Tick-tock, tick-tock, as a 4 turns into a 5 - live!

One of the biggest mysteries known to mankind is where does December go? One second we are in late November beginning to come up with ideas for presents for loved ones, then it's back to business, last minute end-of-year deadlines and the usual round of office parties and social events. We wake up and it's suddenly December 20th, with everything else to be done in two or three days, as the pressure gauge begins to hit the red zone. 

It's totally imaginary, of course, but we always seem to lose a month in December each year, just when we probably need some extra time the most, but there are only 24 hours in a day and there's nothing much we can do about that. In any case, I discussed the "Christmas craziness" at work in last week's post, so naturally this time we come to that other perennial of the festive season and end of year - resolutions for the next 12 months!

I have never, ever been a fan of New Year's Eve, even when younger. There's something I find actually counter-productive about it, and I think it's due to all the fuss that's made over it and how one is expected to party like it's 1999, and put aside any/all of the resolutions that one felt better for having made earlier. People resolve, then go nuts, then wake shell shocked in no fit condition to resolve anything, with the Christmas dream over and the cold, hard reality of January 1st staring them in the face. The day is built up so much, that just about any day coming after it simply has to feel like a downer, right?

It seems we don't learn from our mistakes, and so we continue to make futile resolutions that are so easy to make on December 30th or 31st, but so difficult to stick to , even by January 3rd or 4th! Clearly, it's the easiest thing in the world to proclaim one will stop smoking in 2015, then head out to a massive party with extra smokes in store to make up for all the smokes one will miss next year, and suddenly mere days into the new year, one is, well, smoking again - or smoking still, may be the more accurate way of putting it. 

I don't know why us humanoids insist on setting overly ambitious goals for ourselves, when it's been proven that it doesn't work, instead of setting more reasonable and attainable goals and sticking to them. I mean, how often do you hear someone exclaim that they are gonna quit smoking, in comparison to how frequently you hear someone state that they are going to smoke less? If one could do something less for a few years in a row, who knows, it might be more easily dropped - permanently - rather than failing repeatedly at the cold turkey approach. 

Putting aside bad habits in our personal lives, I think we can benefit from a similar approach in the workplace. Why resolve to make massive changes in particular aspects of our work performance which tend to slip away frighteningly quickly upon facing the horrors of the office in the first week of January? It would be much more productive to examine honestly what things we were good at and did well at, and commit to focusing on doing more of that, and correspondingly facing our weaknesses and commit to them manifesting less in our day at the office. If we set the impossible goal of pleasing everyone all of the time, then surely we are destined to fail. Conversely, if we are determined to please more people than we did last year, then that may well become reality. 

The whole new year resolution and new year party thing seems to be a case of putting off till tomorrow what can be done today, and it's always better to do it today. One doesn't need to wait till December 31st each year to try to improve ourselves; if we mean it, it can be started today, even if today is in summer of autumn. The sooner we begin to act on having thought it or even said it, the more chance there is that we do mean it and will execute it, thus increasing our chances of actually succeeding at it!

There is an added advantage to taking a more ongoing project management-style approach to our resolutions and will power - one doesn't awaken at  midday on January 1st feeling like one did die in 1999, with all sorts of added pressure on one's shoulders from what one promised the wife or husband, kids, friends and colleagues just the day before! Now that surely makes January 1st a much less depressing affair, converting it into a day that requires a lot less resolve and one filled with significantly more optimism and less regret from the night before.

Keep it real, keep the improvements realistic, and don't be overly hard on yourself for not (yet!) being the perfect you - this is my recipe for a healthy assessment of the past year and being primed to eagerly face the new year ahead. But luckily that's still a few days ahead of us, and for now it's all about some serious R&R after a quite spectacular year. So on that note, this is EU signing off for 2014 - I will no doubt be back in touch in early 2015 - and until then, happy holidays! - Kevin Mc

Video killed the radio star - block it, don't rock-it!

In another example of the "gift" that keeps on giving, we continue to hear more detail and back story to the CBC's own version of video killed the radio star - yep, natch, we are talking about the Jian Ghomeshi scandal which rocked the CBC nation severely in recent times. In fact, one reason why the story remains top-of-mind is that the CBC themselves keep it there, via their silence on the internal investigation ongoing, their lack of a replacement for the disgraced host, and by now removing all traces of him from their brand by pulling archive videos of his interviews. 

One could argue for ages whether those interviews (as interesting as some of them were) should remain online or not, but we don't have time to get into that. The guy was a pretty good interviewer, even though with time it began to become terribly self-congratulatory and evidently self-indulgent, with he himself preening like a peacock who had just rocked it. As much as many would now rather block-it, not rock-it, well, a new story involving none other than rock-tt (promotions) got our attention today. 

If you recall, this was one of several rats-off-the-sinking-ship agencies who after staunchly standing by their man in the early days of the media explosion, then turned around and disowned him totally, by dropping him like a lead zeppelin. Business as usual probably for such agencies that feed off the lifeblood of the fatted star calf - once the fame or the money or the marrow has all been sucked away, well, it's time to walk away. It's business, not friendship, even if rock-it head honcho Debra Goldblatt-Sadowski made it sound that way:

"I stand with massive solidarity by my client and dear friend @jianghomeshi. His courage is remarkable and admirable." 

That comment was posted on October 26th and yet he was history at the agency by October 31st - now that is one telling turnaround! From using terms like "remarkable" and even "admirable" about him, her "massive solidarity" suddenly turned into total disassociation in mere days. Of course, she probably knew more about what had gone on than we did, but the situation had been converted from a PR challenge to save his ass into one where Ms. Sadowski's agency had to try to save its own ass, because her credibility had taken one big tumble over her Twitter post above. 

It sounds like she could have used a PR firm to guide her own PR firm on how she should have handled the PR forest fire instigated by one of her top clients, and rock-it surely did not come across as anywhere near sophisticated enough to deal with the Ghomeshi file, in the end. And business is business after all, so they bailed on him for the same reason they reeled him in, in the first place - money! Previously he was in a position to make them money, so they engaged him, and then he was in a position to hemorrhage money, so they dumped him. It's not personal, it's business, they say, even when it involves a "dear friend". 

Rock-it dropped him with a minimum of fuss with zero media splash, and you can be pretty certain that Debra G hoped she would never hear his name or be asked about him again. But a new piece in the becoming-legendary Toronto Star (thanks to Jesse Brown!) has brought the mess back to rock-it's doors: 

"How Ghomeshi's publicist worked to shut down Toronto Life story".

In what is clearly perhaps only half as bad as it looks, the Star implies that Ms. Sadowski went out of her way to block a commissioned story about various girls that had dated #JG, due to the fact that the former radio star was far from happy about it. So like all self-indulged narcissistic minor celebrity little boys, he had gone to mommy to cry and complain, and then Ms. Sadowski got to work on killing the story, apparently. 

“We feel this is a really unfair and absurd piece” she said in the summer of 2013. In return for the story being buried, the Star reports that she offered full access to the former star for a more elaborate story - but not one that included what his proclivities might have been at the dining table or especially in the bedroom. It was the publicist equivalent of a gag order, but what is not clear is just how much rock-it understood about why #JG was so nervous about the original story. It can be viewed simply as a PR firm doing its job, or as someone desperately trying to cover up the sins of their "dear friend", depending on how cynical you are. 

For sure, if Debs had heard the rumours freely circulating around Toronto media circles about his boudoir "idiosyncracies", and one can only imagine that she had, then any move to gag Toronto Life reflects a darker underbelly. When the paper asked Goldblatt-Sadowski recently if she had tried to evaporate the story about ex-girlfriends in exchange for offering access for another type of piece, Goldblatt-Sadowski said by email:

“Yes - and what’s your point? I did my job."

Someone really should talk to her about doing her own PR with the same thoughtfulness she may utilise with her clients, because she comes across as impatient, if not downright testy, and isn't doing herself any favours. It was she who jumped the gun and posted her massive support of the former radio star while theoretically not knowing all of the facts, which seems awfully naive for a PR firm facing a media firestorm. Or, if she was aware of the facts, then her support mutates from simply looking foolish into something a lot more suspect.

Completely inexplicably to this boy, she now admitted in the piece in the Star, that she actually saw the sure-to-be infamous Facebook post that was banged out hopelessly by #JG on the day he was fired by CBC. In an earlier blog about this whole sad, sorry story, I expressed disbelief that any of them (his various agencies) had pre-screened it, and that he must have impulsively cranked it out in desperation, but no - she actually must have approved of it, given her Twitter outburst of support after reading it - even if she attempts to exonerate herself of any responsibility for his outrageous post and turned the spotlight onto Navigator. 

“Jian genuinely wrote it (as far as I know),” she said via email. “He did read it to me before he posted it live, but he had others advising him at this point as I don’t handle crisis communications and he had a firm advising him that did.”

That just sounds woefully weak and inadequate, and perhaps further underlines the lack of true sophistication mentioned above, because I am no PR expert but the second I read that bizarre work of pure fiction on Facebook, I told our Cris that he was either out of his head or one of his agencies must be, because it was as sure to come back to haunt them all as the Demonic itself. Quite what Ghomeshi, rock-it or Navigator hoped to achieve with it (other than perhaps another payment made by the former to the latter two) is incomprehensible. It was nothing more than an act of sheer desperate fear - a fear of what was coming next. 

"Behind every story, is a publicist that has pitched it" is the tagline and one cannot help but wonder how rock-it really feels about having for years pitched a story that was just that - a veritable work of self-promoting fiction covering up the darker truth hiding in plain sight on the comfy leather sofa in front of them. The leather did indeed run smooth on the passenger seat, until the wild ride was over - and it surely is over. 

Rock-it is maybe better at dealing with home furnishing or sports brands, and they should leave PR work for (minor) celebrities to other more specialised agencies that are sufficiently sophisticated to handle them - even or especially if that sophistication is used to tear off the self-serving exteriors of such types to get to the real person hiding underneath - then the job can be less about dealing with BS and more about actual scintillating PR. 

Sometimes the best PR is a capacity to zip it, and not make a fool of oneself with impulsive misinformed Twitter posts, or comments to newspapers, or ridiculous Facebook rants. Whoever encouraged the $55M lawsuit against CBC was living in the same fantasy world as the former star, while taking his cash for their so-called "advice". The one single piece of good news for the former radio star is that he finally got some good advice, from Marie Henein, his lawyer, who seems to know how to deal with the media better than any agency he hired previously, i.e. she (and now he) has been a paragon of silence. - Kevin Mc

Video killed the radio star

The photo above doesn't need much explaining these days, as that pillar has to be one of the most reported-on pillars in Toronto, if not in all of Canada. It is of course the pillar in CBC headquarters in downtown Toronto which used to bear testament to the rising star of a certain CBC golden boy radio persona. The self-aggrandising giant shot was summarily scraped off following the termination of said radio star, and the blank space left sort of says it all. 

That the blank space speaks volumes is mirrored by the silence of the former golden boy subsequent to his Facebook fiasco, and of the CBC themselves, who have not adequately responded to the landslide of questions/concerns that arose out of their (mis)handling of the entire affair. Is there anyone that is going to stand up and take responsibility for this mess, even if only to imply that there is anything remotely resembling actual leadership at CBC?

It sure doesn't seem to come from Heather Conway, based on her somewhat clueless conversation with Peter Mansbridge, and after watching "The Fifth Estate" last Friday, it certainly doesn't seem to have come from Chris Boyce, head of CBC radio/audio. As much as we can sense his angst over whether they should have gone to the police or not, to report what they saw on a video but were not in possession of, this is not really the point over which many feel let down by CBC.

Totally irrespective of whether the former radio star was guilty of any criminal activity, it was abundantly clear to almost everyone that there was serious dysfunction rampant in Studio Q, and by their inaction, incompetence and lack of desire to reel him in, the CBC effectively sanctioned that dysfunction. In what contemporary workplace could a male superior be able to state that he wanted to "hate f**k" a female subordinate, or actually hump her from behind in mimicry of what he must have wanted to do to her?

For anyone to imply that such behaviour is both quite common yet difficult to police or discipline is completely ridiculous - only an outfit with an excuse for a human resources department could have turned a blind eye. But yes, I can hear you all stating that abuse by superiors is extremely common in the workplace, and when someone is powerful (and in this case, famous too) enough then the rules do not apparently apply to them. This certainly seems to have been the case, and the former radio star was so high profile that not only the subordinates were running scared, but so were upper management at CBC.

The key question is why, and it's not so complicated. Sadly. The key to this situation was not only that the radio star (as he then still was) was a major brand in and of himself, one adored by all, but that it was CBC themselves who had constructed this brand from the ground up; the corporation needed a big star golden boy and so they built one, using a template that was very carefully selected. He didn't disappoint, either. 

It was a very symbiotic relationship; one where both parties got a big return from their investment with the other. After having built his brand, and benefiting enormously not only from syndication of the Q radio show, but also from all the free publicity that the former radio star was bringing them, CBC were not going to let some "idiosyncrasies" get in the way of business-as-usual. 

It was an error of spectacular proportions and one that would ultimately cost both partners in that symbiotic relationship - heavily. As his star rose, so did the problem become a bigger one, even if that was not apparent at the time. The former radio star, perhaps sensing that he had become too powerful in the corridors of the Front Street HQ to be questioned, actually let it go further to his head and continued with his (not so) merry ways. 

But there was a ticking going on in the background, and the time bomb that the former radio star had become was rolling precariously towards the hard concrete foundations of not only CBC HQ, but of the very corporation itself. When that time bomb smashed into hard concrete via a video recorded on a CBC-owned media device, well, let's just say that the tremors were not only felt by the building's walls but also by the shaking knees of a whole slew of CBC management. From golden boy to a cancer, in mere minutes. From the chic confines of Studio Q at CBC headquarters, out onto the gutters of Front Street, in a heartbeat.  

There's something very poignant about the lonely stepladder sitting there where the face of the former radio star used to shine down from, leaving one huge question mark over the future for both CBC and the now charged former radio star. His fall from grace is a lot farther than for the scraped pieces of his face that fell onto that tiled floor, and while CBC clearly have no intention of saving his face, he also is going to find it impossible to save face, unless lightning strikes - twice. It's a question of his liberty now, because the job and the career and the celebrity are all part of the past. 

As for the title of today's blog, it's truly ironic that it comes from popular song, which was an art form that was at the heart of the former radio star's life and career, and even though it was written decades ago it describes the former radio star's current situation very aptly:

"In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind, we've gone too far 
Pictures came and broke your heart, put the blame on VCR
Video killed the radio star...."

Of course the tune (written by genius songsmith Trevor Horn, et al.) referred to the advent of video as promotional tool and how that impacted the business of radio, but it's a very different type of video that killed this radio star: the inexplicable part of this wild story being that the video was not uncovered surreptitiously by CBC but it was in fact presented to them by the former radio star himself. It truly did become, at that moment, the video that killed the radio star.

"And now we meet in an abandoned studio
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago
And you remember the jingles used to go, oh-a-oh
Video killed the radio star, video killed the radio star...."

When the demons of celebrity twist fame into infamy

After weeks of silence and no sightings of #JG anywhere, this week brought him out from under cover via a double whammy Tuesday-Wednesday. After being fired by CBC on October 26th, he summarily filed an apparently futile $55M lawsuit against CBC, even though the collective agreement he was subject to actually precluded him from doing so, as he must follow a grievance process mandated by that agreement. The futility of that lawsuit was emphasised by the announcement on Tuesday that he was withdrawing it, with cost, and would have to pay his former employer almost $20,000 in legal costs. 

It was as predictable an event as it was futile, from the get-go, and simply underlined the horrible advice he may have been given (or good advice he ignored) in the days following this story breaking; his Facebook post, the lawsuit and the courting of the court of public opinion (as well as some minor celebrities) were all a desperate scramble for support in advance of what he knew was coming next. Irrespective of whether he was directly advised, inappropriately, or acted on his own questionable judgement, his actions in the early term were destined not only to fail, but to actually continue to work against him - even today. 

Damage control is one thing, but to actually portray himself as the victim, taking advantage of the uninformed and presumably naive quarter of a million Twitter followers, well, that's something else. I suppose the idea was not just to buy even a few precious days of the spotlight being turned on CBC as legions of fans expressed outrage (as they did!), but maybe in his dreams he thought CBC would buckle under pressure, hand him a couple of million dollars, and he could fly off into the sunset of his career - but still a free man. If so, it was a gross miscalculation, as CBC refused to budge from their position, and as more truth came out, some of those minor celebrities standing up for him were forced to sheepishly sit back down with red faces and question marks about their judgement/motivation hanging over their heads. 

After being dropped by various agencies and lawyers, the guy was splashing in the waves all on his ownsome, but it seemed that at least the advice being given him was of higher quality (and of purer motivation) than those who seemed to have just taken advantage of his situation. The rats always come scurrying towards you when you are bleeding out, they pick the bones, then just as rapidly they all scurry back off the sinking ship when they have gorged sufficiently. Thus, his silence in recent weeks was at least indicative that someone with even half a brain was supplying solid legal advice. Stay the hell out of sight, and shut your mouth - including, or in particular, silence the virtual voice on social media!

So, out of the blue, big lawsuit dropped. One simply had to know that something big was coming next. As it did. The day after the suit was dropped, it transpired that a surrender to Toronto police had been negotiated, he was arrested and charged with four counts of sexual assault and one count of the strangely titled "overcome resistance - choking". The latter charge is somewhat foreboding in that it comes with a maximum sentence of life in prison, even if it is highly unlikely that any judge will exercise that option. At the same time, bringing someone to the verge of passing out is but a heartbeat (or two) away from potentially killing them - so it's one very dangerous game. When it happens without consent, it's about as close to attempted murder as one can get, without actually intending to kill someone.

If you look at this triumvirate of faces above, you can see that things have become really serious, really fast, as #JG exits a Toronto courthouse with his legal eagles, and the eminent Ms. Marie Henein (at right) at the helm. They call her fearless and brilliant, and I am pretty certain that any alleged victims are going to be put through some potentially brutal interrogation by her - and the choice of a female lawyer is surely no accident. Who better to stick it to female accusers than another woman? One who will have scrutinised any weak spots in their version's armour in great detail and will no doubt pick them apart with ruthless precision. I don't envy their position, I must say.

There was an overwhelming feeling I had when watching the melee outside the courtroom, and it concerned the whole rollercoaster of fame and celebrity. What a transformation in that man''s relationship with the cameras, the media, the public and other celebrities. #JG has led a very privileged life to date, with the loving camera lens and hungry microphone never far away, and golden boy status endorsed by the CBC corporation, all interlaced with an adoring public who saw him as one of them who made it, big time. In the big time. When he walked out onto a stage at some event or other, or came out of a club after a party, there were always claps and flashes and calls, and security would have to keep the salivating hordes from reaching the celebrity. 

This week, he was faced with a very different version of that circus, with everyone wanting to get a look at him, and/or a piece of him, for totally contrasting reasons to before. In the past all the girls probably wanted to kiss him, while today they would probably be more likely to hit him with their handbags, if not something harder. Instead of security helping to transport him through a lovefest to the safety of his car, now they are needed to actually keep him safe from being assaulted - by that very same crowd. The loving gaze of the camera lens has turned into more of a voyeur's stare, and even though for years he must have loved seeing his face plastered everywhere, today he would probably give a year's salary to ensure his face was nowhere. The current scenario is a total antonym to his previous experience of fame and celebrity, twisted from what used to be a total self-promotion trip into an absolute deconstruction of that celebrity and fame. Fame became infamy. Famous now infamous. 

It's not surprising that the CBC probably aren't too unhappy with this week's events, not least because it justifies their termination of #JG, in that he would now be off the air anyway and if any of the charges stick he would have to have been fired at that point. But even I have to admit that I was not expecting that CBC would have been ready so quickly with an hour long exposé of Ghomeshi, which was shown last night on CBC. What a title too, effectively implying that his celebrity status is already deconstructed completely - "The Unmaking of Jian Ghomeshi". This was shown as an episode of "The Fifth Estate" last night and although there weren't too many surprises, it is clear that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than CBC has acknowledged, and a truckload more than the public thought they knew about Ghomeshi. 

It's a spectacular fall from grace - one powered by the same media frenzy that catapulted him to fame in the first place. I dare say that some might find that to be appropriate. Fame and celebrity can be given, and it can be taken away again, by the very machine that installed it. However, in the end, the unmaking of jian ghomeshi was orchestrated not by the Toronto Star nor Jesse Brown nor the alleged victims themselves; the unmaking of jian ghomeshi was directed by the man himself, and I bet that this is something with which he will struggle in many lonely years to come. 

The cold light of day feels a lot colder when it used to be warmed up by loving media flashbulbs and the warm glow of an adoring fan base - it being taken away leaves one feeling colder than if it had never been there at all. That loss is but one price to pay for the darker side of this former celebrity and individual - it will be up to the courts to decide on any other price he has to pay. - Kevin Mc

Cue does not contain a Q - and neither does the future!

Well, hello there, once again! Here we are, a week later, with CBC anxiously awaiting our thoughts on what to do next with the tarnished Q brand now that the halo above its former host's head has not just been lowered, but effectively was forcibly dragged to the ground like Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad, back in 2003. We have heard more than enough about said host, and now the conversation turns to the future - and what that future holds for Q.

As firmly as the spotlight has been on #JG, CBC itself has been under increased scrutiny from both the public and governmental viewpoints, not least due to the claims that CBC, as a federally funded employer, enabled the host and/or ignored complaints made about him. As stated in our last post, Heather Conway's rather disastrous interviews on the subject did almost nothing to change that perspective, and in fact furthered the image of CBC management as a bunch of old conservative fuddy duddys; nowhere near as synonymous with "contemporary" or "modern" as their host's name was/is with "Q". 

The public were asked for their "insights and ideas" and there have been many comments but no apparently clear path forward. Social media do allow one to get one's personal agenda out there, of course, just as this blog allows me to do (!), and while the suggestions have been many, it's not obvious how various suggestions would actually be constructive in terms of reconstructing the cracked Q (and CBC) brand and building a new future for the team and the corporation. What we would put forward for consideration would be:

• As much as I am not a fan of positive-sounding clichés  in the face of adversity, it is in fact the truth that CBC has been presented with an opportunity here: what they will do with Q might go a long way to restoring a degree of public/governmental support for their funding and ongoing existence as part of the broadcasting zietgeist in Canada.

• One thing we don't want to hear is any more moaning about the level of that funding and any layoffs that occur due to cutbacks. Belt-tightening was already occurring prior to the Q crisis, and #JG himself was prone to criticising federal funding cuts on his various platforms. What I always found irritating was the sanctimonious tone of those bleatings, as if broadcasting was somehow holier-than-thou, and should never be cut back. 

• Even in the face of national unemployment and a recession, for example, we still need to ensure broadcasting is not impacted (?) - total nonsense! Radio and broadcasting should follow normal economics in that if your audience shrinks and you are no longer considered an essential part of the program (pun intended!), then you have to either improve or (be) move(d) on. So, now that the CBC is under intense scrutiny and their ROI is being newly evaluated, if further cuts come then just zip it and get on with the job. Or even better, get better at the job!

• As far as I am aware, Q is not American Idol. Ergo, and to wit, this "opportunity" should not be misconstrued as a chance to bring in a faded star (but one with a recognisable name) and allow them to rebuild their fame and derive a new career out of it. I heard a lot of buzz about a certain Jann Arden, and that is just not the way forward, even if she herself is rather shamelessly courting CBC to entertain the possibility. But why should they - Jann can go make another record to generate income, and CBC can go find an actual contemporary broadcaster - one who knows that job. Yes, I do know about "Being Jann" and in fact it is being Jann that effectively disqualifies her from the job, being older than even #JG, among other reasons (see below).

• I do think the CBC are smarter than we may give them credit for, but at the risk of stating the obvious, the last thing they need right now is a (social media) loose cannon the like of Jann Arden. Isn't she the one who had some kind of Twitter outburst over a much younger and more hyper-talented Nelly Furtado at some point? Isn't she the one who took to a Twitter tirade in defence of Paula Deen? And isn't she the one who was every bit "insensitive" when railing against a certain Steve Jones of Newcap Radio, including comments about his lack of a certain piece of male anatomy? Hardly appropriate for CBC.

• There were many comments in the media about her being a "cyberbully" and trust me, hitching the venerable CBC brand to her wagon is the last thing they need right now - a media disaster in the making if ever I heard one. Who would want her sitting in front of a laptop or smartphone at 3am after a hard day at the office and after a few too many cans of pop? Scaryyy! Her record on Twitter to date effectively precludes her from being in any way associated with the Q flagship show. I have nothing against Norm Macdonald (another popular choice), but he is just not the right fit for this show nor does he have the cultural savvy or hip factor needed to host a multifaceted emission such as Q.

• So, CBC, it's really rather simple. Get off your backsides, and find a broadcasting star-in-the-making.  I refuse to believe that #JG was one of a kind (at least not in a broadcasting sense, anyway!) and there has just got to be a talent pool out there to choose from, if not choosing to handpick from within the CBC empire itself. No, it should not be a rotating series of hosts, as many suggest - we ain't gonna start doing Peter Mansbridge and his rotating hosts, nor Rick Mercer and his series of co-hosts, so let's not start that nonsense with Q. Identify a new host, and roll with it. 

• Go to college radio stations across the country, or across North America, use your considerable network to reach out and source raw talent, look at CBC TV talent and see if anyone might work, or God forbid, look within the Q team itself - clearly the individual(s) who wrote the #JG essays is/are a talent worthy of consideration. It has to be someone who already knows who the coolest bands in Toronto (or Montreal, or New York, or even London) are today, and someone knowledgeable about music, film, books and contemporary culture. Let's not forget that even though he was in fact middle-aged, #JG was "preternaturally youthful" and he had strong appeal for the 21 to 35-year-old demographic, so the host should be young, not old. Someone who doesn't need a massive support team to tell him/her which bands they should be into currently, or to promote on the show. 

• We already dealt with the name of the show last week, but to reiterate, I think Q just needs changing out and returned to simply being the seventeenth letter of the alphabet, as far as CBC is concerned. The issue is not so much rebuilding a "Q" but actually relegating it to memory, while a brand new day and whole new brand is created as its successor. There is less to gain in some nostalgic continuation of a tarnished, dysfunctional brand than in reframing it and using the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and begin again. The fact that #JG's Twitter account has been removed and his website "jian.ca" is now offline both indicate that even he seems to think that evaporation is the way to go. New host, new name, new show - that's the path forward, CBC! 

• A new show does not mean that it cannot mirror the old show in terms of scope and ambition - it's just a 2014 upgrade to the old show. An upgrade that helps to slowly erase the bad taste left by the demise of the old version, and staff and public alike begin to see Q as memory only, stuck in the past where it now should belong. Change is as good as it is inevitable in broadcasting, and CBC should dive into that change today with relish; a relish they have not heretofore been associated with or known for.

• Finally, but by no means leastly, even though it is far from being essential, wouldn't this be a great opportunity to bring a female to the fore, for a change? Replace old #JG with a hip, cool, younger female host who is a fanatic about Canadian (if not global) arts and trends and one who has a great broadcasting voice that can help in part to reshape the future for not just what was once called Q, but for the CBC corporation as a whole. Replace a now fallen former golden boy who has been accused of abusing women repeatedly, with a sharp new golden girl - there would be something quite symbolic about that, I feel. 

Oki doki, those are my thoughts on the subject this chilly Saturday morning! Quite naturally, there will be those who may agree, and surely those who will passionately disagree, and isn't that the way it's meant to be when we are discussing something which we are all passionate about? Only CBC management know what's coming next, and we are waiting anxiously for the news - all I can say is that we truly hope that they get it right, the first time. Err, make that the second time! - Kevin Mc 

PS - Hmmm, speaking of Nelly Furtado.... ;)
#QtheFuture

Q the future by getting to the end of (the) Q!

After all the bedbugs and ballyhoo about the #JianGhomeshi affair, and the seemingly instantaneous and simultaneous deconstruction of his celebrity brand, things have quietened down as the inevitable legal process settles in to pick at the bones. Bones is the word, because it seems that all that's left of JG and even Q this early into the crisis is a charred set of smoking embers with only the blackened bones providing any evidence of what was lost. 

This past week, CBC filed a motion asking the Ontario courts to throw out Ghomeshi's $55M lawsuit on the grounds that it is simply not valid due to a collective agreement that requires the complaint to be handled by a grievance/arbitration process. Additionally, and I think we all agree they are right, they claim that there was nothing defamatory in their statement about information having come to their attention that precluded  his employment, nor was there a breach of confidence if the guy showed them something that was stored on a company smartphone or device. 

Much as CBC are going to come out of this mess more on top than Ghomeshi, who may well have hit rock bottom here in Canada, at least - neither does CBC come out of it looking much better than the giant prehistoric institution that it is oft accused of being. The Canadian Media Guild union that would be handling any grievance process was not delighted by Heather Conway's jumping of the gun by talking to Peter Mansbridge on "The National" (among other). Carmel Smyth (CMG President) voiced that sentiment following Conway's appearance, stating that,

“One would have thought there would be enough respect for the process that she’d have the patience to await the findings of the investigation".

It is a fact that CBC have engaged employment lawyer Janice Rubin to conduct a third party investigation into the Ghomeshi scandal, but in that case, why in God's name would Conway speak up now in advance of the findings of Rubin's investigation? As the union has implied, it reeks totally of an attempt by Conway (i.e. CBC management!) to exonerate themselves totally, even in the face of having apparently brushed complaints about Ghomeshi's "idiosyncrasies" under the warm rugs on the Q studio floor. If you believe what you read, anyone anywhere near Q knew all about Ghomeshi, and for CBC senior management to claim that they were in the dark seems highly unlikely at best and outright fallacious at worst. 

It wasn't just that CBC erred in allowing EVP for English Services, Heather Conway, to speak to the media (uhmm, that would be her media, given that it was Peter Mansbridge!), but it was both the inappropriately chosen/clearly shackled Mansbridge and the cluelessness demonstrated by Conway that added fuel to the fire. Make that salt in the wounds, if you are one of the victims on the show, or elsewhere. To have had any real impact, Conway would had to have been grilled by a non-CBC TV personality who was not scripted or handed a set of questions they could ask, as Mansbridge no doubt was - and it thus came across as a scripted attempt at exoneration for upper CBC management. While they are ruminating on the subject of #QtheFuture - there is something that appears to be missing from this picture which can help significantly - it's called leadership!                                          
Listening to Conway discussing the term "rough sex" was painful if not actually wince-inducing, because she came across not only as (perhaps understandably) misinformed but she also demonstrated the type of stuffy conservatism that typifies one's image of CBC itself. She was spectacularly inarticulate on how the story evolved and their lack of response to it, and as an employer, stating that she had "no reference" on what "rough sex" actually means, well, come on, wake up - it's 2014, not 1974. Like any other corporation with a need in a particular area in which it has no expertise, well, you hire a consultant! Or you order your HR department to get trained/informed on such issues, so that you can deal with it. Brain surgery, it ain't!! And this is the CBC, not the BBC, right? 

Then again, this entire story is not a little reminiscent to this boy of the DJ scandal that rocked the BBC, involving primarily Jimmy Savile in the 70s and 80s, who like Ghomeshi had used his fame to gain access to his targets, but the difference is that Savile was allegedly an out-and-out paedophile who carried on abuse over a period of several decades. Then again, given further free reign, who knows how easily the Ghomeshi story could have become a decades-longer history of abuse? Thank God for small mercies, eh?

The CBC did do the right thing, but only when faced with a level of evidence of what "rough sex" really means that was impossible to further sanction - especially as it appears that some (all?) of that evidence was on a CBC-owned media device, and that the evidence was volunteered rather inexplicably by the perpetrator himself - Ghomeshi. In some moment of presumed arrogance over his importance to CBC, the man showed them what all the fuss was about, and somehow expected that to be enough to make it all go away? This attempt alone is proof positive that the guy's head was not in any normal state of mind, indicative of either sociopathic tendencies underlying his polished public image or that mounting pressure from the victims and Jesse Brown were taking their toll. 

Opening up to the CBC was as critical an error laced in hubris as the ridiculous attempt to sway the public/media with his Facebook post a few days later. That worked for a hot minute, though there was a ship of fools who bought the fiction hook, line and sinker, before the whole ploy backfired totally inside less than a week. The guy is either nowhere near as smart as the image portrayed of him in public, and/or he really thinks that Joe Public is a total dumbass who cannot see through the papier-mâché facade of a few well-chosen and well-crafted words lining the surface of his reality.     

So where are we today? Well, we come to the opening image from my last blog on this subject, which is still totally appropriate today, underlining the fact that the whole future of Q is one massive gaping question mark. The disappearance of Q executive producer Arif Noorani from CBC corridors for a week following the break of the Ghomeshi scandal, and his subsequent departure from the show itself can presumably be taken as some kind of indication that the times they-are-a-changin' - the big question is does Q have a future and if so what does it look like? 

    

I see I have dragged on again as usual, so in the interest of brevity I will only touch on this aspect today, but will get into my direct recommendations to CBC next time. Well, CBC, ya did ask, as the banner at the top of this blog clarifies, so, we will tell you! Let's cut to the chase right away, shall we? As far as I am concerned, the Q brand is soiled, dirtied and dysfunctional, particularly and not ironically because that brand effectively was Jian Ghomeshi. He conceived it, created it, ran it, nurtured it and became synonymous with it, to a point where he did get to the level of gaining too much power in the CBC corridors. 

The fact that he was synonymous with the Q brand, and that the Q brand is owned by CBC, creates an oxymoronic state of affairs, over what was an exceptionally powerful brand for the CBC, but which now is one with an exceptionally powerful degree of disdain and even hatred attached to it. There is only one thing to do, irrespective of whether a very similar but retooled show returns to the air in the near future - bury the Q! It cannot be called Q. For everyone to heal and move on, and even (especially?) for those who have worked on the show, it absolutely must be rebranded! 

That rebranding has to come with separation of Ghomeshi from it (already done to an extent) and distancing of it from the term "Q" which is riddled with Ghomeshi's name, imagery and memory. "Q the future", by all means, but do so by removing the letter from the broadcasting lexicon, and returning it to where it now belongs: simply being the seventeenth letter of the alphabet, as far the CBC goes. Ghomeshi has gone, and let him take the Q with him. Why? Well because nobody else wants it or cares about it anymore. - Kevin Mc

Q just became one massive Question mark!

      

How does that song go again? Ah yes - "What a difference a day makes" - and while some days can truly rock your world and make a difference, we will extend it a little and exclaim what a difference a week makes - particularly if you are a "presumed-gay radio show host called Keith" who has now apparently morphed into ex-CBC radio and TV personality Jian Ghomeshi. 

It has been such a wild rollercoaster week on this story, the narrative of which went from being largely "Poor Jian!" all the way over to being robustly "What a douche bag!" - all inside a mere seven days. The moment I saw that he was initially "on leave for an undetermined time" to deal with "personal issues", I told our Cris here at EU that this story was gonna blow, and not in a good way. The outcome seemed inevitable, almost from the get-go. 

I told her last Saturday that I didn't believe for a second it was to do with his dealing with the loss of his father, but rather that it had to be about sex or drugs or both. After the Rob Ford fiasco and the city's unfathomable support for a drug-taking Mayor (even if it was during one of his drunken stupors!), one now sort of sees Toronto as the drug culture capital of Canada, and one could envisage a minor celebrity such as Ghomeshi assuming he could get away with a snort or two here or there. 

As it turns out, the story had a lot more sex than drugs in it, but not your common-or-garden domestic type of sexual shenanigans; it seems that this guy is into the rougher side of life in the old boudoir, which he had managed to keep incredibly quiet until relatively recently - and that was a lot less to do with his carefulness out there in dating land and way more due to the alleged victims adhering to a code of silence - no doubt further solidifying some form of rock star-like Godheaded cockiness and belief that societal rules didn't apply to him. Or, if you believe (I don't) what he has said about it, he rather astoundingly doesn't seem to think he did anything wrong, and the story has no legs.

Things went from "on leave" to he himself using the term "fired (from the CBC)" as early as Sunday, which was quite a transition in 24 hours! Of course, we already suspected that, and so he went immediately into damage control with a preemptive strike via a post on his Facebook page which lit up Twitter shortly thereafter. Tagged as his "truth", I found the entire post to be self-servingly constructed and crafted with purpose, and don't forget he classifies himself as, among other things, "a writer". I have trouble believing that crisis management agency Navigator or his PR peeps at Rock-It Promotions approved that post, and whether they did or didn't is irrelevant today - because it surely backfired in the end.

Why? Well, the purpose of that post was to set the scene and paint the canvas in a way that made him look like the super nice guy with a predilection for rather strange bedroom activities - practices some would just call kinky, whilst others may refer to it as decidedly deviant - and that this nice guy had done nothing wrong. It was an incredibly transparent case of taking huge advantage of his status as (minor) celebrity to manipulate many tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of fans towards his side, thereby somehow validating his version and discrediting any alleged victims.

Version is one word for it, but if you believe what the alleged victims are saying, it might end up being better defined as fiction, even if that's an area of writing he is not known for, yet. But if that version turns out to be anything but his "truth" then he will be further pilloried, for being a liar. It was a huge mistake if he did any of what is being described by various women, but maybe under pressure from family and friends to say something in his defence, he did what he had to do to gain a very transient control over the narrative. One can only imagine the hellish week that his mother and sister have just lived, so recently after their husband and father died in Toronto. 

It always amazes me how keen the public are to believe the powerful, famous and rich star, over the "trolls" who accuse them of what he is said to have done. Social media were lit up with all sorts of nasty comments directed at those who dared call him "a perv" or worse, and all sorts of people who have never even met him stand up early to defend him. I actually find this to be quite weakass for those uninformed defenders, because they are doing it to bring some much needed spotlight onto themselves - by being so vocal about their support for somebody they don't even know a little bit, about a situation they know even less about. 

The very fact that fans blindly believe is precisely what the stereotype Godhead sociopath depends upon and thrives on - their fame and popularity provides them with an umbrella that shields them from the rules that apply to everyone else. They get to use their audience as anonymous bullies who will defend them to the end, and ensure that victims do what they are meant to do - nothing. The fear of lawsuits and the star using their powerful social media pulpits to ruin one's reputation creates a fear of speaking up that is hard to shake; even today, not all of the now nine women involved have been identified. But the fact that a beloved Canadian actress has stepped up to the podium will definitely change this situation, almost certainly. 

The CBC itself will come under considerably greater fire than to date if it comes out that they did ignore the complaint made by one young CBC producer who says she made a formal complaint about sexual harassment by Ghomeshi, which was brushed under the rug by the corporation. An ex-Q staffer on a recent Jesse Brown podcast essentially said that everyone at the CBC knew of the Ghomeshi "problem" - directly implying that not only did the CBC know all about it but that their inaction was a sign of them being actually complicit and thus public money-fueled enablers of his behaviour. If the CBC needs a jolt as to how bad such things can get, they should take a look at that other beloved bastion of broadcasting, the venerable ultimate in conservative corporate media empires, the BBC, and their horrifying alliance (and dalliance) with a certain British DJ called Jimmy Saville. Brrrr. 

It's one thing to see various local Toronto wannabes or celebrity huggers adding their names in support of Ghomeshi's Facebook post, and quite another to see the foolish grins on their faces as they try to discreetly delete their Twitter support mere days later. At one point there's an opportunity to look liberal and "cool" by showcasing your support for a hip star you wish you knew, maybe even getting closer to the celebrity glow in the process, and a day later they look (and should feel) like idiots, sneaking into Twitter to delete their comments in the dead of night. 

In any story like this, jumping the gun when you hear one version, and not that of the CBC or the alleged victims, seems hilarious to this guy. There had to be another side to it, and it was obviously not going to be pretty. The CBC don't fire their golden poster boy for a bit of mere slap and tickle in the bedroom! And a golden poster boy of the CBC does not reveal his M.O. and varied sexual proclivities to the world, unless he is in a corner. Why would so many not see that? It reminds me of the unbridled support on social media for Lance Armstrong during his denials of doping, and all those people screaming at others in his defence sure learnt the hard way how misguided (and misled!) they truly were. 

Unbridled, unquestioned support for Ghomeshi was not restricted to the general public, as some quite high profile personalities were quick to jump on the bandwagon; names such as Elizabeth May MP, Sheila Copps MP and even songstress Lights come to mind, among others. Lights referred to Ghomeshi as her "hero", which he may well have been, but in light (not lights!) of what the rumours were, what was she thinking, especially as a woman? I hope people have learnt that showing some restraint, and for once in their lives actually saying nothing is the correct response, until the story evolves and/or they sit down with the person involved and get to hear the details and then decide to support or not. In any case, Lights has de facto retracted her support as of today, given the announcement that Ghomeshi is no longer her manager. Ouch!

Even his old bandmates in Moxy Früvous have disowned him publicly, and now The Agency Group who have had Ghomeshi as a client ever since his Moxy Früvous days have just dumped him. Ditto Navigator, and rather shockingly even his PR gang at Rock-It Promotions have now flushed him as well. I am not shocked by that, at all, but it was shockingly timed given the staunch support of Rock-It head honcho Debra Sadowski who stood up proudly beside Ghomeshi only days before:

"I stand with massive solidarity by my client and dear friend @jianghomeshi. His courage is remarkable and admirable." 

That comment was posted on October 26th and yet he was history at the agency by October 31st; talk about the difference less-than-a-week makes?! From using terms like "remarkable" and even "admirable" about him, into total disassociation from him, in a business sense but presumably also in a personal sense. As I said above, sometimes it's simply better to zip it and not be made to look foolish later, until you have heard some facts. If Ms. Sadowski did get the wool pulled over her eyes by Ghomeshi, fair enough, but he certainly manipulated her friendship also then and/or played on the naivete that led to that outburst of support, as a woman, for a man accused of physically and mentally hurting other women. 

It sounds like she could have used a PR firm to guide her own PR firm on how she should have handled the PR forest fire instigated by one of her top clients! Rather ironically, on their website is the proud tagline that "Behind every story, is a publicist that pitched it" and one cannot help but wonder how Rock-It really feels about having for years pitched a story that is just that - a veritable work of self-promoting fiction covering up the darker truth hiding in plain sight on the comfy leather sofa in front of them. The leather did indeed run smooth on the passenger seat.  

Rock-It Promotions is one thing; Navigator is another. One can understand Rock-It being in a pseudo X Files frame of mind ("I want to believe") after many years of having him as a rock star client, but why did Navigator take him on just so they could flush him later? It was kinda obvious that this was going to happen, and it sure appears that they simply wanted to gain some notoriety even via a very transient association with this guy, and his story. It seems that in these kind of situations, some of the rats actually jump onto the ship that all the other rats are jumping off, pretending they didn't realise it was a sinking ship, so they then turn around and hop back off in mere minutes. 

It's all an extremely sick and sad story that is pure tragedy all round, particularly for the alleged victims and all those who put their names and professional reputations on the line in defence of the guy. It appears that The Agency Group, Navigator and Rock-It Promotions all now believe that the Facebook story and Ghomeshi's words are either partly fictitious, a total fantasy or clearly represent outright lies, and it would be the lies that must have been the straw that broke the camel's back. I suppose everyone wanted to believe him, not realizing how convincing master manipulators, sociopaths and celebrity aura can be. There is a lesson for all in the outcome of their business associations with him.

Life and our daily lives hang by such a delicate thread. Last Thursday Ghomeshi was plying his trade, business as usual, reading his essay on the Ottawa shootings the day before, by Friday he was not on-air in Studio Q, by Saturday he was "on leave", by Sunday he had been fired, by Monday he had staunch support building up from fans and business colleagues alike, and then by Friday, the ghosts and ghouls of All Hallow's Eve had come to visit then deserted him once again, leaving his career and life hanging by that thinnest thread. It's an almost inconceivable fall from grace. He just has to be the loneliest man in Toronto (or all Canada?) today, and it's hard to envisage him having any career in Canada again - he will have to go elsewhere. 

The fact that the Toronto Police launched a criminal investigation against him this morning opens a brand new chapter in this story, and it's not a chapter that is likely to be easy reading. One cannot help but have the feeling that it may be 2014 and not 1982 that is the year that he may remember longest and which might end up defining him best, overshadowing his life and career to date. If things degenerate much further, it seems that a certain "Big Ears Teddy" may be relocating to a much more confined space than his previous Cabbagetown or current Beaches digs, yet ironically he may still need to be turned away from some other unthinkable sights in front of him. - Kevin Mc

When is grabbing take-out more critical than the risk of spreading Ebola? When you work on Today!

       

Boy, it really does begin to look like the beleaguered "Today" news franchise on NBC just can't catch a break (in general), especially when it comes to the national fear of potentially catching Ebola. The person pictured on the right, above, beside the strutting NBC peacock is none other than NBC's Chief Medical Editor and healthcare talking head, Dr. Nancy Snyderman. 

We have often discussed problems on the show to do with the main players who carry the show each morning (Matt Lauer being the ringleader, natch), but tarely has our Nance come up, even though I personally find her supercilious, phoning-it-in, scratch-the-surface style of "analysis" to border on being mind-numbingly amateurish. Any unemployed science graduate could spend ten minutes on Wikipedia each morning and come up with the same insight she typically provides to even the most serious of medical issues. 

Speaking of serious medical issues and disease, it rarely comes much nastier than the Ebola virus, which in quite embarrassingly typical fashion does not seem to impact or dent Dr. Snyderman like the rest of us humans- she is a big MD on TV, after all! It appears that she brushes Ebola off with the same ease she does most of the more trivial medical issues discussed on the show. I always smile when it gets really scientific or technical, because she tends to look uncomfy real quick, and if there's another MD in the chair, she will ask "Do you want to take that?". She gets to scratch the surface on deep medical subjects, spouts out the prescribed three minutes of airtime, and ends each piece with a "reassuring" outro of "You bet!"

You bet, and all is right with the world. Except when it's not. Our Nance has been under a much hotter spotlight of late, deservedly so, for her own outrageously arrogant actions upon returning from Liberia, and additionally having been in direct contact with an NBC cameraman who was infected with Ebola, and is currently in Nebraska for treatment. Upon return, Synderman and the team were put on voluntary quarantine for 21 days to guarantee both that they were clear and more importantly that they would not put the American public at risk. 

Now, this all sounded fine and dandy, and given that we had a medical "star" at the helm, that American public breathed a sigh of relief that they would not soon be breathing their last breath, due to Ebola. Except that in typically arrogant fashion, Snyderman snidely (snydely?!) appeared to take the kind of advice she coldly shovels onto the public stage with a massive pinch of salt, herself. What's good enough for the rest of us, is apparently not good enough for the superhuman, who completely underplayed any risk of spreading Ebola in public.

Trust me, the real experts in virology know precisely how quickly a breakout in one far-off country can go from being a minor news item to a full-blown national crisis when we have loose cannon quacks who think they know better deciding personally on how they will react to potential exposure. Hence, what a shocker that Snyderman was spotted outside a Hopewell, New Jersey restaurant (the Peasant Grill) DURING her quarantine, and that very presence goes totally against ANY serious medical recommendation for someone in her position. The very fact that the New Jersey Health Authority had to step in and enforce a mandatory quarantine for an NBC CME for violations - well, it is almost certainly a reason for termination. If for no other reason, simply due to a total loss of credibility for the role as well as for the network, while she remains in that role. 

It reminds me of a medical hubris we have all seen from one MD or another, during out lifetimes. Getting a lecture on not smoking, or the evil of eating too much junk food, and then you see the off-duty doc standing against the side of a McDonald's restaurant, smoking after their Big Mac! Somehow, dealing with cancer and heart disease every day almost endows one with a feeling of invincibility to it, because it happens to them (patients) and not us (doctors), right?

That's all well and good, when you are not putting anyone else at risk. But what Snyderman did was unforgivable for any medical professional, never mind one of the most high profile public doctors in the country who speaks to millions of people regularly on the "Today" show. This whole incident is a staggering embarrassment for the NBC brand generally, and essentially has rendered Snyderman's credibility null on the "Today" show. I don't see how her presence on the show can even be justified now, and the title of Chief Medical Editor has been ridiculed - she has effectively handed in her resignation letter. I do hope that NBC were listening!

The fact that the ladies of "The View" savaged her for her hubris was one thing, but Synderman's ongoing arrogance even in her "apology" caused the pot to boil over completely, and they ripped into her with fervour. America gets over the sins of major celebrities but when they apologise vaguely, that is something that brings out the backlash - big time. Think Paula Deen or Lance Armstrong, whose careers were effectively halted or even terminated by such arrogance in the face of public outrage - and let's be clear, nothing either of these two examples did ever put an entire state's (and then country's) lives at risk!

"As a health professional I know that we have no symptoms and pose no risk to the public, but I am deeply sorry for the concerns this episode caused," Snyderman said. 

I bet that reassured the nation, Nance! Not. Note that she did not confirm whether or not she had violated the voluntary quarantine. But what conceit to state that simply because she has a degree in medicine, she can be confident that there are no Ebola virions circulating in her veins or in those of her colleagues, when in fact, she has no idea if that is true or not. She exhibits astounding personal and professional hubris that is at the level of the archetypal God-head rock star - except that, even on the medical stage, a rock star she most certainly is not. 

Then again, why am I surprised? This is the same woman, who, on a recent episode of "Today" ridiculously claimed that the regime in Saudi Arabia was fairer to working women than that of the USA! That would be the same Saudi Arabia that requires women to have a male's permission to work in the first place, and the one that bans women from driving, and the one that enforces a strict dress code on women, right?! Cough. Splutter. Or did she actually mean the "alternative" Saudi Arabia, that other one, the one that exists only in her own head? 

Methinks it is beyond time for that strutting NBC peacock to walk away in the opposite direction, and greatly distance itself and the brand from that of its Chief Medical Editor. It is the only solution that works, wherein NBC can walk on from this incident with some credibility left in the medical affairs area. Not only would I further refuse to take anything she says seriously in any way, but if her presence on the "Today" show was continued, I would refuse to watch, period. An MD who so outrageously downplayed the threat of Ebola at home on American soil has no business talking to the American public about any medical news item. 

The extent of Snyderman's arrogance is not even so much depicted by her dangerous, careless action in heading out for take-out, but is rather truly underlined and emphasised by her woeful excuse for an acknowledgement or real apology. Thankfully, in spite of her incredibly risky and arrogant lapse in judgement, New Jersey is alive and well, and the threat has been contained. She will be free soon to go out and about and roam everywhere she wants, just like before. However, when it comes to NBC and the "Today" show? I think our Nance may well already have had her last (TV) dance! - Kevin Mc

Malala revisited again - an inspirational girl who should have been but will be (and now is) a Nobel Peace Prize recipient!

 

This amazing girl had made the news on Wednesday May 29th 2013, in the context of pressure mounting on Barack Obama to limit drone strikes in Pakistan in the war against terror. At the same time, he elaborated that her attempted murder did not fall into the criteria needed to go after a certain Taliban leader, due to the fact that she is not an American. That's one very fine line though, and I thought that the war in Afghanistan was at least in part an attempt to stabilize that country and give new hope to its endogenous population. So her not being an American hardly makes the attempted murder of a child by an enemy currently at war with America any less significant.

I might vouchsafe that it is for precisely the same reason that Time magazine overllooked her and ridiculously chose Obama himself as their #1 person of the year at the end of 2012. We said in 2013 that we would leave it to the Nobel committee to right this particular wrong! And right it they did, with the just-released news that Malala has been given the Nobel Peace Prize, finally, at the ripe old age of 17 (!), along with Indian child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.  It's very pleasing to see that the Nobel committee heard our comments and subsequently decided to give her the prize that she so clearly deseved! :) 

As it is more topical than ever, we repost the most recent of our blogs that put the spotlight on the new Nobel Peace Prize winner! 

This blog, in quite typical fashion, refuses to conform with what the (often) self-appointed judges and supposed cultural leaders say and do. We have a mind of our own which is not tainted by what fashions or societal mores dictate, and we are extremely proud of that. We are EU, after all! 

That is why we refuse to post yet another pic of a man who gets way too much unmerited praise and press as it is, and choose without hesitation to post this video documentary of a girl who clearly has a mind of her own, and one which is not going to be dictated to - by anybody. This young girl continues to make the news today, not least because since March she is back where she belongs and always wanted to be - in school, in her new home town of Birmingham, England.

This is of course Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani schoolgirl who was targeted by the Taliban in a wave of military strikes in the Swat valley, aimed at governmental institutions and including girls schools, which naturally represent a threat to the misogynistic males of the Taliban. At an event in Peshawar in September, 2008, the eleven-year-old girl gave a speech entitled "How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to an education". 

To say that it was a courageous move would be gross understatement. Writing under a pseudonym for obvious reasons, Malala started a blog in 2009 and continued to be outspoken about girl's rights to an education in Pakistan, and about women's rights more generally.

"All I want is an education and I am afraid of no one."

Those are very brave words when surrounded by men who think of grown women as second class citizens, never mind an eleven-year-old schoolgirl. Malala's father clearly doesn't agree, and he showed that by putting her name on the family register after her birth: a right reserved exclusively for only male children.

After a battle for control of the Swat valley in 2009, the Pakistani army declared victory and amidst a renewed sense of security, it was revealed that the mysterious blogger was in fact Malala Yousafzai. Immediately, those cowards in the Taliban began to issue threats against her and her family. But she had begun to attract serious attention and in late 2011, Archbishop Desmond Tutu nominated her for the International Children's Peace Prize for which she became a runner-up.

Having become well known by then, at the very end of 2011 she won Pakistan's Youth Peace Prize which has since been renamed after her, and suddenly she became a national and international figure. But that brought increased exposure and led to one of the most disgusting and disgustingly cowardly terrorist acts by the Taliban, who sent an armed gunman into a school bus to shoot her and people sitting near her.

She was seriously injured by a bullet that entered just behind an eye, and after treatment in Pakistan she was moved to Birmingham, England, whereupon the story became truly viral. She later came out of a medically-induced coma and began what will be a very slow process to recovery. But she immediately began communicating and offering support to others in her homeland who had been threatened by the Taliban.

Recently, in a very touching move, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari announced a new $10 million education fund in her name, which will remind everyone of her courageous fight for her right to learn. She is an inspiration not only for girl's rights everywhere, particularly in places where girls are looked down upon, but also more generally for women's rights everywhere around the globe.

Quite how Barack Obama is considered to be a more appropriate Time Magazine "Person of the Year" is beyond this writer. Don't worry, I am not going to go into some (albeit well deserved) rant about his totally inadequate first four years, but there seems to be some sort of inverse favouritism when it comes to this guy. He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 - for what precisely?! For being elected? He moved into office in 2009, so yes, he got the prize for his tough move into the White House. Redecoration is hard, y'all!

Now, once again, after spending more money than God's banker was prepared to loan him, he managed to get a disillusioned public to elect him again, essentially based on the premise: "Let's go for the best of the two bad choices". One of the reasons that Time Magazine chose to anoint him for the second time in four years is that he was the first incumbent since 1940 to get reelected with unemployment above 7.5%. I don't find that to be anything inspirational, whatsoever. I imagine that the tens of millions still out of work and out of their homes would concur.

Under his watch, Americans suffered increasingly, and he seemed to be like a deer in the headlights, unable to do anything other than give the same tired old rhetorical excuses and promises of "change". If he got voted back in, it had one helluva lot more to do with who he was running against, Mitt Romney, than what he had done. It was a default vote for the safer (but weak leader) choice. It's nothing to give prizes over, at all.

It reeks of political brown nosing by Time, who seem to salivate over him getting out of bed in the morning and showing up in the oval office as some kind of holy ritual. Or perhaps being that kind of magazine, it all comes down to sales, and the face of ol' B.O. on the front is gonna shift way more units off the shelves than some relatively unknown girl's face from Pakistan. But it is supposed to be person of the year, not American of the year. Shame on Time Magazine!

As far as we are concerned, Malala Yousafzai stands so far above Obama as the choice for Person of the Year that there is no comparison. He got his feet wet during Sandy, and was praised for it - it is ridiculous. This schoolgirl made a massive move and achieved enormous impact due to her own courage and defence of women's rights in a way that simply overshadows more or less anything that Obama did (or didn't) do in 2012.

He runs around in armoured cars with an army of secret service and police surrounding him - this girl got shot in an attempted murder on a school bus, for speaking her mind. All because of what she believed in, and what she believed in is what we all know to be the right thing. I think he should do the right thing, and hand it over to her - God knows she did more to deserve it, and God knows he doesn't need any more salivatory praise.

As far as EU is concerned, the Person of the Year for 2012 (and 2013, and now for sure even in 2014!) is Malala Yousafzai. We simply don't care what Time thinks, and we know that we are not alone in that sentiment because a poll taken on NBC's Today show demonstrated that the public agrees with us. Well, of course they do! ;) - Kevin Mc

http://www.malala-yousafzai.com/

Can an Android shake a blushing red Apple and turn it green - with envy?!

You can't turn on the TV in 2014 without hearing about one war or another, which is a truly depressing state of affairs, so it comes as total light relief in comparison to hear of another war that has continued to simmer on and which just boiled over again - the smartphone war! Now that Apple has decided to bite the bullet and face the screen size issue, we are off once again into hilarious digs from the Android Nation - with Samsung in particular leading the charge via its series of brutal "It doesn't take a genius" videos.  

This is but one out of a series of six different ads all poking fun at the supposedly novel features of Apple's new offering, including the purported real purpose of the Apple Watch as a distraction from the actual phone devices themselves. Depending on whether you're an Apple (particularly a green apple!) or an Android, these ads come across as either truly annoying or comically brilliant, but in any case they show the great divide that does exist between the Droid Nation and the Apple Army. 

This divide is far from just a consumer-based rivalry and is most definitely not mere fun for the corporations involved - Apple vs Samsung is perhaps the most bitter, litigious and expensive war ever waged between two giants of the business world, never mind just the technology world. It all began in the summer of 2010 during the reign of Steve Jobs when Apple first claimed that Samsung's pioneering flagship device, the Galaxy S, was a rip-off of the iPhone. To cut a long story short, it has been going on ever since, involving millions of pages of legal documents and an even more staggering billion dollars plus in legal costs. As is often the case in such matters, the lawyers are the ones who probably enjoy the smartphone war(s) the most!

To say that the Koreans did not exactly agree would be putting it mildly, not least given that they were supplying (up until the most recent iPhone model) various key components of the Apple device, including that shiny retina screen. Further, Samsung responded by stating that they believed that Apple may have infringed on their patents used in previous Samsung mobile devices; the brand had been in the mobile phone business for almost two decades by the time the iPhone arrived (very glamorously) onto the scene.

Unquestionably, Steve Jobs and Apple got so much right in their flagship iPhone and things changed forever once iPhone fever kicked in, globally. At one point it looked like Apple was always going to be ahead, until one glaring oversight that became more and more apparent from Apple iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy SII, and models beyond - screen size. This is where the two brands began to diverge and the devices began to feel and look truly dissimilar. For me personally, I began to feel that iPhones were simply too small for a man's hand, but they made extremely elegant phones for females. Conversely, Galaxy (and other Android) devices just got bigger and bigger, and the thinking that large tablet-like devices would not sell were put very firmly to bed by Samsung in particular and the Android Nation in general.

Samsung have not been slow to mock Apple for this oversight, one made by the great Steve Jobs himself, and they recently resurrected his own words as part and parcel of their response to Apple's (apparently self-indulgent) ads that suggest that the "bigger-is-better" philosophy is news to anyone except maybe Tim Cook. Naturally, the Apple Army have risen in numbers claiming that quoting Steve Jobs today is tasteless in the extreme, when sadly, the man is no longer able to respond. But you can't blame Samsung for also pointing out that they have had a smartwatch around for ages already, so what's the big deal about that? Essentially, everything that Apple is chest-beating and preening itself over has been available to the Android Nation for years already!

I (for one) knew that the statement above derived from an erroneous philosophy, not least because the very day I moved from Apple iPhone 3G to Samsung Galaxy SII - I was lost to the Apple Army. In one day, I knew I was never going back. Each time I handled a new Samsung phone, iPhones just seemed to get smaller and smaller, to the point where I would never buy one again - even if it was free with the contract! The incredibly successful (yet unwieldy, according to critics) Samsung Galaxy Note series proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Samsung was right, and Apple got it wrong - there's a huge market for so-called "huge" devices (phablets) and an incredibly loyal fan base who gobble up each new model with increasingly ravenous hunger. 

Bringing up that comment from Steve Jobs will hardly do anything to his legacy, I am certain - it's written deeply in stone, and his genius will live on with us (and maybe beyond us) for a very long time. I actually think that it's Tim Cook whose vision will be examined; it's no surprise that he had to go along with Jobs while he was the boss, but deciding subsequently to go with bigger devices is hardly visionary especially given that the market demand for those "unwieldy" devices was eating an increasingly larger bite out of the right side of that apple! So what is Cook bringing to the table that is new - that's the question being raised by Samsung, the Android Nation, some Apple die-hards, and maybe even the Apple board.

For us consumers, I think the smartphone war is all incredibly entertaining and it should not be taken too seriously. If the ongoing battle between the Android Nation and the Apple Army produces beautiful yet amazingly functional devices at killer prices, then it's all alright by me - bring it on, people!