{"id":10825,"date":"2011-08-23T13:16:45","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T17:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10825"},"modified":"2012-04-11T10:01:21","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T15:01:21","slug":"blatchford-comes-not-to-praise-jack-but-to-bury-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/08\/23\/blatchford-comes-not-to-praise-jack-but-to-bury-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Blatchford comes not to praise Jack, but to bury him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christie Blatchford<\/a> displays great courage in saying publicly in her column what others may only be thinking in the privacy of their own minds:<\/p>\n

\n

Yes, his death at 61 was sad and too soon; yes, he made an enormous contribution to his party and a significant one to Canada (though I would quibble with NDP MP Libby Davies\u2019 characterization that \u201cHe gave his life for this country\u201d); yes, he fought a brave battle against cancer, as, mind you, does just about anyone who has it; and yes, he was a likeable, agreeable, smiley man.<\/p>\n

Yet what was truly singular about him was how consumed by politics he was and how publicly, yet comfortably, he lived.<\/p>\n

How fitting that his death should have been turned into such a thoroughly public spectacle, where from early morn Monday, television anchors donned their most funereal faces, producers dug out the heavy organ music, reporters who would never dream of addressing any other politician by first name only were proudly calling him \u201cJack\u201d and even serious journalists like Evan Solomon of the CBC repeatedly spoke of the difficulty \u201cas we all try to cope\u201d with the news of Mr. Layton\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

By mid-day, after Prime Minister Stephen Harper had offered a few warm words about Mr. Layton\u2019s death and rued that their oft-talked-about jam session had never happened, Mr. Solomon even expressed sniping surprise that \u201cJack Layton wasn\u2019t the sole focus\u201d of the Prime Minister\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n

Mr. Harper, who clearly had not spent the day watching the national broadcaster and thus was unaware that the NDP Leader\u2019s death was the only story of note, had gone on to mention the families of the 12 people (including six-year-old Cheyenne Eckalook; now there\u2019s someone who died far too young) who perished in the Arctic plane crash on Saturday and the tumultuous events in Libya.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She also addresses the mawkish over-sentimentality of people who probably never met Mr. Layton leaving bunches of flowers, notes, and the like (at least in this case, we’re being spared the teddy bears) as public marks of grieving:<\/p>\n

\n

Held out as evidence of Canadians\u2019 great love for Mr. Layton were the makeshift memorials of flowers, notes that appeared at his Toronto constituency office and on Parliament Hill, and in condolences in social media.<\/p>\n

In truth, none of that is remotely unusual, or spontaneous, but rather the norm in the modern world, and it has been thus since Princess Diana died, the phenomenon now fed if not led online. People the planet over routinely weep for those they have never met and in some instances likely never much thought about before; what once would have been deemed mawkish is now considered perfectly appropriate.<\/p>\n

Certainly, Canadians liked Mr. Layton, but the public over-the-top nature of such events \u2014 by fans for lost celebrities they never met, by television personalities for those they interviewed once for 10 minutes, by the sad and lost for the dead \u2014 make it if not impossible then difficult to separate the mourning wheat from the mourning chaff. His loss — his specific loss and his specific accomplishments — are thus diminished.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christie Blatchford displays great courage in saying publicly in her column what others may only be thinking in the privacy of their own minds: Yes, his death at 61 was sad and too soon; yes, he made an enormous contribution to his party and a significant one to Canada (though I would quibble with NDP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28,53],"tags":[297,804,798,213,101],"class_list":["post-10825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","category-politics","tag-jacklayton","tag-mourningsickness","tag-ndp","tag-newspapers","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2OB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10825"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14551,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10825\/revisions\/14551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}