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DisEcklering CanaLeahn Culture
Peter is co-editor of Bookninja.com and has recently relocated from Ottawa (where he worked for The Citizen) to Vancouver.
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Dissecting Canadian Culture by Peter Darbyshire Today I logged on to Dissecting Leah Mclaren to see if it had any comments about Rebecca Eckler's column "Punk'd by Stu." I don't normally read Eckler, but while flipping through the Post recently (I had to - it was my job), I noticed a promo piece she did for the magazine Stu: For the Adequate Man. I remember rolling my eyes in disgust at the time and moving on, thinking, "Great, just what we need: more let's-revel-in-banlity crap and ignore the substantial issues out there." It was the perfect subject for Eckler. Apparently too perfect.
Initially, this whole situation gave me a chuckle. But then I thought about it more. Eckler doesn't apologize anywhere in the column for not doing the basic groundwork any journalist is supposed to do: fact-checking. Instead, she says, "Who has the time?" While I can sort of understand this, working as I do in an understaffed newsroom where many of the journalists simply have too many stories to cover (those that still bother to write stories rather than play video games in their cubicles), it's still unforgivable for a national columnist. Especially when Eckler mentions in the same column that she doesn't have time to worry about fact-checking in her work hours because she's off getting massages in the middle of the day. I began to wonder if those rumours I'd heard about Eckler paying people to write her stories in J-school are true.
So this is why I log on to Dissecting Leah Mclaren, which has posted on Eckler before. And if you can't see the connection yet, just go back to reading the Post and never come back to this site again. And I find the sad message that the blog is no more. Why? Well, the person behind the blog says it best. I've posted the entire final message below, in case the site goes down soon. It's not funny, because it's true. Good luck, Coyle. Welcome to Dissecting Leah McLaren. And now for some bad news. This blog has officially closed. The reasons are both long and complicated, but fortunately for everyone, I have plenty of time to explain them. I want to warn everyone in advance, though, this will be a profanity-ridden explanation. The first and most basic reason for the end of the project is that I've frankly lost interest in maintaining it. Don't get me wrong, I sincerely believe that making fun of Leah McLaren is a noble, righteous and hilarious pursuit, but the truth is that it doesn't matter. From the beginning, I never truly believed that incessant and witty blogging would ever result in the end of her writing career, her termination from the Globe and Mail, or improve my chances of actually getting work. I just thought it would be a funny way to vent my personal frustrations, and gauging from the email I've received over the months, I succeeded tremendously at that. But as much fun as writing Dissecting Leah McLaren was, I now want to forget entirely about Leah McLaren and everything she stands for. Because recently I made an amazing personal revelation; a discovery that for me, is on par with the scene in Pulp Fiction where Jules Winnfield realizes that he is the "tyranny of evil men." The truth, as I see it, is that McLaren isn't just what's wrong with Canada, but rather that she is Canada. She is a metaphor for what Canadian media, arts and culture means, and more than anything else I find this depressing, because if Leah McLaren is Canada, then what the fuck am I doing here? So I've decided that I'm not going to try to be a writer in Canada anymore, for the simple fact that I haven't the faintest hope in succeeding. Leah McLaren is the blueprint for success in Canadian culture and I was drawn from an entirely different set of plans. In the past, I had always assumed that the rest of the world looks at Canada as sort of a joke - a cute and endearing joke, mind you - but a joke nonetheless. This, however, is the biggest mistake I'd ever made, because a joke implies that people are laughing, or at the very least paying attention. Nobody cares about Canada. No one. Does anyone truly believe that in Germany or Japan or South Africa, people are sitting around, waiting for the latest cultural export from Canada? Of course they aren't. And why should they? Canada is a country overflowing with talent and yet it's products are - by and large - miserable at best. Why is this? I've lived in this country for most of my life and the people I know are smart, funny, interesting people. How is it possible that our nation consistently produces fifth rate cultural products? The reason is simple. The reason is that the people who control culture in this country don't give a fuck about it. And they don't have to. It's not that they're evil, malevolent people, who eat babies while conspiring to keep our nation down; but rather the people who run our country's broadcasters, publishers, production companies and other media outlets are themselves a bunch of cynical business-people who just wouldn't know talent if it bit them on the ass and then later emailed them a message saying "I bit you on the ass earlier today, from Talent." The truth is that the people that make these decisions get to keep their jobs because of legislation enacted by the government (these guys all know each other on a first name basis) which is designed to protect some ominous thing called "Canadian culture", when what it really does is protect these corporations from real competition. both from within and abroad. The result of this is that it tells the up and coming cultural producers to go fuck themselves. They don't need to sell interesting books or magazines or movie tickets or anything, because their subsidized paycheques will all just come out of taxpayers pockets, so they can all afford to work with the talentless hacks they've always done business with. And that is precisely the message that Canada is giving it's artistic community: Fuck You. So do you have an amazing idea for a movie? Fuck you, young promising director, the money's going to Paul Gross to make a shitty movie about curling, or whoever the fuck made Ginger Snaps. Do you want make an interesting and funny TV show for CanWest Global? Fuck you, brilliant, unemployed producer, we're making Train 48. Do you have a good idea for a novel? Fuck you, you unpublished nobody, this agency only works with "referrals" who write books about rural Saskatchewan*. Do you want a host a radio show for CBC radio? Fuck you, interesting person, we only accept people lacking personalities around here. Do you want to write a hilarious weekly column for our newspaper, a Dave-Barry slice of life piece that will make everyone smile? Fuck you, you over-educated loser, the job's going to Rebecca Eckler. Imagine that the NBA worked this way. Imagine that Shaq went up to the GM of the LA Lakers and said "I want to try-out for your team" and the GM responded by saying "Sorry, Shaq, thanks for applying, but the position is going to my nephew. He doesn't know much about basketball, being a 5'6 one-armed white kid from Oregon, but he's a quick learner." Just think about it for a second. Pretty funny, isn't it? Now stop laughing, because this is the society we live in and it's pathetic, and it's not going to change. That's why Dissecting Leah McLaren is coming to a close. It's because I've had enough of being told to go fuck myself without being given a chance. I look abroad, and I see talented people who are doing interesting things and making careers out of it. I see Wes Anderson and Zadie Smith and Alex Garland and Amelie and Run Lola Run and Bend It Like Beckham and L'Auberge Espagnole and The Office, and all the DJs at BBC Radio 1 and Malcolm in the Middle and Dave Barry, and Toby Young and the list is endless and then I look at the most successful 20 something in Canada and it's Leah McLaren who is stupid and petty and superficial and untalented and uninteresting and it makes me want to shoot myself. In the UK, the BBC has an open call program called BBC Talent, where anyone who can do anything can apply to the company, and if you have the T-A-L-E-N-T, regardless of who you are, they'll give you the opportunity to do something with it. In Canada, the system is designed to work in the opposite fashion: here, talent obscures and confuses the people who run our culture industry, so it's purposely marginalized in favour of "what they already know", which is unfortunately, bullshit. You know, the most astounding thing about Yann Martell wasn't that he managed to be a success with Life of Pi, but that in Canadian terms, he managed to do it at so young an age (39). He is the one success story in a narrative of failure which smothers this nation. So what I'm going to do? I'm leaving. I don't know when, but eventually, I will be living in the US. I bid you all farewell and hope you all find success and happiness in your lives. But I'm moving south. Goodbye Canada. I love hockey, I love putting maple syrup on everything, and I even love Toronto, but I hate the culture and I hate being told to fuck myself without even being heard, and so I'm gone. Because the ultimate truth is that I'd much rather move to the United States - a country I don't particularly love - and fail miserably, then stay in Canada and never have been given a chance. If any of you want to continue with the Dissecting Leah McLaren project (and I think someone really should), then just put a page up, email me the address and I'll link off of it from here. I'll keep this page up and who knows, maybe if Leah writes another "all 60 million British men must be gay just because they won't sleep with me because who wouldn't want to sleep with me?" article, then maybe I'll put in a surprise entry or two. And I never did get around to printing up T-shirts. I had witty slogans like "My Canada Excludes Leah McLaren" and "I'm not just a bitch, I'm Leah McLaren" in mind. If you want to make a T-shirt using one of those sentences, go ahead and use 'em (I won't sue you), and if I see you walking around in Toronto sporting one (and are reasonably cute) then I'll come up to you & buy you a mocha. Coyle I'll be checking this email address periodically for the next month or two, before letting it expire: mightycoyle@hotmail.com *This is funny because basically all of Saskatchewan is rural. To find out what all the fuss is about, go read Leah McLaren's worthless articles, which appear weekly here: www.globeandmail.com The BBC Talent webpage can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/talent/ The LA Laker's homepage is here: http://www.nba.com/lakers/ Information about Toby Young and his book concerning his hilarious account of misadventures in New York are contained here: http://www.tobyyoung.co.uk/ Quotes from the movie Pulp Fiction can be found here: http://imdb.com/title/tt0110912/quotes You can listen to BBC Radio One streamed over the internet for free at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/ Fans of dance and electronic music can browse over here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/dance Information on the funniest TV show since The Simpsons started going downhill is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/ If you don't already own it, you can buy a copy of Amelie here: http://video.movies.go.com/amelie/ You can read Dave Barry's column here: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/ If he lived in Canada, I remain convinced that he'd be unemployed. But he's in the States & has a (richly deserved) Pulitzer.
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Peter Darbyshire
In "Punk'd" (published Friday, Sept. 26, in the Post), she
admits the whole thing was a hoax, the sole intent of which was to
make her look like a fool (like she doesn't manage that on her own by
using words such as "dude" in her column). Seems "Stu"
made up a fake press kit for the magazine and sent it off to Eckler
for the sole purpose of exposing what a joke the media in Canada has
become. Eckler obliged by running the piece. But she admits that
she's not the only media moron out there: Apparently the program As
It Happens was about to run a piece on Stu as well, before Eckler
found out about the hoax and warned them.
Then I became convinced that the whole thing was a hoax perpetuated
by Eckler. I mean, no one could actually be this stupid,
unprofessional and self-inflated, could they? It had to be all a
clever gimmick. Eckler taken in by a hoax! But wait, the hoax story
itself is actually a hoax created by Eckler! The genius! This could
be the only answer, because she was still working for the Post. I
asked my media colleagues, "This is a firing offence, right?
Don't real reporters at real newspapers get fired when they run
stories without bothering to check if the story is even real?"
We are all in agreement that this is indeed a firing offence. Which
brings me back to the idea of the whole thing being a hoax. I mean,
Eckler doesn't apologize for running a story that wasn't true and not
doing the research; instead, she makes light of the situation. The
Post doesn't apologize for running a story that's not true; instead,
it doesn't even address it. If this isn't a clever ruse on the part
of the paper. well, the only alternative is that the Post is now the
Canadian equivalent of the National Enquirer and just doesn't
care.
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