Toronto Sun applauds the appointment of a white male Governor General

An editorial in the Toronto Sun is praising Harper for his choosing David Johnston to be the next Governor General of Canada. This article praises him, not because of Dr. Johnston's past career or what he can bring to the position, but because he is a white male.

An old white guy for Governor General?

How novel, and yet how brilliant of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In fact, we're giving him a standing ovation. Right now.

Everyone on their feet!

In an age when the federal civil service has taken affirmative action to the extreme, with preference in the federal bureaucracy given to those who are bilingual -- preferably francophone, of course -- or persons of colour, or disabled or aboriginal, the appointment of David Johnston as Canada's next Governor General is a historic breakthrough.

You, like us, have no doubt seen the federal career ads where, written in invisible ink, are the words, "white men need not apply."

Well, this appointment trumps it all.

Can we really say that we have any preference to women, persons of colour, disabled or aboriginal people within Canadian politics? Granted, the past two Governor Generals were not white men, but look at the other positions within the country.

The only female Prime Minister was appointed until an election could be held, not elected. The House of Commons is currently only 22% female. The most recent detailed information I could find on other demographics was a study conducted by Jerome Black in the Canadian Parliamentary Review, which showed that in 2000 only 1.7% of MPs were aboriginal (down from 2.3% in 1997), and 5.6% were members of visible minorities, a term which is not explicitly defined in the study, (down from 6.3% in 1997). It is not a good sign when these numbers are decreasing. Also, it seems there have only been 3 MPs with disabilities.

Looking for these statistics, I was very surprised by how little information there is on the demographics of Members of Parliament... I can find a lot on how many women are in parliament, but very few other statistics that aren't related to provinces or political parties.

I'm not even going to go into wage gaps to show how well affirmative action, which, to my knowledge, has never existed in Canada, has worked to equal the playing field, but suffice to say that white men have a much higher income than any other group (lots of info with Statistics Canada if anyone is doubting this claim- check it out now before the end of the mandatory long form in the census further skews much of their results).

It is interesting that elected officials seem to be white men, and other people tend to get appointed to their positions. It is reflective of the authority that is given to white men, especially in that as you go to lower levels of government (provincial, municipal), you get a wider representation from other groups.

I'm not suggesting that David Johnston can't do the job... I have done very little research on him and am not sure what he stands for. He might be great, however, I have my doubts... first, because he was chosen by Harper, and secondly, because I am not too fond of university administrators as a group (comes with the territory of being active in the GTA union, I guess). I just don't think we should be happy that Harper appointed someone simply because they are a white male. We see enough white men in parliament as it is.

Still trying to decide what I think about Lady Gaga...

I saw this great video with a male acapella group singing a Lady Gaga medley (mostly Bad Romance)



I thought I'd use it as an intro to some thoughts on Lady Gaga. I have to admit, I am not overly familiar with her as an artist; I have heard her songs that regularly play on the radio, I play Pokerface on the piano and Bad Romance on the guitar, and I find her music fun to dance to, but I do not have any of her albums, nor do I have her songs on my playlist. What I have been following more closely is some of the discussions around whether or not she is a feminist.

She claimed that she is not a feminist, saying "I'm not a feminist - I, I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars and muscle cars..." Then, she apparently realized that loving men and being a feminist are not incompatible because she later said "I'm getting the sense that you're a little bit of a feminist, like I am, which is good" and goes on to discuss how the music business can be different for women than it is for men.

Another thing she did that I think is great is alternate representations of people with disabilities (found here), which, on the one hand, show interesting images of different types of bodies that do not entirely fit in to "normal" images within pop culture. On the other hand, some argue that she is sexualizing the disabled body (which may or may not be a problem).




I think my favorite thing about Lady Gaga is how she takes images typically found within pop culture, such as poses or fashion, and changes it just enough to make a different type of image. Yes, she does conform to dominant beauty standards in many ways, I'm not sure she would be all that successful if she didn't, but sometimes I find she changes what would otherwise be a very sexual image just enough to make it different. For example, even though her clothes can be revealing, the weirdness of them takes away what might otherwise be blatant sexuality to turn it into something interesting as opposed to simply fitting into the male gaze.





However, her new video Telephone (found here), seems to conform to a more dominant music narrative, including revealing clothing and tons of product placements... Maybe it could be read differently- it does feature one of the few "butch" lesbian images in modern pop culture, and there could be meaning behind the products and lack of clothing... maybe I just don't get it this time.

Anyway, I'm wondering other people's opinion of her, whether it be related to feminism or academia, or just personal likes/dislikes about her music...