Burn the Swine

Drumroll please!

Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrratat!!

We have a guest speaker!

*oohs* *aaahs*


Well, it was almost that exciting. This week I had a couple of guest speakers in my Information and Visual Resources for Journalists class (say that three times really fast without yawning); a photo editor and photographer from the National Post. And they talked about the most exciting thing to happen to Toronto since the Leafs won the cup during the cretaceous period: the G20 riots.

So they're mucking around at the lectern for twenty minutes getting their spiffy MacBook keynote presentation all cued up and then when the woman comes to speak it's like your drunk Aunt Doris giving an impromptu toast at a bar mitzvah. She practically giving the microphone fellatio, so that every 'P' or 'B' or even 'T' she utters jabs your ears with a boiling hot q-tip. And someone is a "P"icture editor talking about "P"age composition, setting "P"icture "P"recedent and assuring you that "P"ictures can happen in any neigh"B"ourhood, the hours start to feel really long.

But she is a housefly compared to the slimy cockroach photog who gets up to speak after her. Minutes into his presentation Senor Douche shows the pics of himself being arrested and all the 18-year-old bosoms in the room heave from "really, really like feeling his, you know pain and stuff." After which he brashly declares; "I'll just say this right now, I don't like cops." I can practically hear the swelling of teenage crushes behind me.

"You know I don't work like other photographers. I just don't work like that. You know most of the guys were wearing helmets and stuff. Of course I had mine with me but...you know I'm really trying to be down with these Black Bloc guys. You know, I was smokin' with them and stuff."

"Some of the other photo guys were wearing their gas masks." He jeers and clicks to a slide of a protester having his eyes flushed out with Maalox after being pepper sprayed. 'Yeah, I think, what idiots.'

Arman the nerdy (but really nice) kid who sits next to me in a lot of my classes raises his hand.

"Did anyone show up to the G20 protests wearing Guy Fawkes masks?"

"I don't know what that is?"



"It's the mask protesters wore in 'V for Vendetta.'"

Mr. Cool chuckles, "I don't watch movies."

Though ten minutes later he's dropping a Dr. Phil reference. Soooo, you don't watch those evil corporate picture shows but your schedule and your morals allow you to watch putrefying daytime television. Hmmmm, you really are a complex man aren't you?

To Mr. Cool's credit he witnessed and documented some major fuck ups by the police who ended up (violently) arresting mostly peaceful protesters. He showed one shot of a discarded pile of black clothing in a field where the instigating Black Bloc members had grouped together and shed their anarchist uniforms.

However, not before trashing Zanzibar a somewhat sad a rundown strip club on Yonge Street. Strippers are not generally included in the same category as Starbucks in terms of economic imperialism. And apparently the Black Bloc paused to discuss the value of trashing the source of revenue for a marginalized and looked-down-upon sector of society.

They thought about it....and then did it anyway. Smashing stuff is fun afterall.

The talk could have been really thought provoking. There were documented cases of police brutality and unlawful detention. The protesters degraded their cause through violence. The point is there was a lot to say that went unsaid because someone couldn't resist the opportunity to preen and bask in the unadulterated admiration of the naive.

Naturally there was a mob of eager women and a smaller number of shrugging wishful bromancers around Mr. Cool after the lecture. I made a b-line for the bathroom where a couple of pint sized hair-flippers discussed "like ohmygawd how hot was he?!"
"Oh I KNOW!"
"Why didn't we go talk to him?!"
"Well...like...what we're we going to say?!"
"Yeah, totally."

The irony of this circus frenzy and gee-whiz-aren't-newspapers-swell back patting is that the National Post is the most conservative right-wing piece of toilet paper currently in print. Its op-ed department is fond of publishing articles which voice support of Israel's naval blockade of Palestine and other such trendy neo-con causes.

I'm sure most of my fellow students thought the lecture was "great" and "entertaining" but it's all too easy to stand up there in a position of authority and shit on the cops, the protesters, the poor security guards who were scared shitless (had no guns) and were trying to not lose their jobs. It's easy to stand up there, charm everyone with seductive cynicism. But it's wrong because it is SO EASY. And if the goal is to turn this new batch of tadpoles into bait-swallowers, hook, line and sinker, then I say bravo. Mission Accomplished.