This One Time... At Gay Camp

Maybe like two years ago (fuck time flies) I was asked by Heeb Magazine to go down to New York City and do some investigative journalism into an organization by the name of JONAH (Jews, Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality).

Long-story short - Heeb sorta folded (or became web only) and I never did anything with this article and blah blah blah... Sometimes I looked at it and wonder what to do with it; sometimes I think I could get sued for its contents, but mostly I just think its kinda crazy.

~~~~~~~~

Late one night not too long ago, I found myself sitting in boxer-briefs, cruising websites that a twenty-something, hot-blooded man shouldn’t be caught looking at. Like a fat kid drawn to a bag of smarties, I just couldn’t quite click away from www.JONAHweb.org, a homepage belonging to an organization whose acronym stands for: Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality. Did I mention that I’m both a member of the tribe and, to quote popular ex-gay terminology, a continued victim of “same-sex attraction”? Even if my victimization hasn't been as frequent of late as I would have hoped...

JONAH is an oddity in the ex-gay movement, which is dominated by the Christian religious right. For Jews and by Jews, JONAH asks the ever-salient question, “Can Judaism help those individuals who wish to leave the homosexual lifestyle?” JONAH was founded and is run by Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Silodor-Berk; Goldberg is perhaps best known for authoring, Light in the Closet, Torah, Homosexuality and the Power to Change (note for those of you with KINDLES Goldberg's text is available from Amazon.com). JONAH “is dedicated to educating the world-wide Jewish community about the social, cultural and emotional factors which lead to same-sex attractions. Through psychological and spiritual counseling, peer support, and self-empowerment, JONAH seeks to reunify families, to heal the wounds surrounding homosexuality, and to provide hope."

I'll take some gefilte fish with that!

Thinking that perhaps this whole JONAH thing was someone's idea of a bad joke, the organization’s logo is of two sperm whales 69ing (I’m serious), I sent JONAH anonymous email: “Hi, I have a packing question for your weekend retreats: If I want to bring anal lubricant, does it have to be kosher?” Questions related to kosher lubricant are, I imagine, the second most important gay Jew question, beyond the obviously offensive: if two gay Jews are having anal sex on Shabbat do they have to use the sheet? An almost instantaneous reply came from JONAH director Elaine Silodor-Birk herself. She was NOT as amused by my sardonic sense of humor as one would have hoped: “How sad that you would spend your time making [sic] of men and women who are unhappy feeling same-sex attractions (SSA). JONAH doesn't make fun of those who are happy being gay and we feel we deserve the same courtesy from you."

I can understand Elaine’s mal humor; these are not good times to be proponents of the ex-same-sex attraction movement. In fact my initial email to JONAH came just days after the American Psychological Association reiterated their position that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.

So where do all of these conflicted reports leave a gay Jew fearing that his own ‘same-sex attractions’ aren’t halacich? Well a road trip, obviously, down to JONAH's head office in Jersey City to see first hand, if I could close the proverbial whale hole that is my ass.

The first thing you have to understand about infiltrating a not so secretive organization such as JONAH is that it is actually fairly easy. I concocted a Jewish alias, wrote a fake back-story and sent end out a tearful, poorly worded email to JONAH’s general email account (info@jonahweb.org). Within a matter of hours both Silodar-Berk and Goldberg were in contact with my poor, conflicted alter ego. I was soon ready to begin their process of de-gaying.

Elaine, clearly a consummate Jewish mother, lay down the rules of engagement, “It is important for you to begin to think of yourself as a normal man with unwanted SSA, which is just a symptom of underlying, unresolved emotional issues. No one is born gay and people do journey out of unwanted SSA all the time. No one is born gay - remember that.” [Adding in for modernity purposes - I guess she hasn't listened to Born This Way by Gaga?] I was never quite sure if she was telling me that for my purposes or for her own good.

In contrast, Arthur appealed to my need for emotional support: “just like you need a minyan to daven, so too do you need a minyan of men to support you to your journey into wholeness. So, let me be the first member of your minyan.” Question: is minyan code word for gang-bang these days?

Shortly thereafter Arthur and my depressed nom de plume had scheduled a phone call, where I was assured that everything JONAH did was completely confidential, “in our decade long existence,” Arthur declared, “we have never had someone infiltrate our organization.” Oy vey.

With my lack of spy training, I couldn’t believe how easy my infiltration had gone; although I was constantly worried that Arthur would see through the many holes in my tale of repressed woe. At one point, when Arthur asked me where I went to college, I stupidly answered Wesleyan, the first college that came into my mind. Arthur sighed heavily and I thought then that the jig was up. I mean what self-respecting yid from Brooklyn would go to a bastion of left-wing champagne socialism? Arthur’s response, however, didn’t skip a beat: “Wesleyan, a typically gay affirmative place. No wonder you experimented when you were there.”

My tale of regretted experimentation led to an hour-long diatribe against “the gay agenda”. According to Goldberg, I wasn’t born gay (that’s a big myth); in fact gay doesn’t really exist in JONAH’s universe. Being gay is just a symptom of underlying psychological issues, “A lot of people who go into the gay world are social outcasts. They didn’t feel they fit in to the straight world.” At one point, Arthur went through the list of reasons that caused homosexuality, which include (drum-roll please): not being close to a father figure, “daddy wasn’t around much”, “cruel daddy”, “overly attached to mummy”, “same-sex peer wounding”, and of course, sexual abuse, which according to JONAH is “the most dramatic of all risk factors”. My non-verbal prompts were so convincing that Arthur thought he was really reaching my conflicted self, “I can tell that this is ringing true for you.”

I won’t lie – while I listened to Arthur yammer on about how my homosexuality was caused by my “poor childhood”, I was also checking out the summer sale on jcrew.com. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in Goldberg (ok, you got me, I wasn’t), but listening to someone yell into the phone for an hour about how “homosexuality is a construct,” gets boring fast. You try keeping a straight face while listening to such bon mots as: “The classical male homosexual has feeling of a deficiency of his own masculinity.”

To truly understand JONAH you have to understand Arthur Golderg, who considers himself a consummate civil rights champion. According to his own bio, he has worked tirelessly throughout his life advocating for rights; in fact during the 60’s he was “hanged in effigy” for his African American advocacy work. Goldberg feels that JONAH is the next, natural extension of his life-long fight for rights. Goldberg is now fighting for a group of people that he feels are “the most under-represented minority in America and perhaps the World”. Who exactly? People who have been “co-opted into the gay lifestyle”. Goldberg feels that contemporary attitudes toward people who don’t want to be gay are “contemptible, immoral, irresponsible and potentially lethal.”

Goldberg looks like your typical Jewish high school professor. Tweed jackets and reserved looking suits, loosely cover a potbelly, while a closely cropped white beard, masks his mouth out of which he emits a mild Yiddish twang. He’s the type of guy who pronounces torah, like toyrah and if he wasn’t a total wing nut he sort of looks like the your uncle who gets drunk at the Passover seder and then tries to dance like Elijah.

JONAH isn’t just another rights crusade for Goldberg, it is also a very personal project. In his book he declares that his mother, shortly before she died “specifically asked that [Goldberg] carry forth a Jewish program to help heal those afflicted with the homosexual condition.” Jew-boys… always trying to please their mothers…

I imagine that many Manhatanites don’t venture to JONAH’s neck of the woods, even though it’s only a quick cross-river PATH ride away. JONAH’s office, the third floor of a converted old Brownstone in Jersey City, consists of a couple of meeting rooms as well as a small reception area filled with NARTH pamphlets and out of date Time magazines. Jersey City itself is typical of a mid-sized American city. That feeling of any town USA is part of JONAH’s positioning: married, straight suburban ideals, albeit with a side of matzoh ball soup.

I did, however, venture to JONAH spending some time under cover at JONAH’s offices where I met with Enrique, the JONAH therapist assigned to guide me towards the path of teshuvah. As preparation for my therapy session, I worried a lot about what to wear, before finally settling on a pair of amusingly titled “Straight Fit” jeans bought years ago from the GAP. I figured a gay guy who didn’t want to be gay would probably tend to shy away from trendy slim-fit jeans.

In our first five minutes together, Enrique let me know a little bit about his own background, which included a fairly lengthy stint as a “homosexual” before choosing the path of reformation. He’s currently “partnered with a woman”. Note that I didn’t meet her… so, to answer your question, I’m not sure if she’s a butter face.

Our hour was, I imagine, fairly typical of ex-gay therapy. We went through the causes of homosexuality, furthering what Arthur and I had already covered. JONAH’s therapy seems to be concentrated in understanding these “root causes” while simplifying the emotional needs into categories: validation/ affirmation, affection, and attention. When we don’t receive enough of these emotional needs, we tend to act out.

How do we act out you may ask? Why through anal sex with men.

Enrique and I would delve into my sexual history trying to understand when I first began noticing my lust for cock. We paused, naturally, at my teenage years, where I quickly made up some story about noticing other boys in the change room. When Enrique asked if I would get an erection, I didn’t even have to lie when I said, “Yes.”

According to Enrique, my erections had nothing to do with me wanting to fuck men, this had more to do with hormonal changes of puberty and of course the lack of validation, affirmation and affection in my life.

“When you were fifteen, you probably got erect very easily, yes?”

“Ya.”

“Did you ever brush up against a chair by accident a get an erection?”

“Ya, sure.”

“Does that mean you are attracted to that chair? Do you want to have sex with that chair?”

“No.”

“It’s the same thing with same-sex attraction. You’re not really attracted to men… you just think you are attracted to men. Because you had a perfectly natural erection and you assumed it was because of men. When it wasn’t.” At this point my internal thought process was more along the lines, “The more we talk about men, the more I’m looking forward to getting laid.” According to Enrique – it’s fairly natural to think that men are hot, but we need to continually affirm ourselves as masculine, which means we don’t fuck men.

“I can tell you – you are a very attractive guy. Very attractive. But I don’t want to sleep with you.” Understanding and being able to harness attraction vs. desire would lead me to the path of reformation, or somewhere between becoming straight or simply stopping to play the skin flute. JONAH doesn’t guarantee full straight-dom; rather, its 75-80% success rate is defined by a spectrum of change, ranging from straight marriage to helping people live without acting out on same-sex needs.

Things hit a new high of awkwardness towards the end of the hour, when I admitted that I had tried to have sex with women, but, “I just… couldn’t physically do it.” I decided that my character was worried about JONAH’s success rate and his ability to find a wife. There was something shockingly subversive about the conversation that followed, which would detail my sexual proclivities. I felt like I was describing what an ice-cream fudge sundae tastes like to an anorexic.


“Well what do you like to do with other men?” Enrique asked.

“I don’t know.” I answered with trepidation. “Uhm, I like to suck penis. I like anal sex.” I finally admitted.

“Do you like to give or receive?” This was the only question I had trouble answering. Truthfully, I had never decided if my fake persona would be a top or a bottom.

“I like both.” I finally admitted. I figured most people on Manhunt defaulted to versatile, so why should my alter ego define himself as either or?

“How does it feel when you’re having sex?”

“It feels like I’m loved, wanted.” It feels great.

“Exactly!” Enrique was excited, but in what way? “You’re using SSA because you require attention, affection and validation. You’ll train to get those feelings elsewhere.” This line of thinking reaffirms the main theory that Goldberg outlines in his book, detailing the need to “get into your soul and understand what the unfilled needs are. And helping people fulfill those needs in healthy, non-sexual ways.”

“Where else will I get those feelings?” I asked.

“Exercise. Maybe dancing…” When I came back to Toronto and debriefed my gay friends, they couldn’t stop laughing, “They told you to replace cock with ballroom dancing? Let me know how that works out for you.”

“You have to start thinking of SSA is like the white bread we’ve all known. But there are other types of bread out there.” Worst. Analogy. Ever.

We parted soon after. I paid him $100 cash, no receipt. As I left he grabbed my hand.

“Listen to me. You are a man.” He nodded his head asking me to repeat.

“I am a man.” I parroted back.

“Gay is just one window. You need to starting looking at other windows.” Second. Worst. Analogy. Ever.

I obviously called my mother as soon as the appointment was over. After all, I am a nice Jewish boy…

"The good news: you're not completely to blame for me being gay." I told her as I stood on the Jersey shore, wistfully looking at the Manhattan skyline.

"I should hope not," She said.

"BUT, because of my upbringing, I did feel a lack of attention and subsequently I act out by filling that void with same-sex attractions."

"YOUR UPBRINGING?” she shrieked. "I take offense! We gave you the best; you went to private school for god’s sake! I mean you don't have a trust fund, but have you ever wanted for anything?"

"Well we didn't delve into where the lack of attention comes from. It may not be because of our relationship... maybe you gave me too much attention? You should be happy that I’m only gay, according to JONAH because of my poor upbringing, I was eventually going to act out, either by turning to same-sex attraction or joining a gang."

My mother was never so happy to tell me that I was gay. "There was nothing wrong with your upbringing and there is nothing wrong with you being gay." Who knew that threatening to go to ex-gay therapy would finally make my mother extremely proud to have a gay son. For a Jewish mother what’s worse then having a gay son? Criticizing her child rearing skills AND costing her money…

So what is the true motivation behind JONAH?

In an email Elaine let me know that her only son Aaron is gay and that when she found out that he “suffered from same-sex attraction, she was completely devastated. For those who you are looking to meet a nice, single, gay Jew, Elaine also let me know that, “BTW, my son is still gay (no longer in that 10 year relationship) but is now not very happy with the gay world compared to his friends who are hetero and are now getting married and having families…”, perhaps Elaine’s son Aaron was my beshert?

I figured there would be some meat (pun intended) in tracking down Elaine’s son. Through the wonders of the Internet, I soon found the right Mr. Berk. I honestly expected to be hung up on, as soon as I mentioned JONAH; instead I found a son caught between his mother, the organization she founded, and his own life. Aaron Berk didn’t just add a new chapter in the story of JONAH he is the proverbial whale in the room.

“I don’t consider myself gay,” Aaron starts off our conversation, “I consider myself open to the possibility of men and women.” This construct frames Aaron’s admittedly complicated relationship with his mother.

To get the big questions out of the way: Yes he talks to her. Yes they have a good relationship. Yes they laugh about “it” (it being JONAH). Yes, they see each other once a week.

Filial responsibility is a consistent theme throughout our conversation. “I don’t want to contribute to something negatively that my mother really believes in,” he tells me as he is quick to defend his mother’s views on gay people, “If you were to ask her – she has no hatred, she has really good gay friends, we lived next door to lesbians growing up, she’s not - gay people are wrong or evil, she just thinks the choice is not the best choice.”

When I ask if Aaron begrudges his mother for her stance on his own “homosexuality”, he defaults to her feelings, “I am upset because she’s upset… I just wish that she didn’t have to go down that path where she looks at it [homosexuality] as a negative. She totally loves me and she totally accepts me for who I am, but I hate that there is always this but, ‘oh but I wish…’ but no I don’t hold that against her.”

So why JONAH? “God knows,” Aaron shrieks in what can only best be described as a Fran Drescher accent, “I was the golden child.” Berk tells me. “And then I was an actor, and then I was gay.”

And then he was an actor who played drag in several, well received off-Broadway productions of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Didn’t see that one coming did you? Yes, the son that inspired JONAH, “looks really good in heels.” But he’s not “a femmy drag-queen; I’m a balls to the walls she bitch rock-star.”

Has the JONAH crew made a fieldtrip to see Aaron’s work? “Arthur and my mother watched me do Hedwig, and were so proud of me, six inch platform heels and wigs and all,” he answers.

“My biggest qualm with JONAH,” He tells me when asked if he’d ever use the treatment himself, “Is their judgment of being gay.”

There are about a hundred people who subscribe to JONAH’s listserv each one trying to subscribe to JONAH’s treatment. Comments are standard, "I know I wasn't born with it [SSA]. But at the same time, it's an invoulentary [sic] result of whatever it is in my past that caused it. Why?! Why did I need this?”

In defending his mother’s stance on blank Aaron tells me simply that, “She does not accept it [homosexuality] as a lifestyle choice; she feels that there is nothing that is morally incorrect to be with someone of the same-sex, but as a choice of your lifestyle, you had many more options to be happy as a guy with a girl.”

This concept of lifestyle is perhaps the defining raison d’etra of JONAH, and while Aaron likes to think of his mother as a pleasant woman who provides “help to those who need it”, the liturgy behind JONAH is not as pleasant. Goldberg’s critique of the homosexual community is fairly clear, “by using the façade of “tolerance” or “civil rights” or the ruse of an alleged “Scientific proof” defining homosexuality as “innate” gay activities have inundated western society with propaganda carefully designed to convince us that homosexuality is simply an alternative lifestyle… hence the argument goes that homosexuality is entitled to the same degree and kind of protection as racial and religious diversity.”

Yet Aaron is able to divorce himself from this, “I don’t believe my mom is anti-gay. She’s pro-straight. There’s a real difference. Anti-gay means you have hatred towards gay people, you believe they don’t deserve the same rights. Pro-straight, you believe strongly that people do better in typical old-fashioned male-female relationships…” Aaron finally laughed as he thought about his parents’ heterosexual friends who were just as single as their gay friends, before finally admitting, “Wow man… this is so challenging.”

And perhaps that was the most honest answer of the day. While our friends in Jersey City like to view sexuality as a flavour of bread, it is clear that to many sexuality is more challenging then simply choosing between challah with raisons or challah without. Third. Worst. Analogy. Ever?

Regardless... after my stint in JONAH's reparative therapy I’ve tucked away those straight fit jeans and am sticking with white bread. Luckily, my mother’s happy with it.

Born That Way

There was quite a bit of chatter a couple of months ago when famed Australian director Baz Luhrmann announced he was going to remake F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby. Lurhmann’s supposed 3D (darling, its like we’re actually in East Egg!) take on Gatsby will not be the first time that F. Scott’s sour take on the downside of the American Dream has made it to the that “oh so” classic American entertainment medium of the silver screen; the 1970s saw Mia Farrow and Robert Redford infamously butcher Fitzgerald’s source-material while looking handsome in their jazz-age best. And while in his younger and more vulnerable years Paul Rudd helmed a made-for-TV version of the Great Gatsby featuring Mira Sorvino (remember her?) and Toby Stephens (who?).

A phenomenal book which has made for terrible film, Gatsby’s iconic characters and bittersweet plot have, however, sustained continued fascination since the novel shot to post-war fame. In fact Luhrmann’s announcement was not the only recent Gatsby news to hit the mainstream press of late. Newspapers from the LA Times to the UK Daily Mail sadly reported that the Long Island mansion that supposedly inspired Fitzgerald was bulldozed in April, its plot of land split up and sold into building lots at $10 million a piece. A sad comment about the end of America’s Gilded Age can be seen here.

Few artistic products, with 85 years of vintage, can claim to have such extreme cultural resonance. So what explains our continued fascination with the novel and its titular character of which Fitzgerald once remarked: “the title is only fair, rather bad than good”?

What is it about Gatsby that still means something?

Well to quote Lady Gaga: “He was born that way.” Jay Gatsby reminds us all that for whatever reason we human beings are obsessed with where we come from, and not in the philosophical way, but rather the mundane, “what did your parents do” sort of way.



Take the recent wedding of Kate (now Catherine) Middleton to HRH Prince William of Wales, or whatever his last name is (is it Wales or Windsor?). Throughout their engagement the British press (and presumably the press-reading public) has been fascinated with the Middleton family’s impressive upward social trajectory. In less than three generations the Middleton’s have gone from bricklayers, to air stewards, to entrepreneurs, to machataynus (Yiddish for in-laws) to HRH Prince Charles and Camilla. We know all of this because it was reported breathlessly with a mixture of glee and disdain by London’s press corps. But also note - there was no whitewashing of Kate common past; rather, Kate and her sister Pippa have forever been dubbed the Wisteria Sister’s for being pretty, smelling nice and for their incredible climbing ability. One may argue that Kate’s non aristocratic background is part of what has enamored William, who seems rather taken with the entire Middleton clan, whose bourgeois closeness would seem to bely his own proper up-bringing; regardless of that, our future Queen will forever have a commoner footnote.

But the British Royal Wedding hasn’t just exposed the British public’s fascination of where the Middleton’s come from – they care about where everyone comes from. As this rather amazing article in New York Magazine noted: the current House of Windsor are seen by some members of the landed British aristocracy as nothing more then “middle-class Hanoverians.” The Royal Family as you may or may not know only became the House of Windsor in 1910, changing their name (how common!) from the German sounding House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, was Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha). And as Tina Brown noted in her biography of Diana, upon being threated by Prince Phillip: "If you don't behave, my girl, we'll take your title away." Diana is alleged to have replied: "My title is a lot older than yours, Philip." Diana was only too happy to remind Philip that while he may be married to the Queen, the Spencer family has been titled since the 1500’s. Snap.

Lest us not think that it is just the Brits who seem to have a fetish for pedigree, over in the former colonies where birth isn’t supposed to mean anything to the Horatio Aldeg set, perhaps the greatest circus sideshow since the merger of Ringling Brothers with Barnum and Bailey has transpired over just that – family lineage.

Witness the rise of the Birther movement, exacerbated by that carnival barker of a Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who believes that Barack Obama was not actually born in the United States and therefore is in violation of Article 2 of the US Constitution, which states that only natural born citizens can become President. While you may think that this is a fringe movement, some polls have found that 1/4 of American’s aren’t 100% positive that Obama was actually born in Hawaii as he states and as his birth certificate shows. Certainly there is something more sinister and sort of racist about the Birther movement but the very fact that people are interested in Barack’s heritage would stem from an innate desire to know as much about our leader’s history as we can. Even the NY Times, a bastion of Liberalism, published a great feature piece of Barack’s mother and her time in both Kenya and Hawaii, highlighting the fact that family history, even in the history less United States, sells.

Now as Canadians, before we let our noses get too high up in the air from judging former super-powers, lets not forget that we took time away from the most recent federal election to talk about how rich or poor the Ignatieffs were when they got off the boat. Forget the “I didn’t come back here for you,” attack ad and go straight to Iggy’s own “My Canada” advert where he voiceovers: “my dad was a Russian immigrant who came off a boat in 1928 without anything."



Of course as the Conservatives were quick to note before the Writ dropped in their cutesy website: Ignatieffselection.com: The Ignatieff immigrant experience is one of significant wealth, first-rate educations and privilege. Very few Canadian families can claim this “immigrant experience.”

The common thread in all of these stories and our fascination with them is that they show humans who are beholden to their pasts. We seemingly just can’t escape who we are. This perhaps underlies the continued fascination with Gatsby. Gatsby is one of the few characters that dared attempt to separate who he was from who he tried to be. And yet he is tragic because his desired future was so caught up proving himself to his past. What’s worse is that for a time Gatsby is successful – he remakes himself into a man of wealth, and yet in the end he fails; he winds up friendless, loveless and dead.

Fitzgerald’s argument is significant: we can never truly escape who we are. This plays true for Catherine Middleton of the Party Pieces Middletons, Barack Obama born in Hawaii and Michael Ignatieff, well to do Russian immigrant.

And so we sing songs, beats against the music, re-investing ourselves ceaselessly into Madonna’s past.

Stop the Presses: Canadian Campaign Ads, Now With Music, Voiceovers and Images

Post Secret – I think Stephen Harper is a creepy mother fucker and if he was my neighbor I wouldn’t give him my spare key to water my plants and take care of my cats when I went away on vacation. That’s how much I trust the dude who has all of our country’s secret codes.

That being said – the Conservative’s new ad campaign “Our Country” is taking a drubbing in the media and I feel it necessary to defend Herr Harper. When this is all said and done I’ll be taking a nice long shower to wash myself clean.

But in the interim - Simon Houpt, in the Globe, and scores of other reporters have reported the following story today, that Our Country is a direct copy of an ad done for Tea Party candidate Tim Pawlenty. This story was most likely fed to media outlets by the Liberal Party itself, which has quickly put together a nice video montage of both ads:

I commend the Libs for quick spin on this one; looks like that whole disaster with the Stephane Dion coalition video thing is finally behind them (remember the Dion video that arrived late to the CBC looked like Dion was some sort of Al Queda leader releasing a tape from his hidden bunker?)



So where’s the beef?

Well… both ads use voiceovers, images and orchestral music.

Yes that’s right. Voiceovers, images and music. This, in Canada, is what is now consider plagiarism. You should read people’s comments on the YouTube: “if i did this in my university I’d be expelled from all universities in ontario. that's called plagiarism.”

Houpt even uses the word plagiarism in his article: The Pawlenty plagiarism allegations threaten to derail the Conservative attempt to pivot in their messaging, from using their ads to sow fear over Michael Ignatieff to a more hopeful stance.

Since when are “voiceovers” and “images” (which are what people in the movie business call narrative techniques) plagiarism.

Furthermore the actual speeches in both ads are fairly different.

Pawlenty talks about the fact the United States is the world’s most successful nation ever known. This is due to freedom, security, and prosperity. Pawlenty’s rallying cry is that life is not easy, but American’s can overcome their challenges.

In contrast Harper talks about the fact that Canada is the true, north, strong and free. He talks not about overcoming challenges, but about serving, and creating a country of hope, where all Canada can be all that can it be.


Most importantly voiceovers, music and images are old hat in election campaigns in the States. They weren’t invented by Tim Pawlenty and the Tea Party. Here is Reagan’s fairly famous: Morning in America (which shockingly uses Images, Music and Voiceover)



Maybe Pawlenty is plagiarizing from the Gipper? Voiceovers, music and images were trademark of his 1984 campaign. Here's another add from 1984. Yes, MORE voiceover, music and images.

Lest you think this is a Republican versus Democrat thing: here’s an add for Barack Obama from 2008. Yes. Voiceovers. Images. Soaring Music.



I believe what Obama presented in his ad is a vision. Same with Pawlenty. And yes… same with Harper.

So look - lets get angry about the content of Harper’s ads – the $35 billion dollars he’s spending on fighter jets which are so amazingly featured in “Our Country”. Let’s debate Harper’s vision. But let’s not get angry about the fact that he’s presenting one.

Nah what I mean?

I’ll be showering if anyone needs me.

On the Youth Vote...

The lead story on the hard copy version of last Thursday’s Globe and Mail, for those of us technological Luddites who still insist on home delivery of their media and or are weighted down by the cost of professional school rendered too impoverished to buy an iPad, trumpeted the fact that on eve of the 41st federal election all three federal parties were targeting the exact same group of voters.

The G+M headline screamed: Three Parties, One Strategy: Courting the Senior Vote, while the article declared: “this election won’t be about the masses. It will be a battle for segments of the population that can be effectively targeted.” One such targeted population: those 65 and older. The stats apparently speak for themselves: 90% of those over 65 voted in the last federal election. Comparatively only 45% of those aged 25-44 voted. The Stats are even worse for new voters 18-25; but just as your average 19 year-old is too lazy to stop taking bong hits to vote [or so how we’re portrayed], I’m too lazy to do actual research. Just know that the numbers are really really bad.

I mean look... I think it is great that our politicians are so concerned about the senior vote. The Baby Boomers ARE important – my parents are Baby Boomers and their portfolio (of issues… obviously) is important to me. But I gotta be honest when I read that no federal party was interested in my support - I felt a bit slighted. Its sorta like anyone under 44 is stuck in the political version of “He’s Just Not That Into You”; and by replacing Jennifer Aniston with Bev Oda we’ve confirmed the adage that politics is Hollywood for ugly people. The He in our scorned lover scenario, because of course all of our dear leaders coincidentally happen to be white, old, men, are Stephen Harper, Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff and not only do they just not care - they’re like the three musketeers: “All for none and none for you”.

Which of course leads us to the chicken and egg dilemma that we rarely seem to talk about when dealing with what has quaintly been described as youth apathy. While organizations like Apathy is Boring and Student Vote exist to urge our youth to vote, our national newspapers tell us that our votes don’t matter. Our politicians seem to disregard us because youth tend to live in ridings where our votes are worth less then rural ridings which are (drumroll please..) heavily populated by seniors. Mix message, much? No big surprise then that instead of rocking the vote, we’re hitting the snooze button. Is youth (and that word is a bit pejorative isn’t it?) apathy because we’re too young to care or because we’re ostensibly too young to be paid attention to?

There are of course youthful political zealots; I remember them from my stint as a political staffer for a liberal politician. Youth are big business to parties who rely on them for their idolatry of the cause and their willingness to do jobs that no one else wants to do, “Our candidate really really needs you to call this list of people…”

Typical engagement for the under 25 set is limited to membership in party youth wings like CPC Energy, whose headline claims that the last time it was cool to be liberal the New Kids on the Block were cool (uhm… last time making a new kids on the block are no longer cool joke was cool was… never?) or the Young Liberals, which is for those who want to “shape the future of Canada”, the NDP youth wing seems dormant, click around on www.youthunited.ndp.ca and you’ll get automatically forwarded to NDP.ca, so I guess uhm… the Dippers care even less about the youth vote then anyone else?

Being a young political animal has its perks beyond open access to the corridors of Canadian politico power such as annual caucus retreats where like-minded individuals argue shades of gray about policy coupled with self-important elected positions. Youth political wings are a self-feeding mechanism that breeds in-group thinking, where every summer John Baird or Justin Trudeau are trotted out at the annual AGM where each will proclaim that those in attendance “are the parties the future”. The whole thing feels like a sycophantic self-congratulating cesspool, which, unsurprisingly, turns off the other half of twenty something’s who are busy trying to solve their own quarter life crisis; not the democratic crisis of a country and a political process that patently declares that it has no interest in them anyway.

So here’s the answer to that chicken versus the egg scenario – why don’t some of the political parties ask us what we want? Maybe then we’ll bother showing up to vote.

Losing My Religion Over YouTube

When I was in grade seven, my class, 7C, was given the task of performing a Shabbat themed play for the entire Senior Division (Grades 6-8). At Bialik Hebrew Day School, or Bialkatraz as we liked to call it, each class got to produce one holiday themed play a year. 7B did a Purim play, 5A did a Passover play etc… twas a gay old time.

I have NO idea how these things were randomized, or whether there was a throw-down in the Teacher’s Lounge every September: “Chava you had the Chanukkah play last year, bitch; this year MY class is going to do it and our version of Peter Paul and Mary’s Light One Candle is going to blow yours out of the water.” [RIP Mary] I don't know how, but it happened.



I will also tell you that these plays were a HUGE deal. Like huge… all consuming for at least a month. As students we were so serious about our performances that I actually can’t watch movies like Centre Stage, because I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; people cried over leads, there were costumes and sets and while retrospectively, they all sucked obviously, at the time I think we felt like we were performing at Radio City Music Hall [You know how shit rolls in grade school].

Anyway… so the 7C Shabbat play; the year was 1994, it was springtime for Hitler and for some reason my teacher, a former Israeli military officer, natch, Rivka, decided to assign me a solo.

No one to this day, is sure what possessed her to do this. But what I can tell you is that at some point during rehearsals and again, let me tell you, this shit was rehearsed over and over again, Rivka turned to me, stripped me of my solo and admonished me in front of the entire class declaring: Yonatan (Hebrew for Jonathan) you sing like a goat. Colour me mortified. I also had horrible Harry Pottery Size glasses; something like 10 years before anyone knew who Harry Potter was so clearly Grade 7 was traumatic enough without being name-checked to a bleating mammal.



In turn, at parent teacher night, don’t think that Papa Len and Sim Sim Sima didn't tell Rivka off. Because they did. “Our sweet, sensitive [sensitive is code-word for gay in retrospect] son,” they let Rivka know, “performs better via positive reinforcement.” Now in some ways my parents are right… I do perform better via positive reinforcement, but, to tell you the truth my parents and I weren’t shocked that my solo was taken away; really what came as a surprise was that I was given a solo in the first place.

My entire family KNEW I couldn’t sing. I could never sing and let's call a spade a spade - puberty certainly didn't help matters.

I started thinking about my brief career as a soloist about week ago, but these thoughts were interrupted as I witnessed the world change forever.

Yes there was a major earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan; Libya’s Mohamar Gadaffi continued to bring the cray cray to North Africa and all of this shit that no one understands went down in Ottawa about contempt and the like.



But more importantly the world met a young rapscallion chanteuse extra-ordinaire named Rebecca Black, singer of the saccharinely mindless ditty, Friday. Which is, stop the presses, about the day of the week, colloquially known as Friday. Black's song is an ode to "looking forward to the weekend" from a chick who probably doesn’t know that when I was her age TGIF meant Full House, Family Matters and Step by Step.

Anyway - what hasn’t been said about the 13 year-old Rebecca Black that hasn’t already entered internet meme lore? At this point R. Black may in fact be bigger then Antoine Dodson, he of the “they raypin erybuddy” fame of last summer. My favourite is the Facebook group entitled: That awkward moment when Rebecca Black doesn't know which seat to take.

What I find fascinating, however, is that Rebecca Black, who admitted to Good Morning America that indeed she doesn’t have the best singing voice in the world, somehow convinced her parents to drop $2000 so that she could have her own music video and song.

At what point did Rebecca Black’s parents NOT say, “Look Rebecca, you’re not the very best singer out there but you’re really good at comedy, horse-jumping, poetry… ANYTHING else.” Did Rebecca Black not have a former Israeli military commando teacher tell her that she sings like a goat?

Cause I can tell you if 12 year-old Jonathan was like, "Sim, Papa Len," I want to become a rap star, my parents would have laughed in my face. Unlike Rebecca, I knew I couldn’t sing. I’m what the French call, tone deaf. But heck, I could do other things instead of singing. I could craft stories, make jokes and uhm… to tell you the truth, I recreated the fictional Hardy Boys town of Bayport out of Lego’s in my basement, but sing? Are you kidding me, singing is on my trifecta of things I don’t do, which are: play team sports, sing and have sex with chicks. Anything else I’m game.



I grow concerned that we’ve somehow become a society of people who refuse to admit that they can't actually sing. Somehow because of the internet and shows like American Idol everyone thinks they can become the next Justin Bieber. The weird thing is that Rebecca Black and the like must know that singing isn't their A talent. After-all its not the artistry of music they crave or a strong endeavor to master the craft of singing. It's none of the above. Rebecca Black and the Ark Music Factory is a wannabe fame factor. We don't want laudatory congratulations, we want celebrity. And people somehow expect that they’ll just throw up some videos on the YouTube and BAM! Viral sensation. Click on those for some awkward YouTube isms.

Maybe the new millennium isn’t, as REM declared, about losing our religion, but losing our sense of artistry for the quick soundbyte of fame at whatever cost. And as if to prove some sort of argument – when I typed “Losing My Religion” into Youtube, the Glee version came up first.

Gross.

Apparently You Nor I Really Care...

I realized the other day that I was behind Bev Oda. I mean I was behind on the Bev Oda affair and not physically behind the Femme Fetale of the Conservative Party of Canada. I saw all of the headlines involving her and some scandal in my morning Globe and Mail, read Rick Mercer’s tweet about it and quickly turn my browser to Gawker.



Certainly if this were the United States we’d have memes celebrating Bev Oda, and someone would re-write the lyrics to Fergie’s song “Fergalicious, so delicious,” to "Odalicious, so fictitious". In the states that shit would go viral; but in Canada, no one really cares.

After Oda I proceeded to miss the whole Jason Kenny imbroglio because truthfully I kinda didn’t care. Sorry, we’re arguing about stationary? I mean I just bought a bunch of really nice French stationary from this paper shop in Yorkville. But sorry… politics and stationary? Who in the what now? I had the same reaction after Rob Ford canceled muffin service at Toronto City council meetings. I’ve also tried to reduce my carb load so I get where he’s coming from, but like… colour me uninterested. So as Harper, Ford, Kenny, Oda and Iggy re-arrange the deck chairs on the good ship Canada – I’m going to be over there, aka get into a lifeboat, but thanks for coming out guys. Let me know how that works for you; maybe someone can send me a postcard?

My political malaise is, to be honest, fairly surprising. I was recently having coffee with a Globe and Mail journo friend lamenting my sudden inability to keep up with political news, when I finally admitted that for whatever reason, whether it was societal, transitional, demo-graphical, or technological, or due to attention deficit disorder, I just could no longer feign interest in broad-based Canadian politics.

This wasn’t always the case; at 22 my life, both personally and professionally revolved around politics. A lot of my friends were politically employed and I assumed that forever bitten by the bug of politics, we’d forever be addicted. A funny thing happened on the way to 30. We all sort of stopped caring.

The lack of interest of course isn’t just voter apathy in the conventional sense, a problem in and of itself, and which campaigns like studentvote.ca and Apathy is Boring exist to challenge. Youth apathy is one thing. Complete disengagement, is, however, a different beast.

It would be easy to claim, debt, business school, and careers for this waning interest in all things government. I worry, however, that there is an insidious undercurrent in this generational angst; an undercurrent, which has created an age of mass political indifference.

As Andrew Coyne notes in what I think is a seminal article on politics in Canada: “Politics in this country – federal politics, at least – is in a kind of death spiral, whose terminus is not dictatorship but irrelevance.”

So what causes this death spiral? At root, surely information, or the lack there of. A friend of mine recently started an organization called Samara, whose goal is to strengthen Canada’s democracy. Samara recently released its second report based on interviews with ex-MP’s. In the reports backgrounder Samara lists the 3 official tasks an MP has in our Westminster Parliamentary system. They are: establish policy and pass laws; ensure that the laws are being carried out properly, and that tax dollars are being spent responsibly; and determine the life of the government by voting for things you support, and against things you don’t.

Truthfully, if you asked me what an MP’s job was before I read Samara's report I’d probably yammer on about “Representing riding interests”. And that’s the ironic truth in this age of information, right? We know so little about how our own government works. How many of us understand the nuances of the recent Globalive ruling, can fully articulate the relationship between the CRTC, the cabinet and industry Canada? To misquote Obama: No We Can’t. This morning as I read about Peter Milliken’s ruling that the government is potentially in contempt of I subsequently had to Google what the ramifications of contempt of parliament actually are.

What’s fascinating and potentially very worrisome about this lack of knowledge is that many of the trends facing our democratic system are dangerous. While most of us like to pinpoint Harper’s supposed hidden agenda as a danger… in reality encroaching conservatism is a red herring at best. What Canadians are actually quietly acquiescing to is a fairly frightening concentration of power.

Jim Travers, the recently deceased Toronto Star columnist wrote this in 2009: "Incrementally and by stealth, Canada has become a situational democracy. What matters now is what works. Precedents, procedures and even laws have given way to the political doctrine of expediency.”

What Travers wrote in 2009, is probably even more truthful today.

And so the chicken versus egg situation that we are faced with is: is our political leadership taking advantage of us because of citizenship disinterest, or are we disinterested because politics has become a dirty business where power is increasingly centralized?

It sort of doesn't matter. There's still fun to be had over at gawker... right? In today's 5700 channel internet, there's 5700 web pages and no one's able to concentrate on any of them... Pity that. [learning of the day: the saying: 57 channels and nothing on is a Bruce Springsteen lyric... am I stupid for not knowing that?]

Confessions of a Jewish Mom

I realize, with some sadness, that I’m about 8 weeks past the whole Tiger Mom fiasco. As I write this, the original Tiger Mom, Amy Chua, is probably slinking back into semi-anonymity at Yale, her tiger tail tucked neatly behind her, having been practically eviscerated by the national media.

I assume that Yalies have better things to do with their lives, such as choreograph musicals and or chase James Franco around campus, before wondering what superstar legal professor Amy Chua is up to these days. Its not like one Wall Street Journal article suddenly makes someone the bee’s knees of New Haven now does it?

I will say that being a bit behind my pop culture is a bit unusual for me; I like to think that I am a fairly trendy person and seeing as I don’t do much except cruise in the internet all day I’m not really sure why it took me so long to actually sit down and read the Wall Street Journal excerpt, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, taken from Chua’s forthcoming book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Battle Hymn is a supposed personal memoir on why Chinese moms are better than other North American varietals of mothers.

Truthfully I am disappointed in myself. And more importantly, you know who is even more disappointed in me, my own mother.

So why my avoidance of the Amy Chua brou ha ha? Don’t think I didn’t see all of the incensed mummy headlines and turn the other cheek stat, because I did. Mumery, more like tomfoolery, and China are exactly the sort of clusterfuck combination I tend to avoid. Truthfully I find the topic of child-rearing to be deathly boring. This is probably because I’m not a mother and have many years to go until I have to drop off my adopted children at their after-school skating lessons (my current name du jour is Pippa). Even worse are mom blogs (OMG how boring are all blogs?) which, from my experience, are all sanctimoniously up in your grill about child rearing tactics and the best way to deal with diaper rash; organic, natch… This is also why I’d love my friend Judy to mummy blog. Her answer to most things mumery involves vodka and buying her kids off with Justin Bieber merchandise. That being said her kids are amazingly polite and well raised; the only caveat to this was the time I let it slip that I was distantly related to Amanda Bynes who apparently knows OMG OMG OMG OMG Orlando Bloom. At the time both were actually respectable celebrities so her daughter's excitement made some sense…

Anyway – Amy Chua - there is something we need to talk about. If you think being a Chinese mom is difficult on your children – try having a Jewish mom. In fact, I’m shocked you haven’t asked your Jewish husband about his own experiences being raised by a know-it-all Maven Mom. Chinese moms may rule with an iron fist but Jewish mothers have perfected the art of not just guilt (which has been refined over centuries by the Catholic mother) but of knowing everything and simultaneously expecting everything.

Unlike the Tiger mom a Jewish mom isn’t the drill sergeant Chua extols, the Jewish mother rules her roost by the imbued fear of unmet expectations coupled with infinite disappointment.

Jewish mothers don’t rule not by a fist; they rule by psychological warfare.

Before she left for her recent 4 month long trip through Southeast Asia my mother repeatedly let me know where her jewelry was hidden “just in case” anything happened, and of course, “you’ll have to take care of your sister.” A friends’ Jewish mother regularly receives similar texts from his mother when she boards a plane. One recent one read: “Am boarding a flight, if we crash the money is in Switzerland.”

Having been raised by a Jewish mother every time the phone rings from an unknown number I’m convinced it’s the police telling me that someone I know has died in a horrible accident. Whenever I miss a call from my sister I see the voicemail and think: Naymark, its time to man-up and get into crisis mode.

Jewish mothers rule by expectation, not guilt. Unlike a Tiger Mother, a Jewish mother would never make me play piano until my fingers hurt so I would become the best piano player – they would assume that I am already the best piano player in the world. What is more fascinating is that Jewish mothers don’t order perfection, straight A’s, and medical school, they just expect it. What is most fascinating is that almost all of this is amazingly unstated. Jewish mothers have jedi power so unbelievable powerful they can shame their progeny into becoming an accountant.

What is their secret to their success? I think it is knowledge. Jewish mothers know everything about everything and everyone and they will tell you what they know about everything. It is the subtlety of their opinions, most of which are stated as fact, but with a slight tinge of disappointment that can be the most damaging.

“She’s pretty,” a Jewish mother will say about someone’s fiancé, “If you like people who look like that.”

Or take how my mother questions me every time I buy a new article of clothing. Undoubtedly the following conversation will happen:

“That sweater looks new.”

“It is.”

“Where’s it from.”

“Club Monaco.”
“Do you really need it?”

“Well…”

“I mean… its just, you have that green sweater and that other blue sweater (she will proceed to itemize ALL articles of clothing I own), do you really think you should be buying more clothes?”

“It was on sale.”

“How much? What was the discount? It will probably go down further. You should have waited.”

And so that is why dearest Amy Chua I fear not your Tiger Mom - my mother and any other Jewish mother could judge you alive any day. And they also let me go to sleepover's and be in the school play. So take that!

But where is my dearest and beloved mother? She’s actually in southeast Asia; I’m hoping she doesn’t come back with any Tiger Blood in her. I wouldn’t want it any other way. <3