Breath of fresh air

Fabulous interview! The candor is really refreshing. Ms. Mallick's comments are the kind of free speech we used to take for granted. To read about the degree to which she has faced hidden censorship and control is really telling. Even five years ago this wouldn't have been as bad. I think she has summed up the status of monopoly media, Canadian reaction to it, and the correlative rise in alternative and independant media. The Tyee being one of BC's preeminent productions. For which I remain thankful!

Yes ... yes ... yes ... yes ... yes ... yes ... and YES!

Vanessa, that's a great read.

But then, you had a great subject. I'm relieved and thankful to see what Heather Mallick thinks about newspapers ... because I'm so tired of trying to find the words to explain that point of view.

As for CanWest Global ... that needs saying too. They truly are a disgraceful example of the printed word; they are traitors to the public's desperate need to understand this rapidly changing world.

Thank you, Heather Mallick.

I can't even say anything

I wrote a much longer detailed post about Mallick that said why she makes me so sad and angry. But I deleted it because I was getting too upset.

Suffice to say her last comment shows her lack of awareness or compassion for ideas other than her own.

I am a feminist and a liberal. I wish George Bush and Stephen Harper were not in office. I am pro-choice. I too, have gone to Paris and London.

But her hatred (and she's one of the few columnists who often starts sentences with "I hate") of anyone who is religious borders on the pathological. And her comment that "we" are too intelligent
to be ignorant (unlike those cretinous Americans) just drips of Toronto bias. She needs to take a tour of Canada to see how ignorant we can be.

I can't write any more. I am glad she doesn't write for the Globe anymore. Please don't start publishing her bile here.

I am really serious. She is not funny, not
incisive, and incredibly self-centred.

She also doesn't have a clue about B.C.

Oh and one other thing

I do agree with her about the Globe redesign.

Extreme opinions can be good!

Even though I don't agree with everything that Heather Mallick says, I do read her column regularly on the CBC website and enjoy her views because compared to what the rest of the paper-selling media tends to print these it is nice to have something that's not pandered to masses who don't like to hear/read controversial things. And no, I'm not saying that this is what you are if you disagree with Mallick's columns.

Whether or not Mallick is "right" shouldn't matter. What should matter is that there is still someone out there who will say controversial things, regardless of the reaction. We need extreme opinions, on both sides of the political spectrum because these tend to help the in-betweeners and form their opinions while looking at the arguments put forth by both sides, particularly when we are now living in a world where the Right-wing seems to be running the show.

We need people who are ridiculous environmentalists because they help to even out the efforts of those who insist on treating the earth like it's theirs to destroy as they see fit.

We need people who are severely leftist, at all costs to speak out for social programming from the government, because it helps to make up for the people who would like to take all rights away from everyone but themselves.

Of course, this type of approach only works for people who can think for themselves and read their news sources critically, without needing to be told what to think, but unfortunately this is only a small fraction of the general population.

Heather Mallick

Heather Mallick is a marvel. She's bloody lovely!

Someone who thinks and is not afraid to write with passion; someone with style and spirit, unafraid to write the truth even when it rubs people up the wrong way; someone with the jam to quit a job with this country's national newspaper over a point of principle despite the fact she had a mortgage to pay. Someone with the strength to take ad hominem abuse after each of her fortnightly columns at CBC.ca that would bring out the editorial pencil here at Tyee.

I think extremists are the people who call Heather names; people generally who've probably never read Jonathan Swift and wouldn’t know a satire from a satrap: People like Margaret Wente - who still has her gig at the Globe and wouldn't know the bloody obvious if it bit her in the leg.

As for the suggestion that she's Toronto-centric, I don't think so; Heather Mallick has a far better sense of this country than virtually any other national columnist I can think of.

Thanks Vanessa.

What I'd like to see is a regular column for Heather her at the Tyee - a kind of antidote to Terry Glavin.

How about it David?

clubby?

"I think extremists are the people who call Heather names; people generally who've probably never read Jonathan Swift and wouldn’t know a satire from a satrap.."

So, I'm not calling her names, but I am taking the liberty to point out, that she is not helping anybody with their child-rearing by resorting to unimaginative language referring to 'the act', when she runs out of superlatives.

About the 'strategic reserve of cluelessness', and G. West's happy jumping on the bandwagon of socking it to those dumber than he/she, what an unpleasant tone of intellectual snobbery! Is the Tyee, then, to become a little club of the 'saved', who can appreciate the finer things in life, not to mention name them in the original language (one remembers Axel Sandemose, who portrayed himself in one of his short stories as a man who jabbed a fork into the thigh of his dinner companion, because she kept mutilating the name of 'Brno') - bon appetit!

Wonderful Writer

I thought she was an asset to the Globe and Mail and as G West says "a marvel" She wrote an article about the hyprocrisy of former British PM John Major which was unforgettably brilliant. Didn't know she was on the CBC website.

Mallick is no Swift

GWest, I have read and taught Swift for years and Heather Mallick is no Swift.

Mallick is a treasure. Doubt

Mallick is a treasure. Doubt many other articles will be read by me though, she's a special case worth the idiotic indignity of this collapsing bs.

The Tyee though, hey I won't be doing much commenting and will stop reading soon enough with this idiotic collapsing comment nonsense.

I look forward to the demise of this foolishness and if the tyee has to go, then you get what you deserve tyee for being foolish in a billion channel universe.

Bandwagon NOT

No latter day ‘band-wagon’ jumping for me. I've been reading and appreciating Mallick for years.

Dorothy – Opinion columnists have an obligation to help folks with child-rearing? I think you need to read her a lot more closely.

In addition, marta, although I'm pleased you love Swift, my point was simply that both writers deal in satire. And both are strong and outspoken critics of their times. Nowhere did I compare Mallick to Swift although I do think much of her best stuff compares, mutatis mutandis, quite favourably with the Dean's satirical essays. Perhaps you need to refresh your recollection of Gulliver's Travels as well.

My point, quite clearly - and I'm sure you'll see it if you read what I wrote a little more carefully, was that the people who hurl opprobrium at Mallick on the CBC website don't know much about satire and react in largely incoherent rage on a regular basis about what Mallick has to say.

In fact marta, and I’m almost sorry to have to mention it, your initial post about Ms Mallick here, well…you’ll see my point I’m sure.

Let me quote just one short phrase of Swift's - anyone as familiar with the man as you claim to be will recognize it as the epitaph he wrote for his own tombstone:
"He has gone where fierce indignation can lacerate his heart no more."

Bring her on, the extra readers a writer like Mallick would attract would undoubtedly pay whatever the added costs might be.

Have a nice long weekend!

Insight vs. overgeneralization

Heather Mallick is definitely insightful, but I do find it odd that she's willing to make sweeping generalizations about Americans and Canadians, yet takes offense when men do that to women. Attacking people for being American makes no more sense to me than attacking people for being women.

As for how men and women attack each other online, the common trend is that they drag out the stereotypes. Men attack women with negative female stereotypes. When it occurs, men, instead of dealing with women's expressed thoughts, change the subject by belittling those traits women on average tend to be more sensitive about, specifically shame over their appearance and sexuality; or by dismissing them as being emotional basketcases. Women also drag out the negative stereotypes. When it occurs, women, again instead of dealing with men's expressed thoughts, change the subject by accusing them of being insensitive, unfeeling and selfish; or by dismissing them as violent misogynists. It's the kind of behavior people resort to because they just want the shortest route to winning an argument.

That said, sometimes the stereotypes fit the actual behavior of the individual online.

Another trend online, however, is that people do tend to overreact. People often personalize things they feel are serious subjects, and react very negatively when someone even pokes fun at their favorite hobby horse. Jon Stewart, in an interesting interview with Bill Moyers a few weeks ago, alluded to this with his work:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/watch.html

So, as I said in another thread, people who comment in public really should be prepared to have their comments challenged both fairly, and more commonly, unfairly. Particularly on the internet, as the very nature of this medium makes quick thoughtless knee-jerk responses very easy to disseminate.

of rank and rule

“Opinion columnists have an obligation to help folks with child-rearing?”

At least they have an obligation to not contribute to a general climate where la-di-dah is glorified as an intellectual exercise. If posters cannot write certain words without having their input invalidated, so that they must make asses of themselves by misspelling said words, if they want to use them, what arrogance for a columnist to use them in our faces, and I guess the Tyee deserves a bit of the flak for letting them pass. Rank does count, after all.

Since we are into the classics, let me quote another Norse oldie:

64.
A wise counselled man will be mild in bearing
and use his might in measure,
lest when he come his fierce foes among
he find others fiercer than he.
(The Havamal)

Don't get Heather

I was a Globe subscriber for 15 years and I never got Heather Mallick. I don’t find her funny, I don’t find her informative and I don’t find her entertaining. She suffers from trying to make the mundane more extreme to increase the value of her opinions……. Hopefully, in the reworking of the Tyee we’re not going to see more of her here.

Mallick is Not Satirical

No GWest, I actually do get what you're saying; I just disagree that Mallick's writing is good satire. She is almost embarassingly literal when she targets various groups for her scorn. There's no wit there, no sophisticated levels of discourse. She is straightforward in her thinking, unswerving in her stance. There's no nuance. I suppose it's good to have flamethrowers out there, but I can say she's one of those people who will never win anyone over to her causes. And I happen to agree with her on some of those issues!

Plus reading about her barely concealed crush on Jack Layton is toecurling stuff.

Strategic reserve of cluelessness!

Now that's funny. I agree she's just stating the obvious here. How else do you explain the state of the union? GWB for two terms! HA! Of course its deeper than cluelessness. It's manufactured consent. The dumbing of the general populace is a planned strategy. It's our job to re-educate ourselves and re-define our purpose here on earth. And laughing at us is a BIG part of that!

Heather Mallick = Paris Hilton.

Heather Mallick comes across as a snob and an airhead. All style, no substance. She could easily be Paris Hilton's half-sister.

One minute she's lambasting evil corporations for destroying the environment. The next minute she's explaining how she has the paper version of the New York Times flown-in by jet overnight instead of simply reading it online because she prefers some vague esthetic aspect of the paper version.

Reminds me of a Russian joke making the rounds after the fall of communism. Two newly rich Russian businessmen met for lunch in a Parisian cafe. One said to the other, "See this tie? This tie cost me $1,500! The second businessman said, "You fool! Don't you know you could have bought exactly the same tie across the street for $2,500?"

Free Speech

So glad Heather's "Hutspah" opinions are available on line. Loved her in the Globe and Mail; Glad I can catch up with her perspectives on the CBC. She pulls away the curtains from so many would-be spin-wizards of Oz.
I have friends and relatives in the USA and when I have visited them I notice how empty and censored is available news to them. Really intelligent comment for the general public to engage does not seem to be there for the mostpart. Sure;PBS,Wash Post, NY Times etc for a small portion of the population but the masses seem only hungry for the fiction of actors and actresses. Pity!
Newspapers like CanWest Empire shout volumes more from what they choose not to print than yesterday's American cultural gossip that they clone . I don't choose to get any info from the B.C. newspapers. Intelligent, brave editorials are lacking because they risk losing position or job, I imagine if they go against the establishment.
Heather's right, it's books and online blogs from individuals (like Mary's excellent tracking of the Legislature Raids with boxes from offices containing??? do only Mr.Basi and Virk know???)that have the determination to research the whole story. Right now I am reading "Infidel", by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian woman challenging her faith community for injustices against women. There is much fear in our societies; fear of losing power over others. The pen is still mightier than the sword 'though and we need to laugh out loud and love one another and level the playing field in terms of encouraging civic discussion about the important issues of our times.I'm glad Heather gets to share her opinions; she makes me think more about my own!

Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton can actually write?

You might want to check the unedited version of what she posted on her Facebook entry when asking her fans for help keeping out of Jail.

Many people don't 'get' Heather Mallick. Just as many don’t get Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

People don't appreciate having their sacred cows gored any more now than they did in the 18th century.

You might want to read a few of Swift's letters from 1730 on for a taste of gloom and misery.

I'll quote just a bit of one - and pretty damn literal it is:

I have been very miserable all night, and today extremely deaf and full of pain. I am so stupid and confounded, that I cannot express the mortification I am under in body and mind. All I can say is, that I am not in torture, but I daily and hourly expect it.
...I hardly understand on word I write. I am sure my days will be very few; few and miserable they must be. ...

Swift, like Mallick, complains loudly and consistently about the state of the world. Then, as now, there was lots to fuel one's ardour.

Moreover, Cycling commuter - I take it then that the enjoyment of nice things is a pleasure not to be shared by anyone but the hollow rich. Suffering and self-denial is de rigueur these days, is it?

How quaint!

I don't get people who don't get it...

Very entertaining writer. It's opinion and it's fun to read. Just like in the abortion story, if you don't like it don't have one, or in this case, don't read it. To attack opinion because she gored your cow, as Mr West points out, is illogical and typical behavior of the unaware. I disagree that we Canadians know better than Americans. I'm glad I'm Canadian and not American but we do some pretty stupid things here too. Fish Farms, paving over swamps and deltas and farmland for developments, pollution per capita, Harper for PM... it's a fine line and were getting closer to them all the time. I wish it were not true, and I like Canadians better but it's pretty tough to distinguish anymore. See, rebuttal without slander!!

I bought the Globe for a

I bought the Globe for a very few reasons. One being Heather's writing. No not the woman's page one. She and the Globe parted company . it seems because she supported the writng of someone else left of Attila the Hun. I look for her stuff and pass it along to assorted women I know. None complain about her and the words "Right on" come up regularly. Thats' my opinion for what it's worth

Oh but how we yearn

Nice gig Heather. Read your musings over an election. Oh how we yearn for The Liberals. We yearn for a government that talked about a child-care programme for 13 years yet did nothing, until, of course, the polls spelled doom and they promised. How we yearn for a military with no funding and our soldiers in brown uniforms in a brown desert theatre. How we yearn for something for our First Nations peoples like the Kelowna Accord, hastily cobbled together when the chips were down and the writing was on the wall that after 13 years of neglect and baffelgab the bums were going down the tubes. How we yearn for a government that sloshes hundreds of millions of our cash around their buddies in Quebec to placate the Quebecers instead of one that actually tries to listen to them and embrace their differences. How we yearn for a Liberal government that will ignore and taunt the USA and alienate them, our major trading partner that buys our goods. Oh Jack, why did you and your NDP comrades bring those wonderful Liberals down? Did you ask Jack if he has any regrets?

Vichyssoise or Bouillabaisse?

Heather Mallick is the Barbara Amiel of the soi-disant Left. Let them eat truffles de la vie at the fin de siècle.

Amiel - mais non!

Can't ever imagine a case where Amiel would write that she was 'happy to be able to pay taxes' which Mallick says ALL the time.

She's a long long way from the Conrad Blacks and Barbara Amiels of the world - and a far better writer to boot.

I remember when I lived in Montreal in the 70s, Black was a regular guest on the morning CBC-AM program. Not much has changed.

His eventual 'end' was entirely predictable even then. He's the only man I know who, in attacking the Catholic Church, could engender sympathy for THAT institution in the reader.

Whatever one thinks of Mallick, at least she can never be accused of ripping off widows and pilfering pension funds to get her start.