Flakcheck Offers Hope

All right, I admit to being snidely critical of the world of Twitter Text and the cult of Face Tweet.  I continue to search for that glimmer of hope, however, that the techno-revolution will have a positive effect on society beyond enabling our youth to instantly communicate to hundreds of “friends” where they ate lunch.

The use of cell phones and the Internet during the Arab Spring is encouraging, of course, but on Sunday I saw a glimmer of hope that was a little closer to home. On Bill Moyer’s weekly show on the U.S. Public Broadcasting System he interviewed  Kathleen Hall Jamieson about the website www.flackcheck.com created by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania. Fed up with the hostile, negative and factually wrong political campaign ads being run during the current presidential campaign, the APPC created Flackcheck to point out exactly where the campaign ads were factually incorrect.  Not only that, but they encouraged viewers to e-mail and Tweet the candidates responsible demanding that the incorrect ads be taken off the air.  In effect they are doing in a systematic and serious way what Jon Stewart on The Daily Show does for comic effect on late-night TV. It is actually working; they have forced the removal of several ads across the country.

Canadian politics has not yet sunk to the depths of American political bad taste, but the success of attack ads down south has infiltrated our campaign processes. A Canadian website like Flackcheck would go a long way to halting that slow erosion of public discourse and would force politicians to argue policy differences on the basis of real facts and authentic issues instead of absurd exaggerations like those of Conservative MP Vic Toews.  You remember his blustery tirade, don’t you?  He stood in the House accusing the NDP, and by implication anyone else who was against his legislation, of “making things easier for child pornographers.” To the credit of Canadian observers, Toews was castigated for his comments, whereas I doubt that such remarks made in the U.S. House or Senate would have even been reported down there, unless it was to praise the politician making them for putting those godless, elitist, left-leaning so-and-so’s in their place.

If a Canadian Flackcheck website were to be created, then who knows, maybe it will lead to real political debate and a time when anyone who dares try to bamboozle voters with negative ads will be handsomely defeated in an election, not rewarded with victory.  If so, our youth will have to be commended for rescuing the political process.

Or maybe the lackadaisical Twitterfacers will be too busy texting about their lunch to care.  Time will tell. Meanwhile, the glimmer abides.

Of Oscars and Cheeseballs

I always watch the Oscars.  My wife and I joined two other couples for a night of ogling the great and near great while dining sumptuously on a variety of appetizers.  It is as close to Royal watching as we get in North America; we even dress up for the occasion, modelling the finest in Grand Forks chic.  I was nattily attired in my best blue jeans, black turtle neck and twenty year-old tweed sport coat (real English lambs’ wool).  My wife focussed on bling, donning a pair of four inch, dangling, faux ruby and cubic zirconium earrings.  Brad and Angelina looked downright dowdy in comparison.

The Oscars went according to the usual script: Billy Crystal told jokes, the winners cried or squealed sincerely, the losers looked happy for the winners, and the various husbands, wives, girlfriends and relatives beamed proudly or looked annoyed.  The only variation from the script was the absence of Jack Nicholson who was missing from the front row.

Actually there was another variation.  For the first time that I can recall, we were given a glimpse into an aspect of acting that we normally do not think about. Brad Pitt, Robert Deniro, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and the chunky kid from Moneyball whose name I can never remember all related how disquieting it is to put everything you have in a role, without having a clue whether the movie you are making will be a hit or a flop. 

As the Oscar awards point out, the audio, the cinematography, the costuming, the make-up, the directing, the editing, all are vital to the success of a film. Of course, all the performing arts are collaborative, but in all the others the performers have an idea of the quality of the finished product because the performances are done live, as a complete unit.  Movie actors shoot scenes out of sequence, with multiple camera angles often shot for each scene.  They don’t know what shots will be chosen or if the original script will even be followed; they certainly don’t know what the finished product will look like. The movie won’t appear on the screen for months, and sometimes never makes it to theatres at all. The finished product isn’t their job.  Their job is to play the role convincingly.  That is why some actors, like Johnny Depp, never watch their own movies.  Their work, the part that is of interest and importance to them, was over months ago and now they are involved in creating different characters in new projects. 

After that part of the broadcast, I actually felt some sympathy for the over-paid, over-indulged actors who all received Oscar goody bags worth an estimated $50,000.  Then Tom Cruise came on, reality returned, and as I turned back to the table of appetizers, I felt both foolish for having felt sympathy and at the same time delighted in the delightful aroma arising from the platter of chicken wings and the delicate flavour of  my wife’s handcrafted cheese ball.