Fifty Shades of Black (4 page)

 

 

Double Your Pleasure

I
wouldn't tell just anybody this, but I suffer from Peanuts Envy.

“Peanuts,” I hasten to add, was the sobriquet my Old Man bestowed upon my younger brother after he came home from the hospital wrapped in a blanket, red-faced, squally and looking very much like, well, an angry peanut.

I was twelve years old at the time, and unabashedly enthusiastic about having a younger bro. I looked forward to hours of road hockey and bike riding; of climbing trees and chasing pop flies. I anticipated the advantage of having an in-house fall guy to blame for my ­misdemeanours. I even imagined we might become a neighbourhood Force to Be Reckoned With.

“Uh-oh—here come the Black brothers.” That had a nice ring to it.

Alas, a dozen years is a wide gap for kids to bond across. By the time he was in kindergarten, I was seventeen and discovering girls. When his voice went from falsetto to bass, I was hitchhiking around Europe.

We grew up apart but, oddly, came together in our adult lives. He met and married a West Coast island girl; I also made my way across the plains and over the Rockies to settle on the same island. The same street, in fact. We live a five-minute drive apart.

But it is a small island and my brother and I, despite the twelve years, look very much alike. Some have called us dead ringers. We get mistaken for each other. A lot. “Hi, Jim,” a stranger calls out to me at the checkout counter. “How's it goin', Jim?” I'll hear from a passing motorist. I seldom correct them. It takes too long—and frankly, I'm flattered. Being mistaken for a twelve-years-younger version of yourself is a bit of an ego boost. But it's better than that. In addition to having inherited my outstanding good looks, ineffable charm and magnetic personality, my brother is an incorrigible flirt. He buys armfuls of roses on Valentine's Day and hands them out to every woman he meets. He hugs anyone who gives off a whiff of estrogen and treats her like a goddess.

He is, in short, a popular guy with the ladies. And if, every once in a while, some strange woman should mistake me for Jim and wrap herself around me in front of the town post office in a smothering embrace . . . well, where's the harm?

I figure if you're going to have a doppelgänger it's helpful to keep it in the family—although instances of mistaken identity are always fascinating.

True story: Once on a train to California, two blushing ladies approached a distinguished-looking silver-haired gentleman in the club car. “Have we the honour of speaking to Professor Einstein?” they gushed. “No, unfortunately not,” said the stranger, “though I quite understand your mistake. He has the same unruly hair, but inside, my head is altogether different. However, he is an old friend of mine—would you like me to give you his autograph?” On the back of a train menu he wrote: “Albert Einstein, by way of his friend, Albert Schweitzer.”

Oh, those Alberts. They all look alike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part Two

Getting Along with the Neighbours

 

 

The Not-So-Friendly Skies

I
observe but one cardinal rule as I am being prodded and scanned by sullen strangers in the meat processing and dignity-rendering plants our airports have become.

No joking.

No one-liners, Shaggy Dog stories, gags, puns or witty banter with the wand-wielding Gorgons at Security. If I see my old pal Jack in the lineup I may wave, semaphore, whistle, warble or tweet a greeting to him. What I will NOT do is bellow, “Hi, Jack!”

Generally speaking the Rent-a-Gropers who staff the security check-ins have limited imagination and absolutely zero sense of humour. I know that any behaviour I exhibit that separates me from the milling herd can lead to an exceedingly tiresome visit to, as Paul Simon called it, that Little Room.

And it's not getting better. Paul Chambers, a twenty-eight-year-old Englishman, was arrested and convicted for making a joke
while on his way
to the airport.

It happened like this. Chambers was en route to an airport in Yorkshire to take off for a winter vacation. A snowfall closed the airport. Chambers tweeted to his friends: “Crap! The airport's closed. They've got one week to get their s—t together; otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!”

A lame joke for sure—but Mr. Chambers did not send the message to the airport headquarters or to a newspaper reporter or a radio station hotline show—he sent it to his small circle of Twitter friends. His message was somehow intercepted and sent to the Yorkshire police. Chambers was duly arrested, charged and convicted of sending a “message of menacing character.”

Mr. Chambers hired a lawyer and went to the High Court in London to have the conviction overturned. His defence? It wasn't a “message of menace”; it was a joke.

His lawyer opened the argument by quoting a line of poetry: “Come friendly bombs, and fall on Slough . . . ” Surely the author of those words was at least as culpable as Mr. Chambers? Better hope not. The line comes from a poem by Britain's one-time poet laureate, John Betjeman. And it was meant as a joke.

Exhibit B: Some scurrilous advice from a chap named Shakespeare who wrote, “Let's kill all the lawyers.” To which the Lord Chief Justice commented: “That was a good joke in 1600 and it is still a good joke now.”

Mr. Chambers's lawyer added, “And it WAS a joke, my Lord.”

Indeed. I'm happy to report that Mr. Chambers won his case, his conviction was quashed and it is once again okay to make jokes—even on Twitter. Even about airports.

And there are some splendid airport jokes. Such as the one involving a harried and self-important MP caught in a crowd at the MacDonald–Cartier airport in Ottawa. Once again, a snowstorm had hampered operations; flights were delayed and rerouted, passengers were milling around like herring and the lineups were long.

Nowhere longer than at the WestJet check-in booth where a harried ticket agent was doing her best to placate irate travellers. The MP barged through the line and bulled his way up to the desk, demanding a boarding pass. The ticket agent looked at him and said, “Sir, as you can see, there are many passengers ahead of you. We're doing our best to get everyone through just as quickly as possible. I'm afraid you'll have to get back in the line and wait your turn.”

The MP went postal. He thumped the desk and roared, “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

Not missing a beat, the WestJet ticket agent picked up the public address microphone and announced to the entire airport, “Attention, please. We have a gentleman at the WestJet ticket counter who does not know who he is. Anyone who thinks they may know this man is asked at this time to please step forward and identify him. Thank you.”

The crowd roared. The man snatched his wheeled suitcase and blustered off, tossing an obscene two-word curse over his shoulder.

The WestJet clerk picked up the microphone again and said sweetly, “I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to get in line for that, too.”

 

 

There Auto Be a Law

I think that the substitution of the internal combustion engine for the horse marked a very gloomy milestone in the progress of mankind.

—Winston Churchill

I
'm with the British Bulldog on this one. Oh, I rely on a gas guzzler as much as the next person and I've had my nether parts kneaded by enough saddles to know that going on horseback is no feasible option—but that doesn't mean I'm in love with my car.

I believe future archaeologists will be dumbfounded when they see how thoroughly we allowed automobiles to dominate our lives. They transfigure our landscape, poison our air, dictate our habits, define our habitations, suck our natural resources dry . . . and they kill us. You think guns are dangerous? Gun fatalities account for less than one hundred Canadian deaths a year. Fatal vehicle collisions claim nearly thirty-five hundred lives annually. Put more graphically, guns kill approximately one Canadian every six days; motor vehicles kill one Canadian every four hours.

What they do to us socially is even more alarming. Marshall McLuhan predicted that mass transportation such as subways and trains was doomed in North America because, “a person's car is the only place he can be alone and think.”

That's what our vehicles do—they separate us. We don't walk or stroll or—beautiful word—promenade anymore. Cars box us in. We jump in our boxes and join streams of other boxes that take us to work or to play or to shop—as often as not in boxy office towers, boxy rec centres or big box stores.

Happily, attitudes are changing. Many towns and villages—and even the tiny island I live on—are putting in pedestrian pathways and bike lanes for all those little trips that really don't require motorized assistance.

Cities too—and no city more comprehensively than Paris, France. There, the city fathers have okayed Vélib', a bike-sharing network that allows citizens to pick up a bicycle at one location, ride it to their destination and leave it there. They have also eliminated twenty-three thousand parking spots downtown, narrowed crosstown expressways and replaced pavement and parking lots with nearly ten acres worth of parks, floating gardens—even a flower market.

All of this in downtown Paris, which just a short time ago was characterized by honking horns, squealing tires and cursing drivers, all emanating from crawling daisy chains of cars and trucks courting terminal gridlock.

Has it changed the fabled City of Lights?
Bien sûr
. For one thing, you can actually see those lights now that the blue-black curtain of auto exhaust is dissipating. Car use in Paris has dropped a whopping 25 percent over the past decade. In the same time, bicycle use has doubled. One-half of all trips in Paris are now made on foot.

Vehicular diehards are aghast. They predict massive traffic jams and widespread chaos. The head of one pro-car lobby harrumphs, “We can no more eliminate cars from Paris roads than empty the Seine of water.”

Fulminate away, monsieur. Other large urban jurisdictions are moving in the same direction as Paris. Across the channel, the city of London now levies a daily sixteen-dollar “congestion charge” on all private vehicles travelling downtown. Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa have already set up bike-sharing programs; Vancouver's working on it.

Personally, I think McLuhan was just a hair off the mark. Men don't love their cars because they allow us to be alone. That's what the bathroom is for. Men love their cars because it's the last place they can be in charge. Comedian Rita Rudner says car love is the reason most men are afraid to make a commitment to a woman.

“It's because we can't be steered.”

 

 

Cambodia: Phoenix Rising

O
ne of the more cynical rationalizations used by the US government for its use of drones to kill foreigners is the fact that there's a legal precedent. The official argument goes that it's okay to target enemies in their own countries because the US did the same thing to Cambodians during the Vietnam War.

True—but not something you'd think a country would want to brag about.

Back in the '60s and '70s during what became known as Henry Kissinger's Secret War, American bombers flew 230,000 separate sorties over Cambodia, dropping more than three million tons of bombs.

It was, as a US general said at the time, “the only war in town,” since a temporary truce with Vietnam had been declared. It was also a bit like shooting fish in a barrel; the Cambodians had no air force, no anti-aircraft ordnance—no armed forces to speak of. They were mostly rice farmers. Their great crime was allowing the Viet Cong to use their country as a shortcut to South Vietnam.

Not that the Cambodians had much choice. They were as powerless against the Viet Cong as they were against the US bombers. The US military rationale was loopy at best; a bit like bombing Vancouver because it lies between Seattle and Alaska. Now the US is arguing that the thousands of innocent Cambodians who died as a result of the US pursuing North Vietnamese set a legal precedent, which makes it okay for the US to go after enemies in any neutral territory.

No one knows how many Cambodians died in the bombings, but estimates run as high as five hundred thousand. We do know that Cambodia was devastated, many of its towns reduced to rubble, the infrastructure shredded, its economy ruined.

Which made it easy for the monster known as Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge to take over the country and utterly destroy what was left of it.

Pol Pot was Joseph Stalin on steroids. He practised social engineering with a sledgehammer and a meat cleaver. In four devastating years, Pol Pot oversaw the gutting and abandonment of all Cambodian urban centres. Organized religion was abolished, banks were closed, private property, markets and even money was eliminated. The Khmer Rouge tore down 95 percent of the country's Buddhist temples. Christians, Muslims, Chinese, ethnic Vietnamese and Thais were murdered on sight, as were government officials, professionals such as doctors or lawyers—indeed, all “intellectuals.” Wearing eyeglasses was enough to get you branded an “intellectual.”

Pol Pot's so-called Democratic Kampuchea was in fact a ­prison-camp state. One quarter of the population—about two and a half million people—were executed, died of disease or simply starved to death.

The best thing you can say about Pol Pot and his evil horde is that they only lasted for four years. He died under house arrest, probably a suicide, in 1998. Today, Cambodia has its old name back, a thriving tourist economy and best of all, a young and healthy growing population.

Especially young. Three-quarters of living Cambodians are too young to even remember Pol Pot.

But they'll have no trouble remembering the US bombings; it's a gift that keeps on giving. Those millions of tons of bombs that were dropped did not all detonate. Some experts estimate that 30 percent of them still lie in the jungle waiting to explode.

And they do, with deadly regularity. There are forty thousand amputees in Cambodia today, almost all of them victims of UXOs—unexploded ordnance. There will be many more amputees for decades to come.

“History,” as Winston Churchill tartly observed, “is written by the victors.”

How true. That's why no memorial on the face of the earth marks the passing of Pol Pot.

And Henry Kissinger, the architect of the Cambodian Secret War?

Why, he won the Nobel Prize for Peace.