family's second home. And those are just the live animals. I've lost track of how many dead ones I've come across: splattered frogs all over the road everytime it rains, tiny dead mice embedded in a comforter wrapped in plastic for the winter, pancaked snakes in the driveway, unblinking fish washed up on the beach, countless insect carcasses scattered inside and out. The cottage brings one closer to nature. And nature is, let's face it, pretty disgusting in a lot of ways.

And it's not like immersing ourselves in the disgustingness is free. It costs money: There's always a water tank that needs replacing, or a septic tank that needs pumping, or a deck that needs painting -- or, yes, a toilet that needs fixing. It also costs time: Driving to the Moon River takes nearly two and a half hours when the traffic and children are good. When either or -- God forbid-- both act up, we're talking hours of desperate attempts to drown out crying and yelling by cranking up Imagination Movers tunes on the iPad because we forgot to bring any music the kids like in a format that we can play on the minivan stereo.
What's the point of all this?, you might wonder.

I'm sharing my cottage experience to make you feel better about the long weekend no matter your plans. Because if you're going to a cottage, you'll be making enduring memories of special time spent with family and friends. But if you're not, you'll be saving yourself an untold amount of aggravation, revulsion, and cash. When you look at it that way, it's a win/win.

]]> 20 Things You Need For an Office Finale Party tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3281770 2013-05-16T08:23:50-04:00 2013-05-16T09:24:37-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ The Office. How will you spend it? Well, in front of your TV, of course. But why not make the experience a bit of a celebration? Invite some friends over, serve some Scotch with Splenda, and play a little Dunderball. It's easy -- especially when you've got a handy list. Here, courtesy of Office Tally, are 20 things you need to hold an Office finale party that would make Michael dance badly. (Episode references are in parentheses.) You can find the complete Office Tally list here.



Savory Foods

  • McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwiches (Hot Girl)


  • Ham and cheese sandwiches (The Secret)


  • Tuna fish sandwiches (Gay Witch Hunt)


  • Grilled cheese sandwiches (The Client)


  • Caprese salad (Frame Toby)


Sweet Food

  • Ice cream sandwiches (Health Care)


  • Donuts (Michael's Birthday)


  • "Fudgie the Whale" ice cream cake (Survivor Man)


  • Peach pie (Survivor Man)


  • Chocolate pudding cups (The Injury)


Drinks

  • Grape soda (The Secret)


  • Peach iced tea (The Secret)


  • Scotch with Splenda (Two Weeks)


  • Coke in cans (Drug Testing)


  • Espresso drinks (Cafe Disco)


Decorations

  • Brown, black, and grey balloons, only partially filled, and a sign saying "It is the finale."


Activities

  • Flonkerton (Office Olympics)


  • Charades (Dinner Party)


  • Sumo Wrestling Suit (Beach Games)


  • Dunderball
]]> The Week In Review: Between Ariel Castro and Tory Backbenchers, We Can't Avoid an Abortion Debate tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3261024 2013-05-11T19:27:37-04:00 2013-05-11T23:43:35-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ held captive in a Cleveland home for about a decade. The prosecutor in the case has revealed that he may seek aggravated murder charges against the alleged captor, Ariel Castro, because Castro is accused of repeatedly beating and starving one of the women in order to force several miscarriages. This particular detail has caused quite the stir, not because of the vile nature of the alleged abuse (there's a disturbingly long list of equally loathsome things said to have been done to the women), but because it casts a fetus in the role of a murder victim. And this, despite fetal homicide laws having been on the books for years in the U.S., always makes pro-choice advocates profoundly uncomfortable.

I think it's for the same reasons that expressing opposition to sex-selective abortion raises such anxiety here in Canada. (If you're wondering what I'm talking about, just ask Mark Warawa.) Both discussions force all parties to actually focus on the fetus and what's being done to it, rather than focusing on the mother. (Margaret Somerville was quick to point this out in the Canadian context last year.) This shift in turn leads to tacit admissions that on some level, few of us can honestly say we don't think of a fetus as at least some kind of human being, even if we don't favour criminalizing abortion.

Rather than dodging the hard cases - the forced miscarriages and sex-selective abortions -- by pretending no harm has been done to anything worth recognizing or protecting, we should welcome them as a chance to bring honesty and painful nuance to a debate that is too often characterized as far simpler than it really is.

]]> The Week In Review: Will Loblaw Let Thoughts of Bangladesh Fade Away? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3216281 2013-05-05T01:47:26-04:00 2013-05-05T01:47:32-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ vocal about its plans to compensate victims' families and to make checking the structural integrity of factory buildings part of its future audits of suppliers. (Loblaw owns Joe Fresh, which had clothing made for it at the collapsed factory.) However, the problem of unsafe labour conditions for global garment workers is far bigger than one apparel company, which is why the conversation on HuffPost quickly turned to broader long-term solutions.

Most of our bloggers were in general agreement that a boycott of Bangladesh would do more harm than good. As Peter Fragiskatos put it, "the plight of garment workers -- as bad as it is -- would be even worse back in the rural villages where so many of them once lived." A more useful course of action might be that championed by Kevin Thomas: urging companies such as Loblaw to participate in a comprehensive, independent fire and safety inspection program in Bangladesh rather than relying on company-controlled audits.

How realistic is this? Obviously no business is going to make a decision that destroys its profitability. But the fact that PVH Corp, the company that owns Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, has chosen to take the independent inspection route in Bangladesh suggests that it's not an unworkably expensive choice. Certainly, the reputational harm a company experiences from being associated with the preventable death and injury of workers isn't exactly cost-free itself. So beyond the obvious moral reasons for making this kind of change, there's a market argument to made for getting it right as well.

The interesting part of this story will come in a few months, once the news cycle has moved on from the disaster in Dakha. Will Loblaw have the fortitude to get out there and remind us all of the disturbing incident in order to update us on the details of its follow-through -- exactly how much compensation it has given to whom, and in what precise ways its audits have changed? Or will it be content to let its customers' thoughts of the collapse quietly fade away, as they are bound to do? I think we'll be able to tell a lot more about the company from that answer than we can from its immediate post-tragdey PR strategy.


]]> CBC Should Have Stuck With "Any Race Except Caucasian" tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3185940 2013-04-30T11:42:11-04:00 2013-04-30T14:42:27-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/
You may find that last bit a tad unclear. The casting agency that ran an ad for the position apparently did. In the original posting for the position on the Larissa Mair Casting & Associates website, as well as on Craigslist, potential hosts were asked to submit audition tapes only if they were "Any race except caucasian."

This did not go over well.

Twitter lit up with outraged comments.

The ad was quickly removed from Craigslist and modified on the Larissa Mair website so as to make no mention of race. The casting agent took the fall and apologized. "We were asked to seek a cast of diversity," Larissa Mair said, according to the National Post. "We mistakenly took that to mean that the production was not seeking Caucasian actors. This was a mistake that was made entirely by the casting company."

I'm not sure, though, that the fault was entirely Mair's. According to the same National Post story, the CBC provides casting agents with a letter that says the following:

"At CBC, inclusion and diversity is a priority. This means reflecting Canada and its regions as well as the country's multicultural and multiracial nature....


"As a part of our commitment to this priority, we are now reaching out to our partners in production to ensure that a concerted and documented effort be made ... to cast actors who reflect Canada's diversity."


How do you interpret that directive?

Make a concerted and documented effort to cast performers of different races and cultures -- just don't be blunt about it to the outside world? Always consider race and culture in your casting decisions, but pretend you're equally open to everyone? Keep a tally of the regional, racial, and cultural makeup of on-air personalities -- just don't show the public the scorecard?

I read it as a translucent plea to casting agents to bring in more non-Caucasians, with an unwritten expectation that said agents won't be gauche enough to actually articulate this strategy. "Heck, everyone's welcome to apply!" casting ads should declare. No need to put it in writing that only those who happen to be of an underrepresented ethnicity will get callbacks.

At least the original ads were honest. If CBC is looking for a host to balance some kind of cultural and racial diversity goals and/or requirements, then it should come out and say so. That would be more respectful of potential applicants, as well as of the taxpayers who fund the public broadcaster. If CBC isn't comfortable honestly setting those diversity goals and requirements out there in front of us, then that could be an indication they should be reconsidered.

On his website, blogger and National Citizens Coalition director Stephen Taylor, who was one of the first to spot and publicize the casting post in question, juxtaposed the original ad with quotes from Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney articulating the government of Canada's position on discriminatory hiring in the public service. "While we support diversity in the public service, we want to ensure that no Canadian is barred from opportunities in the public service based on race or ethnicity," says Day. "It's OK to encourage people from different backgrounds to apply but in our judgment it goes too far to tell people that if they are not of a particular race or ethnicity they cannot apply [for a job] that is actually funded by their tax dollars," says Kenney.

I take Taylor's point to an extent. There's something definitely off about excluding someone from a government job because of his race -- particularly when the government has gone on record as being opposed to such discrimination. It flies in the face of the equal treatment all citizens are supposed to receive at the hands of the state. But we also have to remember that what we're talking about here is casting an entertainer in a dramatic enterprise, not staffing a position in the bureaucracy. If CBC were airing a biopic of Lincoln Alexander, I think we'd all raise a few eyebrows if they issued a casting call for the lead that requested anything but black male actors. Race, age, ethnicity -- they're legitimate considerations for dramatic roles. Less so for television "hosts," I should think. But still of more potential consequence there than for normal public service jobs.

I suppose this is one reason I'm not comfortable with government involvement in the arts and entertainment -- subjective calls about artistic merit and messaging will always be in some ways inherently discriminatory, and thus best left to private actors. But as long as CBC remains our public broadcaster, the next best thing would be for it to have the courage and decency to make its casting choices transparent. If it sees a value in exposing kids to minorities who aren't well represented on television, and therefore wants to hire a non-white kiddie host, then tell us so. And be there with the guts, data, and fortitude to stand behind that decision. Don't throw the casting agency under the bus and point to vague diversity language. Doing so only confuses all concerned. It also leaves paranoid notions to fester about what kinds of discrimination Caucasians must be experiencing from CBC behind closed doors.

So, to Larissa Mair, stop apologizing. You've done us the favour of exposing a conversation and clarification our public broadcaster owes us all.

]]> The Week In Review: HuffPost Bloggers Bravely Commit Sociology tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3171573 2013-04-27T20:43:25-04:00 2013-04-28T00:38:42-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ Power & Politics Thursday, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre took a literalist approach, declaring the root causes of terrorism to be terrorists. In HuffPost blog posts, the analysis ran a little deeper, with some bloggers suggesting a link to the West's oppressive foreign policy, and others rejecting such characterizations as illogical rationalizations of violence. "The root cause [of terrorism] is only depravity," wrote blogger Lauryn Oates. "The line between seeking to understand this depravity, and seeking to justify it, is fine and must be tread upon with care." Whatever one's perspective, or tendency to commit sociology, that's advice worth heeding.


]]> You Have the Right Not To Read Dzhokhar His Rights -- But Don't Complain Later tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3148657 2013-04-25T08:04:24-04:00 2013-04-25T08:04:27-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ Boston Globe, Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's confessions to law enforcement officials came before he was read his constitutional rights. "Tsarnaev made his admissions to FBI agents who interviewed him at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he is being treated for multiple gunshot wounds," Kevin Cullen writes in the Globe. "He had not yet been given a Miranda warning."

The article goes on to reference police sources, who say authorities aren't concerned about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's statements of guilt being thrown out in court, because they feel they can count on the testimony of the Tsarnaevs' alleged carjacking victim to establish the brothers' culpability:

"[T]he carjack victim has told police that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, pointed guns at him and... Tamerlan Tsarnaev told him, 'We just killed a cop. We blew up the marathon. And now we're going to New York. Don't [expletive] with us.'"


It's great there is this strong witness testimony to fall back on at trial. It will certainly be helpful in the case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should Dzhokhar's own statements be deemed inadmissible (more on that in a moment).

"We just killed a cop."

"We blew up a marathon."

These are statements made by someone other than Dzhokhar as recalled by a third individual, so they're not as solid as a taped confession -- yet they're still pretty darn incriminating.

But in a case as high-profile, emotional, and important as this one is, you'd think law enforcement would want to give prosecutors more to work with than just "helpful" and "pretty darn incriminating." I mean, given the severity of the crime, shouldn't the priority have been to carefully build as bullet-proof (no pun intended) a legal case as possible? And wouldn't reading the lone surviving suspect his rights in a timely manner have been the first step in that process? I wonder if the decision will come back to haunt law enforcement when what is sure to be a heavily scrutinized trial finally does get underway. I wonder if, in the cold light of the courtroom, the choice not to give prosecutors a chance at having evidence of a legally obtained confession in their back pocket will still seem like the right one.

Yes, I do know about the public safety exception to the Miranda rule, which allows courts to admit statements from un-Mirandized suspects as evidence in certain circumstances. Essentially, this exception gives prosecutors the latitude to use such statements when police have engaged a suspect in limited questioning prior to reading him his rights in order to try to protect the public from imminent danger. I don't, however, think that's going to save authorities here. The public safety exception arises from a 1984 Supreme Court case, which dealt with a very different situation. There, an officer arrested a suspected rapist in the back of a grocery store and found that the suspect was wearing an empty shoulder holster. The officer had lost sight of the suspect in the store prior to the arrest. The obvious question on the officer's mind -- where was the weapon now?

The officer asked the suspect where the gun was.

"The gun is over there," the suspect answered, gesturing towards a box. The officer retrieved a gun from the box. Then he read the suspect his rights.

That's a very different scenario from what transpired with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was not read his rights until three days after his arrest. Surely that's a stretch of the concept of "imminent." If law enforcement was worried about unexploded bombs, other parts of the plot to come (as one expects they must have been), those pressing questions could have been asked in a matter of minutes -- hours at the most. And then Dzhokhar could have been properly Mirandized, laying the groundwork for making admissible everything he would go on to say, and minimizing the expensive, tedious, and frustrating pre-trial evidentiary battles that eat up so many resources and so much patience in criminal cases. Not to mention improving the chances that a just verdict would be delivered.

It is true that past cases exist in which authorities have successfully used the public safety exception to justify the admission of statements obtained from un-Mirandized suspects even after long periods of questioning. But those cases generally involve trying to minimize a specific impending danger -- locating a particular missing gun or finding a particular potential kidnapping victim. They don't justify extended questioning about potential, unspecified threats, no matter how serious.

That is not to say that police violated Dzhokhar's rights by dilly-dallying over his Miranda warnings. As The Atlantic's Adam Goodman helpfully clarifies and reminds us in a recent article, there is no constitutional right to be Mirandized. There is merely a constitutional right not to have what you've told police -- while under arrest -- used against you in court, unless you were given your Miranda warnings first. So, there's nothing inherently evil in the route law enforcement chose with Dzhokhar. But there'd better not be a word of complaint from any of them if and when Dzhokhar's trial ends up dragging on for an eternity, and seems to be a far more complicated case for prosecutors to argue and present than it rightfully should be.

If law enforcement made a calculated decision that knowing whatever information Dzhokhar might possess was more important than being able to use that information in a legal case against him, I can respect that. But if they expected they could have it both ways -- questioning Dzhokhar without informing him of his rights, then trying to worm Dzhokhar's answers into court by blowing a public safety exception far beyond its reasonable scope, then there is a problem. A problem I sincerely hope a court will be quick to point out. And a problem that only law enforcement can be blamed for not foreseeing.

]]> The Week in Review: Bewildered in Boston tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3125293 2013-04-20T23:19:40-04:00 2013-04-20T23:19:48-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ explosions at the Boston Marathon, and started reading the confused and nervous Tweets and reports that soon followed on Monday afternoon, my mind turned back to 9/11 and details I hadn't thought about since. Milling about with co-workers on Pennsylvania Avenue that hot day in 2001 (I'd been evacuated from my D.C. law office which happened to be situated a few doors down from the White House), I'd felt more lost than scared -- not quite sure where to go or what to do. And though each new rumour that made its way through the small crowds of people - "I heard a bomb just went off at state!" "They're talking poison gas release in the Metro!" - was met with cynicism and raised eyebrows, each rumour also ate away at our confidence in ways we tried not to show. We knew the unthinkable had happened, but that wasn't the hard part at that moment - or not the hardest anyway. Far worse was not knowing if the unthinkable had ended. And not having any way of finding out.

My sense is that a similar bewilderment was part of what made the past week so especially distressing for Bostonians. The pain of seeing innocent friends, family, and fellow citizens murdered and maimed was obviously devastating enough. But it was the lingering uncertainty about where, when, and whether another burst of violence would occur that took the anguish to the next level. (Being locked down in your own home will bring on that kind of anxiety for you if you haven't already brought it upon yourself.)

The fact that the two suspects in the Boston attacks are now accounted for does not lessen the damage done. Let's hope, however, that it does mean we can at least declare this particular episode of unthinkable bloodshed to be finished. You can't begin to process a catastrophe until you know you're no longer in the middle of it.

WARNING: Some of the photos from the scene may be graphic and disturbing.


]]> If Justin Were a Woman tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3111272 2013-04-18T14:51:55-04:00 2013-04-18T17:41:01-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/
I was also not shocked or outraged by Justin's performance. I've seen these sorts of things before: Auction off a handsome hunk for charity. He parades around a bit doing a sexy but safe little "here's what's on offer, ladies" schtick and the female members of the audience clap and whistle approvingly and appreciatively -- but not too appreciatively because that would just be weird.

All in good fun (if that's your sort of thing) for a good cause.

But I started to think a bit more about the whole idea when I read Conservative Minister of Labour Lisa Raitt's comments on Justin's mildly provocative peeling. Raitt wasn't there at the 2011 gala that's featured in the Tory ad. But she was present the year before, when Justin performed a similar cutesy partial disrobing for charity. So she was an obvious target for reporters -- how could this woman be critical of an event which she herself attended and supported? Here's what she said, as reported by the CBC:

"You wouldn't see me making that move, getting up on a walkway and taking clothes off in front of a bunch of men or women.


"What would be the conversation today if that was a female MP who had done that in a room of men, guys, why don't you think about that?"

I did think about that. Logically, I knew it shouldn't matter whether an MP who did a semi-sexy dance for charity was male or female. Either it's okay for a politician to put on a third-rate burlesque scene to help out a non-profit, or it's not.

But voters are not always logical.

And Raitt is absolutely right that the conversation would be wildly different if the subject were a female MP taking to the catwalk and stripping to her bra, while a group of eager men bid on the opportunity to lunch with her. It would seem exploitive and distasteful. People would definitely question the MP's judgment -- they'd probably also accuse her of having pushed back the cause of women's equality by decades.

"Why aren't there more women in politics?" I can almost hear the critics growling. "This is why." And think about today's female political leaders. Can you imagine Hillary Clinton getting up on stage and shedding her clothes with a suggestive little shrug? Angela Merkel? Condi Rice? Would anyone ever take them seriously as politicians again if they did? Or would we all just blush at the memory of their lingerie every time they tried to talk geopolitics?

This is, of course, what the Conservatives are trying to get at with their Justin ad. Not the gender part. The serious-politicians-don't-strip part. It's a good try. But it might not succeed for the very reason that Lisa Raitt identified: There's a double standard at work. If men play at being sex objects -- particularly if it's for a socially accepted reason -- it's considered cute, possibly even endearing. "Oooh, the ladies just love him. Good for him for having a sense of humour. Did you see those abs (wink, wink)?" We're allowed to treat a man this way because we know we'll still respect him in the morning.

Yet with women, such role-playing hits way too close to home. Despite their many professional advances, women still have to fight the fact that when they become public figures they're often looked at as sexual objects, if not first, then still second or third -- even if this should objectively nothing to do with their job. The last thing women leaders want to do if they're serious about politics is reinforce the public's unconscious preoccupation with their bodies, their hair, their physical attractiveness -- ultimately their ability or likelihood to tempt men.

I'm not saying they have to dress in boxy suits and sport unisex haircuts. As Tina Fey wisely advises in her excellent book Bossypants, women in the public eye aren't doing themselves any favours if they abandon all cares about their appearance either. "If you look weird, it will distract from what you're trying to do," she writes. "If you look as good as you can, people will be able to pay attention to what you're actually saying." If, however, you start taking off your shirt, that attention to your words will probably dissipate awfully quickly. It's true if you're a man. But it's true ten times over if you're a woman.

So, I have revised my opinion of the Tories' Justin attack ad. Upon a third viewing, I do find the whole thing disturbing. Not because the Tories have been too nasty. The ad strikes me as more silly than nasty. And not because I'm shocked by Justin's judgment. What he did was unremarkable in the current climate and didn't hurt his reputation. The part that disturbs me is knowing that I could never write that same sentence about a woman had she done the exact same thing. This tells me that there is work to be done. That work could involve trying to get society to a place where women too can do charming mini-stripteases then still be viewed as serious leaders. But my preference would be rethinking how casually we view using sexual innuendo suggestive of prostitution as a happy little joke -- my preference would be getting society to a place where we'd find the practice cheap and distasteful for people in general, regardless of gender.

Either way, Lisa Raitt is right: If the pol in the Justin catwalk video had been female, we'd be having a very different conversation indeed.

]]> Street Art: If the Public Owns the Wall, Does It Get a Say in the Pictures? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3087925 2013-04-16T08:26:07-04:00 2013-04-16T08:18:05-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/
In the latest installment of our "Change My Mind" series, HuffPost asked two individuals who are concerned about the street art question to debate the statement: Government should keep its nose out of artistic expression, even in public spaces.

Arguing for the "agree" side is Gary Taxali, a Grammy nominated visual artist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Rolling Stone and GQ. He exhibits at The Jonathan LevIne Gallery in NYC, Lazarides (The Outsiders Gallery) in London, and Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporarea in Milan.

Arguing for the "disagree" side is Rob Sysak, executive director of West Queen West, which is the Art & Design District, the Creative Heart of Toronto, and the voice of the local business community

What do you think? Read on, and see if one of these persuasive debaters will change your mind.



]]> The Week in Review: Don't Stop Asking Why Rehtaeh Parsons Died tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3077964 2013-04-13T21:04:55-04:00 2013-04-13T23:54:40-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ the suicide of Nova Scotia teen Rehtaeh Parsons. A heart-wrenching post from Rehtaeh's father, Glen Canning, captured the difficulty of knowing how best to move forward now -- after the profoundly sad end to a year-and-a-half ordeal for the seventeen-year-old following her alleged gang-rape at a party.

On the one hand, Mr. Canning explained that he doesn't want his daughter's "life to [be] defined by a Google search about suicide or death or rape. I want it to be about the giving heart she had." Yet the post also contained a desperate plea to the Justice Minister of Nova Scotia (and perhaps to all of us) to treat allegations of rape more seriously, and find a way to address them without further wounding the victim.

Is it too much to expect us to separate, in our minds, the young woman we failed from the failures that helped cut her life short? It may well be. But a small consolation: The alleged conscienceless cruelties that now seem inextricably linked to Rehtaeh Parsons' death have disgusted and sickened so many that Rehtaeh may one day also be remembered as the young woman who made us confront our shameful moral and legal deficits -- and do better.

Blogger Anne Therriault wrote that when she read Rehtaeh Parsons' story, she couldn't help but wonder, "Where the f**k were all the grownups?" It's a very good question. One that we should keep asking loudly and often.

]]> The Week in Review: Can CanCon Rules Survive Netflix? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3023233 2013-04-07T00:13:50-04:00 2013-04-09T13:58:28-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ said goodbye to cable or satellite contracts and opted to get his TV fix from streaming and over-the-air sources instead. More customers are soon expected to follow -- and why not? Netflix, Apple TV, network websites and the like are all a welcome alternative to pricey cable and satellite packages that force us to pay for a lot of content we don't want just to access the handful of shows that we do. This makes me wonder about the future of Canadian content rules. Mandating the percentage of CanCon that gets aired works in the cable monopoly model, but it's a tough feat when consumers are selecting and purchasing what they will watch on an individual show-by-show basis. That doesn't mean Canadian TV won't get seen. Many homegrown offerings are popular enough that viewers will happily pick them up from the alternative sources. It does, however, mean that as time goes on, government's attempts at force-feeding viewers particular categories of pedigreed entertainment are going to become a losing proposition. Which is perfectly fine by me.




]]> Change My Mind: Should There Be an Age Limit For Fertility Treatments? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3001399 2013-04-03T08:28:27-04:00 2013-04-03T07:56:31-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/
The Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recently changed its policy to endorse providing donor eggs and embryos for transfer to women up to the age of 55. Is this a reasonable way of catching up with technology, which now makes parenthood possible for post-menopausal women? Does it go too far? Not far enough?

In the latest installment of our "Change My Mind" series, HuffPost asked two experts in the field of the bioethics of fertility to debate the statement: It's time to drop upper age limits on fertility treatments.

Arguing for the "agree" side is Sara Cohen, a fertility law lawyer based in Toronto. Her practice focuses on legal issues surrounding fertility treatments including IVF, egg donation and embryo donation.

Arguing for the "disagree" side is Francoise Baylis, Canada Research Chair in Bioethics and Philosophy at Dalhousie University.

What do you think? Read on, and see if one of these persuasive debaters will change your mind.


]]> Why Are We Paying Parking Cops $100,000 a Year? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3000122 2013-04-02T13:19:44-04:00 2013-04-02T15:12:18-04:00 Marni Soupcoff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marni-soupcoff/ Ontario's latest "sunshine list" of public sector salaries, let's review a few statistics. In 2012, the average Canadian salary was $47,200. This number was a bit higher in Ontario, but not a lot higher: The average salary there was $47,788. And in the field of healthcare and social assistance -- a field that is well-represented on the sunshine list -- the average annual take was $43,420.

It doesn't take much mathematical prowess to figure out that these averages are all less than half of $100,000 -- the threshold salary for being named on the most populous province's sunshine list. Which is worth remembering.

I'm not opposed to public sector employees making as much as private sector employees. If taxpayers are going to pay someone to do a job, we're best off paying them competitively so that we attract good talent.

But the thing is, I look at the sunshine list and worry that we're not just paying public sector employees competitively -- we're paying them eye-popping salaries that no private sector employer would dream of offering for comparable positions.

I had this thought when I saw several parking enforcement officers bringing in over $100k a year. No specialized education or experience is required for the job. It is a position that, in the words of a government job posting, requires the employee to be "responsible for ensuring that illegally parked vehicles are dealt with in an appropriate manner." Which is not exactly rocket science. So why the jumbo paycheques?

Now, in the private sector, Canadian security guards were making an average of $31,029 a year in 2005, the last year for which I was able to find data. It's probable (though not inevitable) that that number has risen slightly over the years due to inflation. Oh, and what the heck -- let's give the parking guys the benefit of the doubt and say that they have greater responsibilities than the average private security guard since they're actually getting people's cars towed -- and facing the wrath of irritated drivers who were JUST STOPPING FOR HALF A SECOND TO PICK UP ONE TINY LITTLE THING. But it's still a huge leap to get over $100,000 a year for a job that is, in essence, open to anyone with a clean record and a driver's license.

If there are supposed to be strict austerity measures in place because the province is going broke, why are we overpaying for ticket-givers? I could ask the same question about the city of Toronto assistant administrator; industrial millwright; manager of horticulture and greenhouses; and -- let's face it -- every single Toronto city councillor, who are all also on Ontario's $100,000+ public sector earners list. That sounds like more than the province staying competitive as an employer. That sounds like abusing the taxpayer's forced largesse and funding exceptionally and unnecessarily well-compensated jobs.

So, do I have it in for public sector workers? Not a bit. Many of my friends work in the public sector and they are smart, hard-working people who do their jobs well. There's nothing sinister about an employee taking a government job that will offer significantly better pay and benefits than the private alternative. It's sensible and predictable.

My problem is with the government not having the guts to rein in this excessive spending on salaries. This will ultimately hurt not only the private sector workers who are doing the same work for less while paying the heftier salaries of their public sector peers, but also the entire province's economy. Which is to say everyone. As the Cato Institute's Daniel J. Mitchell blogged last year, more and more mainstream organizations and institutions (including the European Central Bank and the World Bank) are coming to the conclusion that large public sectors reduce economic growth.

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This is not an easy problem to tackle. It entails politicians standing up to public sector unions. Political hari kari, anyone? Care to have your cartoon face plastered on angry picketers' signs?

But someone's got to do it if Ontario's $12-billion deficit is to be dealt with. And soon. Do we need the legislated mandatory wage freeze that Ontario Progressive Conservative finance critic Peter Shurman is calling for? My feeling is that a targeted approach would be preferable since there are surely some public sector workers that legitimately warrant wage increases and some that warrant actual cuts, which could amount to the same savings. But you know what? I'd take a wage freeze over the status quo. A freeze is a clumsy and inefficient way to gain control over salary spending. It doesn't offer helpful incentives. It's a typical government solution, but if the alternative is to keep significantly overpaying public sector employees, wouldn't it be the lesser of two evils? So that's what it seems to have come to. The government has proven itself incapable of making the thousands of smart, difficult individual decisions and showing the restraint that would forestall the need for this kind of blanket "solution."

I don't think there's a problem with some Canadians making significantly more money than others if there is genuine demand for their particular expertise or talents. So when Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horvath complains that some public sector CEOs are getting raises larger than what the average single-parent family will earn in a year, I'm not automatically outraged. Could that be an accurate reflection of some of these CEOs' market worth? Yes. However, given what the government is paying for positions that we know are far less generously compensated in the private sector, should we be skeptical about how many of these massive raises are warranted? Yes to that question too.

To focus on any one person on the sunshine list is perhaps nitpicking. To begrudge a horticulturist a (very) good living could be considered unfair. Maybe even petty.

To look at the totality of the sunshine list, though, and conclude that Ontario public sector salary spending is out of control -- well, that's just common sense. This trick is to get those making the individual provincial and municipal spending decisions to take this panoramic view too.]]>