The Clever Shark

Faced with actual complaints from customers, Dell shuts down its customer service forum. This reminds me of an old joke by Monty Python — “I hate to see a grown man cry, so shove off would you?”

Stephen Harper just isn’t a very likeable guy.

It’s true. Much as he would rework his image into that of a personable and in-charge statesman, Stephen Harper comes across to the general population as a conniving, shake-your-hand-with-his-right-hand-while-stabbing-you-with-his-left kind of politician. The guy has a charisma deficit, and in that he seems to have inherited some sort of Reform curse. The closest the party has ever come to having a charismatic leader was when Preston Manning was leader, and even then it was said that his voice was much too shrill — and his much-publicized attempts at “remaking his image” (which apparently consisted mostly of wearing all denim all the time) was the object of much derision. To be honest, Preston Manning’s tenure as head of the Reform Party was also marked by the humiliating 1993 elections which resulted in the Block Québécois becoming “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.”

That being said, Harper is somewhat symptomatic of the ongoing efforts by the Conservative Party to “de-Reformify” its image. The previous attempt to do this, known to this day as the “Stockwell Day disaster”, worked no better. In both cases those efforts culminated in a party leader who just wasn’t a good fit for the party. In Day’s case — he became the first leader of the Canadian Alliance shortly after the party changed names — the man ended up being dogged by very silly rumors about his sexuality (he was often derisively referred to as “Doris Day”) which were based, as far as I can tell, on the man’s slight build, close-cropped hair, and on a few uproariously badly-planned PR appearances (in one of those he was wearing a wetsuit, and that provided Canadian political satirists with material which remained in use long past Day’s party leadership was over and done with).

In Stephen Harper the part has again erred, but in a markedly different direction. It now has a leader who is a strong neo-conservative and is quite aggressive about it. The problem is that the Conservatives have failed to do what the American Republicans have had the good sense to do, which is to keep the doctrinaire intellectuals — like Harper — behind the scenes, and offer up a benign, intellectually-nebulous but sincere-seeming figurehead from the outside to put up as someone that “soft” conservative voters can get behind.

It’s a bit of a “Prince Myshkin” theory of neoconservative politics. Just as Dostoievsky’s protagonist was necessary because everyone knew him as an idiot, George W. Bush is needed to the GOP precisely *because* he can’t pronounce — or, sometimes, even understand — many of the words he is called upon to say frequently (“disassemble” is not a synonym of “dissemble”, Mr. President). He is desperately needed as the guy who never apologizes for anything because it’s actually quite conceivable that he has little or no understanding of the things he should be sorry for. He’s needed as the example of the simple person, the “straight shooter”, largely on the basis that he could, in the public’s eye, conceivably be unable to be so imaginative as to think up a lie or fudge the truth.

Basically the GOP has been fantastically successful in putting up the all-image, no-substance candidate everyone could at least feel equal (if not superior) to. Taking someone who is, intellectually, an “empty vessel” and making him the front man for intellectuals and industrialists who really run the show behind the scenes — Wolfowitz, Perle, and the energy industry — was the perfect strategy. None of the people running the show (e.g. Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) were even remotely electable, so in order for them to hold sway in Washington they had to dredge up a guy who couldn’t be attacked on any issue of substance (having nothing of substance) but seemed like a forced-into-honesty, straightforward kind of guy.

The success of the strategy makes one wonder why the Conservatives made Harper their leader in the first place. He’s a rather cold intellectual with just enough charisma to play to his party’s base, but not enough to bring in new blood. He’s also reportedly quite autocratic and quick to dismiss criticism — something quoted by MP Belinda Stronach as the main reason she crossed the floor to become a Liberal MP. Harper has also been known to sacrifice known assets for reasons of pure doctrine, a tendency which has led to his downfall in the May vote as scorned ex-Reformer Independent MP Chuck Cadman (who passed away on Saturday July 9th) cast the deciding vote in favor of the Liberals and against the Conservatives. Cadman was hung out to dry by Harper when the Conservative association in his riding stripped him of the candidacy (although he was a sitting MP) in favor of a more right-wing candidate. Harper’s refusal to intervene was a callous, short-sighted move which cost him dearly.

It’s all about chickens coming home to roost for the politically-tone-deaf Harper, who should actually be glad to have lost the vote — for all the revelations of “Adscam” Harper and the Conseratives made zero gains outside the West in opinion polls, which is remarkable. It’s also a proof that for all the resentment about Liberals and their sponsorship shenanigans, the four scariest words in the Canadian vocabulary remain “Prime Minister Stephen Harper”.

Of course it’s not only Harper that scares Québec. While the party has tried of late to present a multicultural image — largely by thrusting into the national spotlight their MPs which come from non-WASP background — it continues to be the party most directly associated with two of its most famous and long-standing members: Art Hanger and Myron Thompson.

The unfortunately-named Hanger, whose Commons seat dates back to the beginnings of Reform, is most famous for what must be Reform’s most damaging public gaffe. In 1994 an American teenager named Michael Fay made the news for all the wrong reasons. As a result of a conviction for vandalism Fay was sentenced to be punished by caning with a bamboo cane. This is a savage, brutal practice which breaks the skin and leaves lacerations and scars on the convict’s buttocks, arguably so the pain can keep reminding the person of the consequences of his actions. This was the subject of much condemnation at the time. But, apparently, not to Reform Party Art Hanger, who organized a “fact-finding expedition” to Singapore in order to study that particular form of punishment and see how it could be applied to Canada.

So enthusiastic was Hanger for whipping men’s behinds that he hardly needed to actually go over and conduct his investigations; he was quite firmly on the record as approving of the savage practice: “I suspect flogging straightens up behaviour by jolting a criminal into reality … Compare it to our system, which provides no deterrence and is little more than a revolving door … Is corporal punishment extreme? … I don’t think so” (Art Hanger, in Alberta Report, April 1996). After the outrage that followed the disclosure of the Reform Caucus’s plans to send a delegation of six, not to mention many a whispered rumor that — for all the righteous posturing — Reform had become a haven for twisted BSDM freaks looking to get their kicks on the Canadian taxpayer’s tab, Preston Manning put his foot down and shelved the plan.

As an aside, as many Canadians know, when Preston Manning is the reasonable one in your party, you’re in trouble.

Hanger’s rather unsual taste for blood (or is it taste for unusual prurient practices?) doesn’t appear to have cost him any support in his constituency (almost 10 years later, he is still a sitting MP)… nor, apparently, have the outrageously intolerant off-the-cuff comments he has made in the past (like asking a Toronto shop owner “Do you notice that in Toronto there has been increased crime from certain groups, like Jamaicans?”, for instance). Apparently Reform’s strongholds in WASPy neighborhoods are more “thou shalt not”‘s than “love thy neighbor” indeed.

Myron Thompson is a different beast altogether. The man is the embodiment of the term “country bumpkin”, intellectually and physically (quite possibly a case of nature exercising some truth in advertizing).

The man is from a small country seat and has so far been quoted as saying exactly the sort of thing you’d expect someone of his standing to say. He denies being anti-gay, but his speech is infected with all the stereotypes that the loony right has been belching forward for years, for instance: “I’m not opposed to gays, but if you bring one of those suckers into my school and they try to push their crap on my students, I have a problem with that.” (1994). He also can’t keep going on about how it is “wrong”, “unnatural”, “immoral”, and how homosexuality is something he will object to forever. One of his most famous quotes on record is a bizarre Santorum-like rant about how homosexuality is the same as a host of sex crimes: “We have said all along, and I have said all along, that this (topic of same-sex marriage) is a door to slippery slope. What’s next? Polygamist? What about child rights? Where is this going to end?” (2005). Oddly enough on the subject of child rights, he proposes lowering the age at which a minor may be tried as an adult to ten. It wasn’t even a one-shot thing: less than a month previously Myron blessed us with this “gem”: “I’m saying with this a door opening to a slippery slope. What’s next? Shall we say it’s okay to have six or seven wives, even if some of them are 13-years-old? Where does it end?”.

Perhaps all this pettiness and paranoia does not stem from inner meanness. It may in fact be better to understand that Myron’s small-mindedness and stunted intellect isn’t something he’s capable of doing much about.

Now lest you should think that it’s only the older members of the party that seem somewhat unsavory, it should also be noted that the more recent arrivals to the Conservative lineup also raise interesting questions. I’m thinking in particular of Surrey, BC MP Gurmant Grewal, who announced just before the May’s confidence vote that he had taped evidence of the Liberals attempting to buy his parliamentary vote. Now, that story was extremely fishy from the start. Things aren’t getting much better with time either. An expert is already on record as having determined that the tape had been altered, and since the official investigation began Mr. Grewal has been dogged with rumors of strange behaviour. He has been “put on stress leave” in June. It’s already clear that Grewal initiated the whole thing as a so-called “sting operation”, and given the questionable aspects of it one may well guess that Grewall feels his gig is up. Since the affair is still under investigation one can only speculate, but right now the idea that Grewal is “damaged goods” is the understatement of the millenium. His wife, also an MP, has so far not broken her complete silence about the controversy, which isn’t helping his increasing image problem.

Adding to his problems are Grewal’s own boasts of being an advisor to Liberian dictator Samuel Doe, and of having been “Honorary vice-consul of Liberia in Canada”, which he is now very quiet about for some reason.

With all this, one gets the feeling that Mr. Grewal will not be a part of the Canadian political landscape for much longer. With the Parliamentary system being what it is, it’s hard to imagine that all that many people would vote for someone whose trustworthiness is, at best, shaky.

So, who best represents the Conservatives? Is it the cold intellectual neo-conservative who’ll drop proven assets to achieve a red-state, evangelical vision of Canada like Mr. Harper? Is it a closet sadist who thought that bamboo-caning people for minor offenses was a nifty idea, like Mr. Hanger? Is it the political neanderthal who is incapable of seeing that sexual relations between consenting adults is different from pedophilia, bigamy and bestiality, like Mr. Thompson? Or is it an overly ambitious but muddle-headed MP with big ideas but little notion of how quickly creative audio editing can be spotted, like Mr. Grewal?

On this question Québec chooses E — “none of the above”.

Here’s your chance to preview the next version of the clevershark.com web site. I’ll try and keep the content reasonably synchronized (it’s on different databases). This is in testing until I work out the backward-compatibility aspect of it.

A French bus operator is taking a bunch of cleaning ladies to court for carpooling. Evidently “Transports Schiocchet Excursions” specializes in bullying the little guy. According to the Guardian article their service is pretty shite as well. Those arses deserve a right kicking — if you live in an area served by Transports Schiocchet Excursions (apparently those parts of France that neighbor Luxembourg), why not carpool this week? Let the company know where you stand by hitting them in the wallet.

Up until today I was running this site on MySQL 5.0.4, but it suddenly and unexplainedly stopped working at some point today without my making any changes. This is very strange. Clearly my application isn’t the problem, since I was able to just drop in the latest beta and get things going again right away.

Since I got settled here I’ve gotten used to one channel I could never get with Cablevision in Hoboken: Fox Sportsworld. That channel, I could swear, was started and run by Englishmen for Englishmen abroad, because the “sport” in “sportsworld” is inevitably football. Yup, you heard me correctly, football. As in, the game where you move the ball with your feet. Personally, I can’t get enough of it, and it’s been particularly exciting in the past few weeks, which have (as usual) marked the tail end of the European football seasons. There is still a hotly-contested race in Italy where Juventus is currently giving AC Milan a run for their money in Serie A, but generally it’s been settled already.

In England, everything was settled about a week and a half ago as Chelsea beat their host Bolton 2-nil to clinch the Premiership title (their first in 50 years). And, as a Chelsea fan, I say “well done!”. It’s nice to see loyalty finally pay off after following the team’s travails for the past 14 years. Arsenal’s strong-but-not-quite-so-strong-as-last-year’s record had them clinch the 2nd spot this past weekend, with powerhouse Manchester United finishing 3rd and relative top-ranks newcomer Everton rounding up the Champions’ League final (so far) spot in 4th place, no mean achievement for a team which traded away their star player (Rooney) to Man U at the beginning of the season.

With the top four places already settled this week’s Tuesday and Wednesday Premiership matches were, place-wise, meaningless, but in the end it wasn’t quite so. First, the Tuesday match between Chelsea and Manchester United. As previously mentioned, there was practically no chance of any rank change as a result of that match; that doesn’t mean nothing was at stake though. There you had the last two Premiership sides undefeated at home, meeting at Old Trafford with Man U hungry for a score against the Blues; and score first they did, on a Van Nistelrooy tip-in from a Rooney pass. That was brilliantly played. The crowd went wild… for 10 minutes, until Tiago took a seemingly-benign shot from 30 yards out which United keeper Carroll just incredulously stared at until it had hit the back of the net. Even Jose Mourinho, captured on camera from the sidelines, looked at that shot with a “WTF?” expression on his face. It was just priceless.

The second half started off on the same fevered pitch until the 60th minute when Tiago made a brilliant pass to Gudjohnsen which seemed to go right through United star Rio Ferdinand, and which the Icelander gently chipped over a sliding Roy Carroll for the go-ahead goal which seemed to knock most of the steam out of the United fans. Chelsea then became a veritable blue defensive wall that Manchester United just couldn’t cut through, even as Scholes was granted a penalty kick right on the edge of the Blues’ penalty area. Roman’s Army, as they are known, didn’t rest on their laurels and managed to score a lucky third goal at 82 minutes — lucky because Cole (the scorer) was pretty obviously offside. Still, it didn’t matter in the end, and Man U was forced to swallow the bitter pill of their first home defeat of the season. Overall it was a brilliant game, although the yellow cards were flying in the second half.

The same really can’t be said of Arsenal’s 7-nil shellacking of Everton at Highbury, which, to be honest, had to be the least interesting football match I’ve ever seen. The story of the match was really how Everton never quite showed up for this one. I’m no expert in Premiership football — in fact I’m a fairly late-comer to it, at least compared to my former British co-workers in New Jersey who were reared on the game from the cradle — but this was the most one-sided game I’ve ever heard of, much less seen. Dennis Bergkamp was clearly the man of the match there with an amazing three assists to top his 77th-minute goal. Frankly the game ceased to be interesting 6 minutes into the second half when Pires scored Arsenal’s fourth goal. I remember thinking “now, this is just cruel” when Edu scored on the penalty. I just had to laugh when the sixth and seventh goals were scored. Even the most ardent Gunners fan had to feel at least a little sorry for Toffee keeper Richard Wright who evidently had no backup whatsoever from his defenders. Hey, at least Arsenal players had an unprecedented chance to top up their goal records for the season.

Still, the point is that it was dull. Deadly dull… which brings me to the point of all this (finally!): high scoring doesn’t make things interesting, far from it. The Americans who complain about “soccer”‘s low scores just don’t get it; to them a nil-nil draw must mean that nothing interesting happened on the field, when that’s rarely the case. Case in point — the two Chelsea games against Liverpool in the Champions’ League semi-final. Two games, a single goal (Liverpool won the second game 1-0), but nonetheless it was 180 minutes of extremely interesting football. Same goes for the nil-nil draw between Chelsea and Arsenal at Stamford Bridge: fans saw a solid game of constant attacking-and-defending which, though it was a bit frustrating — I would have expected more Chelsea late-season goals, especially when they had a whopping 9 four-goal games in the 2004-2005 campaign — was nonetheless a brilliant display of athleticism from both sides.

The message here is really that scoring in football is naturally low, and that it’s just plain stupid to try and divorce low scoring from the game in a futile attempt to “jazz it up”. A result like 7-nothing — or indeed, any game where the score of one side exceeds 4 — isn’t something that’ll keep anyone’s interest for very long. An obscenely high result like 7-nil doesn’t tell me that the Arsenal attackers were playing brilliantly, it tell me that the Everton defense sucked hard in a game which was admittedly meaningless and completely unrepresentative of the team’s performance in this past season. Let the Americans have their basketball and its triple-digit scores; when people say that you can tune into a basketball game in the fourth quarter and miss nothing significant, they’re not kidding. As for myself I’ll stick with football, and I cross my fingers in the hope that I’ll never have to make do without Fox Sportsworld in my cable lineup again.

On the verge of Premiership greatness, the Chelsea leopard changes its spots. This is quite surprising; even the team crest has changed! It’s a good thing they kept the color. The upside is that I’ll be able to say I own two “old school” jerseys…

It’s a shocker in Istanbul as Liverpool overcome a 0-3 halftime deficit to win the Champions’ League on penalties. AC Milan will be kicking themselves tonight.

The 2005 US Grand Prix is a race that is pretty much condemned to exist under a cloud of infamy and disgust. Rightly so. And the morons at the FIA must and will shoulder the blame for this disaster for years to come.

Out of 10 teams, each fielding two drivers, only 3 actually participated in the race. That’s 6 racers. That’s not even enough to fill the points slates for the race. Angry fans threw water bottles at the track, and many of them could be seen leaving the Indianapolis speedway 10 laps into the race, and interviews available throughout the web show that the decisions taken by the FIA with regards to this race are going to have a substantial cost not only for the remainder of the F1 season which, obviously, will take place under a cloud of illegitimacy because of what happened today, but for the future as well, and it’s sure to revive talks of a competing Grand Prix Circuit.

What happened is particular to Indianapolis’s odd circuit, which happens to use a banked curve from its rectangular speedway (used in NASCAR and IRL races). Basically this is a 90-degree turn occurring with a fairly high level of banking, which you just don’t see in other F1 circuits.

No one seemed to think that this was a problem until the qualifyings on Friday. First, a tire failed on Ralf Schumacher’s Toyota at that very last turn, which sent his car right into a wall. He was uninjured.

Then his Toyota teammate Ricardo Zonta ended up having the very same problem. Both problems seemed to occur with the Michelin tires used on the Toyotas and 6 other teams.

Michelin offered to ship new tires to its teams… a request which the FIA refused.

Another proposed solution was to add a chicane which would have reduced the speed right before the perilous turn, which the FIA also refused, even though the course managers agreed it could be done in time.

Faced with the risk of killing the drivers who used its tires because the FIA’s inflexibility Michelin felt it had no choice other than to tell its teams to stand down for the day.

So in the end FIA intransigence — it specifically rejected two reasonable solutions — resulted in a 6-car bullshit race that should be struck from the records for this year. Sure, Michael Schumacher won. Big fucking whoop. We already know he can win if he’s facing no one of consequence. I’ll tell you what every F1 fan already knows — there’s no fucking challenge in putting Ferraris up against Jordans and Minardis. Predictably enough, it was a one-two finish for Ferrari, followed by Jordan, followed by Minardi. I’ll tell you one thing — if Michael Schumacher ends up winning the drivers’ championship this year by less than 10 points, he will not be a legitimate champion this year.

One figure is missing from this though — the real last-place finish here belongs to the idea of Formula One in the US. There is no question here that this joke of a race will have a huge impact on the future of the US GP, and that it might even kill it outright. That pressure is on two sides — first, the US GP was already drawing a mere third of the average crowd for a Grand Prix race, and this was before today’s disgrace. Indianapolis will just not be able to draw even those meagre numbers this year. It’d be surprising to see anyone there next year who was there this year.

That’s always been a problem for the US GP though. Frankly, I totally understand how this happens. The race takes place in Indianapolis, for one thing. The jet-setting F1 crowd just isn’t going to gingerly saunter at the opportunity of spending a week in boondocks-ville, especially after spending a week in hip, happening (and strip-club-heavy) Montreal. So, US GP organizers — move the race to a place where “watching corn grow” isn’t the #1 way to occupy free time. You’re not dealing with the NASCAR crowd, but with a bunch which is a lot more sophisticated and well-travelled.

The bigger problem, though, is the FIA. In the name of so-called “safety” the regulatory body has almost destroyed the Formula 1 experience, and they’re still out there trying. Ever noticed how all the cars in F1 now look pretty much exactly the same? You can thank the FIA for that. Gone are the glory days of the late 70s and 80s where innovation played a major part in Formula 1. Remember the Tyrrell P34? It would never even have seen the light of day under the current FIA leadership.

The problem is that new, gradually more insane rules come out every year. This year it’s the mandating that only one set of tires can be used by racing cars for the whole weekend (qualifyings and the race). Same with engines, although the engine may be replaced by incurring a “start from the pits” penalty. But it’s the gradual changes that have taken place over the last 20 years that are gradually more annoying and, in my opinion, make Formula 1 racing boring.

After Gilles Villeneuve’s fatal accident in Europe the FIA outlawed the ground effects “skirts” that basically caused suction to keep the car on the ground. Eventually all ground effects implements were gradually outlawed. Tire sizes came to be strictly regulated. Then, slicks were disallowed. The latest crop of changes also reduce the amount of implements which can be used to make cars aerodynamic, and there are now regulations to reduce the speed at which the cars run.

With all that crap going around, it’s actually hard to imagine why Formula 1 still has a following at all. And this year’s race at Indianapolis pretty much killed off what was left of Americans’ already-weak enthusiasm for the sport. You heard it here (though probably not first) — I don’t think there will be a US Grand Prix next year at all.

The ironic thing about all these regulations, in the end, is that they make the sport a hell of a lot less interesting. With worn engines and tires (which have effectively had to endure TWO GP races in two days) is any sane driver going to go all out and overtake in the final laps? Not likely. That’s why you almost never see overtaking in the late stages of any GP (unless the overtakee has really screwed something up). Basically it means that the standings at the end of the first lap tend to look a lot like the final standings, except of course for the cars that end up not finishing. And with the FIA’s moronic rules you’re sure to see a lot more of those in coming races. Look at Montreal — the Renaults had a fantastic start but ended up DNFs, and the single driver who made significant gains during the race was Rubens Barichello, who was running with a fresh engine and a pit start. That’s no coincidence. Frankly I’d be surprised if there weren’t more racers electing to start from the pits with fresh engines in upcoming races.

I’m not against rules per se. However, I think that when 7 F1 teams — who had to spend millions to get their gear and personnel to (let’s face it) buttf*ck nowhere to race in a GP — end up forfeiting the race, it says something, and that something isn’t good for the FIA or for Formula 1. The FIA’s decision to not let the Michelin teams run with the improved tires clearly show that they don’t give much of a damn about safety (despite their posturing) but were instead eager to let crowd favorites Ferrari have a cakewalk in a race which is, in my mind as well as many other F1 fans’, illegitimate.

Unless the FIA changes its tune, it may find that it has effectively killed off top-tier auto racing, and that would be pretty damn sad.

IHT: FIA needs to blame itself, not just the Michelin teams, for the USGP fiasco. Clearly I’m not the only one who feels that Max Mosley needs a good swift kick in the nads.