Here’s a funny little clip from the resolutely sardonic BBC series Absolute Power wherein public Relations guru Charles Prentiss (played by Stephen Fry) tackles the question of what to do with the House of Lords. I think our own Prime Minister might appreciate the fiendishly clever scheme proposed with regards to our own Senate. Well, that is until he stuffed it full of his own bunch of superannuated hacks and partisan seat-warmers

While on the subject of public relations, if you haven’t already The Century of the Self is well worth a few hours of your time — it’s an absolutely fascinating documentary by Adam Curtis (I posted it here quite some time ago, or on the previous version of this site, but all four parts can be easily found here).

Watching Fry’s performance in this series made me think of Edward Bernays, the deeply cynical man who actually coined the term “public relations” and fathered the profession following his efforts as an American propagandist during the First World War.

Maybe you already caught this extract from yesterday’s Power & Politics program; the CBC’s hip, fast-paced replacement for Don Newman’s old gig.

In this instance, Evan Solomon’s guests for the show’s segment where various bloggers square off about the week’s “hot topics” in the Blathersphere were Kady O’Malley, Adrian McNair and Jeff Jedras. Unfortunately, I missed most of it because the phone rang not long after it started so thanks to Jeff for posting it.

Due to time constraints, I’ll leave it to others to dispute the relative merits of the points made (or more accurately, not made) as it hardly seems worth the effort involved — it could easily take ten times longer than the length of the segment itself to critically analyze and deconstruct them. And to what end?

Save to say, I think this clearly illustrates the futility of attempting to discuss multiple issues intelligently with several people in the space of ten minutes. I mean really, what insight can possibly be derived from such an exercise? As a viewer, all one comes away with is a grab-bag of unresolved loose ends, specious arguments, half-baked assertions, and a maddening sense of frustration — but then, its focus was about blogging, so maybe that was the intended reaction…

ONN’s “In The Know” panelists discuss whether there’s an epidemic among young people (esp. college males) today who get stoked over everything from nachos and free key chains to finding $10 in their pants pockets.

Warning: Although it’s the weekend, the video contains harsh language and therefore may not be NSFW. Viewer discretion is advised.

Completely off topic; apologies for the extended absence over the last several days. As happens from time to time, I was really bummed out (non-stoked, one might say) by recent news events. Sometimes it’s good to just step away from things for a while, take a deep breath and re-group. Posting will still however be slow and infrequent for a while as I’m kind of inundated with “real-world” stuff at the moment (nothing bad… just lots of work and such).

There’s not much that I feel needs to be added to this tail-end of this interview.

Last night’s address by President Obama was a huge disappointment, but one that should have been entirely expected. At the end of the day, while there may be a distinct improvement in style, there’s very little difference in terms of substance between this “commander in chief” and the former one. How depressing.

I’m with John Cole on this one: “I just don’t know what to think.”

Is it any wonder that most people are so cynical and disaffected when it comes to expecting any real change from politicians that are more often than not entirely fungible, held hostage to the corporate interests that get them installed in office and then generously provide for their welfare in perpetuity through respectable forms of bribery… It’s all such a fraudulent sham.

And with that, I need to take a shower, a long walk in the sunshine and another sanity-regenerating sabbatical away from all this nonsense for a while.

Seeing as JKG has been delighting me in the comments of late with clips from the BBC quiz program HIGNFY, I thought I’d return the favour by posting this extract from Mark Lawson talking to Ian Hislop, the quick-witted panelist from the aforementioned show and current editor of Private Eye magazine.

It’s the last part of six, but if you follow this link, it will take you to the place where you can easily access the remainder of the interview that covers lots of interesting subjects such as privacy and libel laws (subjects of particular interest to me, unfortunately) in addition to a lot of chatty banter that’s probably just as well ignored.

However, if you’re feeling a bit keen on the subject and somewhat intrepid (or perhaps just bored or having difficulty sleeping) there’s also a Channel 4 documentary Hislop presented a while back about Sir Robert Baden-Powell and the Scouting movement that’s completely fascinating. As a former Cub who was always somewhat puzzled by the whole thing, it explained a lot…

By the way, don’t you think the HIGNFY format would make a great show for one of our Canadian broadcast networks to shamelessly copy? For instance, maybe the CBC could take a refreshing breather from their horribly frantic, err, exciting new format to have a bit of lighthearted fun with the tiresome “news” they’re so keen on pointlessly jazzing up?

So much for the naïve idea of “hope and change” that for just a brief while seemed so very promising at the time the White House was being fumigated last January. “Patience ebbs” indeed.

Some might still hold out some faith in Obama, but I see little reason why they should.

For a preview of the rationale that’s to be expected from President Obama when he addresses Americans from West Point tonight (photo-op alert!), Joe Sestak attempts to explain the convoluted new strategy behind the latest escalation of forces in Afghanistan. Press Secretary Gibbs also fatuously weighs in some alliterative spin… (translation: “blah, blah, blah blah…”).

Maybe the U.S. president should have spent less time over the past several weeks and months listening to his generals and political fixers and more of it watching The Fog of War (Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara’s shameful apologia for the debacle in Vietnam) or reading Jim Perry’s excellent book about imperialistic bungling in remote corners of the world — what Kipling called the “savage wars of peace.” Either of those intellectual endevours might likely have given Obama greater insight as to how the misadventure in Afghanistan will almost certainly play out.

An additional voice in the wind…

Let me qualify that from the outset by adding the following: Here in B.C.

Take for example this interview by the intrepid Sean Holman of Public Eye Online with New Democrat MLA and veteran spinner (in a former life she was a PR shill for the United Nations in Kosovo) Claire Trevena (North Island) about the party’s 2009 election platform.

“Well, we’ve got a document which is party policy…”

Great opening! Trevena explains how a commitment to development of a “new economy” crucially focused on “sustainability” — a nebulous, ill-defined concept — that was unanimously passed by NDP delegates at their convention two years ago, was quite inexplicably derailed. At the time, the notion was that all of the party’s policies henceforward opposing the province’s neo-liberal establishment based on its “new way of looking at things” as Trevena describes it, would be filtered through this lens of “sustainability” as it boldly and courageously blazed a “new way forward” toward a “new economy.” But then… uh-oh! The party executive kind of forgot about all that gaseous piffle its delegates approved and didn’t even bother including any mention of it the last election campaign. Oops!

But no worries, comrades! The NDP has now gotten with the program and presently has a brand spanking new resolution in the works to create a committee that will study the previous resolution from two years ago and report back to the executive body of the party at sometime before next summer about how the executive might move in some direction to positively implement its previously forgotten/ignored commitment… perhaps in the form of a binding resolution to enable the progressive incorporation of some affirmative proposals that could eventually lead to the development of a really keen and shiny sounding policy paper that may quite possibly, some day or another, at a point in time and in a form as yet to be fully decided upon and determined by the executive after appropriate deliberation following an extensive process of consultation with everyone and their dog, constitute a vital aspect of the party’s next election platform.

A brilliant montage of New York being annihilated on film over the last 40 years set to Gershwin’s iconic jazz concerto.

Former opinion page editor Richard Miniter talks with Howard Kurtz on CNN’s Reliable Sources about the current legal turmoil surrounding the recent spate of executive firings at the troubled Washington Times…

I’ve always found it more than a little odd that the leading “conservative” paper of record in the United States has lost money for the past 27 years and survives only by virtue of the subsidies it receives from the Unification Church of “Reverend” Sun Myung Moon, a megalomaniacal Korean lunatic who, amongst other things, claims to be the Second Coming of Christ.

Marg Delahunty attempts to confront another fictional celebrity… inane Facebook blogger, Katie Couric ambush victim, partial-term governor of Alaska, former Mayor of the illicit meth-crystal, hobo-crack capital of America, “Death Panel” conspiracy theorist, congenital liar and aspiring talk-show host Sarah Palin, in an attempt to get just “a few words of encouragement for the Canadian conservatives who have worked so tirelessly to destroy the socialized medicare that we have…” before being bullied out of a book-signing in Cleveland, OH by a bunch of lifeless zombie thugs.

h/t: Surprisingly enough, to our sometime nemesis Patrick Ross.