Selling

The art of selling is an affront to mine gentler, more refined sensibilities. Sales are a bad word but sales will put food on my plate and shoes on mine feet. Somebody must do it, I just wish that somebody wasn't me.

I ever tell you I wrote for the Rolling Stone? Yeah well.

Oh Half-truths III

Goodspeed wrote: "Thank you for your note. I saw your letter to the editor earlier in the week. I’m not sure when you had your off-the-record chat with the NEVERYOUMIND*, but the situation in northern Uganda has been in flux.There was a significant drop in “night commuters” last year, when the peace talks first started. People began to move out of the large DP camps to return to their homesteads and life did begin to return to “normal” for the first time in 20 years. Unfortunately, when the peace talks stalemated and broke down in December, the situation began to change. There was an increase in “night commuters” and people began to return to the larger camps.
Any number of NGOs that are active on a daily basis in the region will tell you this."

Goodspeed went on to name a few of his sources, individuals and organizations.

I was impressed he responded to me in the detail he did and my respect for him has grown.

He's correct in his characterization of conflicts in general. The reading I've done tells me conflict is constantly in flux, "front lines" change and shift, things flare up, things cool down. As such what one can say about what area today could change in an hour or day or month or what have you. I'd completely forgotten the nature of conflict and as such, am glad he reminded me.

I'm still waiting on my source to confirm what Goodspeed sources tell him as I'm still skeptical. I just don't trust NGOs anymore.

But here's the deal: regardless of whether or not night commuters still exist in northern Uganda the fact is the conflict there has produced death on a grand and boring scale. Night commuters are sexy, an easy selling point. People starving in camps? Not so much.

It's a damn shame NGOs and people who care have to sell, but such is this world.

Oh Half-truths II

Goodspeed responded to my letter.

I may stand corrected.

More to come.

Moron vs. Moron

So dude was a bit of a stoner, or okay, a heavy drug-user and he went to war to document it. Sounds like Anthony Loyd. Wrong, try Pat Dollard.

Perhaps that's a little mean, but when you're being touted as the right's answer to Michael Moore...I mean, can't you aim a little higher?

Anyways, an honest Jackass is more admirable than either of those to politically polar fucks.

Oh Half-truths

Re: What price peace in Africa, Peter Goodspeed, April 23, 2007
While it's heartening to see Uganda's peace process get some press, it'd be a little more encouraging if the article in question forwarded something both factual and thoughtful.

The "phenomenon known as "night commuters" in which tens of thousands of children trek to nearby cities" Goodspeed writes of is no more, actually. Anyone who's been to Gulu in the last year – never mind someone who lives there – knows this to be true. It hasn't been factual for quite some time which I learned firsthand when I traveled to Gulu whilst shooting a story. Selfishly, I was disappointed to learn Gulu was no longer dangerous and the LRA was for the most part across the borders in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the southern Sudan. As such, the threat is virtually gone and any remaining night commuters do so largely out of habit, and fare better than any of the 1.6 million displaced peoples left to rot in the camps. Why Goodspeed repeats this semi-truth cynically perpetuated by World Vision and NGO's is beyond me. You'd think peace and justice would sell themselves.

Furthermore, the truth of the Matoput ritual – despite its many, occasionally understandably desperate supporters – is that while it maintains the façade of being an African solution to an African problem, is that it's simply not designed for a criminal who's guilty of such mass crimes. The ceremony is designed for neighbourhood type conflicts, for face to face meetings between perpetrator and victims. Even if Kony were convinced to take part in such a ceremony, it'd be impossible to rally everyone touched by his violence.

The Post ought to do a little more research before publishing such a piece. Is it any wonder people are lost on African affairs when a story that changed significantly a year ago is still reported as though it's happening? Perhaps we should continue reporting on Katrina as though it happened yesterday? What of the people living in the Astrodome?

Get Up

Perhaps you live downtown and fancy yourself cultured. You eat ethnic food and are the epitome of multiculturalism*. You're quite world-wise, giving money to NGO's, scorn America, are above religion, have an ear for the underdog (in your own cliched definition) and never, ever drive. You hate what 905ers are doing to the city and talk about this long and hard while eating shitty Chinese food.

Yes, shitty chinese food. That's pretty much what you're guarranteed to eat downtown Toronto, shitty Chinese food. You're a step up from small-town Ontario or New York City that way, with your Chinaman's gwailo offerings.

And here it is, sweet vindication in the pages of Toronto Life: The Burbs or Bust.

Forget downtown, Chinatown wears the played out crown.

*Eating food from some other country doesn't count as culture, it counts as eating, period.

Porn and Pussy Nerdery

Re: Porn's philosopher king

"Pressing the play button is an admission of sexual failure: I can't sleep with an attractive woman, so I guess I'll watch some other guy do it."

For all his thoughtfulness National Post columnist Jon Kay seems to agree with Ron Jeremy's assertion "Let's be honest - people get bored." Following Kay's line of logic we can see one ought to seek out and procure pus-pardon, partners, in full neanderthal conquering mode.

Sure, porn is depressing. There's a moral and pragmatic arguement for that. Moralists like the acclaimed Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family approve of masturbation for its inherent safety-valve qualities. Grumpy novelists like Norman Mailer abhor onanism for its wasting of seed while Kay chafes due to its admission of defeat. Kay's stance, essentially, is a modified intellectualism born of 80s movies such as Porky's, where man is not man unless he's well, gotten laid. Which really isn't much of a position at all, Kay's missionary for 80s moralism.

Not to split hairs, but failure would be the inability to rise to even a solitary occasion. What Kay terms failure is other people's training.