Sherry tells a story at The Moth StorySlam in Seattle

On October 1, Jeem and Sherry drove down to Seattle. Jeem was hoping to meet some comrades in the struggle, and to avoid interaction with the police of course, and Sherry was hoping to tell a story.








Along the way, near Pike Place, we discovered that Tommy Douglas, one of our country's greatest Canadians, had developed a chain of restaurants in Seattle, all based on the fresh, local, sustainable model. We even had a nice lunch at Seatown, which was next to Tom Douglas' Rub with Love Shack. Who would have known?








The storytelling is really our story and it took place in a former abbey now known as the Fremont Abbey Arts Center.







This is The Moth, or more correctly The Moth StorySLAM Seattle, and it's a big deal in storytelling circles. Founded in 1997, and based in New York City, The Moth, on all its platforms (live events, radio, podcasts, books), celebrates the art of first person storytelling.




We arrived early, as the sun was setting and the crowd was gathering. The Moth StorySLAM is relatively new to Seattle, and these monthly events have become full houses with many ticket holders standing for the entire evening.

For the StorySLAM, would-be storytellers sign in at the beginning of the evening. Only ten are chosen, at random. The first storyteller is chosen by the "host" for the evening, while the next nine storytellers are picked, in sequence, from a big cloth bag, by the storyteller-just-finishing. In tonight's case, thirteen storytellers put their names in the bag.





The format at all The Moth StorySLAMS is the same. There is a theme to which all storytellers must speak. For the October 1 event, stories were to be on the theme of coincidence.The story has to be true and told without notes of any kind, and it has to be told within four to six minutes. Storytellers are scored by three teams of judges, selected from the audience by a Moth producer, on a scale of one to ten. Scores are announced after each storyteller's performance. The figure-skating judging system has its detractors, but it does create a certain amount of excitement as night proceeds.







Second up was a first-time storyteller named Jack. His was a story of high school romance, and it did involve the theme of coincidence.















Katy followed Jack and then Quincy told a story about dating in Mozambique which led, coincidentally, to a new job.





Jess introduced herself as a Jewish lesbian from the mid-west, who, while studying philosophy in college, suddenly decided to join the United States Navy.






Nikita was the eighth storyteller and we were beginning to wonder if Sherry's name would be drawn. However, when Nikita finished her story, she pulled Sherry's name from the bag and ...

At the end of her story, Sherry received the highest marks of the evening through nine storytellers. In fact, her story, and the marks from the judges, created a noticeable buzz in the crowd of about 250.














Then, under the watchful eye of the host, Sherry drew the name of the tenth and last final storyteller for the evening: Ryan.











And in the end, perhaps given the figure-skating model of judging, Ryan's story won the day, narrowly displacing Sherry's marks.



The audience was warm and supportive of all storytellers. It was a fun evening and while The Moth StorySLAMS don't provide cash prizes, it was rewarding in its own way. The host (above with Sherry, and below) was fantastic!







There are at two well known storytelling groups in Vancouver: The Vancouver Story Slam, at which both Jeem and Sherry have appeared, and The Flame, where Sherry told her first story earlier this year. Both groups showcase storytelling at the Cottage Bistro on Main. Vancouver Story Slam is on the second Tuesdays of each month and The Flame presents its storytellers on the first Wednesday of each month. Cash prizes are awarded at the Vancouver Story Slam as determined by audience votes, which adds a bit to the fun of the evening. Tuesday, October 13, Sherry is scheduled to tell a new story at the Vancouver Story Slam.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.

Donald Trump, reality TV and a broken democracy

Donald Trump, in his latest ramble of idiocy, says that if he's elected president he will sand back Syrian refugees because they might be terrorists in disguise.

"They could be ISIS, I don't know," said Trump. "his could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. A 200,000-man army, maybe," he later added. "That could be possible."



John Doyle, the often brilliant and always entertaining columnist for the Globe and Mail, wrote about Trump and reality television in a column published September 23.

In it he asked the question: Are the issues and the candidates of the presidential campaign gripping the American public. His answer was no, Donald Trump is. "It's all about reality TV."



In his column Doyle reminds us of the day American politics changed forever. It was August 29, 2008, when John McCain announced his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket would be Sarah Palin.

In choosing Palin and pushing her family and life into prime time, the Republican Party was driven by marketing impulses learned from the success of the reality-TV genre. Ordinary people with attitude but without sophistication appeal to viewers as more authentically American than the fictional doctors, lawyers and detectives being portrayed on network dramas.

Reality television, according to Doyle, is about authenticity. There is much phoniness in the world and people respond intuitively to realness.

They might not analyze why they are drawn to inarticulate public figures with messy lives, but they like what they see.

There was a realness to reality television, at least in its beginnings and we went along for the ride.

In the case of Trump, we have moved beyond the “authenticity” explanation. We’re at the level of hyper-authenticity that isn’t real at all, but is a construct. We’ve had 15 years of competitive reality-TV series – if the arrival of Survivor on CBS in 2000 is the marker – and the genre has become more complex.

Where once the attraction was ordinariness on a messy scale, the attraction is now watching "contestants" who understand, as we in the audience do, that hyper-egotism is now essential.

 When Trump declares, “I’m gonna make our country rich and I’m gonna make our country great,” without bothering to explain a plan, he’s in hyper-reality mode. In the same way that a contestant on a competitive reality show declares, “I’m gonna win this thing!” over and over again. Even if they don’t win, they’re compelling and famous for their brashness.

In the language of media and literary studies, Trump is extra-textual. He is outside the text, outside the narrative that has been written, preordained. Not only does he create conflict with other participants in the Republican race, just as the most famous reality-TV contestants are there to create conflict inside a carefully chosen group, he transcends the entire group and its dynamic by blustering, by saying the unsayable, by never expressing regret or apology. He exposes the tame game that is the race for the Republican nomination. And for that he is attractive and admired.

Trump is no scholar of reality TV. He just knows. Years of being part of The Apprentice gave him canniness about it. The most famous figure on The Apprentice, apart from Trump himself, was Omarosa Onee Manigault, better known as just Omarosa. The woman is a reality-TV legend. Fact is, she never came close to winning The Apprentice. But she made a decision to be controversial, caustic, blunt and always acrimonious.

She didn’t play to win the game, she played to transcend it. After The Apprentice, she appeared on 20 reality-TV shows and today has a thriving career teaching branding and marketing classes. Omarosa was one of the first to grasp how second-wave reality TV really works. Now, Trump does, too. Don’t play the game, create a hyper-version of it in which you are the only figure who matters. Works on TV and it’s working in politics.

Donald Trump is leading the Republican presidential campaign. Rob Ford, through his brother, captured almost a third of Toronto's mayoralty vote count. Are we living at the beginning of a time where reality television, celebrity and outlandishness on a grand scale, trump thoughtful discussion, debate and policies?

Do we have a crisis of democracy, or do we have a failing of our citizenry? And how in the world do we fix this thing?

Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.

Tom Mulcair and honesty

Things happen during election campaigns. No matter the planning, the strategy and the image control, things happen. Such a thing happened last Thursday during the French language debate and it revolves around the niqab.



As Lysiane Gagnon pointed out in her Globe and Mail piece on September 30, Canadians are overwhelmingly opposed to covering of one's face during citizenship ceremonies.

As early as March, the Prime Minister’s Office commissioned an opinion poll, by Léger, on the wearing of the face-covering veil at citizenship ceremonies. The opposition was flabbergasting: 82 per cent across Canada, 93 per cent in Quebec, 85 per cent among people older than 55 and, strangely enough, 76 per cent among those with a university education.

Those are staggering numbers, especially when one considers the fact that a very small number of women wear the niqab in Canada, and that those who do so at any citizenship ceremony are required to be identified, in private, by a female agent, before the event. Simple enough one would think.

So the Conservatives are now, in effect, campaigning on the back of an isolated and vulnerable minority, which must be the height of cynicism. But the tactic pays. This matter, as objectively trivial as it is when compared with other election issues, led to the most heated exchange during last Thursday’s French-language debate. 

And the polling numbers reflect the debate, especially in Quebec. An Abacus Data poll released earlier this week shows the NDP at 30 per cent support in Quebec, down 17 points since the same pollster's September 11 survey. Much of that decrease can be attributed to Tom Mulcair's position on the niqab. The Liberal Leader shares the same position but his party is suffering less because the Liberals are not contenders in most francophone ridings and get most of their support from anglophone and allophone areas where opposition to the niqab is muted.

Richard Gwyn, a Toronto Star columnist, wrote on Wednesday that Mulcair believes that limiting the rights of women to wear the niqab would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and he said so. Mr Trudeau agreed, and Gwyn went on:

Almost certainly the Mulcair-Trudeau argument will win out legally eventually. Election debates, though, are not about what is right but what wins votes. Especially in Quebec, but also across the country, polls show considerable support for limiting, even banning, the wearing of niqabs.

Trudeau’s views matter. But Mulcair’s matter more. In the last election, the NDP won an extraordinary 59 seats out of the 75 in Quebec. That achievement is why the party is today a serious national contender, for the first time in its history.

Yet Mulcair didn’t blink. He not only said what he believed during the debate but afterwards sought out reporters to repeat his convictions.

There is something to be said about Tom Mulcair's honesty, determination to do the right thing and his strength of conviction, regardless of how it plays in Quebec or anywhere else.

That’s honesty of a degree rare among politicians at the best of times. For one to do it in the middle of an election is just about unheard of. When the vote counts come in on Oct. 19, Mulcair and his party may well regret their outburst of honesty.

But, at least in this instance, Mulcair will have shown Canadians that there can be more to elections than exaggerated rhetoric and carefully calculated promises of which many are indistinguishable from outright bribes.

Tom Muclair could have found a way to play to his audience in the debate. He didn't, and he is stronger for it. No one said this election would be easy.

Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.

Whither the CBC?

On a day when the CBC announced, for the second time, that they wanted to sell all their properties across Canada in an effort to redirect funds into programming and the digital platforms of the future, young Justin Trudeau was promising to increase annual funding to the corporation by $150-million. But can we really expect the Liberals to deliver?


During the mid-1990s, under Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, funding to our public broadcaster, over a brief four year period, was cut by more than $400-million, or about 33 percent. All that despite the wonderful Red Book promise "A Liberal government will be committed to stable, multiyear financing for national cultural institutions such as the Canada Council and the CBC."

The cuts continued. albeit more slowly under the next Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, and of course with slightly more gusto under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

Ian Morrison, of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said the broadcaster’s decision to sell real estate assets was akin to "burning the furniture to heat the home." Maybe it's some sort of scorched earth policy?



Selling its buildings is an idiotic thing for the CBC to do. It could well be the beginning of the end for what was once a great public broadcaster and part of the very fabric of life in Canada. Given past history, trusting the Liberal leader's promise to increase funding to the CBC is idiotic too.

Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.

Yom Kippur and apologies from media & politicians

On Tuesday night, Chicago television station WGN aired a report on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews. The report included an image of the star of David that was actually the badge Jews were forced to wear in concentration camps, and elsewhere, during the war.

The general manager Greg Easterly and news director Jennifer Lyons issued an apology:

"We failed to recognize that the artwork we chose to accompany the story contained an offensive symbol. This was an unfortunate mistake. Ignorance is not an excuse. We are extremely embarrassed and we deeply apologize to our viewers and to the Jewish community for this mistake. We are investigating how this situation occurred, reviewing our in- house policies and making changes in order to avoid such mistakes happening in the future. Thank you for your understanding. We promise to do better."

And WGN wants to be the Windy City's trusted news source? No, not quite.

Meanwhile, a Hamilton school trustee running in the federal election for the NDP, Alex Johnstone, has apologised for making crude remarks related to Auschwitz of all places.

Her original comments were made on a Facebook posting from April of 2008 when she commented on a friend's photo of a part of the electrified fence and its curved supports at the death camp:

"Ahhh, the infamous Pollish (sic), phallic, hydro posts. Of course you took pictures of this! It expresses how the curve is normal, natural, and healthy right!"

Her apology as of yesterday, which coincides with Yom Kippur:

"Attention was recently drawn to a comment I posted on social media seven years ago," While never intending any malice, this comment was clearly inappropriate. I would like to offer my unreserved apology."

According to an interview in the Hamilton Spectator, Alex Johnstone claims ignorance. "Well, I didn't know what Auschwitz was, or I didn't up until today," she told the newspaper late Tuesday.

And she wants to be a Member of Parliament? No, I don't think so.

Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.