Just listening to Dave Breakenridge filling in for Dave Rutherford on local A.M. talk radio station 630 CHED. On this fine morning in Edmonton, he was discussing the transparent political opportunism behind the outpouring of words in the media regarding Jack Layton's recent untimely passing. Now of course political hacks and charitable organizations are going to capitalize upon something as capitulating as the death of a... wait for it... an enigmatic and charismatic career politician; the whole issue vaguely reminded me of a segment from America's Finest News Source:
Excitement Growing Among Beatles Fans For Paul McCartney's Funeral
I understand Jack was really a musician at heart. Playing eight ball and doing music... sounds like my kind of guy. Sitting down with my bowl of my morning oats in front of my computer, I decided to head on over to the CBC's website to get the latest on the late Jack Layton whilst shoveling down my daily ration of porridge. Much to my morbid delight, they had a LIVE video camera aimed at a closed casket, draped over by Our Own Canadian flag.
While there was also streaming audio to accompany the picture, aside from the appreciably low and sombre murmur throughout Toronto City Hall on this day, all that I could hear through my PC's Cambridge Soundworks speakers were the occasional bursts of rapid-fire automatic shutters admitting light through their zoom lenses- photo journalists hoping to capture those elusive instances of immensely genuine sorrow to replay on the evening news.
Groups of three to five mourners at a time were corralled into the peripheries of the live streaming video camera to pay their last (or maybe their first and last) respects to good old Jack before shuffling off to the job postings board or heading out to a demonstration or whatever. Each group had a good twenty seconds or so to stand in quiet contemplation... fellow politicians, friends, strangers, families, old grannies, union guys... even Olivia Chow was there.
Twenty seconds to stand there, pray, bow the head, drape scarves over the flags in the background, whatever- before filing off... just enough time for a quick once over from the biometric scanning hardware that we can only presume the evil "Harper Government" insisted be covertly installed for the event. Why? I tell you it's elementary, my Dear Reader, the scores of minority government supporters gathering in one place presented an irresistible golden opportunity for our Canadian Department of Immeasurable Doom to mine some good image data on minority government supporters, and to possibly help identify those few renegades who might not have a profile on Facebook yet. City Hall was a proper hotbed of folks who might be potentially threatening to our Majority Conservative Empire today. Sign the book, stand by the coffin, and move on through. Anyway, you could sure hear those cameras going off every time one of the more expressive mourners in the crowd shed a few crocodile tears as they all lined up alongside the coffin to pay respects.
While naught could I afford at this time to fly out East to share this outpouring of grievous emotion in person with my fellow Canadians, at least I could indulge my own voyeuristic self for a while from behind the computer screen and take a few "pictures" (screenshots) of my own thanks to CBC's coverage of this sad event. It was almost like being there in person, but without having to engage in idle chit-chat with anyone stinky, and while enjoying the sort of comfort only a steaming bowl of cereal in front of oneself can provide. Somehow I doubt they'd allow me to bring an open bowl of hot porridge through Toronto's City Hall?
Between big spoonfuls of oats and brown sugar, I would hit the [Prt Scr] to capture the following images from this mournful promenade of people from all walks of life. This impressive turnout could only be a testament to Jack Layton having truly been a man of a certain kind of people:
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R.I.P Jack Layton - July 18, 1950 – August 22, 2011.
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