A World of Cheese, For your Pleasure

Pregnancy in advertising

Well it seems that in most advertising, the people involved are pretty much white, young and above average in terms of looks (specifically, they have particular body and face types), unless the product or service being advertised specifically addresses some "other" section of humanity. Black people in ads are there because they are black, for the most part. As are non-stick models, the elderly and so on. The rest of are essentially niche markets, or there to say that the company wants black or gay people's money, too.

Pregnant woman are used in advertising to sell clothing and other specific resources to expectant women. These women have absolutely nothing to do with anything else in society; there`s no other reason to include them in anything. Until now. A beer company thought that it was a brilliant idea to use pregnant women to sell their non-alcoholic beer. And it is a brilliant idea from a certain point of view. There is no way I would be blogging about this otherwise. I am quite aware that I have become a promoter of their beer just by talking about it. And there are some obvious issues.

First of all, as is pointed out, unless you read the copy, there's no way that you would necessarily and obviously know that this beer is non-alcoholic and therefore safe for her to drink. It seems to promote a dangerous message, especially to certain vulnerable groups. On the other hand, hooray for hot pregnant women! Even if photshopped! It is very rare, in my opinion, for a woman to become LESS attractive when in the full bloom of pregnancy. For me, and many others, hot pregnant women is a wonderful thing. And besides, why should they be immune from the effects of the ad monsters? It's not like they are sanctified, or should be sanctified.

Pregness is awesome to look at, if not to live with.

Only people like Jan Wong can get away with this

Only the elite in journalism and opinion-writing can get away with writing and publishing ridiculous crap like this. Any regular journalist would have been laughed out of the editor's office or fired for writing what Jan Wong wrote. She must have a hell of a lot of clout, or the editor really is that dumb.

Wong does a very good job describing events as they took place from the points of view of those she spoke with (or otherwise got information from). The beginning of the article, and at other points, is actually riveting, especially for residents of Montreal. It is chilling as well, to hear of the story of Stacy de Sousa's death. But here is where she really starts to go off the rails:

What many outsiders don't realize is how alienating the decades-long linguistic struggle has been in the once-cosmopolitan city. It hasn't just taken a toll on long-time anglophones, it's affected immigrants, too. To be sure, the shootings in all three cases were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals. But what is also true is that in all three cases, the perpetrator was not pure laine, the argot for a "pure" francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial "purity" is repugnant. Not in Quebec. (I will come back to this bit later.)

In 1989, Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 women and wounded 13 others at the University of Montreal's École Polytechnique. He was a francophone, but in the eyes of pure laine Quebeckers, he was not one of them, and would never be. He was only half French-Canadian. He was also half Algerian, a Muslim, and his name was Gamil Gharbi. Seven years earlier, after the Canadian Armed Forces rejected his application under that name, he legally changed his name to Marc Lepine.

Valery Fabrikant, an engineering professor, was an immigrant from Russia. In 1992, he shot four colleagues and wounded one other at Concordia University's faculty of engineering after learning he would not be granted tenure.

This week's killer, Kimveer Gill, was, like Marc Lepine, Canadian-born and 25. On his blog, he described himself as of "Indian" origin. (In their press conference, however, the police repeatedly referred to Mr. Gill as of "Canadian" origin.)

And later,

All 50 or so students hit the floor, everyone that is, except for a couple of students who continued working at their computers. Were they Asian? ...

Mr. Gill's rampage has resonated through the anglophone community. Although Montreal is a big city, English-speaking Montreal is not. It is more like a small town, where everyone knows everyone else. And because English-speaking high-school graduates must go through the CEGEP system before university, Dawson funnels anglophone kids from across the city into one institution.

And then she continues talking about English this and English that. There is a lot to be criticized here, but let's start with Ms Wong's background. She was a former Maoist who then returned to Canada and began working for the Globe and Mail as a Chinese correspondent. She is , or was, sensitive to cultural and racial issues. Wong is known to be confrontational in her interview styles, but was very popular nonetheless. I remember thinking in the mid-to-late nineties that she was a stuck-up know-it-all, but she has actually managed to create a hell of a good rep in Canadian journalism.

When you read the article, she starts talking about the linguistic struggle in Quebec for no apparent reason. It seems to come out of nowhere. She suggests that the three killers were alienated due to the language problems. This suggests to me that you might want to watch out Franco-Ontarians, or old-world Italians or something. She seems to be making the claim that this "pressure" from the xenophobic and racist French community caused these people to snap. And she should know; she's seen this intolerance in China first hand. Plus, she's Jan-motherfucking-Wong.

Then she asks, out of the blue, "Were they Asian?"

What the fuck? The problem is that if the guy reponding to her is to be believed, most people ask him that question. This isn't really a criticism of Jan Wong, but perhaps a criticism of everyone. This is what they would expect. Stereotypes exist partly because these things were observed in certain people, but they persist because of you and me. This is a rather telling example of this, if the guy is not exaggerating, and I won't say that he wasn't. It was, after all, a spectacular day, and there were a thousand exaggerations that day.

Here is where I will defend Jan Wong. She says: "the perpetrator was not pure laine, the argot for a "pure" francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial "purity" is repugnant. Not in Quebec."

This requires a bit of explaining. I am not thrilled about siding with this deranged fool (or infamy-seeking snob) , but here goes. The term, as I am told and understand it, is a term used to describe the burgeoning new kind of people, the new nation (in ideology at least) developing in North America. Today it is used simply to describe descendants of the French settlers from hundreds of years ago called the québécois, and it has no more value assigned to it than the word métis (although originally it may have, for example, pure laine is better than whatever epithets they used to describe the Native population; it connotes a unique goodness not found elsewhere). I view it as a silly and cute little term. However, what if you are not one of them? What if you are a black, anglophone from the much-derided Ontario that just got here? You know a little French and can translate those two words: Pure Wool. Well that means something else to you, and it should not necessarily be the same meaning as it would for of them. It certainly looks like they are talking about a certain kind of cultural, lisguistic and, for the guy mentioned above, racial purity, which he will never attain, nor will his descendants. Furthermore, there are laws that say that their language and way has precedence over yours in all aspects of life whenever you step outside the home (although he will learn that he can live perfectly well in English, depending on where you live and work). For that guy, pure laine could certainly sound like a special, higher distinction for a group of people that he can't ever be a part of.

I would expect more from Jan Wong than to (in)cite this kind of cultural divide. And yes, she's the one inciting it. There is often enough an undercurrent of a language issue in the province, and you come to live with that. But I can tell you that there was none that day. NONE. English and French alike shared the same experience of disbelief, shock, disgust and rage. They shared the same call to action and support. English people spoke French, French people spoke English. Everything cam together that day. You know why, Janfuckingwong? Because the massacre had nothing to do with language.

I cannot answer the question of why these things have happened in Montreal only. But you would have to do a lot better than to suggest that the bigotry against minorities is what caused it. Have you seen how native people are treated in Winnipeg and across the country? EVERYONE feels entitled to shit on them. Perhaps Manitoba society needs to be examined before there are any incidents, since prevention is better than a cure.

I suspect that someone was given too long a leash at the Globe and Mail and forgot how to write opinion articles with large scope that make sense. I wonder what the fallout will be if any.

Fusillade, suite

Well, now they have it at one shooter, a Kimveer Gill, from Laval. He killed one, and injured 19 others. As of this morning's news, they fear for the lives of at least two of those victims. Here's another link that says that the dead victim may have been 18-year-old Anastasia DeSousa.

So he had a blog, and was a goth. He blog was hosted at vampirefreaks.com, but it's gone now. Does anyone remember the case either earlier this year or last year out in Alberta where the 12-year-old girl and her 23-year-old boyfriend successfully plotted to kill her entire family? They met at the same site, I believe. I am only pointing out a coincidence. I do not believe that there should be something done about that site, goths, or bloggers. Lambic is dead on; the guy was a walking cliché, and now everyone will temporarily focus on the wrong thing.

What Kimveer Gill really was, I can't say. We won't ever really know what could have led him to do what he did. And this is why I wanted him alive. I wanted someone to grill him until he talked. Silly ravings on a website are one thing, but who actually talked to him about these things?

I imagined a book set in a place like Montreal where these things happen every week, and not just in Montreal, but most major cities. Has this book been written yet?

Shots fired at Dawson College

Shots have been fired at local Dawson College, downtown Montreal. At least one person seems to be dead according to Rose, reporting to me via Internet. (She's watching it live on TVA.) There were a number of shooters and at least one of them, as of now, has been "neutralized".

I am angry and sickened by this turn of events. I hate these people and I frankly don't care what "drove" them to open fire on people like this. It's bad enough when it happens in the Middle East. I don't need that kind of shit here, or anywhere, frankly. If I could get my hands on the shooters, that would be some real terror, I tell you.

UPDATE: Confirmed: Two suspects are dead. Imagine if there were a political motive? Imagine if one or all of the suspects were Middle Eastern? That could be chaotic.

UPDATE: 4 dead, 16 shot. It appears that some innocents lost their lives today. Just like lots of other places, I know, but this is home, not some far off land constantly in war.

UPDATE: From Montreal General Hospital: 15 critical condition, 10 serious, 7 being assessed. This is more serious than many thought. Not all of those people will live.

While searching for more information about the events, I found this. And I can't really argue with him, either.

Crikey, he's dead!

Sorry. I just didn't know what else to say. Steve Irwin is dead. I'm shocked, although looking at his lifestyle, I suppose I shouldn't be. This is sad, but fitting, in a way.