Blog

– this post written jointly with my wife Beth Herst –

At a time when Toronto Blue Jays fans are honoring legendary former second baseman Roberto Alomar’s induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, I’d like to celebrate two of Toronto’s so-called utility players, John McDonald and Mike McCoy. Unlike Alomar, they are not stars. They will never receive that call from Cooperstown. Yet in their way they too represent the best of the game.

McDonald, 36, is now a veteran, having been with the Jays since 2005. His fielding is superb, and he is well-known for his diving catches and near-flawless execution. His hitting, however, has never been quite strong enough to hold down a permanent position in the starting line-up.

McCoy, 30, has been with the Jays since 2009, primarily with its Triple A farm team in Las Vegas. Since the beginning of the season, he has been shuttling back and forth as a replacement player, playing nearly every position in the field, including pitcher. (McCoy pitched a perfect last inning for the Jays in a recent 16-4 shellacking by the Red Sox. Given his lack of velocity, and the one-sided nature of the game, one suspects a measure of collusion on the part of the rampaging Sox.)

A personal disclosure: my family has long been huge fans of Johnny Mac, as he’s known. That was our eight-year old son on the Jumbotron on Canada Day, holding a hand-lettered sign reading “John McDonald for Prime Minister – Again”. And we’ve become equally enthusiastic supporters of the cheerfully professional McCoy.

What is it about these two men that draws our admiration? It isn’t just the exemplary work ethic that clearly motivates them both. Not just their loyalty to the team and the “hustle” that is evident in every play. Not even the mental and physical discipline that allows them to summon their best effort, sometimes literally at a moment’s notice.

More than anything, it is their passion for baseball and their abiding desire simply to play the game they love, without star status, or salaries to match. And that’s how they play it, with love, and without ego, or tantrums, or extra-curricular scandals. It is a passion that is manifest in the way both men talk about the game and the privilege of playing in “the Show”.

The legendary manager of the New York Yankees, Casey Stengel, knew that no ball club can consist only of stars. He surrounded luminaries like Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra with utility players who could be counted on to bring their best to the ball park every game and allow the stars to shine.

The reality of the Blue Jays’ position as a small-market team in the toughest division in the Major League, struggling to play .500 ball, means their corporate owners aren’t willing or able to match the salary bill of the Yankees or the Red Sox. And Jays fans have recognized this fact of life, embracing not only our few high-wattage headliners (the prickly ace Doc Halladay, the pensive and intense late-blooming phenomenon Jose Bautista), but the indispensable, hustling utility players too.

Johnny Mac is tremendously popular with Toronto fans, a testament to his modesty, integrity and commitment to community service in the city, as well as his professional skill. And Mike McCoy too has earned widespread affection and respect. Still, McDonald’s contract finishes this year, and McCoy continues to accumulate those frequent flyer points. Could there be a coaching position in McDonald’s future? It seems an ideal role. And surely the stalwart and versatile McCoy has earned a permanent berth?

With late-breaking news of trades flooding every Major League website, this seems a particularly good time to insist on the importance of players like McDonald and McCoy to the Blue Jays and their fans. Both play baseball with professionalism, modesty, commitment, and love. The team is the better for their presence, and so are we.

Not long after my previous post, I received an email from Access Copyright (www.accesscopyright.ca) informing me that the Ontario courts have approved a settlement for Heather Robertson’s second class action on behalf of freelance writers, this one against Torstar, Rogers,  the Financial Post/National Post, all other Canwest publications, and the database Proquest. After paying legal fees, the settlement will provide approximately $5 million to be divided up among the participants in class action.

The deadline for filing claims is October 15. I looked through the list of publications covered by the suit, went back through my c.v., and found three articles in The Toronto Star and one in The Financial Post. I’ve filed my claim and look forward to payment, probably within a year.

Like the previous suit against Thomson Canada this is good news for freelance writers. My concern, though, is what these suits will mean for freelance writers in the future. My expectation is that, before their articles appear in print, publishers will make them sign a contract that, for whatever compensation is agreed upon, cedes to the publisher not only the right to publish the article but all future rights, including posting in electronic databases.

When I did it, freelancing was informal, without any written contracts. I’m sure that now there will be detailed contracts for freelance writers, just as there are detailed contracts for authors of books and academic articles. Maybe compensation will increase slightly because of the inclusion of future rights.

Regardless what happens in the future, Heather Robertson has provided an important service for writers in forcing publishers to recognize that their articles have value, both for first publication in print or online and for subsequent repackaging or republishing.

Some years ago I regularly published freelance op eds in The Globe and Mail. Recently a sitter for our children told me she was excited to see one of my articles appear in her composition text, a book entitled Thinking Through the Essay. On one hand, I was delighted that my work was being used in secondary education. On the other hand, I was deeply insulted that the publisher had not asked my permission in advance or offered any form of compensation. Rather than just getting angry, an opportunity soon presented itself to get even.

Through Access Copyright, I was informed of a class action suit launched by the distinguished Canadian writer Heather Robertson on behalf of other freelance Canadian writers. The suit, Heather Robertson vs. Thomson Canada Ltd et al., alleged that publishers, by automatically including freelancers’ articles in electronic databases, violated the freelancers’ copyright. The case went to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ultimately upheld Robertson’s claim.

The settlement of the suit provided a pool of $5,400,000 for compensating freelance journalists. Based on my own share of the settlement, compensation worked out to approximately $200 per article. Having published over thirty articles that were eligible for inclusion in the suit, my settlement worked out to a substantial and unanticipated addition to this year’s income.

As I understand it, Robertson is pursuing another class action against the Toronto Star and Rogers Publishing. Good on her!

It seems to me that the big issue here is compensation for producers of what the digital world refers to as “content” versus aggregators and distributors of that content. The terms of trade have moved in favor of the latter. So Arianna Huffington gets even richer while paying contributors to HuffPo exactly nothing. The Robertson class action suit shifts the ground in Canada, providing some compensation for freelancers.

I should say, by the way, that I do not get compensated for this blog. I’ve had offers to place advertising on it, but have resisted. I enjoy the immediacy of posting and see the blog as an opportunity to say something about political issues I may be thinking about, to discuss questions unresolved in class, or to post first drafts of parts of what will later become articles or books. But if I choose to write for a newspaper or online publisher, I expect fair compensation. And I appreciate the efforts of Ms. Robertson to secure it.

When Stephen Harper spoke to the recent Conservative convention he asserted that conservative values are Canadian values. A majority government affords him and his followers a unique opportunity to establish those values in law and practice. While government decisions are made at the margins, if one party is in power long enough it can move the margins and bring about significant change.

But what does Harper mean by conservative values? In this post, I will try to outline those values, based on what I’ve observed of the actions of the Harper government in Ottawa, the Ford administration in Toronto, the platform of the Ontario conservatives, and the discourse of the conservative commentariat, for example Sun News, and Globe and Mail columnists Neil Reynolds and (occasionally) Preston Manning.

1.Privileging families with children. One can argue that a high birthrate will help offset the demographic challenge of the retirement of the baby boomers. The financial supports provided by the federal Conservatives (Universal Child Care Benefit, Canada Child Tax Benefit, Child fitness tax credit) are not sufficient to affect people’s decisions about whether or not to have children, but they are carefully crafted to win the support of families with children. These payments or tax expenditures prevent an overall reduction in tax rates for those who don’t choose to start families.

2.Ignoring Gays. While conservatives do not propose to reverse the gains that gays have achieved, they will not extend them. Mayor Ford’s snub of Pride Week is indicative of the conservative attitude towards gays: not benign neglect, simply neglect. Ironically, Conservatives are quite willing to embrace ethnic diversity, but sexual diversity is another matter.

3.Choosing Jobs over the Environment. Resource extraction is often polluting, and Conservatives always choose jobs in resource extraction (recent examples tar sands oil and asbestos) over environmental protection. Similarly, Mayor Ford’s edict that the war on the auto is over (see my post of June 3) chooses a life-style that increases urban pollution over alternatives favoring public transit (for example road pricing).

4.Glorifying the Military. Symbolically, the federal government takes every opportunity to glorify the military, for example providing a military presence at citizenship ceremonies. Going beyond symbolism, the government will opt for major hardware expenditures (the F-35) over less expensive alternatives.

5.Suppressing Strikes. Conservatives will declare all public sector workers essential services (for example transit workers in Toronto) and legislate a quick end to many private sector strikes (Air Canada). The irony regarding the latter is that Conservative governments have privatized some public services so as to increase competition.

6.Jettisoning high-brow culture. Conservative governments love mainstream culture that the market will support and will increasingly reduce public funding for alternative or high-brow culture, particularly if that culture is critical of the government or conservative values. The attack on Michael Ignatieff’s intellectualism and cosmopolitanism can be interpreted as an attack on high-brow culture.

7.Favouring “useful” research. In the area of research, conservatives prefer research in the sciences or business to research in the social sciences and humanities, particularly because the latter two tend to be critical of government policy (for example, criminologists showing that crime rates are not increasing and hence questioning the “get tough on crime” policy).

I’ve sketched what I see as some of the essential conservative values. I’m sure there are others I haven’t touched on. Parliamentary page Brigitte DePape’s protest “Stop Harper” was eloquent but missed the point. It’s not just Harper but an entire movement. Conservatives are working hard in their commentary, in decisions regarding societal symbols, and in budgetary decisions to enshrine a particular set of values. They’re fighting a culture war and, it appears, winning. The question is what those who embrace a different set of values will do to articulate and preserve theirs.