To: licia.corbella@calgarysun.com
Re: “Jack’s iPocrisy”

Dear Ms. Corbella,

Your article published in Wednesday’s Calgary Sun entitled “Jack’s iPocrisy” makes remarkable claims about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and what he stood for. Fortunately, the public doesn’t have to rely on columnists to learn what King really believed. We have his words to go by.

On April 4, 1964, one year to the day before his murder, King gave a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam”. In New York’s Riverside Church, King – a revolutionary leader if there ever was one – called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and decried the war as an “enemy of the poor” because it drained their social programs at home while killing them overseas.

In marked contrast to your contempt for social programs and “welfare recipients” who receive assistance “because they’d rather not work”, in his speech King warns that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death” and criticizes America for being “on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor”.

Each year on Martin Luther King Day, which was just this past Monday, we are treated to the appalling spectacle of people honoring King while betraying what he believed in. In death, King has become a safe touchstone for feel-good complacency. In life, he was a fiery challenger of the policies of the American government, a vigorous voice of the poor, and a staunch defender of the type of social programs Layton advocates that you have so little regard for.

You also claim that if a Canadian politician were to echo Kennedy’s famous “ask not what your country can do for you” phrase, they would be committing “political suicide”, earn “national pariah” status and cause a nationwide wave of “hysteria and fear mongering”.

This is silliness, on par with Bill O’Reilly’s “you can’t say Merry Christmas any more”. But how much more consternation would result, especially among conservatives, if a politician were to stand up and say that America is “on the wrong side of a world revolution” or that “war is not the answer”, as King does in this speech?

In the same paragraph in which you say that King would disqualify Svend Robinson from running from re-election – a remarkable assumption to make about a man of whom you appear to be in substantial ignorance – you say that King’s “main message was love”. Love appears in this speech too:

“This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men.”

King goes on to say this is an “oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept”.

How true.

Sincerely,

Adrian Duyzer

This election, I’m voting for tax cuts. Why the heck shouldn’t I? I deserve a break. I don’t need most of what our government spends money on anyway.

Take publicly-funded health care, for example. I don’t need it. I’m perfectly healthy and I’m planning on staying that way. By the time I get old and sick I’ll be rich and I’ll just go down to a clinic in the States.

I’m young enough to be healthy but I’m old enough to be out of school. And that’s why I say screw publicly-funded education. I graduated years ago.

The list of crap I don’t need goes on and on. Same-sex marriage? I’m straight. National child-care program? I don’t have kids. Compensation for abuse in native schools? I’m white. Investments in public transit? I work at home. More money for seniors? See above.

What matters to me is tax cuts. Not the environment, because let’s face it, as long as I have clean water to take a shit in, there’s nothing wrong with the environment. Not roads, because as I already pointed out, I work at home – besides, if I ever need to commute, I’ll get an SUV with 4 wheel-drive that can handle the terrain.

Tax cuts. Tax cuts, because I am sick and tired of funding the miserable citizens of this backwater American province. You’re a single mom? Maybe you should have thought about how I was going to vote this election before you went and impregnated yourself.

This is payback for when you showed up at the supermarket with your saggy breasts and your screaming child. I saw you take a cab when you left with your bags of Kraft Dinner and that told me right then that money spent on public transit is wasted money, because you don’t even use it.

Is it possible for me to entirely base my vote on tax cuts? Of course it is. And that’s why this election, it’s time to stand up for me.

While ascending to power, Paul Martin’s cabal were affectionately known as “the Martinis.” Now, in various forums, Stephen Harper’s posse are being dubbed “the Harpies.”

sesquipedalian

sesquipedalian \ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn\, adjective:
1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.

noun:
A long word.

This self-fulfilling, strangely ironic word is courtesy of dictionary.com.

A Million Little Pieces, the best-selling Oprah’s Book Club selection by former alcoholic and drug addict James Frey, has been generating a lot of controversy in recent days. It was published as a memoir without a disclaimer warning of embellishments or fiction in the story, but Frey admitted last night on Larry King Live that parts of the book are made-up.

“A memoir is a subjective retelling of events”, he said, calling his book “an imperfect animal”. He defended the parts he had fictionalized, saying they were not important to the overall story (less than 5 percent of the narrative, he said), and that he “stood by the essential truth” of his book.

He also said the “genre of memoir” is new and its boundaries are still being defined. As the interview was drawing to a close, Oprah called in, defending Frey and saying that she thought the most interesting part of the controversy was how it would affect publishers and the memoir genre.

I watched the entire interview and based on what I heard from Frey, A Million Little Pieces is more novel than memoir.

Frey kept saying he stood by the “essential truth” and “emotional truth” of his book. It’s common for novels to be based on personal experiences, in fact, I’d go so far as to say most great novels are drawn from personal experience to at least some extent. The best novels are so good because they maintain that “essential truth”, which is what I was talking about in my Digital Kayak article from a couple of days ago:

[John Updike] writes about the ordinary lives of ordinary Americans in an extraordinary way. He truthfully reflects reality in his characters and stories.

Frey acknowledges that he originally tried to publish the book as a novel, but couldn’t get publishers to take it as such. The exploding popularity of memoirs certainly makes writing it – and publishing it – as one tempting. Given the number of times it was rejected as a novel, it may have never seen the light of day if it weren’t for the memoir label.

However, by Frey’s own admission the book blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction in some parts. Does that matter?

I think it’s important to look at the author. Memoirs (which are not a new genre, as both Frey and Oprah claimed last night – Rousseau’s Confessions, considered a classic in the genre, was published in 1781) are most often written by famous people. When they’re written by former presidents and world leaders, they are often used by historians and others seeking a better understanding of the past as seen by key players.

But Frey is not a key player in world events, he’s an ordinary guy who’s suffered through and overcome drug and alcohol addiction. No one reads Frey’s book to get an accurate account of, say, the car wreck that killed his friend when he was in high school. The book is, as he made manifestly clear, about his experiences in rehab.

Frey’s book is flexible on the details but truthful on the essentials. Contrast this to many – if not most – memoirs by the people who “matter”, like former politicians and world leaders. These memoirs pack in the details but frequently manage to obscure the “essential truth” that Frey compellingly maintains.

In other words, Frey’s memoir is a big truth with a bunch of little lies tagged on, instead of a big lie wrapped in a lot of little truths. If world leaders were questioned as aggressively as Frey has been, we’d all be better off for it. But recovered addicts and quirky authors make easier targets than presidents.

By all accounts, A Million Little Pieces is an incredible book that has had an important impact on many lives. This reputation isn’t going to disappear because of this controversy. Instead, I think it will make everybody who reads memoirs take them with a bigger helping of salt, which is a positive development that I hope people are still holding on to by the time GW gets around to publishing his.

I think we’ll also see more disclaimers on memoirs in the future, including the next edition of A Million Little Pieces perhaps. As for Frey’s future, I think if anything this solidifies his success. Now he can get on to doing what he clearly does best: writing novels.