NJN Network

OSCAR SHOWDOWN

By The Trouble with Jerry, Hollywood, CA, USA, Feb 20 2009

Los Angeles – Nearly 50 activists from across the US protested at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) headquarters in Beverly Hills today, demanding to meet with AMPAS officials and to present a petition signed by over 2600 individuals objecting to the plan to grant Jerry Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at this Sunday’s Oscar Awards ceremony. The protesters, mostly people with disabilities, occupied the lobby and refused to leave. Finally, AMPAS Executive Director Bruce Davis was summoned to meet with the group, called The Trouble with Jerry. Lewis has long defended the use of pity as a fund raising tactic. He has also described disabled individuals as “half a person” and referred to a wheelchair as “a steel imprisonment.”
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Jerry Lewis, disability parasite and pariah

Lewis is seen as a parasite by the disability community

From Feminist Response in Disability Advocacy, FRIDA
Los Angeles, Ca. - Disability community leaders from across disability advocacy will protest the decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to grant Jerry Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at this Sunday’s Oscar Awards ceremony. Lewis has described disabled individual is “half a person” and referred to a wheelchair as “a steel imprisonment.

“For more than two decades, disability rights advocates have objected to Lewis’ portrayal of life with a disability as tragic and pathetic. In response, Lewis snarled, “You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”
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Lennie Gallant museum

Think outside the box

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown PEI, Canada, February 18, 2009
Change often brings new opportunities. The 9 years of revenue for Cymbria Lions Club from the French School Board will soon be at an end. Any more recriminations and hostility is a waste of time. Put your heads together and come up with a new plan. There’s always a new idea that can make money. You’ve got a building. What can you do with it? How about a Lennie Gallant Museum, maybe a lobster supper? It would give people a destination to visit in Rustico. You might dedicate some space to selling local artists and artisans. Surely with the focus on Rustico, if you adopt a positive point of view you could attract Federal or Provincial dollars to help transitioning the building to something else. Make lemondade from lemons.

PEI Premier Robert Ghiz, one incompetent political decision after another

Ghiz overheard humming, Now and then there’s a fool such as I.

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, February 16th, 2009

PEI’s Premier Robert Ghiz showed his inexperience and ineptitude by dividing Rustico along linguistic lines and not closing the file quickly. Today he turned down the request of the Commission scolaire de langue française de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard for the a cultural centre to go with their new French school in Rustico. While the money was apparently coming from Heritage Canada, it mattered not to Premier Ghiz. He tried to play Solomon and divided Rustico along language lines, a deft act. The conflict was between the Cymbria Lions Club who were renting an old school building to the French School Board. The Lions fought to retain their $90K per year income from rentals. While the Lions Club could not stop the school from moving to the new building, they could act like a monkey in the works by interfering in the negotiations between the Federal Government, the Province and the Commission scolaire de langue française.
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Protect your right to free speech and freedom of the press over the internet

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, February 16, 2009with story from Canadian Press

Plans to review Federal Canadian regulation of internet and cell phone media is waste of time and dangerous to the economy. While the old economy of newspapers, television networks and cable are dying, the internet is supporting a whole new world of creative media. Government control only benefits the established providers who are boring young Canadians to tears.

Canadian Press reports “The federal broadcast regulator will begin hearings on Tuesday in Gatineau, Que., to review its policy of allowing broadcasting content to be unregulated on the Internet and cellphones. Predictably, there are those who want rules to ensure Canadian content on the Internet and there are others who believe home-grown content already has a presence on the Internet without the encouragement of regulations.”
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Lions serve not fight the community

Fighting the Acadian parents isn’t going to work

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, February 15th, 2009

This is for the Cymbia Lions Club. You lost. You cannot win.

I’m sure that if the Lions put their minds to it, they will come up with lots of great ways to serve the community that don’t block the rights of the Acadian minority.

It should be a win-win for them.

From my read of the comments and players, this is a male versus female battle. Women are arguing for soft issues – culture, language, education, children – and men are arguing about money.
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Carolyn Bertram, happier days when the sun was shining on her backdoor

Some kind of wonderful in hiding this week

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, February 14th, 2009

It may be Valentine’s Day but it’s been Februarius horribilis for Minister Carolyn Bertram. She’s nobody’s favourite dance partner anymore. With all the deftness of a 300 lb ballerina, she has divided the placid waters of Rustico Harbour. She’s taken a Federally funded program and make herself goat of the week. Swift but not sweet Carolyn. Carolyn even has Noella Arsenault, one of the two mothers who whipped Pat Binns in the Supreme Court of Canada, calling for her resignation.

No wonder she sent Richard Brown to announce the funding for the Confederation Centre. Here are the honorable no-shows for the event -

On behalf of the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, Senator the Honourable Michael Duffy (Cavendish, Prince Edward Island) and on behalf of the Honourable Carolyn Bertram, Minister of Communities Cultural Affairs and Labour, Honourable Richard Brown, Minister of Environment, Energy and Forestry today announced funding for the Fathers of Confederation Buildings Trust to continue renovations and infrastructure improvements to the Confederation Centre of the Arts.

If I was Carolyn, an improbable suggestion to be sure, I’d a’ made that safe bet. Everyone would have been all happy happy with the Charlottetown elite’s favourite cultural white elephant. I like the Confed Centre: it’s just too rich for my budget. I like a club where the beer is $3.75 and the show is less than $8. My gal she likes those Confed shows that cost $35 each and the water is $5. I hold out until she buys the tickets. Sometimes she takes me: sometimes she goes with her girl friends. You win some and you win some.
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It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit – but none to be offended by them.

—The Midnight Skulker (B.C. 6/26/2000)

B.C. (Johnny Hart) died April 7, 2007

Once when we were young and the Sunday papers came with colored comics, we cut them out and rubber glued them to the walls of our apartment. B.C. was the most popular probably because it was cynical, satirical very witty. I still remember the punch lines today.

B.C. is calling the baseball game, leaning on a rock. Peter is the color commentator, leaning on a second rock.

B.C. “There’s a high pop fly into the …

Peter “…yellow sun.”

ALBANY, N.Y. – Cartoonist Johnny Hart, whose award-winning “B.C.” comic strip appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers worldwide, died at his home on Saturday. He was 76.

“He had a stroke,” Hart’s wife, Bobby, said on Sunday. “He died at his storyboard.”

“B.C.,” populated by prehistoric cavemen and dinosaurs, was launched in 1958 and eventually appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers with an audience of 100 million, according to Creators Syndicate, Inc., which distributes it.

After he graduated from Union-Endicott High School, Hart met Brant Parker, a young cartoonist who became a prime influence and co-creator with Hart of the “Wizard of Id” comic strip.

Hart enlisted in the Air Force and began producing cartoons for Pacific Stars and Stripes. He sold his first freelance cartoon to the Saturday Evening Post after his discharge from the military in 1954.

Later in his career, some of Hart’s cartoons had religious themes, a reflection of his own Christian faith. That sometimes led to controversy.

A strip published on Easter Sunday in 2001 drew protests from Jewish groups and led several newspapers to drop the strip. The cartoon depicted a menorah transforming into a cross, with accompanying text quoting some of Jesus Christ’s dying words. Critics said it implied that Christianity supersedes Judaism.

Hart said he intended it as a tribute to both faiths.

“He had such an emphasis on kindness, generosity, and patience,” said Richard Newcombe, founder and president of Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles.

Newcombe said Hart was the first cartoonist to sign on when the syndicate was created 20 years ago. “Traditionally, comic strips were owned by syndicates,” Newcombe said. “We were different because we allowed cartoonists to own their own work. It was because of Johnny’s commitment to this idea that made us a success.”

Besides his wife, Hart is survived by two daughters, Patti and Perri. He was a native of Endicott, about 135 miles northwest of New York City, and drew his comic strip at a studio in his home there until the day he died.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

Noted in passing: Jean-Guy Arbique, otherwise known as Guy the Painter from cable TV fame. Everyone in the Maritimes will remember his TV show that taught you how to paint in Guy’s folk style. He made use of some unique tools like ‘P de toilet.’

We were amazed at his technique and conversational style. I’d venture quite a few people tried painting due to his encouragement. Even for non-artists, his entertaining patter kept one glued to the set. Guy was part of the simpler, non-500 channel universe. Guy was a Maritime hero.

It was my unexpected pleasure to spend an evening with him in Rustico a few years back. Chuck and Albert were polishing their act at the local hall. I had a supper invitation from a friend in West Prince. To my delight, I was seated with Maria Bernard, the charming sister of Leonce Bernard our last Lieutenant Governor, and Jean Guy Arbique.

Guy had been off the air for quite some time but I knew the face and voice. I tenuously asked him if he was ‘Guy the Painter’. His congenial ‘yes’ started one of the most pleasant evenings in memory. Guy was still a charmer, a man of wit and a great raconteur. Talking with Jean Guy prepared me to enjoy myself. They must have thought me the silliest man in Rustico that night since I laughed uproariously at Chuck and Albert’s jokes.

There aren’t many Maritimers who don’t remember Guy the Painter with fondness.

Funeral arrangements are at East Prince Funeral Coop