[FORUM] Petty cruelties

Toronto's 2005 Boxing Day shooting, when members of two rival gangs had a shoot out in downtown Toronto next to the Eaton Centre, injuring six people and killing 15 year old student Jane Creba, has started. (For pictures of the scene of the shooting, go to photographer Raymond Chow's photo set.) The memorials of cards and flowers and stuffed animals piled up in front of the store where she was shot through the shoulder and neck lasted for a couple of weeks, perhaps in part because Yonge and Dunas is such a visible intersection, someplace most people have visited at one point or another (or another ...) in their lives. I myself had toyed with the idea of heading down there that day to check out CDs sales before I decided that I really should finish inscribing the last of my New Year's Day cards.

First, I'd like to express the hope that if the accused are guilty that they'll get at least a little bit of what they gave out.

Second, I'd like to question Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno's take on the way that some people at the scene responded to Creba's death.

There's no way of knowing how many people have Jane Creba dying as their screen saver.

If that sounds totally appalling, it's all in keeping with a current culture of voyeurism and nihilism--a disconnect from decency that, in its broader sense, is what got the pretty 15-year-old killed: the not caring about consequences, the reality TV shamelessness, the at-your-fingertips guns and cellphone cameras.

[. . .]

Const. Angela Kahnt was in her cruiser two blocks away when the radio squawked about shots fired in the area of Yonge and Elm Sts. In fact, she and her partner actually heard the fusillade as it was occurring. Burning rubber to reach the scene, Kahnt jumped out of the vehicle and sprinted the last stretch because it was faster than negotiating the press of people.

"There were people fleeing, people lying on the ground,'' Kahnt told court yesterday, at the murder trial of a 20-year-old who can't be named because he was a minor at the time of the incident.

"They were lying behind the concrete planters, behind garbage bins. I couldn't tell you how many, more than 50 or 60. It was unbelievable."

And, even now, there's incredulity and disgust in her voice: "There was a female who appeared to have been shot. Somebody was working on her. And there were young kids trying to take pictures of the female ... with their cell phones."

DiManno's case for the cruelty in passing of our era strikes me as tendentious: Gossip long predates the Internet and people have managed to be cruel to each other even without cellphone cameras.

That said, might she have a point, if not about the ways that people can be cruel even in passing and then with the speed with which cruelty's effects can be propagated? Discuss.

[URBAN NOTE] Relationship advice?

Walking west past Trinity St. Paul United Church on Bloor Street West this evening, I overheard one young woman talking to anothyer of her peers with an honest passion.

"You know when you get hammered and they steal your ID and they get drunk? I'm so tired of that."

[BRIEF NOTE] "They have one, we want one, too!"

This story (Royson James, "Liberal senator likes Clemons' 'politics of hope'") made it to the front page of today's Sunday Star.

As Canadians avoid the voting booth and look covetously at an exciting U.S. presidential election, political parties here search for the transformational figure that might rouse the electorate from stupor.

Is there an Obama-like figure out there as the federal Liberals seek a replacement for Stéphane Dion? Is one being groomed? Are there candidates not yet in the political pipeline? Or some little-known Palin-esque figure?

Party rules almost guarantee the next Liberal leader will come from the pool of politicos we've seen and heard and tuned out – except young Justin Trudeau, a long shot.

But there must be possibilities – people who might rally young and old, rich and poor, Liberal and Conservative to get enthused about service to one's country, province or city.

People like one Michael (Pinball) Clemons, CEO of the Toronto Argonauts football team, and the effervescent former star football player with the million-dollar smile and irrepressible personality.

Though he's forever running late, sidestepping a killer schedule that would trip up less elusive targets, Clemons doesn't run through airports. Too many people want to stop and chat, pose for pictures, have him touch their child, tell him they love him, preen over him like a baby brother.

[. . .]

Richard Morris, manager of the city's energy efficiency office and a friend, says while Clemons is a grassroots kind of guy, it's the country, not just the city, that needs him.

"His influence is global. This guy could ... listen, Barack Obama has nothing on Mike Clemons, as far as I am concerned," says Morris who's helped politicians organize in the same Chicago precincts where the U.S. presidential hopeful Obama cut his political teeth.

"Mike's about hope, just like Obama. He needs some federal office to lead us to a broader horizon."

Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein, always looking for fresh political blood, has taken note of Clemons.

"He's made a couple of extraordinary speeches to large audiences and people have been mesmerized by him," the senator says.

Notwithstanding the obvious positive attributes of Pinball Clemens, am I alone in thinking that maybe, just maybe, James is trying to draw too direct a parallel between American and Canadian plitics and is revealing a certain Canadian nationalist bend to boot? Discuss.