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All the President’s Men: A Classic
The 1976 film “All the President’s Men” is fascinating for its perspectives on the craft of investigative journalism and on the Nixon Presidency, which was the ultimate object of the investigation. The movie shows in great detail what investigative journalists do and how they do it: searching for disgruntled front-line staff willing to provide leads,…
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Advise and Consent
I’ve begun work on the chapter on modern American political narratives, a very rich genre with many fascinating exemplars. One of the modern classics is Allen Drury’s Pulitzer prize winning 1959 novel, and director Otto Preminger’s 1962 film, Advise and Consent. Taking its title from one of the powers of the Senate enumerated in the…
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The Right Music for Baseball
After going to the Rogers Centre en famille to watch the Jays defeat the Red Sox 5-3 yesterday, I’ll take a break from the serious business of narrative to write about the way American national pastime is now presented in Canada. While aging undoubtedly reduces tolerance for loud noise and bright lights, I think the…
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Taking Liberties with the Facts
Films often open with the disclaimer that they are “based on a true story” or “inspired by a true story.” It turns out that, in many cases, the story presented on film is significantly different from the true story as presented in other narrative forms, particularly a book on which a film is based. On…
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An Obit for Robert McNamara
Assuming you are the obituary writer for the Globe and Mail, please prepare an obit for Robert McNamara – that was another question asked on the final exam for the Rotman School narratives course. The question didn’t come entirely from left field, as we discussed on the last day of class the outlines of an…
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Conflicting Narratives: Mulroney and Turner on Free Trade
Because my Rotman school narratives course used film as its major medium, I incorporated one clip of a visual narrative into the final exam. This year it was the heated exchange over free trade between then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Liberal leader John Turner in the party leaders’ debate in the 1988 election. The…
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Allan Blakeney’s An Honourable Calling
Earlier this week I was at former Saskatchewan premier Allan Blakeney’s Toronto launch of his new book An Honourable Calling: Political Memoirs, published by the University of Toronto Press. Blakeney and I were co-authors of an earlier book Political Management in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1998). Here are a few impressions from the evening.…
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Yes Minister: Anatomy of Another Classic
This Eighties BBC television satire about the conflicted but codependent relationship between politics and bureaucracy over a quarter century later bears all the markers of a classic. Its DVD and paperback versions continue to sell well, many clips are available on YouTube and elsewhere, and it ranked sixth in a 2004 poll to choose Britain’s…
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Doctor Strangelove: A Classic Satire
Over the next three posts my intention is to look at three narratives, two of which have become classics and one that I predict will become a classic. The two confirmed classics are Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Doctor Strangelove and Tony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s television series Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, and my…
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Fables about Transformational Teachers
There is a classic dominant fable about the transformational teacher in an urban ghetto high school. The school is failing in its mission: the students aren’t learning, but they are getting into trouble. A transformational teacher arrives on the scene and, through hard work, long hours, commitment to excellence, and empathy for the students wins…
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Dominant Fables and Counter-fables
Dominant and counter-fables are key concepts in my work on narrative, so I’d better explain them. I start my research about narrative by looking for narratives – movies, novels, plays – that deal in a serious way with organizations and leadership. That immediately rules out those where the organization is just the setting for a…
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Twelve Angry Men: Anatomy of a Classic
I recently discussed the 1957 film Twelve Angry Men in a session of my MBA Narrative and Management course dealing with decision-making in small groups. The film, adapted for the theatre in recent years, is widely regarded as a classic. The question I posed of my students is why. What makes it a classic? We…
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Bouncing the Treasury: Classic or Edgy?
In my public management course this term, I showed an episode from Yes Prime Minister and an episode from the BBC’s 2005 political satire The Thick of It, both on the topic of bouncing (i.e. outsmarting) the Treasury. The Yes Prime Minister episode “The Smokescreen” involved Prime Minister Hacker’s stratagem to overcome the Treasury’s opposition…
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Where Stimulus Packages Come From
Now that both Canada and the US have adopted economic stimulus packages – the one in the broader context of a budget, the other part of a package involving both legislation and executive orders – I want to step back a moment and look at how these packages came about and think about their implications.…
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Highway 407 East: Will they still come?
The Ontario Ministry of Transportation has announced its intention to build extend Highway 407 East to its natural terminus in Clarington, where it would like with Highway 35/115. This would achieve the government’s goal of a complete multi-lane divided highway route ringing Toronto. Highway 407 is now a privately operated toll-road, with 90 years left…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- I continue to be engaged in research, writing, and giving professional presentations. With my co-author and spouse Beth Herst, I am completing a book on narrative and politics.
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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