What Just Happened…

On the day after the American election, my Democratic friends were ecstatic. Fingernails bitten to the quick, they hadn’t been able to relax or believe that Barack Obama would be returned to the White House until they saw it with their own eyes. “He’s not a great politician, he’s a great man, a great leader” said my friend Margaret often during the campaign, worried that enough Americans might not see it that way.
I stayed up until the early hours, waiting for Mitt Romney to finally listen to reason and concede. It was worth it. Obama’s victory night speech was spellbinding, and you just hope all that vigor and resolve and jubilation will play a bigger part in his second term.
One of the most compelling lessons out of this election was not that women, minorities, and youth ARE the new America—many of us have believed in and written about that Silent Majority for years. It was that any significant electoral achievement or victory has to come from years of organizing and hard work. The Obama campaign workers knew in their hearts they had done that work. Of course the campaign freaked when Obama “napped” during the first debate, but they also knew they were running a fantastic ground game. CNN’s Candy Crowley said that two weeks ago, a senior Obama campaign official had said to her, “listen I’m not kidding you—only the word used was probably “bullshitting”—“we’ve got this.”
On election night, the Democrats even (unwisely I thought) told the media it wouldn’t be such a long night after all. That is how confident they were, and it’s worth thinking about that. In contrast, GOP and right wing pundits, predicting their candidate would sweep to victory were basing it all on a “feeling” , not data, and not battalions of workers checking off minute detail after detail.
So the “mushy, touchy feely hopey changey “party slogged it out, apparently not for months but for years, in the trenches and got their president re-elected. The harder-nosed ‘ya gotta work hard to deserve success’ Republican party? Not so much.

In the eulogy for his sister, Diana, Princess of Wales, the Earl Spencer lamented that Diana, a name which means “the huntress” had instead become “the hunted”–harassed (and hastened)unto death by the paparazzi.
Kate Middleton, today one of the most photographed young women in the world, got a taste of this voracious, boundary-less world when a French magazine, Closer, published pictures that were allegedly of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing without her bikini top.No tan lines?No privacy!
While palace officials fumed about “a red line” being crossed and their lawyers placed crisp phone calls, it’s worth remembering that British royalty is savvier and fiercer now about what they’ve got and how to protect it. I doubt they will let William’s wife and future queen descend into the media vortex that was his mother’s life.
Lawsuits will be launched and British papers tempted to publish the pics will be quickly brought to heel.There’s something so creepy and childish and prurient about a publication basically saying “hey, wanna see her tits?” And public opinion will be with the violated princess and not the creeping Toms.
In the meantime, Kate, who appears both grounded and personable, is well advised to shower with her shirt on if she leaves the protective enclave of a royal residence. (Although that might result in a wet tee shirt photo.)
It’s a fact we live in a different age now of cell phone snaps(Hello Harry) sexual indiscretions tweeted, and ubiquitous nudity that barely raises the blood pressure.
So staring straight ahead as if to say “so bloody what?” is also an option for the glamorous duchess.She did nothing wrong. And carrying on precisely as if it’s not her problem is the ultimate act of dignity.

Apparently the hope goes on. In his powerful address to the DNC last night, Obama answered those critics who sneered he had been peddling “hope-ium”. He essentially turned it back to the crowds.”You give ME hope!” he roared. America is and always has been about optimism and hope. Yes, he says, the path is harder than they all originally thought. But it will lead to a better place. That’s what a leader does when he wants to galvanize people. He includes them in the solution. In this country, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair might take note. People–even those downtrodden and worried about their futures– respond best when they actually think that they as individuals matter.As much as speeches can matter,the Democrats offered up three nights of polished, stirring oratory. But here’s the Obama line that really caught my attention:”You hired me to tell you the truth.” Can he live up to that?
Follow me on Twitter@judithtimson

Just pressed send on my final Globe column http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/obama-hope-and-the-arc-of-history/article4523797/– after almost a decade of being a contributing columnist in four different sections, including ROB, Careers, Focus and Life. In freelance terms, through relaunches and relocations, that tenure is a triumph.
It’s a wrench to say even a temporary good bye to so many smart and generous readers. Not so much the online ignoramuses who spew hateful comments. Although I did secretly enjoy the one calling me “Patriarchy’s handmaiden.” (If that’s what I am, the patriarchy is pretty well kaput.)
I am currently working on a book proposal and an essay for MORE magazine.I will let you know what’s next.
In the meantime, along with blogging about the news,cultural trends, and life on this site, I will reprint some favorite columns from time to time.
While I’ve mostly moved on to social, cultural and political commentary, here is a more personal one I wrote when my mother died,a column that readers still email me about and ask me to send to them. You can follow me on Twitter@judithtimson

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/the-phone-cord-that-binds-i-called-my-mother-every-day/article4352855/

The phone cord that binds: I called my mother every day
Judith Timson

Published Saturday, Feb. 03, 2007 12:00AM EST
Last updated Tuesday, Apr. 27, 2010 11:59AM EDT

For 30 years, I’ve called my mother every day.
I started calling her in my mid-20s — after she gently suggested she didn’t hear from me enough. I was single, selfish and absorbed in my career at the time.
But because she so seldom asked anything of me, I responded. And gradually our calls became an unbreakable routine between 8:30 and 9 in the morning.
My mother almost never called me, because, she said, that would be “interrupting your busy life.” So, as a newlywed, I called her. As a working mother overwhelmed by frantic mornings getting young kids off to school, I called her. As a writer anxious to get to my home office — at the same time emptying the dishwasher so vehemently that she occasionally made a tart inquiry about all the banging — I called her. And as an empty nester after the children grew up and left for university, I called her.
We would talk about her day and mine, about her grandchildren (no news about them was too small to be of interest) and about politics. Although she lived here for 60 years, my mother was a proud American, albeit one so ticked off with the current administration that George W. Bush was frequent phone fodder. As were all major news events. In fact, my mom and I were on the phone with each other on Sept, 11, 2001, when reports first broke that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
We also discussed smaller disruptions closer to home. I’d tell her what temperature the mood-o-meter was hovering at in our household — who was happy, who was grumpy, who had school or work problems, whether a marital spat (a tamely reported version of it, mind you) had clouded my morning.
She took it all in stride. The very opposite of a mother-in-law joke, she deftly took my husband’s side in any domestic flare-up. Which of course slavishly bonded him to her for life. And me to him. Clever woman.
My mother loved her job as registrar at a scholarship foundation. This helped her, I suppose, be unswervingly supportive of my life as a modern working woman. On the phone, she would marvel, “I don’t know how you girls do it!” — her enthusiasm such that friends would jokingly ask me if I would rent her out.
We saw my mother regularly in our household — every Friday night. At dinners, she was everyone’s property, graciously surfing the emotional waves that break the surface of many a family meal. Although when she was there, we all tried a little harder and laughed a little more.
But our morning phone call was different: more intimate, more informative, more generous. Over the phone, she was mine and I was hers. I heard about her table mates at her retirement residence, about her surviving friends, about what she thought of old age (not much, frankly). She heard about my work — and was my cheering section to the point of delusion. If I wearily told her my editors had demanded a rewrite, her standard reply was: “Oh, they didn’t!”
Mind you, my mother — who had probably overlooked obvious incompatibilities to marry my newsman father because she found him fascinating — still revered the news business years after both their divorce and his death.
Which made our phone conversations even more entertaining, although occasionally hard on my ego. On a low self-esteem morning, did I really need to hear, word for word, what another clever columnist had written? Apparently I did.
Friday, Jan. 12, was the first morning I didn’t get to call my mother. A gloriously vibrant 90-year-old — one we expected would be doing her crossword puzzles and her own income taxes for a few years to come — she died suddenly of heart failure very early that day. Along with my shock and sorrow came the realization that our daily phone calls were forever ended.
But how do you stop the habit of a lifetime? The next morning and in the days following, I started toward the telephone many times. When I realized what I was doing, I stopped, but it was as wrenching as a physical withdrawal. I felt constantly that there was something I needed to do.
After operating on the assumption that nothing major in my life had really happened until my mother knew about it, I could not quite grasp that I couldn’t call and tell her what a fabulous standing-room-only funeral we had had for her. (Jazz piano, Mom. And you wouldn’t believe who came.)
In fact, on the second day after her funeral, I felt such an overwhelming longing to hear her voice again that I called her number anyways — just to hear her on the answering machine. It made me smile not only because of her ridiculously charming New England accent, but because I realized then that my mom had never really sounded old.
In the days since she died, I’ve had kind offers from friends and family to be on hand between 8:30 and 9 a.m. for a phone call to help with my withdrawal, or to start a new routine.
But I don’t know about that. My mother was my advocate, my confidante, someone who brought out the best in me and in everyone she knew. She was also just cracking good company. So I cannot imagine — or even wish — that any other phone call would immediately replace ours.
Maybe I’ll meditate instead, or write in a journal to fill that special time. I don’t want to let it slip away though. I want to make a commitment to it. Of course, that morning phone call was already a commitment for me. A commitment to loving my mother and being a reliable part of her life. A commitment to knowing her deeply, to sharing the big and small aspects of our lives and to understanding, especially as she got older, how her life was changing.
Over the years, I have received a lot of undue credit for this commitment. Friends would ask admiringly how I found the time. Or: “What do you talk about with her?” They would even say guiltily, “I’m gonna call my mom tomorrow.”
What they didn’t realize was just how easy she made it.
One night last fall, I took her out to dinner at her local Swiss Chalet. We ordered glasses of wine and talked and talked — about the kids, about the American elections, about her life past and present. She was very animated, her hands waving in the air. She thanked me when I dropped her off.
And when I called her as usual the next morning? She said: “I went to bed last night completely happy.”
No wonder I kept calling.

Wives! How the Democrats and Republicans worship their political wives at the top of the ticket. Tuesday night at the DNC, it was Mobama’s turn to woo the crowds on behalf of her more remote husband. She did a spectacular job. Last week Ann Romney did the speed dating and did it well.
While both women are remarkably polished, authentic and vibrant, they are not genuine political candidates and it bothers me that so many women candidates who aren’t married to presidential contenders get nowhere near such audiences or opportunities to strut their stuff. The position of American First Lady is like no other in the world in terms of symbolic (and real)importance, but let’s face it: these wives come with their husbands. They are a bonus, a two-for-one as Hillary and Bill used to say until that became politically unwise. Makes post White House Hillary seem even more admirable and awesome –senator, presidential aspirant, secretary of state.Those who would say she merely rode in on her husband’s coattails are wrong. She was always a first rate mind, a leader in waiting.
Michelle Obama may well go on to such glory, but she’s far far from that now and any attempt to make her so is simply patronizing. Wives!
Follow me on Twitter @judithtimson

Ann Romney is as forthright and personable as her husband is evasive and stiff.Watching her being interviewed during CNN’s convention eve documentary about Romney,I realized that because she seems intelligent and sincere, she has succeeded in her main task–humanizing the Mittster. When she talked with tears in her eyes about him “curling up in bed beside me” when she was first very ill with multiple sclerosis, she seemed genuine. The bigger question is do voters care if he is a devoted husband? I think they do respond viscerally to an image of good. Americans are hurting economically(as Ann Romney was hurting physically) and they may yearn to be looked after by a leader who can help them.That’s essentially Ann Romney’s message both symbolic and real: Mitt will help you! (Although he definitely won’t curl up in bed beside you.)

Is there a Canadian dream, or have we been smart enough not to buy into one unified grandiose notion of what we should strive for and who we could be?

In my column in this week’s Globe and Mail, I explore the now tarnished and tawdry cliche of the American Dream as seen through the camera in The Queen of Versailles, an entertaining and appalling documentary about an uber rich couple, Jackie and David Siegel, who set out to build the “largest house in America”, a 90,000 square foot Florida monstrosity. Their mad, undisciplined gilt encrusted quest is brought to a halt, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown, with money owed and foreclosure looming.

The movie’s director Lauren Greenfield presents their shop till you drop story as an “allegory” of the American Dream.

It got me thinking about the Canadian dream. There must be one somewhere. After all, hundreds of thousands of immigrants come here to make a better life for their children. Perhaps it’s the equality enshrined in the Charter of Rights, or the inherent fairness and compassion of universal health care. Or just the fact that we are a fully functioning democracy with careful(so far!)banks.

We don’t go in for this life liberty and the pursuit of happiness stuff. It’s too….obvious. But I’d love to hear a succinct version of the Canadian Dream.

One week later after waking to the news of mass carnage in Colorado at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises. What have we learned? We’ve seen the alleged shooter–and is he us? Parsing that amazing, scary, arresting ,and even beautiful photo of accused 24 year old mass killer James Holmes as he appeared in court this week, dazed and confused, that mop of neon bright dyed orange hair. Somebody’s son, many people’s killer? That court photo truly speaks a thousand words—about mental illness, about pop culture and the Joker, about alone-ness, about how someone so benign looking, even handsome,so smart, even brilliant, so quiet even shy, could have ended up able  and willing to do what he allegedly did. His next court appearance will have no cameras present. I think that is a shame. We connect with something deep and important by absorbing this image.

You won’t find it in the DSM but ideological agoraphobia, as I define it, is the fear of leaving the comfort of your usual political stance or belief system to venture out, either to the wide open space of compromise, or even to compliment or agree with someone on what is perceived to be the other side. I was called “right-wing” by one (or maybe 40) irate readers after my column in Friday’s Globe and Mail reflected that Obama’s performance in this latest economic rout was tepid and uninspiring.

After I stopped laughing, I lamented the dug in nature of our political discourse. You’re either one thing or the other, and complimenting Stephen Harper, as I did, for projecting calm during the market plunge is perceived to be selling out. The smartest people I know are the ones who can actually entertain the opposite point of view, but then skillfully point out why their own stance is more powerful.

Beware the symptoms of Ideological Agoraphobia. Cure is to have a conversation with, or read something by, someone with whom you regularly disagree.

Once upon a time (a long time ago)it seemed as though Obama was the Change you could believe in. But having watched him yesterday trying to reassure Americans about the S&P downgrade and the strength of the U.S. economy amid the market plunge, not to mention the future, I actually got a queasy feeling: he is not connecting,not making the case that he can come up with a solution, and not speaking with any true conviction or reassurance about the situation.
It’s shocking that a leader with such natural eloquence has become so tentative and tepid with his words. I wanted him to bang his fist on the lecturn and tell the world he’s angry about the useless political gridlock and game of ideological chicken being played in Washington. I wanted him to say to the American public: you deserve better than this.But I guess that’s awkward when you’re part of the mess.
If nothing else, he needs a new speechwriter. In times of crisis, cadence matters as much as content. Winston Churchill  and Martin Luther King proved that, with words that many schoolkids can repeat verbatim, they are that mesmerizing and inspirational.Where are Obama’s words?