Ed the Sock

It's holiday time, when Pumpkin Spice is replaced with 'candy-cane' lattes and that other seasonal temptation, gingerbread. While I avoid lattes, places they are served and people who drink them, I have a blind spot when it comes to gingerbread.

I admit, I was lured by the smiling cookie-man on the package. Many times this fingerless siren has subverted my common sense and drawn me to products which inevitably mock me with their lack of relationship to anything that remotely registers as tasting like gingerbread.

Now, this isn't like the red flavouring we've accepted as being 'strawberry' or purple type that has come to represent 'grape'. Gingerbread has to taste like gingerbread. There is no wiggle room. And making something only smell like gingerbread doesn't cut it.

So I tried to Gingerbread Oreos. The first one didn't impress me.  think I brought too many pre-conceived notions of what a gingerbread Oreo should taste like. But the rest of the package beckoned.

The second Oreo was much better. It tasted more like gingerbread. As did the third and fourth. To be thorough, I got up to 9 and they all continued to taste sufficiently like gingerbread.

So my recommendation? Eat the second cookie first.

Happy holidays.

No, I'm not defending him, but it was good click-bait and not totally off-topic

As for the standing up, anyone surprised by Bill Cosby's standing ovation in Florida this weekend clearly doesn't pay attention to celebrity culture.

Oh, how I envy you.

Cosby got the big O for the same reason people rushed to defend star athletes against rape charges in the past. It isn't that they don't think the guy is guilty, it's that it's irrelevant to his function in their lives.

Comedians and athletes are entertainers. The daily dungheap most of us call 'life' brings precious few smiles, so when someone finds that ray of sunshine they don't want to lose it to they very thing that it helps them escape from - reality.

That was a long sentence. It's ok if you need a moment to read it again.

So when a celebrity gets outed as a douchebag, fan support isn't about some ardent belief in the db's innocence, it's about the intense self-interest of keeping the entertainer entertaining them. Any obstacle must be Hulk-smashed.

So don't be surprised if Cosby brings more crowds to their feet. The big concern is when he gets them to lay down.

Once more unto the breech....

Sorry for the literary reference. That's no way to start off a written piece.

Another celebrity accused of abusing women. This time it's in America, so it's a real celebrity. And yeah, it makes a difference.

I was quick to believe Lucy DeCouture when she came forward with allegations against Jian Ghomeshi. I'm not so quick to take sides in the Bill Cosby debate. Inconsistent? Sure, whatever. But my reasons are based in the very real differences between American celebrity culture and the passing interest Canadians have in what approximates celebrities here.

So, here's why I bought the charges against Goatmeshi but still not sold on the ones against Cosby.

And believe me, it ain't because I am in awe of Dr. Huxtable. I have hated Bill Cosby's work since before I was born. His stand-up has funny moments, if you're willing to sit through his interminable 'comic stories' for them. To me, his delivery always sounded like someone one drink away from blotto.

"The Cosby Show" didn't charm me either. Antiseptic, contrived, condescending cotton candy nuclear-family social programming. His cutesy faces and idiotic 'dance' in the intro caused my soul to burn with the heat of a thousand suns.

Before the series launched I read an interview with The Cos in the New York Times where he said his motivation was to 're-establish parental authority in sitcoms'. Just what we needed, status quo propaganda. Fuck you, Bill Cosby.

So no, my hesitation to rush to judgment is not an aversion to tarnishing some childhood hero. It's because of the relationship America has with fame.

In Canada, our celebrities carry the same stature as a favourite grade-school teacher. In the US, stars are demigods. Even long-faded faces and peripheral clowns from the reality-show circus carry an aura of magnificence. Fame is magic, it's eternal life. Ordinary people clamour to get a sprinkle of the pixie dust because it makes them special and in America, nobody wants to be ordinary. Ordinary means you haven't tried hard enough.

Or as Nicole Kidman's fame-obsessed character says in Gus Van Sants "To Die For", "(Y)ou aren't anybody in America if you're not on TV."

And that sums up America's Sid-and-Nancy relationship with fame.

Y'know that US TV show Cheaters, that tracked down people of COPS pedigree who were fooling around on their partners? The camera would go right up to the window of the rocking car parked behind 7-11and record the cheater and cheatee in the heat of the deed. Then they'd turn the angry spouse loose on the cheater and watch, like the Christians and the lions.

The people's faces were almost never blurred out. That meant that the people caught on camera SIGNED RELEASE FORMS to allow producers to show them in their glory.

Look at the reality shows which pretty much exist to expose the participants to ridicule. Honey Boo Boo is like the Stepen Fetchit of southern white trash.

In Canada, we can't imagine any inducement strong enough to have our most squalid moments exposed on the boob tube. The sole exception was Speakers Corner (R.I.P) but that was self-inflicted. In the States, "Hey Vern, come look, I'm on the tee-vee" is a social elevation.

So there's no way I'd believe that Canadian women would come forward with allegations against the ex-Q radio asshole unless they were sincere. There's no possible reward, just risk. Canadians don't go looking for 'face-time'.

South of us, it's a different story. Americans don't know the difference between 'famous' and 'infamous', or 'celebrity' and 'notoriety'. It's all the same.

So in the US, people will go on-camera to accuse celebrities of things, because it makes them a 'somebody'. And others just like them will jump on the bandwagon. So having a number of people pop up after the first one doesn't necessarily mean greater likelihood of guilt, just more coming to the party.

That's why when celebrities settle out of court, it doesn't mean they're guilty. It means it's cheaper to pay off bullshitters than have your name in headlines for months and your career kissed goodbye. And some people make false claims hoping to cash in on some 'fuck-off' money. Parents of some Michael Jackson accusers were the gold-digger standard.

I actually hope Bill Cosby's guilty, because whether he is or not, he is. Once you're a punchline, you're done. The court of public opinion decided that they like Cos better as America's second-favourite type of celebrity, the Fallen Angel. It satisfies the envy impulse that underpins celebrity worship.

NBC had to cancel Cosby's sitcom pilot not because they give a crap about the accusations but because they've lost the audience. Cosby's a bad investment. He's show-business Blackberry.

Doesn't mean I don't believe the women calling Cosby out. Some seem pretty credible. But I'm just not as comfortable piling on yet.

The lack of a real TV or film industry in Canada means we also lack the apparatus that makes performers into American-style celebrities. So there's no coat-tail benefit for being mentioned in the same news report as some semi-recognizable shlub. There's no gold to dig, the 'fuck-off' money will be bus fare. The risks of coming forward have no possible reward except, hopefully, seeing justice done or saving others from a predator.

So while the absence of a healthy Canadian entertainment industry means lots of wasted talent and homegrown artists fleeing to the US (where if they have a decent career, they'll get a star on our Walk of Fame instead of successful Canadian artists who never left), it also means that in cases like the Ghomeshi accusations, it's a lot easier to see the trees in the absence of a forest.

No matter what though, I'll never again hear "pudding pops" as anything but a euphemism.