By Sean Callaghan Marketing The Voice I know all the reasons why I should hate a show like The Voice. As a show premised on the search for singing talent based solely on vocal ability The Voice falls victim too easily to the glittering bedazzlement of televised spectacle. It’s over-produced. It magnifies the cult of […]
Read more "The Voice of Another World"By Mark McConaghy Hundreds of news pundits and editorial columnists declared outrage last week over the revelation that the US government’s National Security Agency has direct access to the servers of the world’s largest internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Skype, Apple, and Microsoft. The government can monitor and track all online communication, even if it is […]
Read more "The Scandal We Knew All Along"By Mark McConaghy I will start by stating an obvious but important fact: the irony of doing political or creative work is that, above all else, one must have the time to engage in it. If you want to go out and raise awareness about an issue, either online or through old fashioned door knocking, […]
Read more "Everything is Fine: Rob Ford and Existential Exhaustion"By Mark McConaghy The Scene Monday Night. 7:30 pm. The pub in the tony part of Toronto, the neighborhood known as Rosedale, was packed with people young and old. They were there to cheer on the Toronto Maple Leafs in a deciding game 7 in their playoff series against the Boston Bruins. After having been […]
Read more "On Watching Game 7 in Toronto"By Sean Callaghan After the Event The dust and wreckage have been swept clean from Boylston street, the soiled carpets torn up and replaced in front of Marathon Sports. The memorial at Copley square now fights for its share of quiet reflection amidst the bustle of renewed business and midtown Boston traffic congestion. Meanwhile, news […]
Read more "Acts of Forgetting after Boston"By Mark McConaghy Like many in North America and around the world last Friday, I was riveted by the manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers. I watched with surreal fascination as the entire city of Boston was locked down into a police state for an entire day. Two young men, pressure cooker bombs, guns, stolen cars, […]
Read more "There is No Batman: On Terrorism in Our Time"By Sean Callaghan Anger. It has a mesmerizing effect. My wife and I fought in the early years of our marriage. We’re both stubborn people, and we were both committed to each other, which meant we were willing to fight because we knew we’d be together for the rest of our lives. During these fights […]
Read more "On Media Coverage of the Boston Marathon Bombings"By Mark McConaghy Last week our nation was shocked by the suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons. The details of the story are so grim they remain difficult to summarize: at the age of 15 Parsons was allegedly sexually assaulted at a house party by 4 teenage boys in the small town of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. A […]
Read more "On Rehtaeh Parsons"Mark McConaghy on the Passing of Noted Film Critic Roger Ebert. Film critic and writer Roger Ebert has died. Thousands of people have expressed their sorrow on twitter, facebook, blogs, and in print. The outpouring has come from famous filmmakers and powerful politicians to everyday people, all of whom were touched in some way by […]
Read more "For Roger"Mark McConaghy breaks down the political stakes involved in the University of Toronto’s decision to turf a vital piece of green space in downtown Toronto. Although seemingly a simple issue of field quality, the proposed turfing cuts the very core of questions of democracy, public space, and community life in Canada’s largest urban center. In […]
Read more "The Battle Over Back Campus"
The 14th Floor 