brain – mackaycartoons

Wednesday February 20, 2019

February 27, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 20, 2019

Gerald Butts and Justin Trudeau ‘would finish each others’ sentences’

The two men, who met at McGill, forged their bonds in debate club. In an interview with McGill News, Trudeau said the experience helped convince him he wasn’t cut out for a career as a lawyer or a debater.

January 21, 2016

Nonetheless, in 2013, like a throwback to his college days, he was smack back in a debate while running the campaign that would land him in the PMO, and Butts was advising during each commercial break.

“Butts … practically pinned his friend against the wall,” according to a 2015 Maclean’s profile. “He slung a jacketed arm over Trudeau’s shoulder and spoke in hushed tones, inches from his face. It wasn’t so much aggressive as intensely friendly — a boxer with his longtime coach — with Trudeau occasionally nodding at Butts’s words.”

January 12, 2007

That helped reinforce a stereotype that Butts served as the brain of the operations while Trudeau provided the charming smile and personality to woo voters.

Their life stories, are of course vastly different: Butts, 47, born to a coal miner and nurse in Cape Breton, graduated from McGill, and after earning a master’s degree even briefly pursued a PhD in literature at York University in Toronto.

Before finishing his degree, he entered politics, rose through the ranks of former Ontario Premier Dalton McGinty’s office and later became chief executive of World Wildlife Foundation-Canada.

90s sensation: Beavis & Butts

Trudeau, meanwhile, the son of a former prime minister, pursued a career as a teacher after McGill until decades later, Butts helped convince him to run for office.

“I often did get the sense that they often would finish each others’ sentences,” said Jonathan Kay, who helped Trudeau with his autobiography and was a columnist for the National Post.

Kay said their personalities helped balance each other out, and the stereotype of Butts as the brains behind the operation is a mistake.

“They were very much equals,” he said, adding, “when they’re together they balance each other out.” (Continued: Financial Post)

Friday, December 16, 2016

December 15, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, December 16, 2016

Trudeau Comfortable With Minimum Age Of 18 To Buy Legal Pot

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thinks Canadians old enough to drink alcohol are old enough to smoke marijuana legally.

September 16, 2016

Trudeau made the comment a press conference in Ottawa Thursday, days after a federal task force on marijuana legalization recommended the national minimum age to buy recreational marijuana be set at 18. The report also suggested provinces and territories be permitted to raise the age to harmonize with alcohol consumption laws.

In most provinces, the legal drinking age is 19. In Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta, the age limit is 18.

The Canadian Medical Association had urged the task force to recommend a minimum age of 21, pointing to evidence that brains are still developing until the age of 25.

April 21, 2016

The prime minister, who has long said pot legalization is about keeping the drug away from children and profits away from criminals, told reporters the task force’s recommendation felt like a “reasonable” compromise.

“We know the largest misdeeds of marijuana use happens at a lower age than 18, 19 years of age, and I think this is a responsible approach that we have found in terms of balance that is both practical and useful,” he said in French.

The task force, chaired by former Liberal justice minister Anne McLellan, acknowledged in its report that there are a range of views on the right age to be able to buy legal pot.

July 29, 2013

Setting the age too high risks “preserving the illicit market,” the report reads, and raising the possibility young Canadians will face criminal records since “the highest rates of use are in the 18 to 24 age range.”

The report also said a minimum age of 25, as recommended by the CMA, was “unrealistic” and would force many young Canadians to turn to the black market. (Source: Huffington Post)

Tuesday June 5, 2012

June 5, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Tuesday June 5, 2012

Gruesome cases bolster talk about zombies

First came Miami: the case of a naked man eating most of another man’s face. Then in Maryland, a college student telling police he killed a man and ate his heart and part of his brain.

In New Jersey, a man stabbed himself 50 times and threw bits of his own intestines at police. They pepper-sprayed him, but he was not easily subdued.

He was, people started saying, acting like a zombie. And the whole discussion just kept growing, becoming a topic that the Internet couldn’t seem to stop talking about.

The actual incidents are horrifying and, if how people are talking about them is any indication, fascinating. In an America where zombie imagery is used to peddle everything from tools and weapons to garden gnomes, they all but beg the comparison.

So many strange things have made headlines in recent days that The Daily Beast assembled a Google map tracking “instances that may be the precursor to a zombie apocalypse.”

The federal agency that tracks diseases weighed in as well, insisting it had no evidence that any zombie-linked health crisis was unfolding.

The cases themselves are anything but funny. Each involved real people either suspected of committing unspeakable acts or having those acts visited upon them for reasons that have yet to be figured out. Maybe it’s nothing new, either; people do horrible things to each other on a daily basis.

But what, then, made search terms like “zombie apocalypse” trend day after day last week in multiple corners of the Internet, fueled by discussions and postings that were often framed as humor? (Source: Newsday)

Letter to the Editor:

As a subscriber to The Hamilton Spectator, I am thoroughly shocked at the lack of sensitivity regarding your choice of editorial cartoon for June 5. The situation is bad enough without adding to the tragedy. I would excuse a newsstand tabloid for sensationalizing a tragic story but, not the Spec. Let’s keep black humour to a minimum and off the editorial page. Stick to making fun of our political system, where there is a lifetime of entertainment value.

Mr. R. McEwen, Port Dover

* * * * * *At thespec.com this week, we posted a video made by a Dutch artist who stuffed his dead cat and turned it into a toy helicopter. With each paw adorned with a mini-rotor, the thing actually flies.

What a world.

At our daily news meeting here at The Spectator, some editors suggested we point our print readers to the online video by mentioning it on the front page, but others thought it simply in bad taste.

Dead pets are a dicey business for most editors (the same way living ones are always a surefire hit) and we are wary of things that would unnecessarily offend the sensibilities of our readers.

But what is bad taste? And is it even news?

In the end, we decided against pointing to the video, but I didn’t receive any complaints about our decision to post it online. In fact, news organizations around the world also thought this “art” was newsworthy.

I did, however, receive many calls and emails from readers about another piece of art that appeared in the paper this week: an editorial cartoon by The Spectator’s Graeme MacKay.

It depicted a man reading a newspaper that was dripping with blood, and the caption: “What’s black and white and red all over?”

Many readers called and wrote to express their dismay, to say the least. A published letter by Robert McEwen summed it up: “I am thoroughly shocked at the lack of sensitivity regarding your choice of editorial cartoon for June 5. The situation is bad enough without adding to the tragedy.”

Some in the blogosphere reacted to this with “what’s-the-big-deal?” comments, but I heard from enough people to know that it was indeed a big deal, for them at least.

Editorial cartoonists are expected to be funny, and often they are, but they do much more than that they comment on the miseries as much as the inanities of life. And they are expected to push the envelope. All good cartoonists do.

Some of the cartoons I’ve found the funniest in my career as a newspaper editor are the very ones readers have been distinctly “not amused” by.

As for this one, I’m not sure. Obviously, I was not amused by it, but I wasn’t offended either. Was it necessary? There is no good answer. It was, after all, a gruesome week for news, and reality certainly was more shocking than the cartoon.

I can’t say whether we needed to be reminded of that or not.

MacKay himself responded to the controversy this way: “No subject should be off the table” for a cartoon, he said, “but there was a definite lack of them” when he was looking for one last week.

In the end, he chose the subject about which most people were talking.

It’s a challenge, to be sure, for editors and cartoonists alike. We try as best we can to be relevant and incisive and funny (if possible) without being too offensive. We don’t always accomplish it all.

And we try to learn from our readers.

Ultimately, everything is indeed news. As for the question of what is bad taste or good? I’m afraid that will always remain a matter of individual opinion.

Paul Berton is editor-in-chief of The Hamilton Spectator and thespec.com. You can reach him at 905-526-3482 or pberton@thespec.com.

Thursday July 12, 2001

July 12, 2001 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 12, 2001

Goofy gag proposal doesn’t serve public

If Hamilton city council has an ounce of common sense, a staff proposal that could see councillors and staff jailed, fired or fined for leaking information to the media will be in the trash by the time you read this.

This proposed bylaw, which was to be debated by committee of the whole yesterday, is so heavy-handed it’s laughable. It’s a caricature of good public policy.

In a time when even those not much interested in the affairs of government agree Canadians should have much more access to information than they do at present, bureaucrats at city hall want you to have less.

Proponents of the bylaw argue it’s needed to serve the interests of taxpayers. The argument goes something like this: When confidential business becomes public prematurely, the city’s negotiating position is weakened, and taxpayers could be stuck with a higher bill as a result. Thus, they argue, the public interest is not well served.

No amount of draconian legislation will stop leaks, especially not at Hamilton city hall. Leaks are a symptom, not the problem. The problem is the lack of a constructive relationship between city staff and elected officials. Fix that problem, and leaks will cease to be the headache they are.

Do we have a vested interest in better access to information concerning how this city is operated and governed? Yes. And so do you. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)