In it, I am wearing a costume that is clearly racist and offensive.
This picture was taken from a Christmas Assembly at Lisgar Collegiate in Ottawa, Ontario, and I was performing a rap as an “urban Santa.” Although I was not in black face as some have asserted, my family and I had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii and I had a very uncharacteristic tan. I am deeply apologetic for that triggering tan, the privilege that implies, and for my blatant cultural appropriation.
It is also true that I wrote, “I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A CRAZY CRUSH ON YOU!! in Marie-Therese Vitzhum’s yearbook in 1983. I am deeply embarrassed by my insensitivity to my brothers and sisters who struggle with mental illness. After finishing in the bottom third of the standings in a fantasy hockey league two years ago, I, too, fell into a depression, so I need you to know you have an ally in Michael Murray, not an enemy.
I love you.
I hear you.
And I am listening.
These past behaviours of mine are not in keeping with who I am today or the values I have fought for throughout my career as Commissioner of the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey League. I want to offer my sincerest apology, and to state my absolute commitment to living up to the expectations the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey Community set for me when you elected me Commissioner. I understand why your faith in me has been shaken, and I recognize that it will take time and serious effort to heal the damage this conduct has caused.
I am ready to do that important work.
Humbled and grateful for this teachable moment.
Your fantasy hockey Commissioner,
Michael Murray
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Heidi like to make short statement.
Heidi only a dog.
Everybody think Heidi perfect because she so cute and strong and smart and sexy, but Heidi not perfect. Heidi like Instagram account, just looks like perfect life you’re jealous of. Truth is, some days Heidi actually a BAD DOG, and Heidi not scared to own it.
Heidi now like to address some of accusations being made on social media.
Heidi has engaged in Nonconsensual leg-humping.
It true.
Heidi now understands that even if told she “SuperAdorable,” and, “OHMYGODICANTEVENBELIEVEHOWGORGEOUSYOUAREYOULITTLECHOCOLATEKISSYOU!!” , even if she picked up and kissed on nose and have velvet ears stroked, still not invitation to leg-hump. Also, Heidi now knows that when two-legger sits down, even if two-legger wearing shorts and smell like cheeseburger, it still no consent. Heidi knows even if cheeseburger or ice cream cone spill on leg, STILL not consent.
Heidi gets it.
Heidi learn from mistakes and now ready to listen.
To really listen.
Heidi very sorry for pain she caused and regrets trying to normalize her attempts to assert dominance in pack hierarchies through leg-humping.
Heidi hopes that over time, and with continued hard work, she win back your trust.
]]>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.
]]>returning to the hospital always feels like stepping into a church, into the holy. Everybody there, whether they know it or not, are in a state of pilgrimage, of prayer.
In the atrium a motley assembly of musicians formed. They were a group of people recovering from mental health and addiction issues, with a few ringers tossed in to add some structure to their compositions. The conductor, an energetic and wiry tangle of holistic cliches, worked hard to inspire her students but most of them remained tense, staring flatly at the floor rather than the crowd that had gathered across from them. Their voices were thin and straining, but still, the congregation rose with the music, an original composition called, “Coming Through Darkness.”
And how did they do that?
How did each one of them push trauma to the side to stand where they were that day?
Oh Lord, let their music, that glowing idea, comfort us all.
And then down the hallway there was a display of art created by patients as part of their therapy. Out of all the generic scenes of landscapes and flowers and pets, there was one work that stood out to me.
Mary of the Roses.
As if floating above the others, as if shining.
And I imagined the woman painting it, how with each brush stroke another layer of her anxiety fell away until this new, beatified horizon emerged.
As I left the hospital, a First Nation’s man beating a drum stood outside on the sidewalk, the flames painted on a food truck rising behind him.
We nodded at each other and I remained, watching and listening, as steams of indifferent people passed by.
A tall, homeless man shuffled down the sidewalk and when he walked into the music, without a word he started to dance. First with his fingers. Slow pointing. Cool pointing. And then his body began to move.
His shoulders, his legs, his fingers, his head, all in surprising and beautiful concert with this simple drumming. Suddenly, he was the revelation of hidden genius–he was a burning bush in our midst. He danced for perhaps a minute and then he stopped, and falling back into the broad, rigid silence from which he came, he continued silently through the day.
There was something that seemed miraculous about this, and the drummer and I– the only people who had seen it– grinned at one another.
“It’s part of the magic of the flow, “ the drummer said. “I like to do this in front of the hospital. People are scared and preoccupied, and then they hear the drum calling to their spirit and it lifts them. Spirit takes them places, it unhooks them from their mortal self and for a moment they are free. We are signposts in this world, here to help people find their way.”
Miracles, right that moment, unfolding all across the city.
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