Morning Dump: Almost famous again, Beetle Bailey’s boners, culture v. Canada,
Posted on 26. Jun, 2010 by theashcan in Morning Dump
- Can you remember the last time a reporter got a four star general fired? Maybe you’ve heard, but there was this little article in the latest Rolling Stone about Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of all U.S. and joint forces in Afghanistan. Oh wait, sorry. The former commander of those forces. Sure, writer Michael Hastings crafts a piece that suggests the angle of his story was decided before he even started transcribing quotes, but although truth may be subjective there are character nuggets and quotes sourced for the article that simply cannot be ignored. The feature harkens back to the golden age of Rolling Stone journalism when reporting actually had an impact on the political sphere. Hippies are dead — long live those god damn hippies. -sy
- The Comics Journal reports on a strange but fascinatingly hilarious discovery: a Finnish collection of rejected Beetle Bailey strips that reveal the lecherous side of cartoonist Mort Walker. I seriously doubt any of our current, extremely vanilla Sunday Funnies artists has the balls (ha?) to try and sneak dick jokes into the newspaper, so maybe this is just a peekaboo flash of a time gone bye. Or, maybe, Walker was just a singularly dirty sexist perv. (Yeah that, Boner’s Ark and all.) Either way, this is the first time I’ve ever laughed at Beetle Bailey. -jc
- The relatives of Aqsa Parvez, a teenage domestic violence victim who died in Dec. 2007, were formally charged recently-sentenced to life in prison, with no eligibility for parole until 2028. The resurgence in media attention has brought up some pretty interesting issues-like identity, cultural ‘problems’ versus Canadian problems, and issues regarding access to social programs-but my favourite, and one of the most eloquent, is Uzma Shakir’s opinion piece for rabble.ca, “A Canadian tragedy lost in culture talk.” It’s probably one of the most well-thought out arguments surrounding the fluidity of identity that I’ve read and, in the context of the Parvez case, which the writer says many Canadians dismiss as solely an ‘immigrant problem,’ it makes an excellent case for not just Pakistani Muslims to take responsibility.-am
- When so many arts and ideas mags are busy putting out summer fiction issues, one of my favourites, Maisonneuve, came out of nowhere with the most snarky, blog-like cover I’ve ever seen: “Music we hate.” In it, several music critics pick apart why they hate indie darlings like Broken Social Scene and Animal Collective (never mind the fact that while the first review pans BSS, the second one offers them up as a model of what’s right. That trend continues throughout the feature.) This online supplement to it is a good starting point. For the rest you’ll have to buy the mag though.-jkg
