Jack and Irene

We’re behind in our work so we’re going what is called in the printing business, two-up.  The first is Jack.

Jack Layton that would be.  Jack lead the New Democratic Party, the Official Opposition after our Federal election of a couple of months ago when we gave the Conservatives the keys to the joint.  Jack passed away Monday after a short battle with cancer.  He’d had prostate cancer before, but this was a new one and he didn’t survive.  Those who saw his last press conference when he stepped aside temporarily, surmised that things did not look good. 

His legacy, aside from getting the NDP into Official Opposition, is his final letter to Canadians.  If you want to read the whole thing, this link leads to the whole text, but we’re going to excerpt the last ‘graph as it perhaps the most telling.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

All my very best,

Jack Layton

(Translation for Americans:  Jack Layton’s role would be sort-of like John Boehner down your way.  The NDP has been Canada’s Third Party for decades and is an honest-to-God Socialist party.  Yes, we can vote for a Socialist party and have put them in power several times in our various provinces.  No, they’re not full-tilt nationalize the toilet paper industry next Tuesday and you must drive a Volvo while wearing Birkenstock sandals kind of socialists.  More left than the left side of the Democrats, but still have a sense of pragmatic policy.  Social Democrat is the closest political term you can use, like Germany’s Social Democratic Party.)

Irene, or to use her proper name, Hurricane Irene, was our other story of the last while.  The various media outlets dusted off all the old bumper, interstitial and theme music from Hurricane Katrina to play Irene as the Storm of The Century, battering the East Coast to a Certain Death. 

Which brings us back to Jack too.  He did deserve and get a full state funeral last Saturday.  Both Canadian networks went wall to wall as well, but what was more telling was the comments of Persons In The Street who were interviewed after his passing.  One would have thought that not only had Jesus returned and died again, but he was joined by the Pope, Richard Gere and Celine Dion in the tragedy. 

The last high water mark for mawkish, media-manipulated, inappropriate, insincere mourning was Michael Jackson.  The reaction to Jack Layton’s passing came almost too close to that mark. 

Which is where the question resides today:  Are we getting the media we need, covering things that are actually important in our lives and informing us, or are we getting a media that sees an easy to cover fixed-length story with dramatic pictures as the only news story of note?  Not only do the media tell us it is important but they tell us how to react to the story and if we don’t react appropriately for the media, then we don’t exist. 

Jack Layton’s passing was sad for his family and for Canadian politics.  He did some very remarkable things with the NDP in federal politics as well as his long career in Toronto city politics, but it wasn’t the passing of Gandhi, or Churchill.  Judging by most of the streeters, I doubt a third of them would have ever voted NDP, even at gunpoint, but there were tears-a-plenty from people who wouldn’t know Jack Layton and his politics from a bag of brown rice. 

The same exaggeration held true for Hurricane Irene coverage.  Perhaps FEMA and the other emergency management organizations over-reacted a bit and I can live with that.  It is safer to err on the side of caution with mandatory evacuations, instead of trying inform the next of kin of several thousand unidentified victims who have washed up on shore in Long Island Sound.       

At one point, I swear I saw Anderson Cooper in full wet-weather gear, interviewing a stranger near a fallen tree branch the diameter of my thumb, during what could charitably called light drizzle.  Throw to John King in what is at most a strong wind with rain.  Oooh, the End of Days, as there is Sand On The Boardwalk in Atlantic City. 

Yes, it was a nasty storm in a few places and the clean up will take a while, but it was not, nor would it ever be, the Apocalypse as made out by the media.

Which speaks back to the media and our milliseconds of attention span:  Today’s Top Story?  2011 MTV Video Music Awards from last night with Lady GaGa doing reasonable drag as Joe Calderone.  Beyonce is pregnant.  Oh and clean up on the Vermont aisle of the American supermarket, as half the state has washed away in runoff from Irene.  Over to you Chad!