the daily snivel

  Shake, shake, shake - Shake, shake, shake - Shake your booty!

Last night, my graduating law class went out for some festivities to celebrate the fact that most of us are finally finished exams and thus finished with law school forever (FOREVER, I say!). Although I still have a paper to hand in on the 29th, I'm all finished my exams, having triumphed over my prickly foe administrative law last Friday, and felt the need to celebrate and see my friends. As well, some of us will be leaving the city shortly, either to take the bar admissions course in Toronto or to start articling in another province (and one of my friends from my first year small group is interning at the Hague for the next year before coming back to clerk with a Supreme Court justice), so it was a good chance to see good people before they left for good.

We'd reserved a bar on Bank street (the Gap of Dunloe) and brought in some DJs to spin some tunes and liven up the dance floor. Cover was cheap, the drinks were not outrageously expensive (I wouldn't normally have thought to hang out at somewhere like this bar, whose typically quiet and sparese clientele demographic is clearly several standard deviations to the right of we boozehound braniacs, but at least it lacked the pretension of $7 beer), and I squeezed out the last few drops of precious credit left to me so that I could enjoy a round or two with my mates.

What really blew me away was that I was also proclaimed "the star of the dance floor," and continually praised on my so-called "moves" by at least five different people. I mean, I simply danced for a good two hours with my friends, and although I thought the secret was just to move around like an idiot in time to the music and be too liquored up to care, apparently this white boy does have some rhythm stowed away inside, mixed up with all that repression and shame.

I always think of myself dancing in terms of that old Saturday Night Live sketch with Jeff Goldblum, when he's being cajoled to dance by his girlfriend and he feels too self-conscious to do it. She tells him to just get up and move, because no one is going to care, but as he dances people keep mocking his motions and pointing and laughing, and although his girlfriend assures him he's reading into things, Chris Farley ultimately saunters over, apes the dance motions in a forced manner, and shouts, "Hey, everybody! I'm doing The Idiot!"

I always thought that was me. Huh.

But anyway, it was a lot of fun. I really enjoy being out on the dance floor, despite the fact that as the evening wore on a talented, bright and gorgeous friend who truly awed me as a fabulous dancer tried to get me to dance with her, and I was absolutely horrible trying to stay coordinated with a partner. She kept trying to get me to spin her and, after I kludged it up a few times, eventually she asked me if I minded if she were "the man" for our dancing. I didn't. But in time we worked out the spins and it was really quite elegant.

The only thing that got to me was watching people get progressively drunk and flirt with one another. Some people had brought their boyfriends or girlfriends, and others just got grabby with the drink. For the longest time, I've been quite content with the single life, but I felt unbelievably lonesome last night. One of the reasons was that I bumped into an acquaintance that I'd asked out once upon a time, who initially said yes and later said "Maybe some other time," and things have been a little chilly since. She and I had a few words, but then danced and made eyes at each other, and I kept thinking maybe I should flirt a little, or at least do more than smile like an idiot, and then all the wondering was for naught because she left late in the evening without a word. I suppose the lesson is that hesitation is a bad thing, but I got sick of watching one or two idiots grabbing and trying to dance with every girl in sight, and believe it's better to be a gentleman. Plus, every time I take the initiative (including asking people on a date), it just gets weird.

Not that it helped that I walked home for an hour in the rain, listening to my "Sad Rob" mix on my iPod. I felt very melodramatic.

Anyway, the moral is that I had a great time, many laughs, danced for hours, and sure, felt a bit wistful, but in the end it's all a very typical night for me and I'd be profoundly disturbed if anything had transpired at all differently. 

  God Money I'll Do Anything For You

Writing from the comfort of my Apple iBook, I just had to point out the fact that the Microsoft Corporation is rightly taking a lot of heat for the fact that it has bowed out of support for a human rights bill in its home State of Washington that would grant gays and lesbians protection discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Apparently its decision was based on boycott pressure received from a local church. Given Microsoft's history of supporting rights for gays and lesbians and its proud proclamations of this in its public statements, I think this is a callow and shameful reversal, and a true display of hypocrisy. Corporations' sole responsibility may be to the bottom line, but they shouldn't crassly promote a buyer-friendly image of concern for human rights only to crumple in the face of pressure from the radical clerics of the Christian right.

Think about that the next time you're getting ready to buy a new computer.

From the New York Times:

Microsoft Comes Under Fire for Reversal on Gay Rights Bill
By SARAH KERSHAW

Published: April 22, 2005

SEATTLE, April 21 - The Microsoft Corporation, at the forefront of corporate gay rights for decades, is coming under fire from gay rights groups, politicians and its own employees for withdrawing its support for a state bill that would have barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Many of the critics accused the company of bowing to pressure from a prominent evangelical church in Redmond, Wash., located a few blocks from Microsoft's sprawling headquarters.

The bill, or similar versions of it, has been introduced repeatedly over three decades; it failed by one vote Thursday in the State Senate. Gay rights advocates denounced Microsoft, which had supported the bill for the last two years, for abandoning their cause. Blogs and online chat rooms were buzzing on Thursday with accusations that the company, which has offered benefits to same-sex partners for years, had given in to the Christian right.

"I think people should feel betrayed," said Tina Podlodowski, a former Microsoft senior manager and former Seattle city councilwoman who now runs an advocacy group for AIDS patients. "To me, Microsoft has been one of the big supporters of gay and lesbian civil rights issues, and they did it when it wasn't an issue of political expediency, when it was the right thing to do."

Microsoft officials denied any connection between their decision not to endorse the bill and the church's opposition, although they acknowledged meeting twice with the church minister, Ken Hutcherson.

Dr. Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church, who has organized several rallies opposing same-sex marriage here and in Washington, D.C., said he threatened in those meetings to organize a national boycott of Microsoft products.

After that, "they backed off," the pastor said Thursday in a telephone interview. "I told them I was going to give them something to be afraid of Christians about," he said.

...

But State Representative Ed Murray, an openly gay Democrat and a sponsor of the bill, said that in a conversation last month with Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president and general counsel, Mr. Smith made it clear to him that the company was under pressure from the church and the pastor and that he was also concerned about the reaction to company support of the bill among its Christian employees, the lawmaker said.
...

AmericaBLOG has more on how you can take action, and also has some more information and updates here. 

  The Rage, Oh How it Burns

Sit right back and I'll tell you a tale of a little trip I took today to the Canada Revenue Agency's website.

I took a trip there because I was quite anxious to check the status of my tax return. This is a return on I filed electronically on March 13, and one that indicated I was owed a refund. The good folks at the CRA promptly sent me a pre-assessment notice indicating that I had to send them a copy of my T2202A slip and my 2004 rent receipts, which I sent out the very next day owing to how eager I was to receive that refund.

Many, many weeks later, I'm still waiting around to see what came of the whole thing. This is in large part to the fact that a refund would come in handy right about now. As we all know, April is the blackest month for a student, when the student loans and lines of credit and the paltry savings from last summer have been stretched as far as they can go, the pennies have all been rolled, and the instant noodles are quickly running out. It's the time of year when the old bottle of half-finished wine that you keep around for cooking starts looking mighty good for drinking; when you get friendly phone calls from Rogers and MBNA asking you to call them back, and oh wouldn't it be nice if you wrote more often and sent a cheque and, look, they even include a self-addressed envelope to make it easy.

So, I went to the CRA website to check the status of my account. Now, to prevent identity fraud and protect the privacy of users, there are a number of safeguards built into the website, which is only fair. You have to register for an "epass" with a user name and password on an encrypted page. And to do that, you have to provide your social insurance number (OK), your date of birth (uh huh), your postal code (no problem), and the figure you entered at line 150 from your 2003 or 2004 tax return forms (hmm). Of course, you can't do any of that if you're running Safari as your web browser, which they tell you with regret, and then when you launch Internet Explorer for Macintosh and get halfway into the website, it tells you there's an error and nags you to enable cookies, and since they were enabled all along, you give up and fire up the old desktop PC.

Finally I had a browser that worked with the CRA website -- IE 6. So, I duly entered my SIN, my date of birth, my postal code, and the figure from line 150 on my 2004 return, and submitted it. I sat and waited for the system to churn that information, and once it did, it returned with a screen telling me that the authentication had failed. It also told me that I only had five attempts before it locked the account out completely. I tried again, thinking I must have mistyped something. It failed again. I tried it from a different computer upstairs. It failed again. Then I went downstairs and read the website thoroughly, and realized that the information from line 150 had to correspond to an assessed return, dontcha know, so maybe the problem is that my return still wasn't assessed but was sitting in a file somewhere with the 15 million other returns that piled in this tax season.

So I tried to find my 2003 return because I could also use that information.

I found it, but I had to reinstall my 2003 tax software to view the information. After half an hour of turning my room upside down, I found the install disks. Then I couldn't open the file from last year because the software insisted on being updated first. So I downloaded the 9 megabyte file over my dialup connection, fired up the software, and copied down the line number. Aha. Finally we were getting somehwere.

I returned to the website, feeling that victory must be close at hand. This was my fourth try out of five possible attempts before the account was locked. I again entered my SIN, my date of birth, my postal code, and my line 150 statement from my 2003 return.

Accepted! Now we're cooking with gas!

Then I had to create a username for myself -- no problem, I thought. This I have done many times before, and it was created with ease. Then I had to create a hint in case I forgot my password. OK, so it had something to do with school. OK, then I had to make another hint, something to do with an influential person. OK, and then I had to make another hint, something to do with an important date in my life. "Phew! All this verification is hard work," I thought.

Then I had to create a password. Happiness, optimism -- nay, a childlike wonder -- filled me. Surely now I would be finished and be able to find out when my badly needed refund was coming to me. I was brought to a confirmation screen and I entered my username and password.

The website then told me that the final stage in the activation of my new epass was the entry of the confirmation code they were sending me.

By mail.

Which would take 5 business days, and in the absence of which none of the steps I'd just taken were of any help or made any different at all.

It's times like these you want to say "Arrrgh!" and not sound like a cartoon character but rather the soul tormented to the very limit of sanity that you truly are.

Oh the rage, and oh how it burns inside me. 

  The decline of the American Empire

Did you know that Ann Coulter, the radical, hate-filled Moe the Bartender of the extreme right, made the cover of TIME Magazine this week? Digby has more, making what I think is an essential point. Those armchair warriors who adore people like Coulter, who cheer and dance on the graves of people like Marla Ruzicka (an aid worker who was killed this week while trying to help civilian victims of the war in Iraq), are actually cheering on the insurgents who killed her and are the professed enemies of the United States. This poorly thought out cheerleading completely erodes away the kind of moral high-ground required to make the ridiculous claim (as Coulter frequently endorses) that liberals are in any way guilty of treason. Physician, heal thyself.

...

Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn't. For instance, he doesn't say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn't say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn't say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn't put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn't, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.

...

While Ann Coulter makes the cover of Time for writing that liberals have a "preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason," her followers actually side with Iraqi insurgents against an American charity worker. At freeperland and elsewhere they laughed and clapped and enjoyed the fruits of the enemy's labor. This is because if you listen to Ann and Rush and Sean and Savage and all the rest of these people you know that there is no greater enemy on the planet than the American liberal. That's what Ann Coulter and her ilk are selling and that is what Time magazine celebrated with their cover girl this week.

I'm not going to argue with my fellow Democrats any more about how Janet Jackson's nipple and Desperate Housewives' double ententres are coarsening American media culture. This is not because American media culture isn't being coarsened. But T&A is clearly not the problem. It's the sick, depraved fucks who are selling liberal death fantasies to the public and being aided by idiots in the mainstream press who are so in the (ever heating) tank that they have lost all sense of perspective.

...

 

  Worth Noting

The Daily Snivel celebrates its eighth anniversary this week, which I don't mind saying puts it as one of the oldest (though also one of the least well known) continuous on-line journals around, pre-dating the advent of blogs by several years. It all goes back to some simple complaining here in April 1997, coded and archived by hand (versus the newfangled blogging software that eventually came along and which I resisted quite stubbornly until I realized how handy it was), and ever since then it's been a lot of that winning formula: boy meets girl, boy is infatuated with girl, boy loses girl, boy rants about conservatives and eventually meets another girl.

Thanks for eight great years. 

  Pie Our Squares

The classic gag of a pie in the face has become a popular resort of those disaffected pranksters who want to humble and ridicule the powerful and puffed-up as they make some grandiose public appearance before what they hope are eager throngs of an adoring public. There have been many examples over the years and in many different parts of the world, including France, Belgium (where Bill Gates met a creamy fate), Canada, and recently the United States. Canada, and Quebec in particular, has seen quite a few episodes targeted at politicians in recent years, including Pierre Pettigrew, BC Premier Bill Vander Zalm, and Tory Leader Joe Clark, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, Quebec Premiers Bernard Landry, Jean Charest, and Jacques Parizeau, and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien. There is even an organized group in Quebec, Les entartistes (many of whom are former members of Canada's defunct but immortally silly Rhinoceros Party), who organize many of the pie-throwings. The preferred strategy is to have a confederate shake the target's hand while moving in and proceeding to rub (not throw) a cream pie into the face of the target, whose hand and attention are engaged.

There is certainly an argument to be made, and one that I think many people would agree with, that a pie in the face is a relatively harmless protest that does no harm to anything except shirt collars and egos. Normally the bemused public figure simply clears some of the dripping goop off his or her face and laughs the incident off while the pranksters are hauled away by burly men who spend an awful lot of time working out at the gymnasium in strenuous preparation for just such an occasion. And after awhile the charges are dropped or the sentence is lenient and people get on with their lives, including a return to celebrating the true meaning of pie, which is to be baked, delicious, and eaten.

The pie can also seem like a great way to make a statement. On top of groups who just want to mockingly take the self-important down a peg or two and make them feel foolish, there are those who increasingly feel that their protests against the policies and excesses of the powerful fall on deaf ears, and to them a well-placed pie can create a flurry of media interest and public discussion of the event.

In the end, however, the pie-ing is largely dismissed for what it is -- a childish prank. Not exactly harmful, but counterproductive, puerile, violent, and a waste of pie.

In a formally legal sense, it is also criminal. In Canada, for example, assault is defined by section 265(1)(a) of the Criminal Code, which states that assault is the intentional application of force without consent (see also sections 265(1)(b) and 265(1)(c) for additional definitions that are not applicable in this context). This is to say that intentionally touching another person without his or her consent is an assault. Now, you have to query whether anyone who ever intentionally touches another person without permission is charged with assault, should be charged, and so on, because in fact we look to context a lot in considering whether it is in the interests of justice to prosecute, or even whether it is that offensive. That said, the civil tort of battery ("assault" in tort law actually refers to the apprehension of the physical contact) requires no proof of damage to attract liability. If you batter someone in the tortious sense, again just an unwanted touch, you stand liable for nominal damages because the conduct is actionable per se given society's interest in protecting of an individual's physical integrity.

So, given the legal implications, even the ridiculous behaviour of rubbing a pie in someone's face goes against what we are normally prepared to consider tolerable behaviour. People are charged, and (assuming the charges are not dropped, for example in an act of prosecutorial discretion) sometimes convicted of assault. Speaking as someone who is not yet a defence lawyer but has two years of experience in the courts through my work as a law student at the legal clinic, I would make arguments against that behaviour truly being criminal, and in the end probably be stuck making some good sentencing submissions and hope that my client can get a discharge or some sort and thus avoid a permanent criminal record. Better still, I'd start off trying to find some more appropriate way of dealing with the charge such as a diversion program that allows the accused to take responsibility, perform some community service, write a letter of apology, and/or make a charitable donation in an act of contrition such that society can be satisfied and the charge can be withdrawn in the interest of not clogging the courts with such matters when there are murder trials backlogged for months and years. But you have to admit, not every police officer, prosecutor, or victim, is going to laugh the matter off, and all of a sudden what started off as a prank wrapped up in your freedom of expression seems an awful lot less attractive once you're required to get up inconveniently early in the morning and shimmy into an uncomfortable, ill-fitting suit because you have to go to court.

There's also the fact that it gives the pie-d person a soapbox on which to thoroughly denounce the actions of the pranksters as a wanton assault on their right to speak and have their opinions and a sign of the thoroughly bankrupt position of the opposition. This is in fact just what happened when someone pie-d Ann Coulter, and when someone else put a pie in the face of David Horowitz. Now, let it be said that Ann Coulter is one of the vilest humans on the face of the earth. Her opinions are nothing short of hateful. She is the Moe the Bartender of pundits -- violent, hate-filled, ugly, and bigoted. Ann Coulter's quotes include such gems as:

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

  -- on Muslims, September 13, 2001.

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

  -- on liberals, January 2002.

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

  -- on terrorism.

So, in October 2004 Ann Coulter was presented with a pie in the face while giving a talk at the University of Arizona. And while I'm in agreement that it's a silly, stupid prank and certainly not a vicious assault, it both runs afoul of the law and the spirit of honest debate. Now, Ann Coulter is not one to engage in honest debate. She is on the record as stating that there can be no useful dialogue between liberals and conservatives, and engages in some of the worst distortions of truth and fact in her jingoistic rhetoric. But all that can be taken from an incident on this is that she is allowed to feel like a victim, and feel like a victim she has. Here's what she said in a New York Observer interview:

I was physically attacked this year. I hear MoveOn.org has a bounty for anyone who throws a pie in my face. Neither of those guys hit me. I think one is still in prison. It is a funny thing, that they ended up in prison—enjoying the benefits of gay marriage. One guy with a broken shoulder and one with a broken nose. And that was when I was traveling totally unprotected. Let ’em try it again, they’ll end up dead."

The charges against the pie-throwers were ultimately dismissed, signaling to me that the state felt it was a prank and likely that the courts could better spend time on more substantively serious offences (and that the pair, who were then roughly handled by some burly conservatives in attendance, had suffered enough). But one thing conservatives love to do is feel victimized by the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, and such tactics only give them something real, if harmless, to point to as evidence.

David Horowitz, one-time radical 60s leftist now radical right-winger, was also pied while giving a talk, and he took much the same route, claiming to be a victim of an attack on his free speech and that the episode demonstrated all too well how hostile and shallow the left must be if it couldn't tolerate his [nutty] opinions. Horowitz, in fact, has been championing an "Academic Bill of Rights" which will allow students to sue their professors for being "biased" (that is, insufficiently conservative), and has twisted his incident into proving just how badly this bill of rights is needed, because universities are seemingly cramped with hostile radicals who resort to violence when challenged. Sadly No! has more, and had it just right when it said:

1.) The best way to handle people like Horowitz is logically attacking their arguments in Q & A sessions. Hurling a pie is a sign that you aren't thinking so much as reacting- a sure way to lose an argument.

2.) It lets Horowitz whine about how "oppressed" he is, and inspires his moron readers to give him more money.

3.) Everyone has a right to speak without getting pied.

I have to say I must also denounce such actions as pie-throwing as juvenile and counterproductive. Not only does it attract possible legal consequences, but it is unworthy of us. If there is any merit to your beliefs and arguments, they will prevail in an honest argument. Throwing pies suggests you have nothing worthy to say at all, but are simply having a public tantrum.

And speaking of pie, my good friend Mélanie baked a fantastic sugar glazed fieldberry pie today, and it is unbelievably scrumptious. I've rarely had such good pie. In fact, I'm going to eat some right now... Remember now - pie is for eating, not throwing. That way, everyone wins.

UPDATE:

Via World O'Crap, we discover that Ann Coulter is once again also a liar. The charges against the protesters who pie-d her were dismissed because she couldn't be bothered to show up for their trial to give evidence, her claims to victimhood and calling for vigilante justice notwithstanding.