Not sure what you mean, Jowzer. Satirizing identity politics IS cutting edge territory. It’s felt dangerous for writers here to do it because they might have been shamed online. Likely less true now. Samplr is wrong, though, when he says Canadian literature doesn’t do much satire. There is a rich tradition of satire and irony starting with Mordecai Richler, Margaret Atwood, David McFadden and many, many others. The Canadian critic Linda Hutcheon says Canadian writers use 11 different kinds of irony in their stories. Samplr would benefit from getting acquainted with Hutcheon’s literary criticism and the satirical fiction of these other writers.
Susan, we can happily disagree on whether satirizing identity politics is cutting edge. I think it can only seem that way because of how censorious our mainstream culture has become. But any writer who is afraid of satire because of online blowback isn't a very good writer in my opinion. Online shaming is a very recent development in our culture, and one that should be loudly ignored. Writers of all people should not be influenced by the fear of a Twitter mob or equivalent nonsense; you can't satirize identity politics if you've got your own identity all wrapped up in your social media.
But to explain what I mean, I'm using this interview (and the last one) as an opportunity to comment on Henley's work more generally. She started out strong on Substack, with a dramatic departure from our woke CBC, with powerful pieces on freedom of speech and diversity of opinion, and an excellent take on the Freedom Convoy. I fully expected that to continue, and was excited about the prospect of her fulfilling her potential to become a trailblazer in independent media, perhaps later taking on more influential roles and really changing the game. But more recently, she spiralled down the slopes of her own navel with her focus on trust in media, and never got to the crux of the matter. Her Massey essay, apparently the culmination of all this time and energy, was a shining example of chickening out; she never got to the actual money/power structure of the media industry that has caused all the bias and misinformation and is the real source of the public loss of trust; instead she deftly bypasses it with some word salad and a touch of virtue signalling. This cowardice had shown up earlier with her review of Naomi Klein's ridiculous outing, 'Doppelganger', a book-length hit piece on Naomi Wolf. In it, she uses the term 'conspiracy theorist' to describe Wolf, and her using that term was it for me. She had either not read any of Wolf's post-pandemic work (ignorant journalist), or she had and decided Wolf was too risky to defend for fear of social media blowback (cowardly journalist).
And now, we've got fluffy book reviews. Good, timely (and arguably cutting-edge) books, to be sure, but still something we can easily find back at CBC. So why are we paying for it? I'm just trying to get my money's worth now before my subscription runs out, pointing out this sad turn towards gutlessness. I'm not trolling, I'm just really disappointed.
As for good writers not fearing Twitter, in the days when Twitter (now X) was more powerful, writers could lose their jobs over a thoughtless comment. And it is still, unfortunately, a possibility. So as far as I can make out, Tara’s mission has been to open up the debate so writers and readers can speak up if they have problems with the excesses of social justice ideology. Many of these ideologues are not real thinkers but politicians chanting slogans. As long as a real discussion like yours and mine can happen her column is providing an important public service even if you wish she would go further.
Fair point - she does deserve kudos for giving heterodox thinkers a safer space, and I like that you're pushing back in her defence. I'm certainly glad X has had the manic air taken out of it, although writers losing their jobs over it is something Tara has also conspicuously left out of her analysis, in terms of how that 'new media' ended up with such an influence over those in the newsroom and their editors. That's a rock with a lot of worms under it (see the Twitter Files, care of those excellent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, among others), which I thought would be an obvious direction to head in, in terms of searching for government influence on the narrative etc. No mention - even a deliberate avoidance - of controversial topics like Project Mockingbird. Twitter and Mockingbird are both primarily US issues, so there's an argument (albeit a weak one) for leaving them out of the analysis - ours are far more trite and obvious, like Trudeau handing out $600 million and expecting the public to trust that he's not trying to control the narrative. The absurd censorship, government misinformation and media propaganda throughout the pandemic and ensuing Trucker Protest are pretty big smoking guns in terms of corrupt influences, but she shied away from taking on any of that.
The core of the debate on this side of identity politics (the side that refuses to buy into it) is whether it has grown up organically (the take Tara is sticking with), or has been a deliberate manipulation of the narrative based on the very well-developed science of citizen behavioural control. The UK has a bloody government department for it, for Pete's Sake (77th Brigade). How does an intense, months-long study about trust in media not take you down these lines of inquiry???
I would love to write a rebuttal to Trust in Media, although it really does come down to, as you say, I just wish she would go further, not to mention the heartbreak at seeing her actually backing away and sticking with author interviews, hence my 'safe territory' snipe. But it doesn't seem to be my thing; it seems I'm destined fight the good fight in other ways. I do appreciate a good comment exchange though - thanks Susan.
It sounds like you should write a counter essay to Trust in Media with your diagnosis of how their money/power structure has steered us wrong. I’d be interested to read it. I was a reporter for a Toronto daily once, a job without much time for reflection and analysis of how we did our job. It’s probably worse now that advertisers have fled to the Internet and so many newspapers are in frightening economic straits.
So glad that Tara is featuring “writers that are pushing back on the status quo”, especially that “skewer the extremist politics of our age.” Ordered the book, but out of stock for now . . .
With craziness being the order of the day, we do yearn for hopeful signs of sanity. Maybe, just maybe, literature might help. Glad that Literature is still a subject in our classrooms as stories do help people see different points of view. And good to see the 10th ed of The Moral of the Story, Introduction to Ethics (Rosenstand) is out and hope it’s being used in our colleges and universities. Downloaded Linda Hutcheon’s 11 pg Functions of Irony as recommended by Susan, thanks. I just finished a great book, VICTIM, by Andrew Boryga, which deconstructs the victim game to gain fame and a college degree. (It all crashes when fabrication is revealed!)
Now, my bit. Do we all know that Vancouver is legendary for having produced the best-selling book, The Peter Principle, a satire? Laurence J Peter (d 1990) was a School Board employee for 24 years and observed the principles of incompetence in hierarchies on the spot. A delightful short video from the BBC shows Peter in the early stage of his discovery (1974). Why, there are even PP Board Games designed by Peter. I remember in the 70’s attending Vancouver (Excelsior City) School Board meetings as a young parent when the trustees would sometimes joke around policies and personnel matters, using terms such as “lateral arabesques” and Peter Principle!
I do support the use of literature as an additional, important tool to help us grapple with the confounding and threatening events we are experiencing today. Hope this kind of literature — ridicule, satire, irony, comedy, etc. — becomes a flood that reaches the average person on the street where even PC (politically correct) narrative is still tricky.
Fantastic piece. The Canadian culturati are a nasty lot, jostling for virtue status in a pit of snakes. Satire here is in short supply and often couched in politesse. There's a fine tradition to learn from though, from Swift to Daumier. I look forward to reading this book. And to the day somebody in the press publishes a cartoon boldly satirical of the righteousness police.
I repeat—Canadian writers have created a strong satirical tradition. No need to go back a few centuries to find it. It’s a homegrown product too. I wouldn’t be surprised if some very good writers here are already at work on novels satirizing the problems with our current political landscape.
What is truth? Whoever has the money. Media today is like the Salem witch trial, accusations thrown around with no concern for people. Many stones are thrown at innocent people. What ever happened to listening, debating agree to disagree without a pound of flesh.
Literature reviews on Substack. Could you go into any safer territory? I was initially inspired by Tara's courage to leave the CBC and take on dangerous, exciting, cutting edge topics and expose facets of the events around us the mainstream media are ignoring or censoring - 'complicating the narrative' as she puts it - but this, and that self-important jerk Michael Lista from last week, are straight out of 'The Next Chapter'. Move over Shelagh Rogers, Tara's coming. Lean Out, aka The Little CBC.
I find it interesting that after reading the Michael Lista transcript my thoughts were "You can take the girl out of the CBC but, how much of the CBC can you take out of the girl?"
Not sure what you mean, Jowzer. Satirizing identity politics IS cutting edge territory. It’s felt dangerous for writers here to do it because they might have been shamed online. Likely less true now. Samplr is wrong, though, when he says Canadian literature doesn’t do much satire. There is a rich tradition of satire and irony starting with Mordecai Richler, Margaret Atwood, David McFadden and many, many others. The Canadian critic Linda Hutcheon says Canadian writers use 11 different kinds of irony in their stories. Samplr would benefit from getting acquainted with Hutcheon’s literary criticism and the satirical fiction of these other writers.
Susan, we can happily disagree on whether satirizing identity politics is cutting edge. I think it can only seem that way because of how censorious our mainstream culture has become. But any writer who is afraid of satire because of online blowback isn't a very good writer in my opinion. Online shaming is a very recent development in our culture, and one that should be loudly ignored. Writers of all people should not be influenced by the fear of a Twitter mob or equivalent nonsense; you can't satirize identity politics if you've got your own identity all wrapped up in your social media.
But to explain what I mean, I'm using this interview (and the last one) as an opportunity to comment on Henley's work more generally. She started out strong on Substack, with a dramatic departure from our woke CBC, with powerful pieces on freedom of speech and diversity of opinion, and an excellent take on the Freedom Convoy. I fully expected that to continue, and was excited about the prospect of her fulfilling her potential to become a trailblazer in independent media, perhaps later taking on more influential roles and really changing the game. But more recently, she spiralled down the slopes of her own navel with her focus on trust in media, and never got to the crux of the matter. Her Massey essay, apparently the culmination of all this time and energy, was a shining example of chickening out; she never got to the actual money/power structure of the media industry that has caused all the bias and misinformation and is the real source of the public loss of trust; instead she deftly bypasses it with some word salad and a touch of virtue signalling. This cowardice had shown up earlier with her review of Naomi Klein's ridiculous outing, 'Doppelganger', a book-length hit piece on Naomi Wolf. In it, she uses the term 'conspiracy theorist' to describe Wolf, and her using that term was it for me. She had either not read any of Wolf's post-pandemic work (ignorant journalist), or she had and decided Wolf was too risky to defend for fear of social media blowback (cowardly journalist).
And now, we've got fluffy book reviews. Good, timely (and arguably cutting-edge) books, to be sure, but still something we can easily find back at CBC. So why are we paying for it? I'm just trying to get my money's worth now before my subscription runs out, pointing out this sad turn towards gutlessness. I'm not trolling, I'm just really disappointed.
As for good writers not fearing Twitter, in the days when Twitter (now X) was more powerful, writers could lose their jobs over a thoughtless comment. And it is still, unfortunately, a possibility. So as far as I can make out, Tara’s mission has been to open up the debate so writers and readers can speak up if they have problems with the excesses of social justice ideology. Many of these ideologues are not real thinkers but politicians chanting slogans. As long as a real discussion like yours and mine can happen her column is providing an important public service even if you wish she would go further.
Fair point - she does deserve kudos for giving heterodox thinkers a safer space, and I like that you're pushing back in her defence. I'm certainly glad X has had the manic air taken out of it, although writers losing their jobs over it is something Tara has also conspicuously left out of her analysis, in terms of how that 'new media' ended up with such an influence over those in the newsroom and their editors. That's a rock with a lot of worms under it (see the Twitter Files, care of those excellent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, among others), which I thought would be an obvious direction to head in, in terms of searching for government influence on the narrative etc. No mention - even a deliberate avoidance - of controversial topics like Project Mockingbird. Twitter and Mockingbird are both primarily US issues, so there's an argument (albeit a weak one) for leaving them out of the analysis - ours are far more trite and obvious, like Trudeau handing out $600 million and expecting the public to trust that he's not trying to control the narrative. The absurd censorship, government misinformation and media propaganda throughout the pandemic and ensuing Trucker Protest are pretty big smoking guns in terms of corrupt influences, but she shied away from taking on any of that.
The core of the debate on this side of identity politics (the side that refuses to buy into it) is whether it has grown up organically (the take Tara is sticking with), or has been a deliberate manipulation of the narrative based on the very well-developed science of citizen behavioural control. The UK has a bloody government department for it, for Pete's Sake (77th Brigade). How does an intense, months-long study about trust in media not take you down these lines of inquiry???
I would love to write a rebuttal to Trust in Media, although it really does come down to, as you say, I just wish she would go further, not to mention the heartbreak at seeing her actually backing away and sticking with author interviews, hence my 'safe territory' snipe. But it doesn't seem to be my thing; it seems I'm destined fight the good fight in other ways. I do appreciate a good comment exchange though - thanks Susan.
It sounds like you should write a counter essay to Trust in Media with your diagnosis of how their money/power structure has steered us wrong. I’d be interested to read it. I was a reporter for a Toronto daily once, a job without much time for reflection and analysis of how we did our job. It’s probably worse now that advertisers have fled to the Internet and so many newspapers are in frightening economic straits.
So glad that Tara is featuring “writers that are pushing back on the status quo”, especially that “skewer the extremist politics of our age.” Ordered the book, but out of stock for now . . .
With craziness being the order of the day, we do yearn for hopeful signs of sanity. Maybe, just maybe, literature might help. Glad that Literature is still a subject in our classrooms as stories do help people see different points of view. And good to see the 10th ed of The Moral of the Story, Introduction to Ethics (Rosenstand) is out and hope it’s being used in our colleges and universities. Downloaded Linda Hutcheon’s 11 pg Functions of Irony as recommended by Susan, thanks. I just finished a great book, VICTIM, by Andrew Boryga, which deconstructs the victim game to gain fame and a college degree. (It all crashes when fabrication is revealed!)
Now, my bit. Do we all know that Vancouver is legendary for having produced the best-selling book, The Peter Principle, a satire? Laurence J Peter (d 1990) was a School Board employee for 24 years and observed the principles of incompetence in hierarchies on the spot. A delightful short video from the BBC shows Peter in the early stage of his discovery (1974). Why, there are even PP Board Games designed by Peter. I remember in the 70’s attending Vancouver (Excelsior City) School Board meetings as a young parent when the trustees would sometimes joke around policies and personnel matters, using terms such as “lateral arabesques” and Peter Principle!
I do support the use of literature as an additional, important tool to help us grapple with the confounding and threatening events we are experiencing today. Hope this kind of literature — ridicule, satire, irony, comedy, etc. — becomes a flood that reaches the average person on the street where even PC (politically correct) narrative is still tricky.
Fantastic piece. The Canadian culturati are a nasty lot, jostling for virtue status in a pit of snakes. Satire here is in short supply and often couched in politesse. There's a fine tradition to learn from though, from Swift to Daumier. I look forward to reading this book. And to the day somebody in the press publishes a cartoon boldly satirical of the righteousness police.
I repeat—Canadian writers have created a strong satirical tradition. No need to go back a few centuries to find it. It’s a homegrown product too. I wouldn’t be surprised if some very good writers here are already at work on novels satirizing the problems with our current political landscape.
What is truth? Whoever has the money. Media today is like the Salem witch trial, accusations thrown around with no concern for people. Many stones are thrown at innocent people. What ever happened to listening, debating agree to disagree without a pound of flesh.
I appreciate a good exchange too. Thank you!
Literature reviews on Substack. Could you go into any safer territory? I was initially inspired by Tara's courage to leave the CBC and take on dangerous, exciting, cutting edge topics and expose facets of the events around us the mainstream media are ignoring or censoring - 'complicating the narrative' as she puts it - but this, and that self-important jerk Michael Lista from last week, are straight out of 'The Next Chapter'. Move over Shelagh Rogers, Tara's coming. Lean Out, aka The Little CBC.
I find it interesting that after reading the Michael Lista transcript my thoughts were "You can take the girl out of the CBC but, how much of the CBC can you take out of the girl?"