False Premises, Thurston Howell III, and Toronto's New Mayor

Where Has all the Empathy Gone?

Toronto has a new mayor. Our previous mayor stepped down earlier this year because he had an affair with a much-younger staffer and thus, ‘twas necessary for him to resign his pzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…oh, I’m sorry. My head just hit the keyboard. Municipal politics, y’all. I honestly never understood why our philandering mayor had to quit. He was a bit of a pill, which suits Toronto. I always rather liked him. But quit he did and he vowed to make it up to his lovely wife of many years. (I wonder how that is going.) So we had an off-brand/off-schedule election in which there were approximately 72,000 candidates, including a couple of people I know and for whom/with whom I have even worked.

I did not vote for Olivia Chow, our new mayor, in spite of her having promised to fix our housing, transport, mental health, pothole, baked goods, substance abuse, fashion, crime and niceness problems. It all sounds good, but I am married to an economist, which means I have it on good authority that most of her economic plans will make things worse or are ridiculously pie-in-the-sky. (Note: I will be thrilled to be proven wrong.) I do love that she has promised to make our city more caring - we need that. She hasn’t said how, but I’m assuming we are getting all new people and all current Torontonians will have to move elsewhere. Seriously, this city isn’t so bad. I have lived in some massive conurbations - Paris, Istanbul - and spent a good deal of time in another - Tokyo - and Toronto is fairly peaceable, if ugly and bland. That said, I will give credit to Chow for something she did over a decade ago: she defended female newscasters on the Sun News Network (RIP) when the Toronto media puritans went after them for baring flesh. How much flesh? Well, some of them didn’t wear blazers so we had to see their arms. (Brigitte Pellerin wrote something related to this a while back - highly recommended.) I always appreciated that, because Chow was effectively defending employees of a network to which she was ideologically opposed (and vice versa). She was also being a consistent feminist.

Speaking of caring, how about the lack thereof for the victims on the Titan submersible? I could have predicted, sadly, the nasty comments oozing envy, the lack of kindness and empathy (much of it from people with “choose kindness” on their social media profiles), given that all who died were incredibly wealthy. According to psychotics on the internet, wealth means that you deserve what befalls you and a certain level of glee should be expressed upon your grisly death. It does seem that safety issues were skirted by Stockton Rush (I see lawsuits on the horizon, despite the waiver all aboard signed, a waiver that mentioned death several times), but how does this justify the lack of compassion for those who died and those they left behind? Particularly frustrating was the depiction of the passengers as caricatures, a quintet of Thurston Howell IIIs, arrogant, cartoonish and selfish. A cursory look at the victims’ lives reveals that all were philanthropists, innovators, contributors, involved in their communities, loved by friends and now missed by many. To be clear, I think what they did was stupid. You would not catch me bungee jumping, getting into a submersible, climbing Mount Everest - though I did once start to climb Mount Fuji. This was in a highly protected way, with guides and a group and a promise that at any point I could say, “enough.” Which I did. But I am a woman, and, in general, men take bigger risks, die younger, play more, have more accidents, invent more, discover more, create more works of art, do more dumb stuff, explore more, chase after thrills, many of the pointless variety but many that bring us so much (can you say “Magellan”?).

[The ocean, looking deceptively peaceful - other than the Minke whale in the distance. Photo: Rondi Adamson, 2018]

Along with “ha ha, rich people died,” the Titan launched a thousand false premises/false comparisons, a la, there has been no coverage of the migrant ship tragedy off the coast of Greece because the media only cares about rich people. Oh man. There is so much wrong about that take - it is one of those “worst possible takes” I wrote about in a previous piece. First of all, there was plenty of coverage of the migrant tragedy. If you are not finding it, that might say more about your reading/viewing general media habits than anything else. I read numerous articles - and followed much broadcast coverage, particularly on Italian television - of the migrant ship, handled with great sensitivity. Should there have been more coverage? Certainly. Second, this is a false comparison, a false dichotomy. One does not take away from the other. Both involved precious lives lost - in the case of the migrants, including many children placed in the hold - and we can care about both and cover both. It would not have helped any migrants anywhere to ignore the events off the coast of Newfoundland. The situations are entirely different: in the initial days of the submersible one believed there was the hope of finding them alive. The heartbreaking migrant event saw immediate deaths and limited time in which people could be saved. (In a great twist, 100 people in this case were saved by a yacht.)

Further, the stories of migrants trying to reach Europe are ongoing. I have spent a lot of time in Italy these past years and can remember at least three separate occasions when everyone at the university I was attending stood in silence to honour the victims of similar disasters. One can sneer and say, “that helps no one,” but it does show that there is mourning and awareness. This issue also involves debate about sensible policies to prevent/minimize such occurrences. How do we stop traffickers? Can we stop the boats? (Read here about Australia’s relative success in this regard.) Should there be more centralized rescue operations? More preparedness? Absolutely, but when news stories continue (see war, Ukraine) and lack immediate or easy answers, people tire of them. (Kind of like in one’s life.) One-time, freakish events are another matter.