Posts with category ‘Bay Street’

On not being famous at Moses Znaimer’s IdeaCity

It’s a Friday night in Toronto’s Distillery District, a vast commercial, residential and “arts” space installed in a renovated booze factory close to downtown. I’ve come to attend one of Moses Znaimer’s “legendary” IdeaCity parties, held at this time every year as part of a three-day festival attracting “luminaries” to the city. There’s a rather elaborate entry protocol, which involves me standing around a long while waiting to be confirmed. Once in the door, I feel practically naked as I don’t have a giant badge with my name on it indicating that I’ve paid Moses however many thousands of dollars to listen to 20-minute snatches of wisdom selected by him. Among this year’s merchants of wiseness are Margaret Atwood, listed as a “Canadian literary icon”; Christie Hefner, written up as “CEO Playboy Enterprises” (now there’s an idea!); and Betty Krawczyk, “Head Raging Granny.”

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Categories: General, Bay Street, Gossip Hound, Egos
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Posted on June 23, 2008

Peter Munk interview at Indigo goes awry due to rowdy audience member

Balzac’s neatly turned observation that “behind every great fortune there is a crime” has developed into a veritable shibboleth of the activist left. One thing is sure: if you make or inherit a great fortune, it’s a lock you’ll be accused of a great crime. Gates is a monopolist, Murdoch a closet fascist, Thomson a virtual polygamist, and don’t even get me started on all those Russians. Tuesday night in Toronto I saw this phenomenon in action. Peter Munk, whose Barrick Gold Corporation has developed into one of the great Canadian money-spinners of recent times, was interviewed on the stage at Indigo Books. His interlocutor was his daughter, Vanity Fair contributor Nina Munk. The subject of the chat was supposed to be a new book by Munk the Younger and Rachel Gotlieb that is titled The Art of Clairtone and celebrates the design innovations of Peter Munk’s long-defunct stereo company. The evening went more or less as planned, with Nina asking Peter straightforward journalistic questions concerning the content of her book. And then, in a moment, things went haywire.

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Categories: General, Bay Street, Gossip Hound, Egos, Books
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Posted on June 12, 2008

CityTV celebrates Ted Rogers’ 75th birthday by flouting journalistic standards

Canada’s idea of a media mogul (i.e., bland and ruthless), billionaire Ted Rogers (number 173 on the Forbes list, with seven-odd billion dollars), turned 75 years old on Tuesday. Rogers still makes news, and his pursuit of an NFL franchise for Toronto is one of the big business and sports stories of the moment. So when CityTV’s Web site decides to cover its owner’s birthday, while it’s a stretch, it does not beggar all credulity. If you were expecting a bland, pleasantly inoffensive statement of fact, much in keeping with the man himself, then you’d be wrong. CityTV provided a jaw-dropping hagiographic blow job that makes Mark Steyn’s coverage of Conrad Black look like All the President’s Men.

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Categories: General, Bay Street, Television, Internet, Egos
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Posted on May 29, 2008

Just how accurate is Michael Clayton?

If the recent success of Michael Clayton is any indication, the public perception of lawyers breaks down into four archetypes, each represented by a character in the movie: brutal (Sydney Pollack), disappointed (George Clooney), psychotic (Tom Wilkinson) and criminal (Tilda Swinton). It’s probably no coincidence that Clayton’s only Oscar went to Swinton. A piece on the film and its effects on legal culture in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Law Blog reprised a review from Slate:

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Categories: General, Bay Street, Internet, Newspapers, Over the Border
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Posted on February 29, 2008

Welcome to Spectator

A little over half an hour into Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane takes control of the moribund New York Inquirer and fires the editor. On completing his fourth draft of the front page of his maiden edition, Kane turns to his soulmate and dramatic critic Jedediah Leland and reads to him a prospective declaration of principles for the paper: “I’ll provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly. I will also provide them…with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings.”