Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 13, 1995, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press january editorials editor John 6977044 flying Blind the future of the Winnipeg jets rests in the hands of the men and women who run the Manitoba entertainment Complex it is those 58 Community leaders who must now decide if investing millions of Dol Lars in a Winnipeg franchise in the National hockey and Many millions More in a new sports is Worth the until the private sector shows the color of its there is nothing much governments can or should As it the Mec has been flying it sold 40 luxury boxes and or More Premium seats in a mythical Arena whose location is still it has put a Price on those boxes and seats without knowing whether there would be a Deal Between the players and the with out knowing whether a Revenue sharing arrangement among the owners was it still has no idea How Many regular and at what could be sold to the working people of win surely the meat and potatoes of any professional hockey opera there is nothing wrong with any of business people have every right to conceive and implement a marketing they May get Rich because of it or they May go that is their it is when the taxpayers Are asked to share the risk that flying Blind is not City councillors will be asked within the next few weeks to give the Green Light to build an Arena on the Portage Avenue East How can responsible politicians approve any site at All until they know there is a financial plan in place which guarantees that the Arena will eventually be built if the 58 Community leaders had enough Money raised on their own to finance the construction of a new then the politicians would be in a position to weigh the pros and cons of one site versus they could apply the usual planning including a careful assess ment of what Impact the new facility will have on the with particular attention paid to the future of the Winnipeg convention As soon As the Mec group has raised All the Money it is going it can show the results to City councillors and the Federal and provincial if the Mec finds Pri vate investors who understand the new economics of the and Are still ready to come up with almost All of the capital needed to build a new then governments will be equipped to evaluate the benefits of pushing the project Over the until the entrepreneurs augment their enthusiasm with some firm financial there is no role for governments to behind the brutality opposed by his former the liberals and Reform and supported by his former the us tra nationalists and the russian presi Dent Boris Yeltsin continues to press the War in chech this week in the Liberal democrats introduced a reflecting the mood of the that would forbid the use of the russian military against civil ians anywhere within the Yeltsin and his Una vory allies refused even to debate and so the War bloody and brutal and with an inordinate number of civilian it has been going on for just Over a month the russian military badly botched what was to have been a Quick military strike that would have Grozny under Moscow control within a instead the City is littered with wrecked russian tanks and dead russian Many it is impossible to know because the chechen almost certainly exaggerate and Moscow obviously even if the capture of Grozny is a then a russian Victory is the chechen have suffered heavy casualties As but they remain defiant and after Grozny vow to repair to the mountains to wage a guerrilla War that will end Only with their should this they will have the sympathy and at least the moral support of their fellow muslims in neigh Boring caucasian states of Russia such As that fact May help in understanding the otherwise inexplicable brutality of the russian which has seen tiny hamlets of no military importance bombed and strafed and the deliberate targeting of since Chechnya declared its Independence two years Yeltsin has feared that it would become the Flash Point of a general rebellion in the where rus Sian Rule has never sat the scorched Earth policy in Chechnya May be designed to show russian other Cauca Sian states what will happen to them if they choose the wrong As much As it is designed to destroy Chechnya Winnipeg free press Winnipeg fret press esl 1973 Winnipeg Tribune to Rudy Duncan Mcmonagle executive editor John Dafoe editorial Page editor directors John Bardawil marketing Stephan Majorki operations Perry Glenn j a division 9 newspapers pm vision of Thomson newspapers company limited published seven Days a week Ai Mountain Manitoba r2x pm 6977000 a member of he Manitoba press Council Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights feast of electronic leftovers 1went to the video store the other Day and rented a it was one of those Winter nights when you want to do nothing More than sit in front of the television watching Noth ing too it was and we had already flipped through to scene and found there was nothing on television nothing at that we wanted to the movie was it was cheap and the video store was Only a few min utes away All in it was a pleasant it was hard to believe in the new world of Cable with specially channels claiming to offer something for every conceivable it was not possible to find one program on the schedule that we wanted to thirty five channels and nothing that was one night in the new Cable to there have been other nights quite nights if the new to channels did not exactly open up a whole new world of enter they did at least offer a look at an appealing older saturday for thanks to the new Bravo we sat in front of the to set until the Early hours of the there was three hours of Puccini the girl of the Golden from la with place Ido Domingo holding in his Tummy As Cowboy even better was an hour of Barry Humphries As the outrageous Edna interviewing a baffled Gina Lollobrigida from her hideaway in the Swiss to keep us up until the Early there was that great Early Busby Berkeley musical 42nd with Ruby Keeler going out there a scared kid and coming Back a the other channels had a lot to offer on saturday night As even without the there must have been something for almost every As there was on wednesday when i settled Down for an evening of John Dafoe vicarious gluttony on the life who could resist a starting at eight which was described thus in the free press to listings its eating wednesday night is pig out night on the life Channel and any enthusiast for watching other peo ple Cook and eat will have a wonderful time on Channel 19w or All the shows Are not homages to Gas of is Graham the former galloping who has been born again As a Safe food he appears now in tie and sus mixing bits of Tofu and ending his show with charts that demonstrate How few calories and and Satu rated fats his dishes the food shows Are not All How to Doit its cooking turns out to be a show whose full title is its cooking but its which comes from new Orleans and features a jazz pianist along with one of that cites Good the chefs Fried Chicken recipe was simplicity itself you take the you dip it in you dip it in flour and you put it in the fat and you Cook the commentary was mostly the Chicken looked on it went into the evening a pleas ant visit to a restaurant on Vancouver a couple who fancied them selves As the Regis and Kathy Lee of the Kitchen and taught us How to Cook veal a marvelous program about a lot of exuberant spaniards cooking interspersed were the usual file photo to Cook Graham galloping no favors health notably in this Case for pesto Bismal and dog the eating went on into the according to the free press to the last offering listed was Galley chefs at that is not the sort of thing you might want to watch on television every it May not even be the kind of thing you want to admit to your friends that you would watch at that portion of the viewing Public that cant get enough of cooking shows can complain no the new Chan do appear to offer some amusement and enlightenment for just about none of it seems to be very fresh or very some of it is so recently out of Date As to be obvious such As mar tha Stewart offering hints about Christ Mas some of it is so old that it Doest the specially channels have dug deep into the bin of discarded series and some Are Busy recycling those on the evidence to Are More like a Good secondhand Book shop than a Brave new world of the books May be a Little dogeared and sometimes out of but they Are cheap of they do provide something diverting or even what they dont offer at least from what Ive seen is anything that has much to do with the preservation of Ca Nadian culture or with any other great issues of National the addition of the specially Chan Nels has provoked a great National de not Only about the channels but about the Way the Cable companies at tempted to impose them on their Cus the customers had every right to object to the so called negative option scheme for Selling them the Chan when it comes to the actual programming the specially channels Are the big question is whats All the fuss about Heights prejudice strikes again some years i returned from a business meeting to the of fice that i shared with a colleague in the old free press building on Carl ton Street to discover a person work ing at my computer actually it was the free press computer Ter Minal but i had come to feel proprietor rial towards it since it was used Only by myself and my when i re turned to the old building recently to take a tour of the wasteland we left be Hind us when we my All by itself in the Corner of the looked so lost and like a dead baby on the streets of that i Felt like wrapping it up and giving it a decent in any the person at the Termi Nal was obviously not my colleague since this person had Blond hair and Nice Ankles and my colleague was balding and his Ankles we rent Worth a second she was a reporter and All the other terminals were she so she went ahead with what she was do ing and i tottered each of us minding our separate until she turned to me and asked As a Wasp male followed by one of those questions like have you stopped beating your wife yet which Are impossible to answer without incriminating i deflected it by saying in a tone of deep resentment that i was not a Wasp male but a wic she was working on a Story about one of society oppressed women or i or perhaps Black and in the course of explaining it to me made an extraordinary com ment if she haunt been born a she she would like to have been born a Black so that she would still know what it was like to i have news for that Young you dont have to be female or a minority to suffer and feel Dis Crimi not least by the kind of stereotyping she had just indulged in All you have to be is As you May guess by the picture that appears with this i or at least a Blu eyed relatively healthy the perfect social Dominator except for one fact i am also people who meet me often comment that they had thought i would be that is a because i have an oversized head sitting on a puny body with Skinny arms and legs and no Hope of Ever starring in a pornographic because of this in my own Small have suffered and Felt discrimination and Ripples from that have touched other lives As to we must go some Way Back in i went to University in the 1960s and in my third year i dropped that want unusual at the time with people leaving to go and take dope in san Francisco or to try to find them selves in id like to say my Rea sons were similarly but the truth is that dope terrified me and i Al ready knew where i which was in trouble because i haunt attended a class since the first Day of the univer sity preferring to spend my mornings Reading what i wanted to read and the afternoons watching some opera with a Girlfriend who offered More interesting courses than the pro that meant that i had to find a which want supposed to be difficult but everywhere i went i was told i was too Small for any kind of work that demanded physical labor and either overqualified or under qualified for everything this of a blatant example of Siz ism and All of which i assume Are illegal now As grounds for discrimination although there Are As yet no affirmative action programs for people like it is also How i ended up at the free where neither size nor brain appear to be considered is sues of it is also where the Ripple effect comes it was through the free press that i met my she appears to be about three inches taller than i am but when we compared Drivers licences you have to do something on a first Date were both 58 which Means that either one or both of us Are liars or the apparent difference is merely an optical had i been taller and i would probably be an Archaeol Ogist i eventually did get my degree up in the Arctic somewhere searching for the lost cities of the a major Triumph for the person who eventually finds one i would never have met her she would probably be happily married to a six foot millionaire and you would not be sitting Here Reading this and wondering what on Earth is this Man talking about and while you Are wondering i can think about How glad i am that i was Only born Short and not too Bright and into a relatively privileged part of i cant even imagine what members of truly oppressed groups live through every Day in a society that is full of pointless and in a better world they have so perhaps the Young woman at the com Puter terminal had a bit of a Point to after ;