Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Bono The Beauty Queen

Much to the dismay of modern and old-fashioned feminists everywhere (ditto fatwa-minded Nigerians), the beauty pageant is alive and well. Sure, it is sometimes called Ms. America and sometimes even disguised in Survivor loincloths. But don’t kid yourself kid, there is still fully-blown superficiality in them thar hills. Yet, inevitably tucked between the bikini walks and talent shows still exists the speech, sometimes referred to as the “community service platform” but really it is the pledge: to bring about world peace; to find a cure for AIDS, for cancer, for…obesity; to end discrimination, and so on. But usually, and more earnestly, is it simply to eliminate world hunger. Or to, as it is known in music circles, feeeeeed theeeee woooorld. Let them know it’s Christmas time.

The trick with the pageant platform, as in life (dinner table chatter: tragic what’s been happening in _________; doesn’t make sense in this day and age; pass the salt please) is that it is that first paving stone, one heap of asphalt, on the road to hell. Because Miss Vermont, or Miss New Brunswick, for that matter, is no closer to feeding the world than my dinner companions and I are, her good intentions are worse than apathy. And just ask six million Jews about apathy. Or roughly one million Rwandans. Or the Sudanese. Or poor people, anywhere. Or…oh, geez. Pass the salt.

Isn’t it funny how apathy seems such a sophisticated, complex word? Actually apathy is commonly defined as “emotional indifference” or “lack of interest or concern” (sociopath, in the briefest of definitions, refers to “individuals with little regard for the feeling or welfare of others...yikes, that’s tight). Therefore, technically, our dinner conversations are a moral loophole, and it seems that my little guilt burst is about inaction, not apathy. Yet and yet, how to quantify interest and concern in the parameters of a spoken sentence? Do-gooder. Now that’s a clean, straight-as-Stephen Harper word. No debate as to its meaning (and it is just your imagination that it is uttered on the edge of a snarl).

Worse than apathy is even merely hinting that you are doing some pro-active to solve the world’s problems. Why? ‘Cause if you say you are busy building communities and trucking grain to sustainable markets than I get to…well, be apathetic. Of course Miss Kentucky is not packing rice and petitioning corporations and aid groups to reconsider their food drops, so actually nothing is getting done. This is why Bono should be Miss America or Miss U.K.. Heck, he should have one big fat tiara on his head and some lovely long stems in his arms. And while we’re handing out tiaras, I fancy Jamie Oliver as Bono’s runner-up. As Doug Saunders reminds us, the “dirt-eating and nothing-eating poor” are sometimes no further than down your block. Oliver rolls up his sleeves, slaps flour with the lunch ladies and wham! bam! thousands of council children in Britain are eating better and the school lunch program gets a boost. Wow.

And it’s not just famous people: Joe Kloete, Paul Forman, Eugenia Muhayimana, Bob Geldof…oops, he is famous. Respectively, these do-gooders have rescued a young girl from a burning car, stood up to the Darfur regime while medically treating victims of various war-horrors, and become the loving mother of a ten-year old son, a boy who may or may not resemble his Hutu rapist father, un enfant de mauvais souvenir. Do-good does not cover such love. Do-god more like. Sir Bob, well, he gets enough publicity.

You see, I have done nothing, big fat zero. Even, or especially, writing about apathy is an exercise in self-flagellation that buys me more time in the do-nothing chair. I feel like Suess’ Bofa on the Sofa, but at least he acted as if he didn’t care. Remember that road to hell. My private embarrassment is that I would rather be able to plead ignorance than apathy. I could protest that Bono has the resources and the connections. Because, naturally, a rock star understands the economics of regionalized starvation and the logistics of humanitarian aid. No, it’s simply this: I am lame and Bono and Jamie, well, they are not. Watch out Miss Ireland; Bono puts his mouth where his bikini is… or something like that.

From New Orleans to Vancouver’s East End, all news is bad news these days as we head into the North American season of cold and wanting. The food drives begin some time around the candy-collecting time of All Hallow’s Eve. The fallacy being, of course, that people are hungrier ‘round Christmas than say……today. This year, I do, I really do, want to feed the world, but I am ignorant. I don’t know where to start. And as soon as the rest of those do-gooders call it quits, I’ll be off the sofa. Right with the rest of you lot.

O Canada

The last time I sang our national anthem was on a July long weekend in Kamloops two years ago. Shy in a crowd of many, my voiced cracked in a half-hearted attempt to appear patriotic and, though now thirty-four, I know I reminded myself to sing the new words, sans “God”, as we has been instructed sometime around grade four. My son sang gleefully beside me, slipping into the French version when the English words escaped him, the French lyrics more forceful, prideful: “…des plus brillants exploits….” The great Canadian immersion project.

When I entered the gymnasium of the local elementary school this past May 17th, I recalled all of the gyms of my school years and the frequent “assemblies” which always began with a scramble to sit near my friends and then a hush as we stood for, in the early years, God Save The Queen, and then, of course, O Canada. My vocal performance then was no different from that of today, struggling with the tricky balance of appearing “cool” in front of my friends but feeling in my gut it would be wrong not to sing (after all, Canadians young and old are embarrassed by any overt American-style jingoism…aren’t they? or perhaps it is what Adrienne Clarkson calls our “pathological modesty”). In truth, butterflies would tickle my stomach and I would feel something incredibly like pride as the anthem built momentum. I don’t doubt that both the cool and the uncool felt that same glow.

So, as I sidled up to an election volunteer in my son’s school gym that Tuesday, I felt the familiar thrill of my childhood anthemism. Of course, I can attribute the lump in my throat to the super-polished wood floors, the stale smell of sweat, or the stage and its makeshift curtains over which hung the red and white maple leaf. And yet, if I dig deep, I know that it’s because each of these are successfully symbolic, they make me believe, in the joy of childhood, in the satisfaction of education , in Canada, in the whole damn reason I was standing there that afternoon, in democracy.

I don’t normally think of myself or my family as very politicized, yet my 9- year old son wants to be Prime Minister and giggles at the Globe’s Heather Mallick and her term of dislike for our southern neighbour’s leader (or “neighbor” if you wish): “Bushlet”. My husband has started to refer to me as the “pop-up head” as I interject every news item on the radio with my invariably partially-informed, yet passionate, views on world affairs (“I can’t believe the CBC would broadcast comments like ‘dipstick’ “; “Newsweek shouldn’t have to apologize for publishing misinformation; for god’s sake, Bush went to war on misinformation!! And so on…) When my mother-in-law suggested I was wasting my vote if I voted for a certain environmentally-concerned provincial party, I argued that the heart of democracy was not strategic voting and that her vote could be considered trash too if she voted by default for the likely winner, rather than for the party that most closely represented her values. My friends and I discuss the fallacy of a true democracy in a two-party race and a decreasing voter turnout. Perhaps I am more politicized than I realized.

Of course, it was just a provincial election and (yes, Ottawa and Quebec) JUST a wacky B.C. election at that, but what I realized that afternoon as I hovered over my ballot (YES! STV) and my stomach did flip-flops was that O Canada and Gordon Campbell were the same butterfly. I realized that, with the possible exception of Stephen Harper, I can trust that Canadian politicians, regardless of the waxing and waning of scandals and budgets, will forever uphold democracy, will forever cherish my right to vote and it is up to me to stand on guard, protégera nos foyers et nos droits, by submitting my ballot. If democracy is a sham it is only because a country’s citizens (or a U.S.-sponsored coup d'état) make it one. Sure, I am sometimes as embarrassed by our politicians as I am singing aloud but, fortunately, I can hide behind the cardboard divider. Something as simple as a school auditorium or as seemingly complex as a provincial election nudges the word “free” from my heart to my lips. Free. As in True North. As in Strong and. Sentimentality perhaps, simple-mindedness even, but just try to sing O Canada and not feel funny inside. Peculiar and ha ha at once.

I used to be envious of the determination and passion of voters in countries where democracy is in its infancy, where, sometimes, to vote could mean to die. Canadians no longer value this freedom, I would tell myself. I saw no trace of that lazy monster voter apathy last month on the city roads awash with campaign posters. When I stopped for milk at 7:30 p.m., the clerk asked me to hurry, so she could make it to a polling station before it closed at 8. At my polling station, an elderly man struggled with his cane up the path; he looked determined. He looked proud. I’ll bet he had butterflies.

X Canada
X Democracy

(as published in Monday Magazine, July 2005)