Who Needs English Grammar?

The Irony of English grammar

The irony of English grammar is that we impose it most on the people who need it the least:  second- or foreign-language learners.  (See The "Ball of String" Theory.) Anyone who teaches English will, at some point, feel compelled to tell the fib that you need grammar to communicate and be understood in English.  This claim is pretty easy to disprove. Consider the following sentence:

"Me eats restaurant Italian yesterday."

An astute English teacher will point out that this five-word sentence contains at least six errors of grammar:  1) wrong case of pronoun, 2) wrong verb tense, 3) error of subject-verb agreement, 4) missing preposition for the indirect object, 5) faulty syntax, 6) missing indefinite article/determiner.  All this to say that the sentence should be:

"I ate in an Italian restaurant yesterday."

However, most native speakers of English would have little doubt about the intended meaning of the garbled sentence despite its multiple errors of grammar.  (A message full of errors circulated on the internet some time ago, demonstrating that native English speakers can understand even a long message which contains mistakes in every single word.  I'll attach it to the end of this post.)

It took me about ten years of correcting hundreds (probably thousands) of faulty sentences before the epiphany finally dawned on me.  The fact that I was able to correct the grammar was proof that I always understood the intended meaning of the original ungrammatical sentences.  Or, to reverse the insight, if I didn't know what the person was trying to say, I wouldn't have been able to correct the grammar. So much for "you need grammar to be understood."

What language students learn that native speakers don't know

I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that most native speakers don't know the grammar that we expect language students to learn.  Test yourself.

1. What's the difference between "I'll see her tomorrow" and "I'm going to see her tomorrow"?

2.  What's the difference between "I've seen Star Wars" and "I saw Star Wars"?

3.  What's the difference between "I'm studying history" and "I study history"?

Identify the error

4. "The guy which lives next door"  or "The guy that lives next door"?  Why?

5.  "Less people than expected" or "Fewer people than expected"?  Why?

6.  "He's bigger than me" or "He's bigger than I"?  Why?

7.  "Just between you and me" or "Just between you and I"?  Why?

Testing Grammarly

I downloaded and installed the free version of the Grammarly app for this post.  This isn't a scientific evaluation of Grammarly or even a review (but something to consider for a future post).  However, I find the results instructive.  Grammarly detected that "which" sentence #4, "less" in #5 and "I" in #7 were mistakes.  According to Grammarly, both quoted sentences in #6 are correct.   Both sentences being right is impossible, but I understand the Grammarly decision.  According to proper prescriptive grammar, "he is bigger than I" is correct, but for most native speakers "bigger than me" just sounds better.

To give credit where credit is due, I have made a few changes as I have been typing based on Grammarly suggestions.  On the other hand, here are a couple of sentences that I correctly predicted Grammarly would not know how to deal with.

"He is the Mr. Jones that lives next door, not the Mr. Jones convicted of fraud."

The sentence is necessarily awkward, but not ungrammatical. Grammarly cannot accept a sentence in which "the" and "Mr." appear consecutively.

"I have seen that movie yesterday."

Interestingly, the verb tense in this sentence (above) is wrong, but Grammarly does not detect the mistake.  When a specific time in the past is indicated, you must use the simple past tense (not the present perfect, "have seen").  (See The Truth about English Verb Tenses.)

Most revealing, in the garbled sentence with which I began this post--"Me eats restaurant Italian yesterday."--Grammarly detects only one mistake.  According to Grammarly, "me" should be "I", consequently "eats" must then be "eat."  However, your final sentence would then be "I eat restaurant Italian yesterday"--which Grammarly declares error-free.

The important point to glean here is exactly the one I made at the top: in order to correct the grammar, you must already understand the intended meaning of the sentence.  If the app doesn't understand your sentence, can't read your intended meaning, it will not be able to correct your grammar.

Grammar and dress codes

When the argument that communication is the underlying necessity of English grammar falters, we English teachers typically turn to the analogy that grammar is like dress codes. You know, you have to dress properly for the occasion.  I can still remember telling a class of would-be professional writers studying Applied Grammar that "of course, you wouldn't wear a baseball cap with a tuxedo."  Two weeks later (and I'm not making this up) at the Grammy Awards all the hip-hop artists were wearing jewel-encrusted baseball caps with their tuxedos.

"Rules are meant to be broken."

The feature that grammar and dress codes share is that in both cases "the rules are meant to be broken." While we tell students that you need grammar to "get on in the world," the Rolling Stones have gotten on pretty well with "I Can't Get No Satisfaction."  And then there is the Nobel Laureate in Literature who wrote "It Ain't Me Babe."  Could pop music survive without that anathema to English grammar: "ain't"?  (By the way, Grammarly accepts "ain't.")

As General MacArthur once quipped, "You are remembered for the rules you break"--which is probably why breaking the rules of grammar and dress codes has such appeal.

"Rules . . . are too often for the lazy to hide behind."

The complete MacArthur quote is "Rules are mostly meant to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind."  The second half of the aphorism is particularly apt and rarely quoted.  The rules of grammar, as I endlessly pointed out to students, were the beginning of the thinking process, not the end. Grammar changes over time, it varies from one region to another, and it is tied to linguistic register. Once you know the rules, then you need to consider how they should be applied and even when to break them.

English grammar isn't a license to bully!

Knowing a few of the rules of English grammar isn't a license to bully, for one-up-manship or rudeness. I find it strange that individuals would proudly declare themselves "grammar nazis" online, since the dysphemism implies someone following rules without understanding or appreciating them--their intentions, consequences, validity, basis or morality.  I've seen dozens of different versions of this poster:

I really don't know how I am supposed to feel about this sign.  For one thing, this is a very specific mistake that some grammar nazi has dreamed up that I can't imagine anyone actually making. Plus, it isn't very . . . well . . . grammatical. It makes me think of this other sign:

If grammar really is about "knowing shit," with or without an apostrophe seems a minor problem.  The fact that "their," "there" and "they're" (like "your," "you're" and "yore") are pronounced the same way but have such different meanings and usages tells me more about the underlying incoherence of the English language than about those individuals who are occasionally guilty of their /there/ they're misuse.  (While I'm at it, here's a prediction.  Sometime in the not-too-distant future, "they're" and "you're" will disappear from the English language; "your" and "their" will become not only accepted but consider correct English.  Dictionaries will begin to identify "they're" and "you're" as "archaic.") 

The Origins of English grammar

The origins of English grammar (or grammars) can be traced to the 18th century, in particular to Jonathan Swift's "A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue," in which he decried the fact that contemporary authors (like himself):  "will be read with Pleasure but a very few Years, and in an Age or two shall hardly be understood without an Interpreter." Swift's Gulliver's Travels has survived better than the average 18th-century text; however, despite the fact that we continue to browbeat highschool students into reading Shakespeare's 17th-century dramas, few people these days (despite vainglorious claims to the contrary) can read the writers of 400-years past without an interpreter (or at least an interpretation). 

Although the rules of grammar were supposed to pave the path to immortality for English writers, what was actually produced was Robert Lowth's  A Short Introduction to English Grammar: With Critical Notes (published and republished 50 times from 1762 to 1800) from which we are instructed,  based on the spurious notion that English should follow the rules of Latin, that a sentence cannot end with a preposition and we must not split an infinitive.  (See: What Is English Grammar? for more.)

In keeping with my "Do not read this sign" sign,  in "The 'rules' of grammar are made up, so why bother following them?" Tiger Webb points out:

That Lowth, like many after him, broke most of these so-called "rules" in his own writing — or that some of his examples of substandard English came from the writings of Jonathan Swift — went unremarked upon at the time.

Taylor Swift vs. Jonathan Swift vs. The Princeton Review

I came across this comedic grammar kerfuffle in Penny Adam's "Is there simply ‘good’ and ‘bad’ English? Are you with Taylor or Jonathan Swift on grammar?" in which she provided a link to an article in The Guardian entitled "Taylor Swift’s grammar marked down incorrectly."  The details are funny enough to make for entertaining reading, but the short version is that The Princeton Review, a company which helps students prepare for college admission exams, used a line from Taylor Swift's song, Fifteen, on one of their practice tests as an example of "bad grammar."  Swift herself responded, pointing out that The Review had gotten the line wrong.  In a superlative example of "after shooting yourself in the left foot, how to take perfect aim at your right," The Review responded that the corrected quotation was also "bad grammar" because the plural pronoun "them" could not be used to refer to the singular subject "somebody."  (We are back to The Pronoun Wars, dear Reader--click the link if you need a reminder.)  The Review, being unaware of what is now widely known as the singular they, was pretty much laughed off the internet.   On the other hand, the brouhaha has given us a first answer to "Who needs English grammar?"  Apparently, if you are applying for admission to an American university, you should know some prescriptive grammar.

[To be continued in "Who Needs English Grammar:  Part II"]

Can you read this?

Only great
minds can read this.
This is weird, but interesting!
fi yuo cna raed
tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too

Cna yuo raed tihs?
Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.


The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid,
aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr
in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the
frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.


The rset can be a taotl mses and
you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.


Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not
raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

The "Ball of String" Theory for Learning English as a Second or Foreign Language

The "Ball of string" theory

I believe in the “ball of string” theory of learning English. Imagine that the English language is an infinitely long piece of string. You begin rolling the string into a ball. The English that you have mastered, can repeat and understand almost perfectly, is your ball of string.

Daily English is redundant and repetitive

Your ball of string begins with the English words and expressions that you might hear every day: “Hello,” “How are you?” “How much is it?” “Where’s the bathroom?” “Coffee and a cheese sandwich please.” “Nice weather today.” “Tomorrow.” “Next Monday.” “That’s nice!” All the simple words and expressions that you hear constantly repeated. Assuming you are somewhere where people around you speak English, you don’t need to learn any grammar or how to conjugate verbs or have a vocabulary of unusual words or expressions. If you are surrounded by people who speak English and you pay attention, you will discover that in daily conversation people use a small variety of words. English, as it is spoken in daily life, is repetitive and redundant. You only need to learn how to understand and repeat the things you hear most often being said around you in order to begin “your ball of string.”

To Learn is to add something new to what you already know

When you are rolling a ball of string, as the ball gets bigger it becomes easier and easier to add more string and you will do it faster and faster. Learning is the process of adding something new to what you already know. The process is fast and efficient because you only learn what you really need to know right now. In every course, book or program for learning English, you will be asked to learn things that you don’t need immediately and you may never need. For example, a course or book might encourage you to learn, the conjugation of the verb “to write” in the present continuous: “I am writing, you are writing, he is writing, we are writing, you are writing, they are writing.” In real life you are probably never going to say any of these things, so why waste time learning them. Learn only what you need right now for your life, interests and occupation, (maybe “I’m writing to him right now” will be useful), the rest you will be able to learn easily when your ball of string is much bigger.

Watch low-budget television

This approach means that you focus on what you already know, practicing, repeating and perfecting what you know, instead of constantly trying to learn something that you don’t know and may never need. If you are living in an area where people around don’t speak English, you will have to try and artificially create the environment where the “ball of string” approach will work. I would recommend watching television soap operas—not big-budget shows. The lower the budget, the more tv-shows depend on actors talking a lot in normal dialogue and common language. You don’t even have to understand the show, just begin to understand the words and phrases that are being used most often to add to your ball of string.

What a teacher is teaching isn't necessarily what a student is learning

Even if you are taking a course to learn English, you can use this “ball of string” approach. I have often told teachers of English that what they are teaching is not necessarily what students are learning. Imagine a teacher is giving a lesson on verb tenses and asks each student in turn to repeat the different tenses. He might say “okay, good,” and “now your turn,” “very good” and “now you.” The teacher might think he is teaching the verb tenses but what the attentive, ball-of-string student will learn is “okay, good,” “now your turn,” very good” and “now you.”

When It Comes to China, Do Canadians Believe the Media?

The Media blitz

Since I first published a post ( 10 Dec 2018) on Canada's arrest of the Huawei CFO, Meng Wanzhou, I have been baffled, awestruck and frustrated by the refusal of Canadian media to question the legitimacy of her arrest and extradition.  Since I began the process of my own modest online inquiries, I have noticed that the National Post, the newspaper founded by Conrad Black before he went to prison (he has since been pardoned by President Trump), has published some of the most strident anti-China editorials.  Although, Black sold the paper to one-time Liberal Izzy Asper, in recent years "the Post has retained a conservative editorial stance."

What does "freedom of the press" mean?

Obviously every newspaper in the "free" world is owned by somebody. Does it matter who owns a newspaper or a media company?  I don't know.  I've never worked for a newspaper.  I'm not particularly courageous or selfless, so I imagine that if I worked for a large media company I would be reluctant to risk my job, my salary, my social position and connections by publishing anything that I knew ran seriously counter to the interests and ideology of my top-of-the-pyramid employer.  I find it discouraging that Robert Maxwell "who embezzled hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies' pension funds" also controlled hundreds of newspapers. (His daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell,  is in the news with claims that she was sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein's madame, supplying him with juvenile prostitutes.) It is hardly encouraging that Robert Maxwell's nemesis, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, "faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty, and public citizens. Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the U.S."

Does it matter that the Globe and Mail is wholly owned by The Woodbridge Company which is the private holding company of the Thomson family?

Is Reuters covering the story, or is Reuters the story?

As your typical diffident Canadian, I have long been aware but not terribly disturbed by the fact that our news comes to us through channels that usually have owners.  As a Canadian, I think that we have CBC News and are therefore immune from tampering.  However, this seemingly innocuous article disturbed me: "New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria."

Why is it disturbing? If you followed the link, you will realize that it is presented under the banner CBC News.  However, this is not by any stretch of imagination CBC News.  As the small print and the content of the article make clear this is a publication of Thomson Reuters, the news agency owned by The Woodbridge Company of which the Thomson family are the principal shareholders.  Reuters is categorical that "Our correspondents do not use unconfirmed reports as the basis of a story, nor do they offer subjective opinion."  Nonetheless, readers need to be alert to the fact that what appears to be the research and writing of journalists from our national public broadcaster is, in fact, the work of un-named authors working for a private company principally owned by a single family.

Reading the article you will quickly discover that Reuters isn't just reporting the story, they are the story.

 . . . corporate filings and other documents found by Reuters in Iran and Syria show that Huawei, the world's largest supplier of telecommunications network equipment, is more closely linked to both firms than previously known.

Reuters have actively been building a case which might ultimately be used against Meng.  As they report, somewhat proudly:

Articles published by Reuters in 2012 and in 2013 here about Huawei, Skycom and Meng figure prominently in the U.S. case against her. 

Does Thomson Reuters have skin in the Meng-Huawei game?

Under "normal" circumstances, we would praise journalists for the hard slogging, investigative journalism required to unearth evidence.  However, in this case, we don't know who the authors are.  We are encouraged to believe that this "news" comes from the CBC, but obviously no CBC journalists were involved.

Does Thomson Reuters have any skin in this game?  Is it reasonable to ask this question?  I ask the question quite naively, but the result is surprising.  Thomson Reuters has gone through significant restructuring this year.  (I own 16 shares of Thomson Reuters stock by the way.) In its Annual Report for 2018, Thomson Reuters announced "In October, we sold 55% of our Financial & Risk (F&R) business to private equity funds managed by Blackstone for approximately $17 billion and retained a 45% interest in the new company, which is now known as Refinitiv."

Refinitiv, as its website displays, is collaborating on China's "Belt and Road Initiative" (aka "The New Silk Road") which the company describes as "The Infrastructure Project of the Century."  Thomson Reuters is now invested in China.  Will we begin to see a softening of positions and warming toward China in the Globe and Mail and Reuters' reports?  On November 4, Reuters still appeared to be maintaining a negative slant on China, but on November 5, along with everyone else, they reported on the front page of the Globe and Mail print edition that China had lifted its ban on Canadian beef and pork.

[This link (above) is to the "Global News" website.  Since I'm on the theme, I checked to see "who owns Global News?"  It's owned by Corus, which is controlled by the Shaw family.  Wherever you get your news in Canada, there is likely to be a family at the top of the pyramid.]

Same numbers different story

Reuters published this article 4 Nov 2019:  "Less than a third of Canadians view China favorably -poll."  Considering the media coverage, I think the real and surprising news is that 29% of Canadians continue to view China favourably. Reading this "Less than a third" headline, I was reminded of living in Quebec during the referendum years.  I can vividly recall standing at the counter of my local depanneur (corner store).  Glancing down to my right, I saw the bold, front-page headline of the Montreal Gazette: "One Third of Anglos Determined to Leave an Independent Quebec."  Looking to my left, the front-page headline of the French-language La Presse read "Two Thirds of Anglos Happy to Remain in an Independent Quebec"  [my translation from memory]. Same numbers different stories.

Summarizing a UBC survey, Reuters reported:

“The chill is real,” concluded the survey. China is now viewed favorably by 29% of Canadians, down from 36% two years ago but up from 22% in February, it concluded.

 

"Canadian Public Attitudes on China and Canada-China Relations"

"The chill is real" is a direct quotation from the UBC report, but the sentence appears on page 2, and is not a conclusion to the report as a whole.  "The chill" refers only to the drop of 7% from the previous survey two years ago.  Oddly, survey numbers indicate that attitudes toward China have warmed by 7% since February.  In the face of a Canadian media blitz condemning China for the arrest of two Canadians, and numerous reports on the threat China poses to Canada, it is astounding that one third of Canadians continue to view China positively.  (Keep in mind, that one third is almost as many Canadians as voted for the re-elected Liberal Party in the recent election.)

Survey says . . . 

The results are even more surprising, given the tenor of the survey as a whole which includes questions about human rights in China, references to Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and a substantial listing of all the reasons a Canadian might perceive China negatively.  A frankly amazing statistic (again given media coverage) is presented in the conclusion of the report:

A plurality (39%) of respondents felt arresting Meng was a mistake, and a plurality (35%) feel she should be released before judicial proceedings complete.

Consider:  if "arresting Meng was a mistake" were a political party, it would have formed a majority government in the October 2019 election.  Despite our politicians and our journalists, Canadians are impressive.  Being "wary of China while supporting continuing contact" and releasing Meng--all make perfect sense.

Is Canada’s Print Media Fair on China

Influential, misinformed Canadian media hurts China-Canada relations: envoy

Canada-China Relations: A Note on Public Attitudes

The Panda and the Beaver

The Difference between pandas and beavers

The panda and the beaver are very different animals.  The panda is big and black and white, eats bamboo and likes to sleep in the top of trees.  The beaver is small and brown, eats maple trees and lives inside a beaver damn.  Beavers and pandas don't have much to do with each other, except that eating maple trees is good for bamboo, and eating bamboo helps the growth of maple trees, so they got along.  Then one day the eagle told the beaver, those pandas have been helping the leopards, so you should grab that panda cub when she comes near your pond.  Beavers always do what the eagle tells them to, so they did.  They grabbed the panda cub and brought her underwater to their lodge.  The beavers treated the panda cub very nicely because beavers are nice.  When the pandas saw what the beavers had done they were very upset and they grabbed two beavers and brought them to the top of the trees.  Beavers don't like being high in the air--pandas aren't nice like beavers.  Then the pandas began to drain the water out of the beaver pond--pandas really aren't nice like beavers.

The Beaver response

When they saw what was happening the beavers did what beavers do, they slapped their tails against the water to make a loud noise.  When the eagle heard the noise he understood and said: "Yes, what the pandas are doing isn't nice!"  The beaver slapped its tail some more and the rooster and the lion and the kite and the falcon and camel all agreed that "the pandas weren't nice like the beavers."  And the beavers all agreed "we're nice, but the pandas aren't."  But the bear and the crocodile and the cobra and the leopard and lots of other animals still seemed to like the pandas.  So the beavers told themselves some more, "Pandas aren't nice like beavers."  But the two beavers stayed in the trees and the pandas continued to drain the pond.

Is the panda a dragon?  What kind of dragon?

Enough Aesop's already--except to quote a line from a documentary on China and the New Silk Road:  "China is a friendly dragon, but it's still a dragon."  Canada's relationship with China, its second-largest trading partner, is the most acute and urgent problem facing legislators, but I heard no substantive discussion of the issue during the recent election campaigns.  Only one politician, Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québécois dared to mention China in the leaders' debate.  Blanchet proclaimed that it was foolish of Canada to arrest the Huawei CFO, trying to flex muscles that it did not have before China. In his report on the debate, Paul Welles, in keeping with what has become the Anglo-Canadian journalistic meme, took the opportunity to play to Anglo-Canadian self-righteousness mixed with a bit of Quebec bashing, while alluding to how law-abiding we have been been in arresting Meng.

He [Blanchet] did say arresting Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou “may have been a big mistake,” which I will take as his way of letting everyone know that a sovereign Quebec would ignore its obligations under extradition treaties. 

Had Welles taking 45 minutes to consult the Canadian Extradition Act, or the  Treaty on Extradition Between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America, or even the Public Prosecutor Service of Canada's clear instruction that "Extradition treaties do not themselves create an obligation or a power to arrest in Canada," he might have reconsidered his mockery of Blanchet.  However, these days the job of most Canadian journalists is to repeat not to research.

China's new "Silk Road" 

For most of its history, Canada's economy has depended on trade with the USA to function and survive.  However, China has been challenging the USA as the world's largest and most powerful economy.  As the USA has adopted a fuck-you-if-you're-not-American economic policy, China has been subsidizing massive infrastructure projects all over the world--hundreds of billions spent in 65 different countries so far.   The size and scope of Chinese global subsidies have been compared to the USA's Marshall Plan after the Second World War.

How should Canada behave in this battle of Titans?

A number of editorials and Jonathan Manthorpe's recent monograph, Claws of the Panda:  Beijing's Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada emphasize that we should mistrust and fear the current Chinese regime.

Okay.  Once fear and mistrust have been established, then what?  Manthrope judiciously points out that "engagement with China cannot and should not be avoided" and claims that his book is not "arguing that Canada should distance itself from the current regime in Beijing."  However, since his premise is that representatives of Chinese diplomacy or business can be viewed as "spies" for a "fascist" regime in Beijing, a thick cloud of suspicion is cast over virtually every interaction between Canada and China.

Here's the smoke, where's the fire?

In these cautionings about Canada becoming too cozy with China, concrete examples and hard evidence never quite match the level of the sensational rhetoric and headlines.  The essayists'  evidence is often in the form of guarded references and allusions to CSIS (the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service).  CSIS itself is part of the problem.  Our Intelligence Service has yet to gain the recognition of the population or the confidence of our political class.  (This is, after all, the organization that Arthur Porter, who was convicted of receiving $22 million in bribes from SNC-Lavalin, was tasked with overseeing.)  Evidence, purportedly coming from CSIS, of Chinese malfeasance, is in the form of leaks and anonymous sources--all under the required veil of secrecy.  When there are supporting public documents such as the  National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Annual Report 2018, they don't quite live up to the dire, definitive headline:  "It's official – China is a threat to Canada's national security."  Or, as in the case of Rethinking Security: China and the Age of Strategic Rivalry, linked on the CSIS website, we are informed that what we are reading is not a CSIS report but the opinions of un-named academics. Ultimately, when Manthorpe offers potential solutions, they sound much more like the status quo, a (re)new(ed) cold war, or simply too abstract to be meaningful:

. . .  future governments in Ottawa need to prepare the ground. They need to cement political, economic, social, and security ties within NATO and the G7, along with other like-minded countries. Canadian politicians need to assume a much tougher and more self-assured attitude toward Beijing than is now the case.

If these are the solutions, can the threat to Canada be that dramatic?

The Examples of Australia and New Zealand

Warnings of the Chinese threat in Canada typically cite the examples of New Zealand and Australia.  In fact, when the argument is being presented that China is a threat to Canadian sovereignty the authors most frequently quoted are from Australia and New Zealand--Clive Hamilton and Anne-Marie Brady respectively. (See, for example,"Academic who blew the whistle on China's influence on Australia says Canada is in even worse trouble, [take note of the quite innocent but dire looking photo] and  "How China uses shadowy United Front as 'magic weapon' to try to extend its influence in Canada."  Both articles published in the National Post.)

I agree with Manthorpe that the Australians have been a "good deal louder" than we have in discussing their relations with China.  Watching the Australian television series Pine Gap, I was struck by how the challenge of being in the middle of a China-versus-USA conflict is forefront in the Australian imagination.   Fiction aside, Pine Gap is, in reality, a "US satellite surveillance base" run jointly by Australia and the USA.  "The station is partly run by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), US National Security Agency (NSA), and US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and is a key contributor to the NSA's global interception effort, which included the ECHELON program."  If you watch the tv series to the end, you will discover that these fictional Australians are much more concerned by the recklessness of the American regime than by the financial investments of a Chinese businessman in their communities.

There is more to fear than fear itself

It makes perfect sense to be wary of Chinese investments and influence in Canada, particularly as China is expanding its global empire and, in some instances, using debt-trap diplomacy to achieve its objectives.  There is no doubt that the current regime in China espouses and promulgates a system of values which runs counter to the dominant values of the West.  General Secretary Xi Jinping's Document 9 on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere clearly and explicitly spells out those differences.  We need to have an open, public discussion of Canada's relationships with China.  Describing those relationships as "a war" and couching the discussion in terms of espionage do not strike me as helpful.  At the moment we seem to have fear-mongering in one corner and naivety in the other, but willful ignorance about everything in between.  The absolute refusal of Canadian politicians and media to discuss all aspects of the Meng arrest is evidence of our current inability to have an open discussion.

"Open discussion" is NOT the same singular argument presented over and over

Global News published a commentary this morning in which it is observed that "Meng is living in a gilded cage at one of her two multi-million dollar homes in Vancouver and is free to go shopping and eat out."  How many times do we need to hear this beside-the-point inanity before someone finally asks, "Were we justified in arresting her in the first place?"

Jonathan Manthorpe was invited to discuss his book on TVO's The Agenda.  The episode, Exposing China's Influence in Canada, was bookended by references to Canada's arrest of Meng.  Both the introduction to the show and Manthorpe's penultimate answer referred to the arrest of the Huawei CFO. However, in discussing the "Huawei affair,"  Manthorpe described it as "the kidnapping and holding hostage of two Canadians."  Not a single word was spoken about the Meng arrest which precipitated this reprehensible response.  I certainly agree with Manthorpe that in our dealings with China we have to ask "How does this benefit Canada?"   How has arresting Meng benefited Canada?

Back to Aesop

The panda princess is still being held in a "luxurious" beaver lodge, beavers are still being held in the trees and the pandas continue to drain the pond.  How is the newly-re-elected leader of the beavers going to deal with the situation?  He's going to make it rain!

Central Banks and the Bitcoin Experiment

Money has gone digital

Money has gone digital.  Less than 3% of currency these days is in the form of cash (coins or paper bills).  I still struggle to understand bitcoin, but I have slowly come to realize that what I don't fully understand are the technological aspects of bitcoin.  To understand bitcoin, you must first understand blockchain. To understand blockchain, you need to know about open-source coding, algorithms and cryptography, then you need to know about hashing and CPUs in order to understand what "mining for bitcoins" means (although I get that "mining" means solving a math puzzle and allowing transactions to use your computer).  However, these lacunae in our technological knowledge notwithstanding, bitcoin is just like any other digital currency (keeping in mind that the US dollar, for example, is already 97% digital) with only one truly significant difference.  Every example of money that we accept without much thought is managed and manipulated by a central bank--bitcoin is not.

Countries and companies preparing their own digital currency

Most countries have their own currencies--197 countries use 164 different national currencies worldwide--but there are only eight [small] countries without a central bank.  The Financial Post reported a few days ago that  last year Stephen Murchison did a presentation to the Bank of Canada on "whether or not the bank should issue its own digital money."  China is preparing the launch of its own digital currency.  Facebook is planning the release of Libra, its own digital money.  The FP article reports that :

 Switzerland’s central bank started exploring the use of digital currencies for trading. Sweden and Singapore both have research efforts underway. [ . . . .]  JPMorgan is already using a digital coin and Vanguard is testing a blockchain-based currency trading system.

Although these reports create the impression of a definite distinction between digital and non-digital currencies; to reiterate, most of the money we use today is already digital.  Since this currency must be encrypted in order to transit over the internet, it can also be described as cryptocurrency.  What distinguishes bitcoin from the crypto, digital money that we accept unquestioningly into our lives is that bitcoin has no central bank.

Facebook, China and even JPMorgan provide a central bank to manage their digital currencies.  We Canadians who have been accepting Canadian Tire money since the 1950s should be at ease with corporations' producing their own money, and recognize that a company (the Canadian Tire Corporation in this case) can be a central bank.  The question bitcoin raises is:  "Do we need central banks?"

Central Banks:  God or the Devil?

Central banks are either God or the Devil depending on your perspective.  Few issues are more likely to spur conspiracy theories than discussions of central banks.  The claim that the Rothchild family has slowly taken over the central banks of the world regularly gets viral play.  Depending on your perspective the US Federal Reserve (the US central bank) either saved the American economy from total collapse in 2008 with 100s of billions in bailouts, or it protected the interests of wealthy bankers at the expense of American sub-prime mortgage holders.  Central banks are either a cabal of fat-cat bankers taking care of themselves, or they are altruistic, public-spirited individuals dedicated to serving the interests and welfare of their countries' citizens.  Individuals with connections to a central bank have insider knowledge not only of monetary policy but of the financial systems and decisions of their home countries.  These financial gurus tend to be in the wealthiest 1% of the 1%--which arouses suspicion.  On the other hand, they help to control inflation and unemployment by decreasing or increasing the money supply, cooling down or heating up the economy.  We barely note their existence until there is a major screw up, as there was in 2008.

What's the difference between the new money and the old money?

The average citizen doesn't understand bitcoin because the average citizen doesn't understand money.  I speak from the perspective of an average citizen.  Even though I have done two posts on the subject (What Is Money?  & How Is Money Created)  and I am an accredited professional in understanding works of imagination, I still struggle to grasp that money, that thing which hard-core realists consider the bedrock of modern existence and survival, what we get up and go to work for, and worry about going to bed, can be such an airy-fairy, shrouded-in-mystery product of imagination.

How the Bank of Canada creates money

I credit this Parliament of Canada website with providing a clear and succinct description of "how the Bank of Canada creates money for the federal government." The article also provides "Information about how private commercial banks create money." The first step is perhaps the most confusing.  The Government of Canada produces bonds and treasury bills, which the Bank of Canada sells to private banks and other financial institutions, but the Bank of Canada also buys 20% of the bonds produced by the Government. This first step is confusing because to the uninitiated (like me) the assumption is that the Bank of Canada is part of the Government of Canada, so it sounds like Canada is buying and selling to itself.  The process would seem to make more sense if the Bank of Canada was a private company, separate from the Government.  In fact, the Royal Bank of Canada was first created as a private enterprise in 1934 but was nationalized in 1938.

However, in the current Canadian case:

Since the Bank of Canada is a Crown corporation wholly owned by the federal government, the Bank's purchase of newly issued securities from the federal government can be considered an internal transaction. By recording new and equal amounts on the asset and liability sides of its balance sheet, the Bank of Canada creates money through a few keystrokes. The federal government can spend the newly created bank deposits in the Canadian economy if it wishes.

The entire process seems like a game of "let's pretend."  "Let's pretend" you are a bank and I borrow some money from you, then I deposit the money I borrowed from you in your bank.  There is no limit to how much money I can borrow from you, and it doesn't matter if you think I'm a good, reliable client or not.  When I spend the money I have deposited in your bank, you take the money out of my account.  Of course, you will never ask me to repay the money I've borrowed from your bank. Later, when I have depleted my account, I will just borrow some more money from you.  In more adult language:

 . . . the Bank of Canada's purchase of government securities at auction means that the Bank records the value of the securities as a new asset on its balance sheet, and it simultaneously records the proceeds of sale of the securities as a deposit in the Government of Canada's account at the Bank [. . . ]. No paper evidence of a bond, treasury bill or cash is exchanged between the Government of Canada and the Bank of Canada in these transactions. Rather, the transactions consist entirely of digital accounting entries.

Most of the Money in the Economy is Created by Private Banks

In the game of "let's pretend," the Bank of Canada only buys 20% of the Canadian government's loans, the other 80% is purchased by private banks and investment firms.

Private commercial banks also create money – when they purchase newly issued government securities as primary dealers at auctions – by making digital accounting entries on their own balance sheets. The asset side is augmented to reflect the purchase of new securities, and the liability side is augmented to reflect a new deposit in the federal government's account with the bank. However, it is important to note that money is also created within the private banking system every time the banks extend a new loan, such as a home mortgage or a business loan. Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower's bank account, thereby creating new money [. . .]. Most of the money in the economy is, in fact, created within the private banking system.

As just described, with a click of the mouse, private banks have an asset (money in their accounts) and an equal debt owed to the Bank of Canada.  Why do private banks buy or even want Canadian government debt?  The answer has many names (some of which I have dealt with in What Is Money?  & How Is Money Created) such as "leverage" or "the fractal banking system."  The parliamentary website describes the system as "[t]he limiting rules, known as 'capital constraints,' [ . . .]."  What each of these expressions is telling us is that when you go to a bank to take out a mortgage, or a car loan, or an education loan, or if you use your bank's credit card to buy a cup of coffee, you are creating money.  The money does not exist until you spend it, and when you spend it you have created an asset--money in the bank's bank account.

The Ontology of money

What we are talking about here, in big words, is the ontology of money.  With most things that are borrowed, there is an assumption that they must exist in order to be borrowed--not so with money.  It's as if you go to the bank to borrow a cup of sugar, the bank has sugar, but the sugar they lend you doesn't exist--except that you still owe the bank a cup of sugar.  Guess what?  Now the bank is considered to have even more sugar because the sugar you borrowed is added to the bank's supply. What "leverage," "the fractal banking system," and "capital constraints" all indicate is that the bank is allowed to lend you 10, 25 or even 40 times the amount of money it actually has, depending on the "limiting rules" in place.  For a period of time, the banks in Iceland had no limit on the amount they could lend out and thereby created so much money for themselves that they had more money on their books than the entire GDP of the country.  Imagine you were a bank and the "capital constraint" leverage ratio was 4% and you had a hundred dollars in your pocket.  You could lend your friend $2500 (without touching the $100 in your pocket).  Once you had your first friend's IOU for $2500, you could lend a second friend 25 X 2500 = $625,000.  If you could find a third friend, you could lend him $625,000 X 25!  You'd be a multimillionaire.  Kinda makes you want to be a banker, doesn't it?

The Bitcoin experiment

I call bitcoin an experiment because it attempts to test (prove or disprove) a hypothesis in an empirical fashion.  The hypothesis is that it is possible to create money without a central bank, without a private banking system, in fact, without any of the middlemen who run the financial system.  The mere fact that bitcoin still exists (despite constant rumours of its demise) is proof that it is possible to have a monetary system, to buy and sell, lend and borrow, carry out transactions of every sort on a person-to-person basis, without a central bank and accompanying private banking system.

What's wrong with bitcoin?

As I have taken note, here and there, of what is said to be wrong with bitcoin, I have found the only substantially negative feature of bitcoin relative to other currencies is its volatility.  The value of a bitcoin can change dramatically because its price is based entirely on supply and demand.  The total supply of bitcoins has, by design, been limited to 21 million.  Bitcoin is comparable to gold in terms of its limited supply and consequent fluctuating value. Fluctuations in the value of bitcoins can be unnerving as you are trying to decide if you should save, spend or exchange them.  This forex volatility calculator rates bitcoin (BTC) at least four times more volatile than most currencies.  Today's financial news is full of references to bitcoin's dramatic fall to below $10,000 Canadian.  Of course, if you bought, mined or were paid in bitcoins six years ago, you would still be up over $9000 per coin.  Central banks generally work to reduce the volatility of their countries' currencies, but they can also manipulate them to serve national economic interests in the global market place.

Much is made of the potential use of bitcoin to avoid taxes or for criminal activity.  As such bitcoin is a more technological, efficient replacement for cash, gold, jewelry, and artwork--all common currencies for tax-evading criminal activity (not to mention offshore banking, of course).  The real risk to and of bitcoins is that countries will and have been moving to protect their own central banks and banking systems by banning the use of bitcoin.  China is a leading example.  The second bitcoin risk, and perhaps this is the greatest one, is the competition from countries--like Canada, as the Murchison presentation suggests--when they create their own versions of bitcoin using the blockchain technology which would allow the government to track how every Canadian digital dollar is spent. 

Addendum

Royal Bank of Canada launching new cryptocurrency trading platform: Report

There's Hypocrisy, and Then There's Scheer Hypocrisy

Andrew Scheer has dual citizenship.  So what?

When I heard the "breaking news" that Andrew Scheer, leader of the Conservative Party, and potentially Canada's next Prime Minister in a couple of weeks from now, held dual citizenship, I thought, "big deal; so what?"  We're not like those Americans obsessed with national homogeneity:  obsessed with President Trump's (aka Drumpf) being German, or obsessed with President Obama's birth certificate and Kenyan father, or obsessed with presidential-hopeful Senator Ted Cruz being born in Canada.  We believe in the Canadian multicultural mosaic in contrast to the assimilation of the American melting pot.

Dual citizenship versus hypocrisy

I disagree with Andrew Coyne who finds dual citizenship--not the blatant hypocrisy--to be the essence of the problem.  I would go so far as to claim that dual citizens are a net gain for Canada, making us a hub of international networks beneficial to our national interests in an increasingly interlinked, globalized planet.  However, it does give me pause to think that a man who could, in two weeks from now, be the Prime Minister of Canada is an American citizen.  The greatest leadership challenge of our next Prime Minister will be walking the fine line between the USA and China in our trade and diplomatic relations.  It is hard not to laugh at Scheer's ludicrous, hollow bravado claiming that Canada needs to "get tough with China."  The Chinese already have reason to believe that Canada only exists as a lackey branch-plant kowtowing to American interests.  Electing an American citizen as Prime Minister will make it that much harder to convince them otherwise.

There's hypocrisy then there's Scheer hypocrisy 

In my previous post, on blackface, I wrote that "I have never found politicians calling one another hypocrites very convincing or meaningful."  There are degrees of hypocrisy.  Andrew Scheer seems out to prove himself the hypocrite of hypocrites, the stone-throwing king of glasshouses. The Scheer unmitigated hypocrisy of criticizing the dual citizenship of Governor General Michaëlle Jean, Liberal leader Stephane Dion, and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair--all the while holding dual citizenship himself--has been laid out in the mainstream media.

Dual American versus French citizenship

What has been less explicitly spelt out are the differences between Scheer's American citizenship and the French citizenship of Jean, Dion and Mulcair.  In the first place, as many of my dual-citizenship friends have pointed out, renouncing your American citizenship is much more difficult to do than you might imagine.  The USA is one of only two countries in the world which levy personal income tax on non-resident citizens.  This translates to the fact that Scheer would have had to file an American income tax statement every year.  Unlike most dual citizenships, where it is possible to be a dual citizen and rarely think about it, Scheer would have been reminded of his dual citizenship and decided to maintain it every year of his adult life.

Jean, Dion and Mulcair each explained clearly how and why they became dual citizens (always related to family issues) but Scheer has left the explanation murky by simply claiming his father was an American.  However, the fact that his father was an American living in Canada does not in itself explain how Scheer became an American.  Another step and process were necessary, and Scheer had to undertake the process and annually decided to maintain his American citizenship.  As we are stopping to consider how Scheer would do in negotiating with our US neighbours, while maintaining a Canadian identity and culture distinct from the American monolith, we might wonder at the fact that both his sisters are registered Republicans living in the USA.

Sarcasm is the lowest form of irony

Snippets of Scheer's 2005 blog criticizing Michaëlle Jean's dual French/Canadian citizenship have littered the media, but it is worthwhile to consider his entire text (6, 13 Aug. 2005) in context.  What dominates and characterizes Scheer's writing is sarcasm.  Sarcasm, as I've pointed out elsewhere, is the lowest form of irony.  Sarcasm transmits an attitude, usually of disdain, without any clear, explicit content.  It tends to be a dissembling, cowardly form of communication--pretending that you will be understood, but without taking responsibility for what you are saying.  It demands interpretation but escapes interpretation because with sarcasm the dissembler never explicitly says what he means and can always deny whatever interpretation is given to his words.

Scheer in his own words

In the blog, Scheer rhetorically questions Michaëlle Jean's dual citizenship (though Jean, unlike Scheer, renounced her dual citizenship before taking office), then goes on to mock her claim, that "Having a person like me as governor-general will mean a lot not only to Canadians. I think it will mean a lot for humanity."  Scheer replies snidely:

Right, all of humanity is very excited that you've become Governor-General. I can just hear a collective gasp of amazment and happiness from hundreds of millions of people all over the globe who are now inspired because you are the new GG.
All that, and she's modest too.

How can a man who would have us believe that "blackface" is an important issue in this election be self-satisfied mocking a black woman who quite rightly acknowledges that a  woman of colour being named Canada's Governor General is a gesture that will be celebrated around the world?  Didn't most Canadians relish the brilliance of  Michaëlle Jean as our GG and the sea change happening in the world as she greeted President Barack Obama on the tarmac at the Ottawa Airport?

Maintaining his narrow-minded, short-sighted view, in his blog, Scheer goes on to mock the choice of Adrienne Clarkson, only the second woman, the first member of a visible minority and the first Chinese-Canadian ever to be named Governor General.  Scheer continues his mockery of  "Another CBC broadcaster."  Adding:  "If the Liberals aren't hiring journalists in the PMO or appointing them to the Senate, they're making them Governor-General."  (The Conservative Government in which Scheer was an MP would later appoint two journalists to the Senate:  Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy--both of whom had worked for the CBC and became embroiled in the Canadian Senate expenses scandal.)

When does hypocrisy become outright deceit?

There is a point at which hypocrisy becomes outright deceit.  Scheer has certainly played on that point with his campaign mantra that "Justin Trudeau cannot be trusted."  Whenever Scheer has been questioned about why he has failed to reveal his dual citizenship, his response has been "No one has ever asked me."  Scheer became a Conservative Member of Parliament in 2004.  In 2006, when the Conservative Party was provoking a scandal over Stephane Dion's dual citizenship, the CBC launched an inquiry to determine how many Canadian MPs held dual citizenship.  CBC.ca reported that

Dion was criticized this week because of his reluctance to give up his French citizenship. He was born in Canada but holds dual citizenship because his mother was born in France. 

The Parliament of Canada website shows that 41 of the 308 MPs sitting in the House of Commons were born in 28 countries other than Canada, ranging from Uganda and Malta to China and the United Kingdom. 

Many of these MPs qualify for dual citizenship. That puts them in the ranks of the 691,300 people living in Canada who hold dual citizenships, according to the 2001 census. 

CBC.ca called their offices to check on their current status and found that the following MPs hold dual citizenships:

• Omar Alghabra (Ontario Liberal), with Syria.

• Raymond Chan (British Columbia Liberal), with the United Kingdom.

• Libby Davies (British Columbia NDP), with the United Kingdom.

• Jim Karygiannis (Ontario Liberal), with Greece.

• Wajid Khan (Ontario Liberal), with Pakistan.

• Maka Kotto (Quebec Bloc Québécois), with France.

• Pablo Rodriguez (Quebec Liberal), with Argentina.

• Michael Savage (Nova Scotia Liberal), with the United Kingdom.

• Mario Silva (Ontario Liberal), with Portugal.

• Lui Temelkovski (Ontario Liberal), with Macedonia.

• Myron Thompson (Alberta Conservative), with the United States.

Why isn't Andrew Scheer's name on this list?  Did the CBC only contact MPs born outside Canada?  Such a procedure wouldn't make much sense since Stephane Dion, whose case spurred the inquiry, was born in Canada and his dual citizenship would not be discovered if only MPs born outside Canada were questioned.  Could the CBC research have been this shoddy?  Should we believe Andrew Scheer's claim that he has never been asked about his dual citizenship?  Certainly, he had to be aware that the question was being asked about MPs with dual citizenship, and he decided not to come forward, and to maintain his dual citizenship.  Ultimately, the question is "Can Andrew Scheer be trusted?"

"Blackface" and Best Evidence

Why is blackface wrong?

Blackface is wrong.  But it's not prima facia, at-face-value wrong.  (The pun is intended and meaningful.)  There is nothing inherently immoral about blackening your face.  It's not like theft or rape or murder.  It is wrong because of its historical context; specifically, within American history and culture, a white actor using the pseudonym Jim Crow performed in minstrel shows in the 1830s portraying "blacks as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice."  That taint of racist intention has remained with the practice for almost two centuries.

Teaching American literature

When I taught American literature, I typically invited students to produce a "creative assignment" of their own choosing which reflected the content of the course.  In this context, one of my students--an intelligent, cooperative, engaged, well-intentioned student--surprised me and the class with a one-man performance of a minstrel show in blackface. I came down hard on him and, to some extent, the class as a whole for their gleeful reception of the performance, which I described as not only racist but potentially criminal.

Talking to the student who had performed in blackface afterward, he told me that as he was walking toward the classroom he crossed paths with a couple of African exchange students.  From the expressions on their faces, he understood immediately that he was making a terrible mistake.  A lesson was learned.  What's left to learn?

Is ignorance innocence?

It is worth stopping to notice that "innocent" is a synonym for "ignorant".   There is a principle in law that "ignorance of the law is no excuse."   However, contrary to what I told my students in 2003, blackface is not a crime (unless it could be argued that it rises to the level of hate crime).  (Sometimes I get it wrong, or at least exaggerate.)  This week, in the midst of an election campaign, images of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a young man wearing blackface have been widely circulated and exhaustively discussed in the media.

An Apology gone too far

Well schooled in the principle of "getting out in front of a scandal," Trudeau has apologized profusely and repeatedly, saying "Darkening your face, regardless of the context or the circumstances, is always unacceptable because of the racist history of blackface."  "Regardless of the context and circumstances" goes too far.  Blackface is wrong because of the historical context and circumstances within which it emerged.    It is not an absolute evil unmitigated by the circumstances in which it occurs.  (Similarly, the swastika is not a symbol of evil, but it was made into one by the Nazis in the 1930s.)

What did Megyn Kelly say?

Oddly, I began writing this post almost a year ago when Megyn Kelly was fired by NBC from her job as host of Megan Kelly Today because of her "comments" on, "defense" of and "support" for blackface.  At the time, I was curious about what exactly she had said because reports on her transgression were so uniformly vague?  Were her comments so outlandishly racist that they could not be repeated?  Eventually I found this online article--Megyn Kelly doesn’t understand why blackface Halloween costumes are offensive--which included the video of her comments.

In the pandemonium of panel exchanges this is what Kelly said:

"What is racist . . . ?" [ . . . .]  You do get in trouble if you’re a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween or a black person who puts on white face for Halloween.  Back when I was a kid, that was OK as long as you were dressing up as a character.” 

Subsequent articles on Kelly's "racist tendencies" cited as evidence her claim that "Santa Claus was white."    ( For my thoughts on Santa see "Mateus da Costa, the Very First, Original, Authentic, Pure Laine Québécois de Souche and the Real Santa Claus.")  

Best Evidence

"Best evidence" is a legal concept which, in its barest form, means that at trial the original document should be presented and not a copy.  In a more general sense, researchers in all fields understand that wherever possible you want to use authentic documents.  Unadulterated, first-hand evidence of what someone said, or did, or wrote is best evidence.   A second or third party's interpretation, paraphrase, quotation, re-contextualization, edited or doctored version is not.  Obviously, in the internet age, journalistic rigour tends to get lost as everyone is looking for the worst possible spin on the worst news of the day.  "Bad news," as the cliché goes, "is good news."  These days the worse, the more terrible, scandalous, outrageous and enraging the news, the more likely it is to go viral.

Consider:  CGP Grey's This Video Will Make You Angry 

"Every picture needs a thousand words."

My communications professor, John Buell, loved to counter the bromide that "a picture is worth a thousand words" by claiming that "every picture needs a thousand words." In his Introduction to Communication Studies, John Fiske outlines how a picture is a metonym (or synecdoche); that is, like the figure of speech where a part of something stands in for the whole.  Fiske's (and Buell's) point is that we have to "read" photographs and add the reality, the context, that is missing from the image we are looking at.  We may think we are looking at "reality," but we are simply looking at pigment or pixels and imagining a reality attached to those bits and pieces.

Reading the images of Justin Trudeau as a young man in blackface, what I interpret is his rapid ascendency, on the coattails of his father's fame, from ski instructor and high school teacher to Prime Minister. The images of a foolish young man are evidence of a steep learning curve.  Obviously, when he allowed himself to be photographed in blackface he wasn't thinking that he might someday be Prime Minister and called upon to explain himself.  He may have been insensitive and unthinking, or simply unaware of the implications and interpretations of his behaviour, as were my students in 2003.

When did blackface become verboten?

Blackface is a theatrical tradition which lasted for almost 200 years, from the mid 19th to the early 21st century.  Al Jolson, the American actor, comedian and singer, and the most popular performer of his day (1920s, 30s and 40s), was best known for his performances in blackface.  Orson Welles portrayed Othello in blackface in a film version of the play in 1951.  Actors on British and Quebec television performed in blackface as recently as 2003 and 2013 respectively.  As near as I can judge, the clear and general consensus in the USA that blackface was a social taboo only coalesced in the mid-1980s in the aftermath of the civil-rights movement, after Afro-Americans had taken on and defeated more blatant and injurious forms of racism. (Just as the swastika became a heinous symbol only after World War II and the facts of the Holocaust became generally known and understood.)

Gender transgression versus racial transgression

Ignorance of history is a feeble excuse, but it is, nonetheless, an excuse.  We should stop to notice that we are at a very unusual crossroads of history where transgender expression (See The Pronoun Wars) is being protected as a civil right.  Racial transgression, however, is still decried.  Michael Jackson was criticized for appearing white.  Rachel Dolezal, one-time president of the Washington chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was charged with fraud and perjury when it was revealed that both her parents were white. In 1961 John Howard Griffin underwent chemical treatments to blacken his skin and travelled the US southern states, eventually publishing an account of his experiences in Black Like Me.  In the 60s and 70s, Griffin was heralded as an anti-segregationist hero, but in contemporary times, it is argued that “Black Like Me” Is Blackface Too.

Blackface and saturnalia 

Megyn Kelly's attempted use of Halloween to justify blackface seemed only to make matters worse.  We are hostages of a racist history that has made blackface such a potent symbol that it, seemingly, cannot be mitigated by circumstances or intentions.  However, we still need to recognize that as a product of human history, it is a contingent evil, not an absolute, permanent, immutable, universal evil as some partisans would have us believe.  We need to take note of where we are in history.  We should look forward and hope that in a more tolerant, equalitarian society, future generations will have moved beyond the kind of problem that blackface emblematizes.  We also need to recognize that we live in a rational universe which is less and less likely to accept the irrational justifications of saturnalian ritual. 

Halloween Matters:  Why Do People Dress in Costumes?

Halloween is an ancient Celtic ritual to mark the end of the harvest season, which was adapted by the Romans and later by Christians.  The Greeks celebrated the festival of Dionysus, the god of wine and madness and tragedy, around the same time of the year.  For the Romans, Dionysus became Baccus and the festival the Bancannal.  The wearing of costumes was, in particular, common during the Saturnalian festivals, which Christians converted to the Christmas period, and is the underlying ritual of various carnival celebrations such as Mardi Gras and the Brazilian and Portuguese Carnivals.  What all these rituals have in common is the upsetting of the social order, a beggar could be named King, men dressed as women, for a temporary period social roles and taboos were suspended.  In a chaotic, cryptic discussion of Halloween, Megyn Kelly asked if the ritual tradition didn't suspend the taboo of blackface today as it did during her childhood.  The answer she received was a resounding "no." 

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/03/brazil-carnival-2019-photos/584050/

In some cultures, Halloween is a celebration of the dead.  For Catholics it is "all souls day." Rituals, most typically, are designed to mark and to aid in the transition from one period to another.  We have rituals like christenings and baptisms to mark births, bar mitzvahs and confirmations to mark the entry into adulthood, weddings to begin married life, birthdays, anniversaries, parties of all sorts and ultimately funerals and memorials. Traditionally one of the most common forms, which today are an endless source of controversy,  are rituals of initiation.  As James Frazer's The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion established at the end of the 19th century, initiation rituals are widespread.  The typical pattern was of the death of a young man's youthful being and the taking on of an adult spirit--being, attitudes, life, or what you will--marked by an encounter with death and a first sexual experience.  World literature, in particular the war novel, is marked by the repetition of this pattern.  In the 21st century, it is possible to describe but impossible to rationally explain such rituals.  Hence outrage at hazing rituals of initiation in universities and sports teams, though the long history of initiations might explain visceral, irrational attachments to these rituals. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/03/brazil-carnival-2019-photos/584050/

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/03/brazil-carnival-2019-photos/584050/

The underlying purpose of all these rituals, these episodes of temporary madness thought to promote long-term stability, was social solidarity--even at the cost of attachments to individuality.  Rachel Dolezal, John Howard Griffen, Al Jolson and others have put on black faces claiming that the gesture was one of solitary.  Today, their claims are being rejected but, I think, we can at least hesitate to brand them as racists.  And what of Justin Trudeau?

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/03/brazil-carnival-2019-photos/584050/

Racism, hypocrisy or something else? 

Trudeau's juvenile antics in blackface have been described as "disturbing" and "disappointing," yet his policies and demeanour as Prime Minister have garnered the consensus that he is definitely not a racist. Partizan Conservatives have downgraded the accusation from racism to "hypocrisy." I have never found politicians calling one another hypocrites very convincing or meaningful.  The question which comes to my mind is:  How is it that these images, which have existed for decades, have only appeared in the midst of an election campaign?  As a follow-up: If it is sincerely believed that these images are unacceptable, disturbing and demeaning for racialized Canadians, why are they being promulgated and displayed in public--by exactly the same people who decry their existence?   Far from any semblance of sincerity, we are witnessing political gamesmanship and dirty tricks.  In this context, claims of "hypocrisy" ring hollow.

Personally, the brouhaha only adds to my sense of self-assurance as I head to the polls with the intention of voting for the party headed by a man who wears a turban and a local candidate who just happens to be black.