Shania Twain Had a Point, Or: The Only Way to Beat a Right-Wing Populist

When I heard that Shania Twain got in hot water for saying that she would have liked to vote for Donald Trump if she could, my knee-jerk reaction was to think she was silly and ignorant. But I had to stop and ask myself, what is Trump's appeal? He clearly has some, despite all the awful things he's said and done.

Twain said it herself: "He seemed honest."[1] He isn't of course, but he is a straight talker. Whatever comes into his head is quick to fly out his mouth. No number of handlers can keep him "on message" for long.

Contrast this to what we have come to expect from our politicians. Spin. Talking points. Questions going unanswered. Boring blather. Broken promises (Justin Trudeau being just the latest, most egregious example).

"If I were voting," said Twain, "I just don't want bullshit."[2] Bullshit is exactly what we get from our politicians. We've had decades upon decades of bullshit. Did they think nobody would get tired of it? Fact is, our politicians are the ones responsible for the upswing of right-wing populism around the globe. They built this edifice of Neo-Fascism, brick by bullshit-infused brick.

Twain should be neither vilified nor mocked. She should be lauded for her valuable insight. She told us exactly What Happened, probably better than Hillary Clinton's self-serving, blame-everybody-and-everything-but-Hillary-Clinton book ever can. Let's hail Twain as the prophet of the twenty-first century: voters don't want bullshit, and that's why Trump is the President of the United States.

In the long run, only one thing can beat a right-wing populist, and that's a left-wing populist. Bernie Sanders could have beaten Donald Trump; polls told us that well before the election.[3] Among other things, Clinton wasn't progressive enough to present voters with an exciting alternative to Trump. Sadly, while the Republican Party failed to prevent the nomination of their populist, the Democratic Party succeeded, and Americans are paying the price.

And as long as left-wing parties continue to block their most interesting, populist candidates, the rise of the right will continue. Perhaps that's what we're seeing in New Brunswick, with the NB Green Party's unprecedented ousting of Fredericton North candidate Chris Smissaert. No reason was given.[4]

So it seems our elites have not learned. They continue to want someone controllable, predictable, presentable and safe. Someone who will stay on message. Someone who will bore the living shit out of the voters. This fact puts us in continuing danger of being governed by somebody like Doug Ford.[5]

What can we ordinary people do? My best advice is, stop holding your nose and voting for the safe option. That's not a winning formula. Vote for the left-wing populist. If he gets blocked from running, vote for him when he runs as an independent. Yes, that may split the vote, but what difference does it make if the right-wing populist wins because of vote-splitting or because of the lack of an appealing candidate on the left? The result is the same, so we may as well bet on the only real chance we have.

Fear of vote-splitting is how our overlords keep us under control. It's the reason Justin Trudeau didn't implement Proportional Representation. He doesn't want you to vote for the left-wing populist, he wants you to vote for him, and he's perfectly happy to undermine democracy, trash the environment, and betray Indigenous people and everyone else in order to maximize his chances of winning an unjust majority.

If you rail against the "ignorance" of those who find Trump appealing, you're wasting your breath. Sure, in a perfect world, everyone eligible to vote would make an effort to research the candidates and their policies. Since this is the real world, that's never going to happen.

Another thing that's never going to happen is whipping all left-wing voters into voting for the safe, dull candidate the king-makers (or the queen-makers) have chosen. The Americans have that whipping and bullying routine down to a science. Third parties were scarcely a factor in their last election, and the results were as we have seen. In Canada, the situation is different. This hasn't been a two-party system in a long time, and it will never be again.

We need to thwart the king-makers, and choose the left-wing populist. Business as usual can only doom us.

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1. "Shania Twain Apologizes After Saying She Would've Voted for Trump", CBC News. http://people.com/country/shania-twain-voted-donald-trump-the-guardian-interview/. Back

2. Ibid. Back

3. "Bernie Sanders says he consistently beats Donald Trump by bigger margins than Hillary Clinton does", Politifact. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/08/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-says-he-consistently-beats-donald-t/. Back

4. "N.B Green Party bans candidate from running in provincial election", KHJ Radio. http://www.iheartradio.ca/khj/khj-news/n-b-green-party-bans-candidate-from-running-in-provincial-election-1.3751232. Back

5. "With nine weeks to go, the Ontario election is Doug Ford's to lose", CBC News. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-ontario-poll-tracker-1.4603291. Back

Dr. Fool

This past Good Friday, CTV aired an episode of Dr. Phil called "Growing Up Too Fast?" It concerned a teenage girl, Demi, and her habit of dressing provocatively. Demi's behaviour earned the concern of her mother, the censure of her father and the epithet "slut" at her high school.

The family identified Demi as the problem. If only she would dress more modestly, everything would be fine. The father was notably hostile to his daughter, going so far as to say that she disgusted him. The mother paid lip service to the idea that Demi's behaviour was a problem, but paid for the clothes that brought her daughter this attention. Demi's relationship with her sister was also marked by hostility. Although the videos showed that the two girls habitually interacted through screaming and name-calling, the sister went along with the prevailing attitude and declared, most improbably, that the trouble between them was all due to her sister's style of dress.

In short, the family was a tinderbox, sparking hostility, desperate for help. But they weren't going to get it from Dr. Phil, who rolled up his sleeves and got to work bullying the girl. That teenage girls often dress provocatively as they try out their shiny new sexuality, that girls can easily get labelled "slut" in high school for doing anything and nothing--these facts got not a moment's consideration. Dr. Phil asked Demi an array of leading questions: How do you feel about being called a slut? Do you want to have sex? Well, don't you know that when you advertise it, boys expect it? These questions were all meant to get this 14-year-old girl to admit that her behaviour was wrong. Big surprise--it didn't work.

Meanwhile, a screen behind them played an endless loop of Demi modelling her skin-tight dresses and low-rider jeans. In light of Dr. Phil's disapproval of Demi's clothing, this is odd and certainly contradictory, but I suppose that when you have your own TV show, being a hypocritical sleazebag pays the bills.

While Dr. Phil was intent on getting Demi to see how wrong she was, he showed himself to be utterly uncaring and disinterested in her as a person. He asked Demi only one genuine question, and that only because she led him in that direction: what sort of career did she want to have? Then he stopped listening to her in the middle of her answer. Any attentive viewer could see how he sniffed in contempt and looked away, how poor Demi dwindled off in the middle of a sentence. The performance was a blatant display of his seeing her not as a person but as an object--perhaps even more blatant than the sexy fashion show looping behind them all.

What kind of therapist is this? The show's producers could have gotten a performance no worse, and perhaps even better, if they'd dragged some random person off the street. The very minimum prerequisite a therapist needs to help anyone is caring. Dr. Phil flunked on that point. But his failure is bigger than that. Any competent therapist, observing the family dynamics, would have immediately picked up on the fact that there was more going on than Demi's clothes. He would have asked himself, what is the underlying problem that the family is using Demi and her "inappropriate" clothing to distract them from? For Demi was working very hard to draw all the attention to herself, and her family was eagerly accepting the distraction.

What could the real issue be? Due to Dr. Phil's lack of interest and insight, we can only speculate. Perhaps the parents' marriage is not so hot. Certainly the father has anger issues; no loving, emotionally healthy man publicly declares that his daughter--his normal, intelligent daughter--disgusts him.

And Demi clearly was intelligent. Dr. Phil himself admitted it, albeit grudgingly, on the basis that she used to get good grades. But Demi gave better indication of her intelligence than that. After an extended period of questioning on her habit of dress, Demi finally admitted that she did it "to get attention." When one of her parents declared, "She has low self-esteem. I don't know where she gets it," Demi retorted, "I get it from you guys." Not one but two perceptive, self-aware statements. Demi may not wholly have a handle on her problem--she's probably not consciously aware of her service as family lightning-rod--but she's got some idea of what's going on, and she tried to give Dr. Phil some hints.

But Dr. Phil persistently dropped the ball, by not listening and not really caring but instead choosing to be a bullying and prudish yet faintly lecherous creep (that video looping in the background). Because he never looked below the surface but chose instead the easy route of accepting the parents' definition of the problem, he was unable to be of any real help.

You may be wondering, how do I know all this? I'm no therapist, but that family dynamic is all too familiar to me. But for some minor differences, Demi's family could have been my family, and Demi could have been me at about that age. Even the incompetent shlub posing as therapist is familiar; my parents also subjected me to one of those. Eventually we had real family therapy, but it took years and a great deal of suffering. It pains me to think how much longer Demi might have to wait before she gets the sympathetic listener she deserves.

I would like to urge parents to get their children and themselves real therapy, and not settle for quacks like Dr. Phil. But in the end, it all comes down to parental priorities: do they want to get real help for their problems or do they want to make spectacles of themselves on TV? Clear enough which choice Demi's parents made.

The Eros of Labyrinth

Welcome to the second installment in my series on things that are unexpectedly sexy. The first installment explored The Eros of Jeeves. This one looks at a children's movie that isn't a children's movie. Enjoy!

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Labyrinth is a Jim Henson movie featuring David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly and a host of scruffy Muppets. David Bowie plays Jareth the Goblin King, ruler of the eponymous labyrinth. Jareth has a thing for a whiny teenage girl named Sarah. Much like the schoolboy who expresses his feelings for his crush by yanking her braid, Jareth steals Sarah's baby brother Toby (on her request, it should be said, though she regrets it instantly). Sarah must find her way through Jareth's labyrinth and brave its Jareth-created terrors so that she can rescue Toby and get him back home before her parents return from their party and discover him missing.

Labyrinth has never been a darling of the critics. Yes, it has its flaws, but it's got a lot going for it as well. It's got a great soundtrack courtesy of Mr. Goblin King himself, it's got some brilliantly creative scenes, it's got lots of amusingly ugly goblin Muppets, and it's got Bowie, looking scrumptious in eye makeup and big eighties hair.

The flaws include the movie's opener, which features dialogue and acting so unpersuasive it makes your teeth hurt; a bunch of irritating hairy creatures who sing the movie's one lousy song and pull off their own heads; a wholly unnecessary fencing chihuahua; and "The Bog of Eternal Stench". It's all worth sitting through, to get to the good bits.

What I think hurts the movie overall is its lack of focus. Its makers, it appears, were unsure of what, exactly, this flick was supposed to be about, so they shoehorned in extra themes like the importance of family and friendship (yeah, we really need more movies about that, don't we?) and made Sarah excessively bratty right at the beginning so she could mature as the movie progressed. Utterly beside the point. If only Jim Henson, Terry Jones (who wrote the script) et al had realised what the movie was really about: a girl's erotic coming of age.

Well, it's not surprising. Our culture has always had difficulty with the idea of girls having their own sexuality. We've no problem with the sexuality of boys; look at American Pie. But girls? God forbid. Girls may struggle with the sexual interest of boys but are not supposed to have any of their own. So perhaps the moviemakers could not bring themselves to admit, even to themselves, what sort of movie they were really making.

And yet there is at least one occasion when it becomes perfectly blatant. Sarah solves a well-known logic puzzle involving two guards and two doors, only to find herself falling down a hole full of hands that grab at her. At first, she is understandably perturbed, but the hands explain that they are "helping hands" and are holding on to her to prevent her from plummeting to her death. She then accepts their grappling.

Excuse me? A teenage girl falls down a dark tube, somewhat reminiscent of a vagina, and gets felt up by a bunch of hands, and we're supposed to believe that this is just another innocent kid's movie? No no no.

This scene is one of my favorites, not only because it's naughty but because the hands speak by clustering together in several different configurations to form faces. It's brilliant. Labyrinth is worth seeing for this bit of artistry alone.

Vagina-like tunnels abound. Sarah falls down them, slides out of them and walks through them. In one scene, we even get a scary penis. Sarah and her goblin guide Hoggle are walking down a tunnel when Jareth shows up and asks her how she likes his labyrinth. "It's a piece of cake," says Sarah, and is punished for her hubris. Jareth vanishes and a dangerous-looking cylindrical metal apparatus comes chugging towards them, filling the tunnel completely. According to Hoggle, the device is for cleaning the tunnel, but that doesn't explain the blades swirling around on the front (or glans, as I like to think of it). Sarah and Hoggle escape into a nook, and as the mechanism sweeps by, we see that it's operated by a couple of goblins working pedals, one goblin per pedal. The cleaner seems dangerous at first but becomes funny once you get a closer look at it. It is a symbolic disarming of the penis.

Speaking of penises, something I'm always happy to do, a certain web page brought to my attention just how much Jareth's, or rather Bowie's, package is on display in this feature. I didn't notice, at least not consciously, but far be it for me to object to an attractive man in form-fitting pants.

Near the end of the movie, as Sarah draws closer to Toby, Jareth meets her on a collection of impossible stairways out of the Escher woodcut "Relativity". This scene rivals the helping hands scene for clever effects. Sarah and Jareth chase each other up and down the stairs and finally come face to face for the movie's most smouldering exchange. Jareth tells Sarah he's been generous to her, and she reacts with scepticism, but he points out that everything he's done, he's done for her, starting with taking Toby away. "Just let me rule you," he says, "and you can have whatever you want. Fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave."

In other words, the labyrinth and its seeming dangers, the Goblin King's show of menace and tyranny, were all a sort of sadomasochistic seduction. Jareth was never any threat to her. He never wanted to be anything but her top. Everything he did was to give her the erotic thrill of fear.

Sarah's next statement seems on the surface to be a non-sequitor, but it is in fact an admission that she understands, and agrees: "You have no power over me." Indeed, Jareth, like any top, can maintain the illusion of power only as long as Sarah chooses to participate in his sadomasochistic game. As soon as she speaks these magic words, the spell is broken and she is back in her room, and Toby is back in his playpen. Her parents haven't even come home yet.

It's the perfect setup for a girl like Sarah. She can spend some time with an attractive male and mess around a little but put the brakes on as soon as she feels things have gone far enough. All the while, her parents remain completely unaware of what's going on. What teenager doesn't want that? Every girl should have a Goblin King.

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In the next installment of this series, I will get even more controversial and argue that a children's picture book can have content that is erotic--to children. Yikes! So keep an eye out for that, or flee, depending on how openminded you are.

Faces of the Powerful

Note: This strikes me as a piece that cries out for illustrations. However, I don't want to either violate anyone's copyright or pay Reuters for pictures. So instead of inserting pictures, I'm inserting links to articles that have pictures. The articles have nothing to do with this entry; in fact, most of them are quite old. The point is the pictures. So to see pictures of what I'm talking about, click on the links. Thanks for understanding.

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As you are no doubt aware, Barack Obama became President of the United States yesterday. He made a beautiful, moving speech about responsibility and sacrifice. That, of course, does not prove anything. Many people can make wonderful speeches and promise all sorts of things without following through. Many people have. But I feel sure that Obama is a man of integrity who will spend his time in office doing the right thing to the best of his ability, rather than covering his butt and sucking up to corporations and the wealthy in order to secure a second term.

How do I know this? Because Obama has something to back up his pretty words. He has his face. I saw a wonderful photo of him on the cover of a magazine, last week's Newsweek I think. He was smiling and looking relaxed and confident. His face is open. He is a man with nothing to hide.

By stark and terrible contrast, here in Canada we have Stephen Harper. Here we have a man whose conception of governance is to alternate attacks against every perceived threat to himself with long vacations and interruptions to Parliment. He has, since taking office, done much that is destructive and almost nothing that is useful and constructive. He is secretive to a degree that is sometimes pathological. He is probably paranoid, which is why he is secretive. And none of this comes as a surprise to me, nor should it to anyone, as it was all plain to read in his face, his distressingly masklike, expressionless face that looks like a Botox treatment gone too far.

We have a new leader of the opposition party. The old leader, Stephane Dion, was not a man of extremes, neither great like Obama nor terrible like Harper, as could be read in his average-looking face, but a good man. Strangely, that wasn't what Canadians wanted, and Dion had to go. His replacement, currently temporary and possibly to become permanent in May (though I hope not) is Michael Ignatieff. Here too, there is something disturbing to be read in the face. It doesn't reach the soulless extremes of the Harper rubber-face, yet all is not well. There is a hardness and an odd squinching up around the eyes, as if either to hold something in or keep something out. His eyes remind me of Karla Homolka's. I don't mean to imply that Ignatieff is like Homolka. I am fairly certain he will neither serve as an accomplice to murder nor mail his underwear to prisoners. Still, this narrowing of the eyes must mean something. I don't know what, but I know it isn't good. I do not have high hopes for Ignatieff.

The mouth can lie, the face does not. If you really want to know your leaders, hit the mute button when their faces appear on your television. If everybody did that before every election, we could probably save ourselves a lot of pain.

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Further Reading: "The President's Speech" describes an incident in which brain-damaged people laughed at a televised speech by Ronald Regan, while people with normal brain functioning were taken in. This fascinating essay can be found, along with several other fascinating essays, in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.

Oprah's Ego

For several years now, I have wondered if Oprah's ego is not getting a wee bit out of control.

It started a decade ago, when Oprah began having Phil McGraw, another character not exactly known for his modesty, on her show regularly. Dr. Phil would make sweeping pronouncements regarding a guest's problems and what she (almost invariably she) should do about them, based on a few minutes of listening to her talk. If the guest showed any reluctance to accept the instant diagnosis, Oprah would jump in with a comment like, "Did you hear what he told you? I mean, did you really hear that?" The implication seemed to be that if you didn't agree, you must not have been listening. There was never discussion of the possibility that other interpretations and diagnoses could be made.

This happened about the time that Oprah apparently decided she was some kind of spiritual leader. The show's opener was changed to give more of a Baptist church feel, and the format was modified to include things like the ever-sappy "Remembering Your Spirit" segment. For this reason, I don't think Oprah automatically backed up everything Dr. Phil said because she idolized him. Rather, I suspect she saw him as a peer, another Great One like herself.

Then of course, there is her decision to put herself on the cover of every issue of her magazine. I was just in the grocery store and I saw the latest issue of O magazine (January 2009) on the rack. To my surprise, there were two people on the cover. My first thought was that Oprah had finally deigned to share her cover with someone else, and that perhaps her ego was not as overinflated as I'd thought.

But when I picked up the magazine, I saw that both people were Oprah. On the left is a slim Oprah in a tummy-exposing white workout suit. On the right is a chubbier Oprah in a purple workout suit that displays only some carefully-arranged cleavage. (Oprah's putting some rack on the rack this month. Sorry, couldn't resist.) The headline: "How did I let this happen again?"

That's right: the only person Oprah has shared her magazine cover with... is herself. OK, there is a reason behind it. She's discussing her weight gain and is illustrating it with contrasting images of herself. But still... once, just once, O magazine features two people on the cover and they're still both Oprah?

On the other hand, Oprah declared this summer that she's tired of being on the cover. So there's hope that she has not crossed some kind of ego Rubicon, from which there is no return.