Author Archives: Michael Happy

Canadian Conservatives: Whatever

Conservative senator Doug Finley: charged with election law violation

Four Conservatives, including two senators, have been charged with breaking federal election law on campaign spending.  Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey dismissed the charges, saying, “This is an accounting issue.”

That seems to be a pattern of behavior for conservatives everywhere these days: the law is for other people, particularly when it comes to any form of electoral malfeasance intended to gain or hold on to power.  It’s just another accounting issue.

Story here.

Tennessee Williams

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_lToyPAUyE

Blanche meets Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams died on this date in 1983 (born 1911).

Frye in The Educated Imagination cites Williams in his account of recurring archetypes in popular literature:

You notice that popular literature, the kind of stories that are read for relaxation, is always very highly conventionalized.  If you pick up a detective story, you may not know until the last page who done it, but you always know before you start reading exactly the kind of thing that’s going to happen.  If you read the fiction in women’s magazines, you read the story of Cinderella over and over again.  If you read Westerns, you’re reading a development of the pastoral convention, which turns up in writers of all ages, including Shakespeare.  It’s the same with characterization.  The tricky or boastful gods of ancient myths and primitive folk tales are characters of the same kind that turn up in Faulkner or Tennessee Williams. (CW 21, 449)

Gov. Scott Walker Prank Tells Us Exactly What We Need to Know

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nweqmMnRi04

Scott Walker confiding in “David Koch.” (Part 2 of the conversation after the jump.  A full transcript of the conversation here.)

Koch: Bring a baseball bat. That’s what I’d do.

Walker: I have one in my office; you’d be happy with that. I have a slugger with my name on it.

Koch: Beautiful.

Walker: Union-bashing…

Koch: Beautiful.

You’ve probably heard that Wisconsin’s Tea Party governor Scott Walker got a prank call from a reporter at The Buffalo Beast (founded by Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi) in which he spoke with carefree frankness about his intention to break the public sector unions in the state. What’s crucial to the prank is the person Walker believed he was talking to: David Koch — the same David Koch to whom Walker seems eager to deliver untendered state contracts.

If you want to look into the representative faces of the corporate interests that have by this point more or less purchased the Republican party outright, look no further than the David and Charles Koch: they fund global warming denialism, they co-founded and fund the Tea Party, they threw millions of dollars at the Republicans during last year’s midterms and are looking to raise tens of millions more in 2012; now they intend to do a little union bustin’ in Wisconsin. These guys are not here to fool around. They’re working behind the scenes to distort public perceptions on some of the most important issues of the day and to gin up the political polarization that results. All of this effort is to advance an agenda whose only beneficiaries are themselves and the rarefied corporate cloud dwellers they associate with — as well as their bought-and-paid-for Republican flunkies in Congress.  So the first thing to do is to bring them out of the shadows to give them the exposure they shun.  That seems to be happening a little more every day.

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Calls for Papers

Frye, about age 10

As the Frye centenary approaches, the calls for papers increase.  We will continue to post them as they come in, and, for good measure, we will regularly put up a tickler to remind people of them until their deadlines pass.  We also now have a separate “Call for Papers” search category which will make it easier for people to find them in a hurry.

Thomas Bowdler

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XZ091CEgNU&playnext=1&list=PL5B5F62A809AA1D00

The BBC Animated Shakespeare, The Tempest (part 1)

Physician and self-appointed censor of Shakespeare, Thomas Bowdler, died on this date in 1825 (born 1754).

Frye makes a point at his expense in “On Value Judgments”:

Every age, left to itself, is incredibly narrow in its cultural range, and the critic, unless he is a greater genius than the world has yet seen, shares that narrowness in proportion to his confidence in his taste.  Suppose we were to read something like this in an essay published, say, in the 1820s: “In reading Shakespeare we often feel how lofty and genuine are the touches of nature by which he refines our perceptions of the heroic and virtuous, and yet how ignobly he condescends to the grovelling passions of the lowest among his audience.  We are particularly struck with this in reading the excellent edition by Doctor Bowdler, which for the first time has enabled us to distinguish what is immortal in our great poet from what the taste of his time compelled him to acquiesce in.”  End of false quote.  We should see at once that that was not a statement about Shakespeare, but a statement about the anxieties of the 1820s. (CW 27, 260-1)

On Wisconsin

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfsIW6RY8Q

This is nice little common sense video putting the Wisconsin budget “crisis” into perspective and explaining by the simplest possible means how little it would cost to “fix” it.

However, what it doesn’t mention is that the “crisis” has been deliberately engineered by the new Tea Party governor of the state as a pretext for union busting.  He inherited a budget surplus when he took office in January.  He’s now running a deficit.  The reason?  It rhymes with “wax butts for the witch.”

It never stops.

(h/t to Amanda Etches-Johnson for the video)

Video of the Day: The Beginning of the End?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua_rSF1TQ6k

Chris Matthews and his panel have a hilarious good time reviewing the leaked manuscript of a memoir by former Palin aide Frank Bailey.  This may be enough to end the madness, at least as far as the mainstream media is concerned.  No more free rides for her.

Now if only we could revisit Bill O’Reilly’s multi-million dollar sexual harassment suit and Rush Limbaugh’s draft deferments for a sore bum, his illegal possession of Oxycontin, not to mention his illegal possession of Viagra during a visit to a sex-vacation haven.  Poobahs on the right are as answerable for their foibles, crimes and misdemeanours as everyone else.  They only think they aren’t.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of “English Studies in Canada”

A call for papers from English Studies in Canada:

To mark Northrop Frye’s 100th birthday and as part of the process of revaluation of this important figure, ESC is planning a special issue on Frye.  Northrop Frye was enormously influential and in a variety of fields and with a variety of individuals, so we are encouraging papers from all disciplines, as well as English.  Submissions are welcome on any topic or approach relevant to Frye.  Topics might include:

What does Frye have to say to us today? — Current perceptions of Frye — Frye and McLuhan — Frye and Canadian literature/culture — Visionary Frye — Frye’s sources —Frye and Music —Frye’s reputation— Applying Frye’s ideas or approaches to specific texts (or movies) — Frye¹s concepts (e.g., displacement) — Frye in other language contexts —Frye’s impact on literary studies —Frye and the Sixties — Frye and Genre — Frye and Popular Culture — Frye’s diaries / letters — Bibliographic issues — Frye and Blake (or Dickinson or Shakespeare or Milton or any other specific author) — Is it time for a Frye revival? —Frye as teacher —Frye and poetry —Specific Frye texts (e.g., Fearful Symmetry) — Frye and other critics — Frye and other fields and disciplines — Frye and education — Frye and faith — Frye and the university — Frye and institutional religion — Frye and politics — Frye’s view of history — Frye and children’s literature or science fiction or fantasy or detective fiction — Frye and creative writing—The new edition — Frye and the media — Frye and the Bible — Frye and the visual — Frye and imagination — Humour and Frye

In addition, shorter notes detailing personal responses to Frye’s work are welcome.  What is your personal view of Frye, his place, his influence, what he has meant to you?  Give us a brief reflection on Frye.

Submit by email—in Word 2003, please: mnicholson@tru.ca

or by regular mail at the address below.  Submissions by 15 July please

Mervyn Nicholson

Department of English

Thompson Rivers University

Box 3010, Kamloops

British Columbia

V2C 5N3