Just In Time For New Year's!

Death At A Funeral - Review

A British black comedy about family's undoing at a funeral. I should have loved this movie - but what started so promising and smart, spiraled into a pathetic gagfest - just one cinematic prank after another. There was ample opportunity to build a richer story - sibling rivalry, a mother's shallowness, a father's secret, the resulting family dynamics - all screaming out for more scrutiny - all sacrified for a laugh. Nothing ventured and therefore, nothing gained. Sigh.

Still, it was time well wasted as it revealed to me much of what was wrong with my own work. My writing suffers from some of the same deficiencies. I tend to be a casual, detached observer with somewhat shallow analysis of my characters and I am over-indulgent with some of the more trivial aspects of my stories.

A story only breathes life when it's characters are real and there is ample friction between them to justify forward motion. Humour is great, but it means nothing without substance - same goes for men:)

I have been told (by my more more observant friends) that I use humour to distance myself emotionally, to hide from controversy or discomfort. I fear my writing suffers from the same inclination. I use humour way too much, dwell on it, perfect it, make it the consumate laugh, all the while running away from the real story.

It sounds so simple, but as "Death At A Funeral" demonstrated, it is all to easy to miss the obvious.

2008 Top 10 Memorable Moments and Stuff

2008 was such a wild and memorable year, I thought I'd honour it with a top 10 memories list, an exercise I know invites criticism, but, as Harold Pinter once said, "I'm the author of this play". If you don't like it, you are welcome to make your own:)

10. Terrorist strikes in India
9. Earthquake in China
8. Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies
7. Yael Naim sings "New Soul"
6. David Wroblewski's "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle"
5. Tina Fey as Sarah Palin
4. The economy
3. Nadal/Federer match (even if Federer lost)
2. Momentous losses - Tim Russert (I cried for 3 days), Paul Newman, Arthur C. Clarke, Harold Pinter, Heath Ledger and Jeff Healey
1. Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States

My hubby thinks The Nadal/Federer match belongs waaaay behind the Earthquake and Terrorist strikes in terms of importance -ok true - but if I were to evaluate on the basis of uniqueness - well I'd say there are earthquakes and terrorist strikes just about every year but when did we last see a duel comparable to Wimbledon this year?!

Tell me your top 10!! I promise I won't shoot.

Harold's Truth

Harold Pinter, playwright, sreenwriter, political activist and 2005 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, died yesterday of throat cancer. He was 78.

I humbly admit, my first introduction to Pinter's work was through a much delayed viewing of "the French Lieutenant's Woman". Perhaps that fact betrays the populist in me, but more accurately (Harold would have loved the bare simplicity of this), I think it reveals my age. Yes, I was a latecomer to the Pinter train but once aboard, I was a passenger for life.

Einstein once said "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough". Pinter had a gift for the simplicity and economy of carefully selected words. Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words never read a Pinter script. I loved his brevity and I enjoyed the breaking delivery he brought to his scripts - it was often fast paced and jagged, but it was always purposeful. I don't know why he chose this approach - some say it was because he preferred the unspoken words of silence to the words in between, that he preferred timing to message but I think it was because he had a hurried desire to get to the truth - however it best revealed itself. "Normal, what's normal?" Pause. A thousands thruths captured in three small words - and one pregnant pause - that's genius.

I loved him most for the honesty in his writing - however ruthless it (or he) could be. I am reminded of a poem he wrote called "Laughter". He wasn't concerned with honest, bottom-of-the-belly laughter. He was more interested in that social laughter that comes from that nervousness of being too close to the truth. The poem went something like this:

Laughter

Laughter dies but is never dead
Laughter lies out of the back of its head
Laughter laughs at what is never said
It trills and squeals and swills in your head
It trills and squeals in the heads of the dead
And so all the lies remain laughingly spread
Sucked in by the laughter of the severed head
Sucked in by the mouths of the laughing dead

With "Laughter" he had Iraq in mind. Pinter was famous for mixing politics and art - and for his full hate-on of the United States. Some of his positions I found truly offensive - his support of Milosovic being one transgression I'll never forgive - but he served us well by highlighting the sometimes unwitting but always destructive effect powerful nations have on the strategic but vulnerable countries of the world. He shunned the West's tendancy to over-reach with agressive diplomancy and military force but he was even more offended by their propensity to spill someone else's blood without the slightest regard for the damage they caused.

Not surprisingly, he was an early and fierce critic of the Iraq war, his attacks most evident in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech (no economy of words here!). It was a blistering critique, yes, but it was also cry for a better, more just world - and for that reason, I thought it was good enough to remember again. I wish Pinter could have lived long enough to (perhaps) see Obama undo some of the worst of what he called American. I think he would have died more pleased.

Harold Pinter – Nobel Prize Lecture: Art, Truth & Politics

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavor. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realizing that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonizing has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focusing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with al Qaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favored method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case “innocent people” were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidized by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighboring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favor. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally – a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticize our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!*

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honorable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force – yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimeter and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.

All Things Abercrombie

Shopping a week before Christmas makes me groan, packed malls make me want to scream, but upon leaving an Abercrombie & Fitch store I am always left with the feeling of being unhinged.

Yes, it's obvious I hate this particular "retail experience". Certainly my only desire upon entering an A&F store is to immediately get out - but it's Christmas and my Goddaughter is a huge A&F fan so off to the music dungeon I go. As I enter, I can't help but feel like my kind is not welcome. I'm too cynical, too drab and I'm definitely too old. I think it's the intention of the wise old (ha) marketing folks at A&F to make it as untenable as possible for anyone over 20 to stay longer than 5 minutes (that's how long as it takes to pick up any old $35 logo t-shirt and pay the cashier). For those of you who have never been, you may ask "how bad is it"? Let me paint the picture.

You walk into an A&F store. You get the feeling you've been there before - someplace a long time ago where the weather was hot, the food awful and the drinks really cheap. You can't quite put your finger on it but you begin to get the feeling that you are entering the Disney version of a skanky underground Mexican dance club you stumbled upon back in 1986. It has cleaned up considerably but it's still loud, dark, smelly and FAKE.

So how dark is it? Dark enough that you can't tell if you have blue jeans or black jeans in your hands. Dark enough that you can't see the counter of sweaters behind the shelf of t-shirts across the bank of cash registers and - wait - aren't those store fixtures all spray painted the same custom A&F "Elk Grey"?! Dark enough that you can't match any of the clothes because good luck actually seeing what colour they are so you just pick up a white $35 logo t-shirt because worst case if it isn't white maybe it's pink and that goes with either blue or black jeans. And you don't think about the fact that when you buy that logo t-shirt you are buying free advertising for A&F because it's so loud in there you want to get out.

So how loud is it? So loud that when you ask the salesgirl (who is gorgeous) "how much is it", she can't understand what you are saying and yells back "Whaaaat did you saaay?" and you repeat more loudly, more slowly, "hoooowww much isss it?" to which she shrugs and she smiles and hands you a $35 logo t-shirt to try on with the jeans you aren't sure are black or blue. You take the logo t-shirt and jeans and you go to the cash and the male cashier (who is gorgeous) tells you the total but you can't hear him so you don't know how much cash to give so you just hand over your credit card and it's too dark to see the total but thank God they have signature capture because it lights up like a beacon against all that A&F "Elk Grey" and you see the total is $170 and you freak out and want to ask how much those jeans cost but who are you kidding, the cashier can't hear you so you just sign the receipt and take the bag. And you don't think about the fact that you are buying free advertising because you notice an odour coming from above and it's getting to you because it's really strong, it's really smelly and you have to get out.

So how smelly is it? So smelly you're sure a bottle of Glade air freshener just broke, its scent shooting straight up your nose like a molecular guided missle, so fast and pointed that your head starts to ache, it starts to throb and you ask the customer next to you "What's that smell?" she says it's "Fierce" and you say "Whaaat did you saaaay?" and she points to a bottle and you get up real close so you can see and it's a bottle of cologne called "Fierce" and you panic because you now realise they are marketing each and every one of your senses, not just going for your eyes, not just going for your ears but now they're going for your nose, now pumping cologne through every vent in the store into every pore in your body so that if you don't buy "Fierce" at least you'll smell like it and you'll be walking down the street and someone will ask you what you're wearing and you'll say "Fierce". And damn if you didn't notice - they get you with their free marketing again! You feel so small (or is it smelly) and you feel so used, like you're their tool, their mannequin (did you notice there aren't any "real" mannequins it the store?!) and that makes you realise just how FAKE this whole thing is.

So how FAKE is it? So FAKE that when you touch the t-shirts they don't feel like cotton, they feel like paper and you ask the salesgirl, is this really cotton and she just smiles beside a picture of someone who looks just like her but the girl in the picture isn't working at A&F for eight bucks an hour, she's rowing a canoe in Nantucket in 1842 wearing A&F clothes from last season. And you feel so stupid, you feel so played, this whole thing is a sham, you spent thirty five bucks so they could advertise to your 10 friends and they haven't laid out a dime (except for the paper) and now your head starts to spin and you begin to sweat and the salesgirl doesn't have a rag so she offers you a $35 dollar t-shirt to wipe your forehead and you won't take it. No you won't take it! You're going to get out of there without that t-shirt; you're going to get out before they get you! You are not an A&F clone, you are not their marketing gizmo, you're a human being dammit, you have your own identity, your own feelings and you are going to leave with your beautiful blank body unadorned by their $35 logo t-shirt!

You escape through the doors, you can't see it's so bright - a bright white light. You can't see because your pupils can't dilate that fast but you know you are free. There is no dark, there is no loud music there is no bad cologne smell. It's the real outdoors (or at least the real mall) and you are free! Free at last. Free! Free! Free! Free!

And you say to yourself, I'll never go in there again. I'll never go back. I'll never be used.

That's great, of course, but now what do I get my Goddaughter for Christmas?

Happy (Slightly Belated) Birthday Frank

The Confidence of the House

"To be a critic, you have to have three percent education, five percent intelligence, two percent style, and ninety percent gall and egomania in equal parts." Judith Christ

Our very own political drama unfolded earlier this month...

Only a Canadian could attest to the deathly boredom of Canadian politics (and of course, its politicians) but finally, December brought the kind of drama that makes me want to switch from CNN to CBS - except it also brought the kind of drama that was big enough it actually make it to CNN - and CBS and NBC and the Daily Show of all places!

The Right and Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada (or so he is for now) in a particularly narcissistic moment, forgot he was still only a minority leader and sought to introduce legislation that limits government spending on elections – which was fine for the corporately well padded Conservatives but not so good for the opposition who are still holding karaoke fundraisers in their basements to try and pay off the last election.

What happened next was – well get the popcorn out because this is the good part - the opposing leaders ganged up on Harper in a parliamentary vote of non-confidence and then organised themselves as one party thereby creating a majority government made up of minority opposition parties. This meant the Governor General (whose normal activities this time of year includes picking Parliament's Holiday Tree theme) was now weighted with the unenviable decision of calling an election or giving the newly formed Team B (or is it B Team) the keys to the Prime Minister’s office. Harper, in a rare moment of submissiveness, got on his knees and begged the Governor to prorogue (can’t they just say delay?!) Parliament till he could buy enough time to subdue his oppressors and get off the 6 o’clock news (not to mention the syndicated comedy shows).

In the meantime, Canadians on both sides of the argument, took to the streets, protesting “illegal this” and the “unconstitutional that” while calling for a moratorium on argyle vests - can't Harper’s wife dress him?! While I sympathize with Canadians everywhere (I absolutely refuse to trudge through this sub-zero weather for yet another election!!), the opposition parties are well within their legal rights to throw their Prime Minister under the bus.

I have heard Canadians argue that Dion and his Liberal cohorts did not win enough seats to lead the House and, therefore, as runnerup, could not assume stewardship of the government. Even Harper alluded to the illegality of such an act. The mistake these Canadians make is to assume their government and their constitution mirrors that of the United States where one casts their ballot to determine which party leader will become President. The fact is, the Canadian constitution is quite different from that of the U.S. and Canadians must actually cast their ballot to choose their riding representative, not their party leader. Those riding representatives then come to Parliament to make up the House with the winning party’s leader assuming the role of Prime Minister. The interesting part is that the Prime Minister’s license to govern is not through the individual votes of Canadians but rather the collective confidence of House representatives.

If the winning party secures a majority government, its leader will have the confidence of the House simply because it maintains the majority of riding representatives within its own party. If, however, the winning party does not secure a majority, it can only effectively govern by lobbying enough of the opposition to reach a majority. If they do anything to alienate their opposition, they risk a vote of non-confidence and could be forced a situation like the one we have today.

While Canadians may not wish to see Dion as Prime Minister, he is absolutely within his constitutional right to force a vote of non-confidence and organize the opposition into a majority party that could potentially unseat the Conservatives. Stephen Harper would do well to remember those pesky rules (it wasn't so long ago when he was in opposition pulling a similar stunt). Harper should know that the license to govern is through the confidence of the House. That’s our constitution. If you don’t like it Mr. Prime Minister, you can always move to the US:)

Obama Victory Speech - November 4, 2008

Remarks of President-Elect Barack Obama-as prepared for delivery
Election Night
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
Chicago, Illinois

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he's fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation's next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House. And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

I Heart Biden. Biden Hearts Tucker.

Yet another reason to adore the fabulous Joe Biden - his choice of man's best friend for the Naval Observatory? A German Shepherd! Apparently, Biden has raised three of them already - so no surprise one is going to join him at the vice president's residence. And - you will love this one because it is oh so Joe - he's going to train the puppy himself! (Finally) A vice president with sensibility.

It is customary that both the president and vice president adopt a puppy in their new government digs. I think Bush had three - remember how they would either run away, go to the bathroom at inopportune times or bite the hand of respected journalists? Hmmm. Even where dogs are concerned this man has a challenged record!

That, of course, leads me to wonder - does Cheney even have a dog? I have certainly never seen it. As a man of tradition, I think he must - heck he probably keeps several - way down in his underground lair, right behind his personal electric chair. I can just see him test driving the his latest torture techniques - waterboarding for dogs - aghh! The more I think about Cheney, the more disgusting my thoughts become.

So back to Biden. My first reaction upon discovering his fondness for German Shepherds was surprise but, after some thought, I concluded of course a German Shepherd! Much of a gentleman's character can be presumed simply by understanding his affinity for a particular breed. It is only natural an honourable and humble man like Biden, with his sense of duty and commitment would pick a working dog whose own regality is rooted in the unbiding devotion shown to his master.

Tucker would be most pleased.

Frankie Venom R.I.P.

Frankie Venom (a.k.a. Frankie Kerr) and his family lived across the street from me on a dead end road that ended at the bottom of the Hamilton escarpment. My sister and I used to play with his much, much younger sister- God what was her name again? Aileen I think. We were best buddies as kids and not a day went by when we didn't call on her to play.

Frankie never really engaged with us, except to smile with detached humour at the marvel we displayed upon entering the presence of a rock star. Teenage Head was only a local band at the time, its biggest gig our annual street party but we worshipped him nonetheless.

I recall one particular street party – before he hit it big – when Teenage Head was the entertainment. The band drove onto the street in a station wagon, it's windows covered with towels. The neighbours stood in a row on either side, clapping and cheering as they rolled in. The band sat in the car till everyone got really rowdy – finally sauntering out when they felt we'd earned it. It was the first time I realized it was cool to keep people waiting. Yes, they knew how to play us but they also knew how to give back – we got a private rock concert right on our front yards!

I also remember Frankie’s bedroom. It was a source of a lot of education for me. When he'd leave home for band practice (his parents outlawed rehearsals in the house) we'd sneak into his bedroom and explore. It was pretty impressive, even now as I think about it from my adult designer eye. On his walls, he had wallpapered, collage style, from floor to ceiling, thousands of pictures of naked women. Not poster size pictures but small cutouts – like the ones (I imagine) you’d find in Playboy or Hustler style magazines. He was meticulous in covering every inch of his walls. No space was too small to support a nude. He had the odd picture of an idol singer (I recall Rod Stewart) but mostly it was naked women. A single bed (at the time, it didn't register with me what a juxtaposition of modesty that was given the rest of the room) but it had a shaggy black blanket on top of it (I think pretty much everything else in the room was black) – and I thought that was cool. I remember his concert outfit – hanging on a small hook off the closet door. A purple velvet suit jacket with sparkly trim and a white ruffled tuxedo shirt was considered gold. Touch it and we die!! We respected his wishes - actually we were just afraid of getting in trouble - so no dress-up parties to boast of.

I had other memories – like the time he found me under his bed after a particularly good game of hide-and-seek – God was I terrified – but mostly I recall Frankie rushing out the door for band practice, leaving us to play Nancy Drew in his room. It’s one of those childhood memories that stands out for me with its’ variegated colour and intrigue. I imagine Frankie Kerr was much the same.

Rest in Peace Frankie. Your memory lives on.

Of Joe Biden's "Better" Instincts

From Salon.com - titled "Joe Biden's 'Better' Instincts"
By Alex Koppelman
Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008 11:27 EDT

The book on Joe Biden is that he is a solid, working-class guy who occasionally get himself into trouble by running his mouth. I think these two biographical features are related. Let me explain.

Biden stuttered as a child, something many people (myself included) didn't know until Barack Obama picked Biden as his running mate. It's easy to dismiss Biden's chattiness as an obvious compensation mechanism: The man speaks boldly and as often as possible because the boy could not -- or at least could not without suffering embarrassment.

But I wonder if Biden's running mouth problems are actually more closely related to the formative effects of his rather modest upbringing, and his current status as second behind only Wisconsin's Russ Feingold as the least wealthy senator in a chamber brimming with multimillionaires. The reason I speculate on this -- and this is a somewhat painful admission on my part -- is that I often exhibit the same pathology.

My dad drove a truck for a living, my mom was a waitress. I grew up, literally, on the other side of the tracks of an otherwise affluent, suburban Albany town. (The trains, which passed within 50 yards of my bedroom, shook my Delmar home at the intersection of Hudson Avenue and North Street.) Don't misunderstand: We weren't poor and I never missed a meal. But growing up in a poor urban or rural neighborhood is, in some ways, a psychological experience different from growing up as the son of blue-collar, non-college-educated parents in an affluent suburban town chock full of third-generation college kids whose parents have Volvos with ski racks and for whom "summer" is a verb, not a season. In my high school homeroom of just 30 students we had at least one kid go to Hamilton College, Princeton, Providence, Tufts, and St. Michael's, among others. I was the first generation to go to college, and I attended SUNY.

Similar pecking orders prevail in Washington. This is especially true in the chattering classes filled with prep school and Ivy League types, which is why I keep a small, blue-collar chip on my shoulder at all times: It motivates me to try harder when some "senior editor" just three years out of Harvard turns down some Op-Ed I submitted. (I often wonder: What does a "junior editor" look like?) In Washington cocktail party circuits I, too, abhor silence, and often rush to fill it by saying something, often trying to impress listeners by promoting my ideas or myself. I'm not proud of this, mind you. But it is what it is because I am who I am.

In Biden I see the same need to fill that vacuum of silence by pleasing, by trying to show he's an honest guy and worthy of his betters. That urge sometimes gets the better of him, which is perhaps why Biden refused to defend some recent Obama attack ads -- especially when he knew subconsciously that he would earn a short-term media plaudit for defending his buddy "John" (McCain) while the cameras were rolling. (The campaign later issued a statement in which Biden walks back his earlier comments.)

This tendency of his may appear to be mere courtesy, or a nod to a long-standing friendship between two senators who have served together far longer than Biden has with Barack Obama. But I suspect there is something deeper at work here. And I know, because I always feel my upbringing bearing down on my shoulders when I'm in public. Of course, all I have at stake is my reputation. At stake in Biden's public conduct is nothing short of what will be remembered as one of the more pivotal elections in American history.

So, Regular Joe, some advice: Even though he's third-generation Annapolis and owns seven houses and more than a dozen cars, John McCain is not your better -- and there's no need whatsoever to defend him or his honor, especially given the deceitful and often quite repellent way McCain has conducted his own campaign. (Sometimes the "betters" don't act that way, do they?) You don't owe McCain any benefit of the doubt, or the media any greater level of transparency than McCain has displayed. You owe your running mate, your party and your country far more.

So concede nothing. You'll be the better man for it.

Update: There you go, Joe...this is more like it.

Interesting analysis. As someone with a somewhat similar family history, I must admit, this article re-ignighted insecurities that grew of my own humble background.

I came to Canada over 40 years ago. Not my decision - I was only 2. It was my father who packed up our belongings and moved us across the ocean to a land of opportunity he only knew through second-hand stories.

We came from a communist country - one in which my father was a political prisoner for 7 years. I think his decision to come to Canada was partly to seek a better life for his family but I am sure it was also to bury those stubborn demons brought on by the hopelessness and abuse of prison life.

So came my father, a beaten 42 year old man, with $50 in his pocket, a young wife and two babies to support. That responsibility alone would have scared anyone but he was further burdened with language constraints and a lack of decent employment prospects. His first paying job was at the hand of a sympathetic farmer who, after seeing his small children, offered him work picking grapes at an hourly rate slightly better than that he'd paid other immigrants. That put food in our mouths but not much of a roof over our heads - so he worked hard to build his english skills, finally gaining enough mastery of the language to land a good paying job at a steel mill.

We moved into a simple, small semi-detached home in a rough neighbourhood - but we had a backyard, a school nearby and wanted for nothing save an easy bake oven with chocolate cookie mix - I still dream about it!! Those were simple times wrought with the simple struggles that limited finances bring. And, because it was 1968, it was also a period brewing with political conflicts and hostilities. My father endured the harsh criticism of locals who thought immigrants were taking away their God-given right to a job and free healthcare. We were viewed as a tax burden, even as my father worked 14 hour days to become an established Canadian consumer.

I grew up enduring much of the same criticism in school - from my friends to some degree but mostly it was their parents who reminded me I was sitting at a desk that my forefathers had not earned.

I am not ashamed of my humble beginnings. The struggles my father endured today make me very proud of him. I admire his strength of character and his ability to adjust to a new world. I am not sure if most Canadians, with entitlement on their side, could have endured what he did.

And yet, he has consistently maintained a humbleness that is bourne of such struggle. I used to think it was because he never forgot those early hardships but as I grew older, I began to wonder if that humbleness was really an inferiority complex - one which grew out of the hostility felt from Canada's white, naturalized citizens.

With all the controversy that surrounded new immigrants, he was almost apologetic for what he had earned - as if he didn't really deserve his job, his income, his house, his comforts. I cannot recall ever seeing my father relax. He never took up a recreational sport, didn't drink, didn't socialize much - all despite his homeland's (and his many brothers) renowned taste for fun and frolick. I think all that guilt just wouldn't let him to sit back and take in the fruits of his labour.

It upset me to watch his indebtedness manifest itself in daily routine - not just because I thought he deserved better but because it reminded me of who I was, of who I AM. I too maintain an almost maniacal sense of obligation to my job and to the individuals who afford me that right - I work countless hours to the detriment of my health and family. I accept a pay status lower than my male collegues even though, putting humbleness aside for a moment, I feel I have done more. I accept all this because I cannot rid myself of the sense of obligation I inherited from my father. Deep down, I too wonder if I deserve all that I have earned.

And here is Joe Biden, so much more accomplished than I, with the very same vulnerable spirit, with the very same sense of obligation and duty. I have to remind myself of who I am watching. He is after all, THE Joe Biden!!! More than any of the candidates in this election, he deserves to be here. His intellect, his leadership, his values - they combine to create the man America needs right now. And to think he cannot make the front page because he harbours the same complexities I do - well that wills me enough to say stop! Because if he can stop then maybe there's hope for me. If he can rise above his own inadequacies - small town, small income, small house, small world - then maybe, just maybe, I can too.