Terry Levine | Noggin Advertising | Copywriter | Digital + Direct Writer | Blogging | Toronto | Canada

SOCCER, FAMILY AND LEARNING TO LIVE TOGETHER.

My mother and her siblings have always had a very rocky relationship, especially my mom and her older sister. Every few years they have a blow out fight, refuse to speak for five or 10 years, then start talking again.

When they do come together one more time -- and they always do because, blood is thicker than water, even if it's diluted by 60 years of fighting -- they don't rehash the reasons for their stupid arguments. In fact, most of the time, they barely remember why they stopped talking -- or they choose to forget. Instead, they enjoy each other's company, even for a short time, and remember what they have in common, like my grandparents.

This report today about peace -- and a soccer game -- spontaneously breaking out in Hebron made me think of family fights. So did a Facebook debate I had earlier this week with a rigidly anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian partisan who I could not nudge to get beyond the Jew did/Arab did two-wrongs-do-or-don't-make-a-right arguments that ultimately torpedo any hopes for peace in the Middle East.

The truth is, in spite of all the nastiness we cause each other, there comes a point where we have to move on -- not from yesterday's pain, but from today's momentary forgetfulness. As I get ready to head over to my Palestinian buddy's house later tonight for drinks and a night of partying, or as those kids in Hebron did today over a scuffed up soccer ball, sometimes we all just have to live -- and learn to love each other -- in the now.

LEADING BY LEADING.

When The Gap unveiled its new logo last month, there was a storm of criticism -- including from me -- about how lame it was. Within days The Gap backtracked and reverted to its current logo.

But Donna Maria at the Indie Business Blog makes a strong case that caving to public ridicule about the new logo was a big mistake. She writes:

"People generally do not like change. They often respond negatively to it, especially if it is unexpected. But when you change your brand, and you have good reasons for doing so, their significance does not also mean that the best thing for the company is changing your mind in response to their criticism."

She's right, noting that each time she's changed her blog's identity, she's received emails and comments criticizing the new logo and then, months later, no one could remember what the old one looked like.

While the corporate world is brimming with marketers who waste their time devising new logos when they should really be devising smarter ways to address customers' needs, the same world is overflowing with marketers who can't make a decision and stick with it. In other words: they're too frightened to lead.

And I say corporate world, but of course this is a huge problem in other areas too, like (surprise!) politics. Progressives more so than conservatives seem especially good at caving to public pressure rather than sticking to their guns -- or maybe it's just that, because they're liberals, they don't have guns. Note France's Nicolas Sarkozy ignoring protests against raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. Contrast that to Democrats during this US election cycle completely disassociating themselves from probably the most important piece of legislation passed in 40 years -- healthcare reform -- because of a perception that the masses don't like it. I can guarantee you the masses didn't like civil rights legislation either once upon a time but it was still the right thing to do.

Leading sometimes means risking losing. But it also means standing by reasonable decisions, even if the nattering masses haven't caught up yet. They will eventually, and when they do they'll remember who led them there.

PERIODIC TABLE OF IRRATIONAL NONSENSE.

There seems to be an unfortunate uptick of late in the number of people who "believe" over those who "know." (See: climate change deniers, intelligent design proponents, Scientologists, Sarah Palin, etc.) But worse, these believers use what appears to be science to the average joe to try justify and prove their quackery. To quote "Dr." Leo Spaceman from 30 Rock, "science is whatever we want it to be." (0:34)

Crispian Jago over at the Science, Reason and Critical Thinking blog has put together a fantastic Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense, compiling the elements of lunacy rational people have to deal with every day. You can check it out more closely here.

ROB FORD, TEA PARTIES AND THE RIGHT.

Progressives in Toronto are scratching their heads this morning as we try to figure out how an anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-public transit, anti-downtown pro-overeating candidate with an inane but effective slogan was elected mayor with nearly 50% of the vote.

In large part it was due to an opponent who ran a breathtakingly weak campaign assuming, I suppose, that no one would vote for his reactionary opponent. He was wrong and we'll all pay the price for the next four years.

And next week the Republican Party, hijacked by radical Tea Party right-wingers, is on tap to take over the House of Representatives -- only two years after nearly destroying the US economy and America's reputation in the world -- again due in large part to a gutless Democratic Party unwilling to defend its principles.

My friend Paulo Senra has some analysis on the subject. And below, Seth Godin has his own always illuminating ideas. Both are worth a read.

If you want to get elected in the US, you need media.

When TV was king, the secret to media was money. If you have money, you can reach the masses. The best way to get money is to make powerful interests happy, so they'll give you money you can use to reach the masses and get re-elected.

Now, though...When attention is scarce and there are many choices, media costs something other than money. It costs interesting. If you are angry or remarkable or an outlier, you're interesting, and your idea can spread. People who are dull and merely aligned with powerful interests have a harder time earning attention, because money isn't sufficient.

Thus, as media moves from TV-driven to attention-driven, we're going to see more outliers, more renegades and more angry people driving agendas and getting elected. I figure this will continue until other voices earn enough permission from the electorate to coordinate getting out the vote, communicating through private channels like email and creating tribes of people to spread the word. (And they need to learn not to waste this permission hassling their supporters for money).

Mass media is dying, and it appears that mass politicians are endangered as well.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE?

The most common criticism I hear about social media -- tools like Facebook and Twitter or even texting -- is how it's destroying good old fashioned face-to-face communication. The beef is that now people spend more time poking, posting and tweeting each other than having real heart-to-heart chats over a beer.

It's probably true.

But it's probably also true that people had the same beef 60 and 100 year ago, when Ethel Mertz started phoning Lucy instead of climbing three flights of stairs to tell her that the Ricardos' rent was due.

In other words, while it may be true most of us are seeing each other less, we're probably in contact with each other more. We haven't stopped having beers with our closest friends; we've simply added another level of communication to keep in touch without the need to get drunk every time. I don't have to meet my friends face-to-face, for instance, to tell them all about a great movie I just saw (though I might with some); I can post a review on my Facebook page or blog about it, or I can text them the minute I get out of the theatre.

We've begun calling those we communicate with at this level "Facebook friends," people you would have never had the time to keep in touch with before regularly but with whom you now can. Some scoff at impersonal Facebook friends but, as with any interpersonal connections, they're as personal as you choose to make them.

Finally, when people lament the good old days of face-to-face communication, I'm reminded of the doomsday predictions about movie theatres when VCRs first found their way into our homes. It turned out there was room for both to enrich our lives and help us pass the time.

The same goes for just the latest way for us to communicate.

SETH REBLOG: DELIBERATELY UNINFORMED.

Seth Godin's post this morning (see below) is, as usual, right on the money.

It's the great irony of our times that we have access to more information and knowledge than ever, yet we seem to be getting more and more stupid. And not just stupid, proudly and deliberately so.

You only have to turn on the news and watch the US mid-term election debates to see mostly willfully and proudly ignorant Tea Party Republicans scoff at well-informed and educated "elites" (i.e., people who use the outer part of their brain) and question basic, accepted, proven truths and facts, like evolution, climate change and what's written in the US constitution.

Take evolution, for instance. These morons (and that's not an ad hominem; these people are demonstrably moronic) still contend it's not proven because it's called the "Theory of Evolution." (Apparently the fact gravity is also called the "Theory of Gravity" is lost on them too; they probably still wonder why their empty heads haven't floated off from the flat earth into God's heaven above.)

It only takes a 5-second Google search to understand that "theory" in science doesn't mean unproven. And that our 100 years of advances in medicine rest in large part on the truth of evolution -- your annual flu shot is just one small example.

Sadly it seems like the Age of Reason is quickly coming to an end, replaced by the age we thought we had rid ourselves of only recently, the Age of Ignorance, Superstition and Stupidity.

End of rant. Here's Seth's:

Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year.

Many of those people have seen every single episode of American Idol. There is clearly a correlation here.

Access to knowledge, for the first time in history, is largely unimpeded for the middle class. Without effort or expense, it's possible to become informed if you choose. For less than your cable TV bill, you can buy and read an important book every week. Share the buying with six friends and it costs far less than coffee.

Or you can watch TV.

The thing is, watching TV has its benefits. It excuses you from the responsibility of having an informed opinion about things that matter. It gives you shallow opinions or false 'facts' that you can easily parrot to others that watch what you watch. It rarely unsettles our carefully self-induced calm and isolation from the world.

I got a note from someone the other day, in which she made it clear that she doesn't read non-fiction books or blogs related to her industry. And she seemed proud of this.

I was roped into an argument with someone who was sure that ear candling was a useful treatment. Had he read any medical articles on the topic? No. But he knew. Or said he did.

You see a lot of ostensibly smart people in airports, and it always surprises me how few of them use this downtime to actually become more informed. It's clearly a deliberate act--in our infoculture, it takes work not to expose yourself to interesting ideas, facts, news and points of view. Hal Varian at Google reports that the average person online spends seventy seconds a day reading online news. Ouch.

Not all books are correct or useful. Not all accepted science is correct. The conventional wisdom might just be wrong. But ignoring all of it because the truth is now fashionably situational and in the eye of the beholder is a lame alternative.

I know this rant is nothing new. In fact, people have been complaining about widespread willful ignorance since Brutus or Caesar or whoever invented the salad... the difference now is this: more people than ever are creators. More people than ever go to work to use their minds, not just their hands. And more people than ever have a platform to share their point of view. I think that raises the bar for our understanding of how the world works.

Let's assert for the moment that you get paid to create, manipulate or spread ideas. That you don't get paid to lift bricks or hammer steel. If you're in the idea business, what's going to improve your career, get you a better job, more respect or a happier day? Forgive me for suggesting (to those not curious enough to read this blog and others) that it might be reading blogs, books or even watching TED talks.

As for the deliberately uninformed, we can ignore them or we can reach out to them and hopefully start a pattern of people thinking for themselves...

via sethgodin.typepad.com

3 MOVIES AND A TSUNAMI: 140 WORDS ON HEREAFTER.

Had Clint Eastwood's name not appeared at the end of it, I wouldn't have ever guessed he directed Hereafter. Not because the subject matter is out of character for him -- his movies tackle everything from westerns to female boxers to multiculturalism -- but rather because so much of the film seemed so all over the place.

Essentially a tryptic of movies -- including one nearly entirely in French -- implausably connected in the last 20 minutes by some mealy musings on the afterlife, plus a heartstopping scifi intro that cinematically feels completely separate from what follows, I really wasn't sure what to make of it all.

The casting also seemed off, with grating performances by Bryce Dallas Howard, Jay Mohr, Thierry Neuvic and Lyndsey Marshal.

I want to tip my hat to Eastwood for taking some chances with Hereafter. I'm just not sure any of them really paid off.

MAYOR VERA.

My mayor died Thursday.

While I haven't lived in Town of Mount Royal, Quebec, for nearly 15 years, it's still Vera Danyluk's face I see when I think of TMR politics -- and of my start in journalism. Because, as a twerpy kid of 22, she was the first politician who gave me an interview, sitting calmly and patiently behind her desk on Roosevelt Avenue and, like the teacher she was, explaining clearly and passionately the challenges facing her town and mine -- and the larger Montreal Urban Community, which she would later head.

In recent years, I would get periodic reports about her and her husband and son from my mom, whose store she shopped at from time to time. When my mother told Vera that my parents had bought a condo in Cote-Saint-Luc and would be leaving TMR after nearly 40 years, the mayor joked: "you're not allowed!"

Through nearly four terms, she was always TMR's greatest defender and the town was always in good hands as long as Vera was around. She will be missed.

 

(Below is an obituary from the Montreal Gazette.)

She was a small-town mayor who reached the top of local municipal politics but never seemed overawed by any of it. She contemplated the idea of entering provincial politics, but decided against it after her husband worried the National Assembly in Quebec City would too often keep her away from their home in Town of Mount Royal.

Vera Danyluk, mother, community volunteer, mayor and former head of the Montreal Urban Community, died yesterday at the Montreal General Hospital after a battle with an illness described by city officials as "a very rare disorder."

Danyluk, 66, was surrounded by family in her hospital room when she died.

"She was a very determined woman while heading the MUC," recalled Westmount Mayor Peter Trent, who replaced Danyluk as chief of an association of suburban mayors after she left to head the regional government.

"Her nickname within the MUC was 'Mother Superior' ... (but) it was said with all due respect," added Trent, saying the title referred to her no-nonsense approach to running the regional council.

"And in a period where most of us are not overly impressed with our federal and provincial politicians, it's comforting to know that Vera set the bar very high" when it came to conduct in office.

Trent said Danyluk "was an extremely important role model for women," referring to her assuming the reins of the MUC at a time when women in politics were a rarity.

"She showed that if you're going to be in municipal politics, you can do it with probity, with a sense of ethics, a sense of responsibility and you can work very hard.

"She almost single-handedly helped to raise the public opinion of municipal politicians in the Montreal area."

In a communique made public in the hours after her death, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay, on his way to Rome to attend the canonization of Brother André, described Danyluk as "an exceptionally talented woman who was a great source of inspiration for all those who made a choice to enter municipal politics. We've lost an exceptional woman who dedicated her life to public service."

Three weeks after her last town council meeting in March, Danyluk walked into the emergency ward of the Montreal General Hospital and said she thought something was wrong with her.

She had lost 35 pounds over the previous 18 months and was suffering from bouts of fatigue and dizziness. She was referred to the Montreal Neurological Hospital for a series of specialized tests.

The name of the condition was not specified in a Danyluk family letter and companion document subsequently sent to T.M.R. town hall, advising the city that the veteran mayor, elected to a fourth term last November, would be unable to continue serving in office.

She served as mayor of T.M.R. from 1987 to 1994, and from 2002 through her last appearance at town council. Town councillor Philippe Roy has since been acclaimed to the post of mayor.

Danyluk was a critic of forced municipal mergers carried out at the start of the decade, but her support of decentralization wasn't limited to municipal administration. In the 1970s, not yet involved in politics, she co-founded the Women's Committee on Public Safety after the attempted rape of an adolescent girl in T.M.R. That group called for a demerger of the Montreal Urban Community's island-wide police, placing public security back in the hands of municipalities.

Elected chairperson of the Suburban Mayors' Conference of Montreal in 1992, two years later she experienced what might be considered the greatest irony of her political career: After spending more than a decade criticizing the MUC, Danyluk, then 49, was named its chairperson, responsible for a budget of $1.2 billion and the 15,000 employees who provided the region's public security and transit, restaurant and food inspection, water purification, air pollution monitoring and emergency co-ordination services.

Those close to Danyluk attributed her rapid weight loss in late 2008 and early 2009 to how she was juggling a heavy workload with increasing time she was spending with her ailing mother, Anne Mystic, who died in July 2009 in the Father Dowd Home in Cote des Neiges.

Vera Mystic grew up in Rosemont and took the Danyluk name upon marriage to Victor Danyluk of T.M.R. Like Victor, she was of Ukrainian origin. She declined an offer to run for the Quebec Liberal Party as a candidate in the 1998 general election because Victor didn't want her to be away in Quebec City so much.

She is survived by her husband and son, Peter, who lives in Ottawa.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

ANOTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTH: 140 WORDS ON WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN'.

What irritates me most about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is everyone already knows how it ends -- mostly Israel in pre-1967 boundaries and West Jerusalem, mostly Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, a shared arrangement for the Old City, most Jewish settlements in occupied territories dismantled and descendants of Palestinian refugees only given the right of return to the new Arab state.

It's actually pretty simple. But the truth is men with power are stubborn. And so problems fester and everyone suffers.

I was reminded of that while watching David Guggenheim's Waiting for 'Superman', an uplifting and disheartening documentary about the broken US education system. Uplifting because everyone knows how to fix it. Disheartening because the politicians and unions who pull the strings refuse to relinquish power to help those who matter most: the students.

OF TEA PARTIES AND STREET FIGHTS.

In 1903, revolutionary Julius Martov called for the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party to model itself after more moderate Western European social democratic parties. He was opposed by his fellow partisan Vladimir Lenin who wanted to restrict power in the party to high-level professionals.

That year, Lenin's followers obtained a majority on the party central committee and began calling themselves Bolsheviks ("the majority"). Lenin derisively called Martov's faction Mensheviks ("the minority"). More importantly, however, members of Martov's own faction fatefully began calling themselves that too, even if at times his group actually had more support within the party than the Bolsheviks.

But it didn't matter. Lenin's Bolsheviks came to be viewed as the dominant group, which eventually morphed into the Communist Party and ruled the USSR with an iron fist for seven decades. The Mensheviks became little more than a historic footnote.

I'm thinking of Lenin's masterful psychological and propagandizing move of defining his adversaries as the US midterm elections draw near and I watch the give and mostly take between Democrats and Republicans. For 30 years, the GOP has done a thoroughly impressive job of defining Democrats chiefly as tax-and-spend liberals, as weak on defense and as anti-business -- and the Democrats have mostly let them, in spite of clear evidence to the contrary (Clinton surplus, anyone?)

It seems hard to believe that the party of supposed economic know-how and military prowess could spend their years in power criminally mismanaging the economy and losing two wars then, less than two years after losing the last election, rise like a phoenix (or Michael Myers in Halloween) accusing the Democrats of being what they themselves proved to be for eight years.

But it's not really surprising if you understand the lesson of the Mensheviks. Because what was key was not that Lenin defined his adversaries  -- every astute political leader ought to try. The lesson to be learned is that his adversaries -- the Mensheviks -- let him.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Democrats consistently, almost pathologically, allow themselves to be defined by the Republicans. The GOP has even not-so-subtly taken a page from the old Bolsheviks, making a point of calling the Democratic Party "the Democrat Party" as if to suggest they don't recognize their adversaries as democratic, or perhaps simply to get under their skin. (Worse, as if déjà-vu all over again, I've heard some Democrats mistakenly call their own party "the Democrat Party.")

It may be an inherent decency that center-left politicians like Barack Obama have, or a belief that everyone playing this game is honorable and in politics for the same reason (to help the little guy, of course). Or it may simply be a lack of gall -- or balls -- that seems to make Democrats unable or unwilling to hit back.

There are some exceptions on the left like Anthony Weiner, Alan Grayson, Barney Frank, Russ Feingold and Al Franken (all coincidentally -- or perhaps not -- Jewish), all of whom have shown a willingness to get down and fight when necessary. But for the most part Democrats act as if politics is a dainty tea party (no pun intended) instead of what it clearly is for the Republicans: a street fight.

On that point, I'm reminded of a kid in high school who repeatedly called me "fag" until one day I punched him in the gut. It's the only time in my life I've hit anyone and I have to admit that for a few minutes afterward it felt really good. But more importantly, the little shit never bothered me again.

Perhaps it's an overdue lesson Democrats ought to learn -- fast.