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Donald Ashman's avatar

In Canada, we have laws that favour domestic artists, be they composers, singers, authors, actors, or whatever.

Many Canadian nationalists suggest this is the only way to promote a distinct Canadian culture.

Yet, we continue to be the home- or the origin- to many fine composers, singers, authors, actors, or whatever.

Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Mordecai Richler, Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood et al are internationally renowned artists who happen to be Canadian.

Many would argue- myself included- that the stringent Canadian content laws produce success for Canadian artists within Canada, but fail to launch artists on a more international scale, as a result of sheer parochialism .

Great essay: an enjoyable romp through a number of topics.

Always a joy.

Benjy Compson's avatar

Everyday I still read the formerly estimable National Review online, I cannot help but wonder what our dear leader W.F.B.W.D….and what would he opine if he were Living in this Kakistocracy/Idiocracracy…that is still the greatest country on Gods Green Earth…in spite of the mobster, I mean monster in the Bada Bing, I mean Oval Office…but he sure as hell would not have forgotten the meaning of two words AGAINST TRUMP…and decline by choice…and go with the crowd like Rich white trash Lowry…just because the megalomaniac had the cosmic fortune to face off against Nurse Ratchet, then Selina Meyer, and get his crony capitalist pig sorry sassafras elected President at the ballot box office. Every time I hear that autographed copy Preppy Handbook carrying Senior Editor cackle about something funny his Don has done I think of Buck making like The General making a Bee Line for that dweeb Neil Reed…and how Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti still cannot be reached for comment…and their real killers

Like a song i like to sing, I sing it for you Narges Mohammadi

“When they kick out your front door

How you gonna come?

With your hands on your head

Or the trigger of your [verbal] gun”

Hat tip Paul Simonon and his blood brothers The Clash

One woman with balls is just the beginning if the end, prayerfully, of the Tehroran regime…but how freedom of The West was won was was not with buttery language, but the barrel of a gun. Here’s hoping and praying as many made in America full metal jackets enter the depraved skulls of monsters that would hurt a beautiful woman like Narges for not believing in The Hadith, or following its war profiteers wicked seventh century edicts. Hope you “Like a Song” Gotta run on. Onward and Upward Jaywalking. Peace through superior mental firepower

David K Taggart's avatar

The Poli Sci faculty at the University of Vermont was a diverse bunch of pinkos, from Leninists to Maoists to Trotskyites. And they were rigorous.

PROF: MR. Taggart, analyze Miss Smith's statement from a Marxist perspective.

ME: Miss Smith and her ilk will be dealt with during the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

PROF: Excellent.

Angie's avatar

Have no idea why I had to get a code to post...sigh

Fun piece...

CynthiaW's avatar

That happens to me sometimes. No idea why.

Angie's avatar

Yeah, it's weird. I was signed in, and I am a subscriber.

RustyEggleston's avatar

As a long-time adult piano student, I was once told there are 3 categories of potential repertoire difficulty: 1) “I can play that;” 2) “I could play that with a couple months of practice;” and 3) “HELL, NO!”

I still play McDowell’s “To a Wild Rose.”

Gottschalk’s “The Banjo” for me?

CATEGORY 3!!

TP's avatar

I once represented the spouse of a man named Keister. Some would say the name fit. I never bothered to ask why his parents hung the name on him.

CynthiaW's avatar

“I listen, from no mortal tongue,

To hear the song the angels sung;"

*shudder*

Is "from no mortal tongue" an adjectival phrase modifying "song"? Or is it an adverbial phrase modifying "to hear"? It can't be modifying "listen" because that would be nonsense.

Even allowing the disclaimer, "It's poetry!" the phrase doesn't belong where it is, weirdly set off by commas, not to mention rhymed with "sung."

Paul Britton's avatar

This all reminds me of Neil Diamond's song "Play Me":

Songs she sang to me

Songs she brang to me

Words that rang in me

Rhymes that sprang from me

Warm the nights

Neil is perhaps not, as a poet, in the same class as Whittier.