Tim Gunn did one. Hillary Clinton did one. Hell, Barack Obama did one. Seems as though making an It Gets Better video has become the kindness trend of the year, and Canadian celebrity gays refuse to be left behind. A new video released yesterday features Rick Mercer, Rex Harrington, Diane Flacks, George Smitherman (still sadly wearing his mayoral campaign button), Tommy Smythe, Enza Anderson, the cast of MTV’s 1g5g, Joeffer Caoc, David Dixon, Deb Pearce and Peter Fallico all discussing how much their lives improved as they came out, grew up and gained confidence. The It Gets Better project was kicked off a few months ago by American sex columnist Dan Savage as a reaction to a spike in suicides among teenage homosexuals. The videos assure young gay people that existence improves as life goes on.
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Is John Tory ready to concede that his 15 minutes is up—again?
Early on, we called John Tory‘s mayoral indecision a “Hamlet act.” Well, it now looks like Tory might finally have read the play, only to discover what the price of waffling can be. According to a Toronto Star blog, Tory is now leaning—once again—towards no.
The source said his enthusiasm has waned, apparently after hearing sobering advice that he should have announced and started organizing earlier, the reality that most of his advisers are committed to other candidates and won’t defect, and that [Rob] Ford won’t drop out under any circumstances. In fact, Ford, a past ardent Tory supporter who entered the race only after Tory said in January he was staying out, has been signalling that his old friend would be in for a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle battle.
Tory is also aware of the haunting prospect of coming up short yet again. After losing a provincial byelection last year, he resigned as leader of Ontario’s PC party, and in 2003, Tory lost the mayoral election to David Miller.
Tory has oscillated pretty wildly throughout 2010, so we’re most inclined to take his lastest musings with a grain of salt (he’s got another month before the city’s registration closes). But if Tory was only leaning towards running because he thought Ford would drop out, this starts to feel more solid. Ford gives every appearance of being in this race for the duration, and not-so-gently let it slip that Tory would get no quarter from Ford and his weird YouTube ads.
This whole Tory situation reminds us of when, in the midst of the pitched battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats in the U.S. started yearning for Al Gore to jump in to the race and unite both sides. Of course, that never happened and the Web-savvy upstart beat the candidate who long ago thought she had the thing wrapped up.
Of course, we’re not sure if this counts as Web-savvy.
• Consultations lead Tory to reconsider mayoral run [Toronto Star]
America’s newest pastime: driving 10 hours to Canada for mangoes
Fruits of their neighbour: honey mangoes on display at a London market (Image: Jay Bergesen)
This week’s example of the “U.S. acknowledges Canada’s existence” trend comes in the form of mangoes, which seem to be right up there with prescription drugs on the list of items that Americans are willing to cross the border to buy. The Star reports that some Yanks are so in love with the fruit—Pakistani ones, to be exact—that they’re driving to Toronto to load up on cases of the stuff because the U.S. banned them for not meeting pest control standards.
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Toronto hating gets an embossed stamp: U.S. State Department says stay away during the G20
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Torontonians woke up this morning to find that the U.S. State Department had put our fair city on the same list as Jamaica and Ethiopia, thanks to the G20 summit. In the language of the U.S. government, travel alerts are usually reserved for “natural disasters, terrorist attacks, coups, anniversaries of terrorist events, election-related demonstrations or violence,” as well as less dramatic stuff, like the World Cup (South Africa currently has a travel alert). Of course, the rest of Canada has wanted people to stay out of Toronto for decades now.
Michelle Obama doesn’t wear pantyhose, so neither should anyone else
(Image: Steve Newman)
The latest in First World problems: the decline of pantyhose because Michelle Obama doesn’t wear them. The First Lady is not the only woman to shun nylons; a trend piece in The Charlotte Observer (obviously they’ve never heard of mantyhose in South Carolina) points to women working in banks who are avoiding them because the risk of runs defeats the intention of making legs look silkier. On the other hand, an “executive stylist” (a very niche job title, by the way) says wearing hose is still a must for women in powerful positions, like Hillary Clinton. “You’re never going to see them without hose on. It’s like a man in a three-piece suit with lace-up shoes and no socks.” Hear that, ladies? Aspiring first ladies should go bare-legged, while future secretaries of state should stock up on nylons.
• Are pantyhose on their last legs? [The Charlotte Observer via Toronto Star ]
Media has a week of field days as Clinton shows Harper what real opposition looks like
Iggy, take notes. Stephen Harper learned what it’s like to have real opposition in front of him this week as Hillary Clinton criticized Canada’s position on the three A’s: Afghanistan, abortion and the Arctic. The Canadian media couldn’t get enough, refracting the U.S. Secretary of State’s star power off every front page in town. TV was no different, with Clinton bringing her not-so-subtle plea for Canada to reconsider its 2011 withdrawal from Afghanistan to The Hour on Tuesday:
I’m not going to sit here and tell you we’re happy about it because…that wouldn’t be telling you the truth. We’d love to have Canada stay in this fight with us. But again, you know, you’ve got your own considerations, and we respect that.
Sarah Palin invokes God while defending meat eating, Timothy’s World Coffee sold, the $1-million cow
Famed meat lover Sarah Palin (Photo by Roger H. Goun)
• Sarah Palin takes aim at vegetarians in her highly anticipated memoir, Going Rogue. The moose-hunting former governor’s justification for being a meat eater: “If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?” Perhaps Palin should present her infallible logic to Hillary Clinton over carnivorous scones when the two meet for coffee. [Examiner]
• Paris no longer reigns supreme as the Michelin star capital of the world. With 11 three-star restaurants, Tokyo has inched ahead of the City of Light, which houses a meagre 10. Some observers say that comparing the two cities isn’t fair, as Tokyo is home to about 160,000 restaurants—about four times as many as Paris. [Bloomberg]
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