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Atwood: You must know how much it pains me to do this, but after the most recent injuries to both Elvis Andrus AND Corey Seager ( si non fortuna velim fortuna omnino! ) I have found that my team, The Bad Feminists, is in need of some help at shortstop. Thusly compromised, I have no alternative but to attempt to discuss the possibility of a trade with you.
Me: You know, I really don’t have a clue how much it pains you to open a chat window with me. Please describe.
Atwood: It feels as if am a lone tree burning on the desert.
Me: A really ancient, worn out and desiccated tree? One that’s been completely abandoned by all the other trees that used to respect her but now subtweet her because they think her work is over-rated and old fashioned? A tree that just decided to go ahead and set herself on fire because let’s be honest, nobody was even going to notice?
Atwood: No, not that tree.
Me: Sounds like that tree.
Atwood: Your ability to evaluate the world around you is very poor. It’s why your team always finishes at the bottom of the league and you’re in a constant, emasculating state of rebuilding. It’s your cycle of pointlessness, part of what feeds your rage.
Me: I can’t remember– maybe because you look so much alike– but was it you who won the Nobel prize for literature or that singer Bob Dylan?
He might have come along after your time, so here’s a little video of him to ensure you have a clear, very clear picture, of the great literary talent who bested you for the Nobel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJymBJ_5iUg
Atwood: I am interested in acquiring New York Mets infielder Asdrubel Cabrera from you, and as you obviously have no chance of winning this year, I’ll give you a couple of promising, young players who you can use next year in exchange for him.
Me: No.
Atwood: Without even hearing who those players are?
Me: I’m not out of contention yet.
Atwood: Yes you are. You’ve never been in contention.
Me: I WON’T BE BULLIED!!!
Atwood: Is that what’s been happening to you? You’ve been bullied into failure again and again and again? That daily video chat with your mother each morning, it’s not really helping you organize your life and establish your own goals, is it? No? Well ask yourself, is it your mother refusing to trade me Cabrera, or is it you, Michael?
Me: Look, I’ll give you Joe Panik for Jake Baurers and Nick Williams.
Atwood: NO! As the great Aeschylus said, “ I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery!” You are a cheat, a blackguard! Panik just had thumb surgery and is out for the next two months! He’s worthless to me! Cabrera for Bauers and Williams, that’s it. Take it or leave it!!
Me: Can you arrange for me to meet Elisabeth Moss?
Atwood: I refuse to pimp out the wonderful actress from the award winning TV show, based on my award winning book, The Handmaid’s Tale, to you!
Me: You will if you want Asdrubel Cabrera in your lineup.
Atwood: You wouldn’t be allowed to make eye contact with her or touch her, you know.
Me: Jesus, of course I know that!
Atwood: I will think on the matter. You are dismissed.
]]>How could that be?
Look at her.
She’s stunning.
I, of course, had the blunt interests of a boy who knew nothing about women or sex– although I was very interested in both– and I simply accepted Hollywood’s casual objectification of these mysteries. I didn’t know somebody was attractive unless Hollywood signalled to me that they were, something they usually did by a display of nudity. And so the promise of Jessica Lange, Kim Basinger or Jamie Lee Curtis taking off their top in some accessible, high velocity movie was simply too much for me to resist.
Streep, who even at a young age seemed to be playing adults rather than sex toys for naive adolescents, was cast in the sort of films that my parents might be interested in, in “prestige” films, and even though she was of the same general age as all the other celebrities I lusted after, she was stood apart from them, a European cousin, or something.
As an adult I came to love Meryl Streep. Not so much for her acting, which was always somehow obscured for me by her reputation for “acting,” but for her presence. Talented, charismatic and beautiful, she’s also fantastically articulate and charming, and like everybody else I was super keen to hear her speak at the Golden Globes.
Her speech was widely celebrated.
Meryl Streep, Hollywood’s single-combat hero, called to our better angels, and as we sat there listening it was as if the Stature of Liberty herself was speaking. Expecting to love every word of it, I was surprised to discover that I did not.
Although she might have been joking when she referred to the roomful of beautiful, insanely wealthy and adored people sitting before her as, “The most vilified segment of American society,” it made me roll my eyes . Whether she intended it with any irony or not is unclear, but the thrust of her argument was that Hollywood, full of outsiders and foreigners, was representative of some sort of scrappy refugee success story rather than a consumerist ideal of near-unattainable privilege. She continued, saying that if Trump had his way, all America would have left would be football and mixed martial arts– and as she said this, her voice rising in certainty, finger wagging, she admonished, “Which are not the arts!”
The home crowd cheered.
I don’t know.
I had thought I was the home crowd, too, but was I supposed to believe that actors were rescuing America from the things that the people who lived there liked? That football and MMA were unworthy to watch unless they were recreated in movie format starring celebrities?
Something like that?
I wasn’t sure.
Her audience was rapt, hanging on every word. And they were all so beautiful and dewy, so earnest and self-congratulatory in expression, so not of this earth that I imagined them separating from the rest of the world and rising up, up, up in some magical balloon that they knew the rest of us, so smitten, would never be able to let go of.
Her condemnation of Trump’s nascent war on journalism struck me as wanting, too, because there is likely no industry that succeeds so brilliantly at manipulating the press as does Hollywood. The Hollywood Foreign Press, who are responsible for the Golden Globes, are little more than a marketing wing for the industry, trading off favourable stories for glamorous access.
When we see our celebrities on the red carpet refusing to be objectified by not revealing who made their outfit and thus striking a blow for equal rights, we have to keep in mind that they’re still accepting money to advertise that dress.
Hollywood is about money.
Period.
If art or diversity or empathy is a byproduct of this pursuit, all the better, but if Meryl Streep were being honest with herself and the rest of us, she might acknowledge that she, like Trump, depends on a compliant media to promote her work and spin her narratives.
And so it goes.
Everything touches everything else.
It’s not like Streep was saying anything crazy, though. She was trying to do good, but her blind spots were, well, Hollywood in scope. Her words were tangled in contradictions, a stinging disregard for those who might not agree with her, and an imperious detachment from the pedestrian, discount store lives the rest of us struggle to lead, and that actually demoralized me.
Politicians and actors, I have found out, have all too much in common.
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Here is a quote from his column in the Sun newspaper, “… if some old bigot from a backwoods village in Pakistan or Somalia doesn’t want to respect Canada, that’s where our schools come in and teach those bigots’ kids and grandkids what it means to be Canadian.”
I will now provide you with a collection of holiday messages (quotes from columns) from Ezra Levant over the course of the last year:
Christmas Day: “ Look, I get that Muslims and atheists and homosexuals might not have it in them to honour the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the cross for THEIR sins, but the least they could do is get into the spirit, buy a few things and keep this damn economy growing! You’re in this country now!”
New Year’s Day: “ The First Nations People never had any sense of time. They didn’t have a calendar! Everything was just “now” with them. Have you ever tried to have a meeting with one of them? It’s next to impossible, they just don’t “get” time, so why on earth should they get this holiday?”
Family Day: “ Gay couples cannot biologically create families. End of story. This is not a holiday for them. They and their rainbow tattoos are not wanted, and for the record, I have never had gay sex, never even been curious, not even when I was alone in that bus station in Minnesota and it was just me and that Mormon missionary and the light above us, swaying slightly in the summer breeze, kept flickering, as if a suggestion.”
St. Patrick’s Day: “The Irish are awesome. Nobody can drink like them, not even the Russians, and especially not the Indians. If there was a drinking Olympics, and there should be, the Irish would win every year. They deserve three holidays. I had an Irish girlfriend in University, Shelagh, and she was a wild one, if you know what I mean.”
(Shelagh looked like a combination of these two)
Easter: “ And now the Vegans and Vegetarians want to take away our Easter eggs. They can suck my dick.”
Canada Day: “ Canada is a truly beautiful country. Have you ever seen a good-looking Muslim woman? I have not. That religion is not producing any Kim Kardashians, that’s for sure, and if they are, they must hide them up in the hills with all the other terrorists.”
Labour Day: “It’s a statistical fact, black people rarely work and they shouldn’t get any of the benefits of the holiday until they get their numbers up. We’ve been carrying them long enough!”
Thanksgiving: “The Feminazis would have you believe in something they call “White Male Privilege.” Well, it was white males who built this country and provided the sperm that made your families, so I want to say that I am thankful for them and if they have a little bit of privilege, it’s because they earned it!”
I have been a huge fan of yours ever since Winter’s Bone. You are my Ozark Mountains, and our substantial difference in age, looks and talent does not make the purity of my affection creepy. It makes it real, and you Jennifer Lawrence are real. We should be together.
Michael Murray
Dear Jennifer:
I dreamed that you and I were walking along a beach together, holding hands. I was worried that a small sand crab might bite one of your bare feet, but you weren’t. “Hush now, my little turtle, “ you said, the salt air breezing through your hair.
Michael Murray
Dear Jennifer:
I saw you in The Hunger Games and I have to say, “I’m hungry for you!” Haha! 
No, that would be creepy and I’m not creepy. Would you come to my birthday party? If the answer is yes, please where a white dress in your next televised appearance, but black if it’s no.
Michael Murray
Dear Jennifer:
I consider myself a feminist and believe in equal rights for women. I just want you to know that. I would fight for your rights.
Michael Murray
PS: Anne Hathaway is a bitch
Dear Jennifer:
I think it’s really cool that you served as an assistant nurse at the summer camp your mother ran while growing up. I tell you, if I was attending that camp, I would have been sick with stomach problems all the time! You should star in a movie about a nurse who falls in love with an older hernia patient and then has a forbidden and torrid affair with him. I have some drawings and notes if you’d like to see them.
Michael Murray
PS: Please send an autographed photograph.
Dear Jennifer:
The other day I had a dream that some breed of super rats were attacking me. I was valiantly fighting them off, but there were too many of them and all I could feel were their horrible teeth and claws slashing at me. And then you came into the room and everything smelled like pumpkins and the rats vanished. Holding hands, we ran together into a forest, the sound of waterfalls in the distance.
Michael Murray
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As many of you know, Rob Ford and I went to Carleton University in Ottawa at the same time and were last call drinking buddies. Although we’ve never had a sober conversation, we developed a strange but resilient friendship, one that sees us communicate even to this day. Whenever one of us is drinking alone, we often go on-line to chat with one another, a sort of nostalgic slur back to the good old days.
At about 3:00 am on Saturday, as Toronto’s Nuit Blanche arts festival was winding down, I got this message from Rob:
The Mayor: Her Mur, you there? You go to the French thing last night?
Me: Rob! You mean Nuit Blanche?
The Mayor: Yeah, the farts festival.
Me: What were you doing there? You’re not a fart fan!
The Mayor: Who says?? BTFSPLK!!!! LOLOLO!! Hey, uever hit a raccoon with a rock?
Me: Tried to, but always missed.
The Mayor: Always threw like a girl, Murray! Honest to god, thought ur a fag until we went to that peeler together!
Me: Juicy Lucy’s.
The Mayor: Loved that place. Wanted Sylvie so baaaddd!!!
Me: What about the raccoon?
The Mayor: Pegged it right in the head, thing fell off the fire escape. I was a goddamn hero, but the press never runs those stories.
Me: Slobber, you should have been the quarterback.
The Mayor: Always the QB inside, Mur, u know that.
Me: So how was your night of arts?
The Mayor: Fuckin’ AWESOME!!!
Me: What’d ya see?
The Mayor: My brother and I dressed up as Droogs from a Clockwork Orange!! Got hammered!
Me: You gotta always hide from the press, eh?
The Mayor: Always wanted to be a Droog. Relate to the Droog. DROOOOOOGGG!!
Me: DROOOOOGG!!
The Mayor: We tipped over some shitter that some dick was in.
Me: He crossed the wrong fucking Droogs!
The Mayor: Ain’t that the truth! Doug and I were yelling at some chick to show us her tits and then this fancy Charlie got all feminazi on us so we taught him a lesson.
Me: You ‘da Mayor!!
The Mayor: Fuckin’ right, little buddy. And let me tell you, if that pirate girl Justin Trudeau runs for Prime Minisiter, I’m quitting this job and running against him. Show him what a real man smells like! Ford’s Fist, Fucker, Ford’s Fist. Outta Rye, catch ya later little buddy!
