Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2008

…Something about not blogging anymore?

July 20, 2006 at 12:44 am | In media | 8 Comments

All the way back in April 2003, I blogged an entry called I hope nomen est omen not, which described how I learned that my surname is a Yiddish Dutch word derived from the Hebrew word hewel, “a vain cause,” translating colloquially into “trouble.” The word is listed on this site, Hebrew Words in Dutch (via Yiddish). Reading the webmaster’s disclaimer, “Most of the words from the following lists are slang terms, not meant for polite conversation,” didn’t exactly make me feel higher up on any heraldric totem pole, thank-you very much: mud-wrestling seemed more apt.

It has given my atheistic nature pause to consider that a perpetual penchant for getting into trouble is somehow …well, pre-ordained, and there have indeed been times when I wondered whether blogging (or building a crazy wiki) was the equivalent of entering a field filled with the bulls of civility, good manners, and status quo-ness, all the while dressed with a swooping red cape tied around the neck. And yet, to paraphrase every heibelmaker who has gone before me: what the hell? Why not pursue a vain cause?

So: here’s something troubling, taking me back to blogging …

On July 7, Sean Holman of Public Eye Online, a BC-oriented blog /slash/ political_reportage site, reported in his July 7 column, Writing coach written out, that Vivian Smith, a biweekly newspaper columnist for local (but CanWest-owned) daily paper Times-Colonist, was fired.

Clearly, she was fired for exactly the reasons Holman so lucidly lays out: she offended the paternalistic power brokers of Victoria’s allegedly prime industry, tourism. Here’s what happened: Just in time for the lucrative highpoint of Canada Day (July 1) weekend, Vivian Smith wrote a Sunday July 2 column called, “In dear Victoria, the best is often free” (see Holman’s July 7 entry for a full reprint). The column, which had the lightly snarky tone of a blog post, satirised not only her out-of-town visitors (”droolers” from Toronto), but also took on the Big Daddies of Victoria’s tourism industry, viz., the Empress Hotel, the Butchart Gardens, and the newly opened so-called BC Experience. She pointed out how expensive it is to get here (”a C-note” just for the ferry — that’s $100, for a car with mom, dad, and 2 kids), and how expensive it is once you are here. She wrote not a single lie or exaggeration: it was the honest truth. She added:

You may be bunking with relatives (cheap, but strings attached) or in a $200-a-night hotel.

Let’s say you’ve been seduced by the premier’s talk of provincial pride, and want to have a B.C. Experience in the morning. Next, you’d like tea at The Empress, and then spend the later part of the day at the Butchart Gardens.

For a family of four, with two kids over 12, you’d be dropping nearly $350, and that is without breakfast or snacks or souvenirs or transportation or supper. The Empress tea was $48 until yesterday, when it went to FIFTY-FOUR DOLLARS per person for the summer.

After this (and a few more jabs at Tourism, Inc.’s general fleecing of the rubes), she elaborated on all the wonderful things you can do here for free — and believe me, they are plentiful.

Well, on Wednesday July 5, after the weekend, she was fired. Co-incidentally, the day before (Tuesday July 4), the executives of the lampooned tourist traps (all of whom are big-dollar advertisers in the Times-Colonist) had met with the newspaper executives, where they complained to the newspaper about Ms. Smith’s column. Draw your own conclusions, and if you need a hint, see a doctor…

Sean Holman has followed this story up, with several columns:

Tourism slump results in more lost business? on July 11
Flower Power on July 12
Pohle-axed, also on July 12, which refers to the name of the UBC media ethics specialist, Klaus Pohle
The British are coming! on July 17 (which notes that Roy Greenslade (a Guardian UK blogger) had taken up the issue
and Talk of the town, also on July 17, which notes that otherwise, Smith’s firing has hardly made a stir.

That’s what’s so weird about this whole thing. Local journalists have been quiet as mice, except for today’s column in local weekly Monday Magazine by “Dee Penner,” a nom-de-plume, who wrote Composting a columnist.

(Dee Penner reminds me of the quixotic “lily of the valley,” Mr. DePinna, in Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You…)
Notes from a teacher reported the affair on July 13; Canadian Journalist blog on July 14, but in general, it has been awfully quiet around the whole business.

Is this ok?

Not really. The Vivian Smith firing raises all the obvious questions around freedom of the press (and answers them very very depressingly), but it also says a lot about Victoria’s immature economy, and the paternalistic mindset of its entrenched classes who expect to be sheltered from criticism, whether the kind emanating from a free press or the kind coming from the market. I think this story fails to have traction in the press or amongst other (American?) bloggers because our Canadian (dare I say, “Victorian”?) climate of controlled capitalism, which seems “natural” enough to Canadian “entrepreneurs,” is in the final analysis utterly illegible to anyone beyond our shores.
It’s the sort of business-as-usual modus operandus I associate with the cradle-to-grave paternalistic capitalism of early 20th century corporations in, say, …Beverly, Massachusetts: take the United Shoe Machinery Corporation, for example, which ran a whole city according to its mandates. What was good for “The Shoe” (as the USMC was known), was good for Beverly. It hired (and fired) the bulk of the city’s working population, gave them decent jobs, provided amenities, and if you didn’t like it, you did what Puritans had always done since the early 1600s: you left, went somewhere else, and started over. It was paternalistic in the extreme. Worked reasonably well as long as paternalism was in fashion, but somehow things went haywire for it down the road.

Victoria’s tourism industry, too, is like a giant “Shoe”: paternalistic and allergic to criticism. “If you don’t like it, leave” is its mantra.

I’d like to think that this could, that it will change. As my old UBC prof used to say, “You have to learn to take criticism!” Only the immature and the paternalistic think criticism doesn’t apply to them. The former can’t deal with it, and the latter think they should be exempt.

That, in my opinion, is the subtext of this non-conversation happening in Victoria around the firing of Vivian Smith. Old guys in suits run this town — who the heck does Vivian Smith — a woman — think she is, challenging them?
“Baby, you’ve come a long way,” but in Victoria it seems you’re still Daddy’s Girl.