July/August 2007 Bibliographies

Moneybags
Bruce Livesey
pp. 36-43

If income inequality seems like a big story this year, it’s in part because lefty think tank Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has received funding to study and publicize the issue. Check out their inequality home page, Growinggap.ca, which links to a riveting blog. The ndp are doing their part with this television ad on what they call the “prosperity gap.” They’ve also successfully lobbied the Human Resources and Social Development Committee for a series of hearings slated for the fall.

Economist Dean Baker’s blog, Beat the Press, covers income inequality as well as the American press’s wretched coverage of economic issues in punchy, accessible language. His 1996 book on inequality, The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government To Stay Rich and Get Richer, is available in paperback and as a free download. This year Baker published The United States Since 1980, a more academic treatment of similar themes.

If statistics aren’t your cup of chai, you might prefer the voyeuristic pleasures of the 1987 Hollywood classic Sex Lives of the Rich and Beautiful. Or, to see the ravages of inequality in Latin America rendered into aesthetically pleasing violence, try the more recent City of God, best enjoyed with a fistful of Bravaras.

Of course, not everyone’s against the super-rich. Conrad Black’s 2003 biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (his company paid US $8 million to buy FDR’s papers) has been widely admired. Ken Whyte, whom Black hired to run
Saturday Night (RIP) and then the National Post, is currently employing Black’s wife Barbara Amiel as a columnist at Maclean’s.


3D Vision
Taylor Owen and Patrick Travers
pp. 44-49

One of the principal contributors to the International Security Assistance Force (isaf), Canada has suffered the second-highest casualty rate of any allied nation in Afghanistan. Canada has deployed three successive missions to Afghanistan and committed a total of 15,000 troops to combat, making it the largest Canadian military engagement since the Korean War.

Though Canada’s two main political parties are unanimous in their official support for the mission, Canadians themselves are consistently divided over Afghanistan, evidenced by regular polling conducted by Decima Research, Ipsos-Reid, Angus Reid Strategies, SES Research, and the Strategic Counsel.

Further discussion of Canada’s 3D strategy can be found in the December 2006-January 2007 issue of Policy Options, which includes essays by defence experts Sean Maloney and Desmond Morto, and in Peter Pigott’s Canada in Afghanistan: The War So Far (2007). Readers more interested in Afghanistan’s pre-9/11 history should look to military historian Stephen Tanner’s Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban.


Charisma
Jeff Ryan
pp. 50-54

The study of charisma — defining it, deconstructing it, quantifying it — can be traced back to the work of 19th century sociologist Max Weber, who called it the “gift of grace.” In Monitor on Psychology’s “The Science of Savoir Faire,” Mark Greer provides a brief overview of charisma studies since then, citing various schemes that have been developed to measure this seemingly immeasurable quality, including the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and the (90-item!) Social Skills Inventory. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the article for a list of scholarly articles on the subject.

If scoring on ninety variables seems a little too involved, stick with Irvine Schiffer’s eight “ingredient” system, laid out in 1973’s Charisma: A Psychoanalytic Look at Mass Society. His analysis is grounded in historical examples as well as then-contemporary politics, but it still provides plenty of grist for conversation about the charisma (or lack thereof) of today’s politicians.

The Rick Mercer Report is a favorite venue for Canada’s leaders to stage their playfulness. For the October 31, 2006 episode, Stephen Harper invited Mercer to 24 Sussex for a sleepover and read the jammy-attired comedian bedtime stories. Elizabeth May poked a little fun at herself on the October 17 episode that year when she fired up a chainsaw and took down a tree, commenting, “it’s a heady sense of power.” More recently, Stéphane Dion attempted self-deprecation somewhat less successfully by discussing global warming with Mercer while soaking up UV rays from sun reflectors (January 9, 2007). Video clips are available at the rmr archives.

It’s widely accepted that Pierre Trudeau set the standard for charismatic Canadian leaders and finding literature on the subject isn’t difficult. Finding arguments that complicate the image of Canada’s rose-toting, pirouetting, banister-sliding, backflipping, and bird-flipping prime minister is appreciably more difficult. However, following Trudeau’s death in 2000, University of Toronto political economy professor Stephen Clarkson posted an essay on news@UofT suggesting that Trudeau’s charisma did not rest entirely in his person, but that the Canadian public projected their own longings and hopes onto him.


Bob Dylan Goes Tubing
Marni Jackson