POP Montreal puff

I'm not a musician, just a regular live music fan. And, you know, Nate Munn's Unpop festival may have been over-hyped ["Unpop over-plugged," Letters, Sept. 1], but that little spot of press was nothing like the babble-spewing, dysfunctional, hydra-like PR machine that is POP Montreal.

How much coverage does that mess of a "music festival" normally get? Disproportionate? Usually heavily plugged by its own employees? Personally, I'm sick of hearing from them.

On message boards, in press releases, local and international media I see "Re: POP Montreal," signed "POP Montreal." Too many people have come to believe that POP Montreal are the go-to folks who have their finger ever on the pulse of the local music scene. Why is this? Not because POP Montreal is über-legitimate, but because POP Montreal won't shut up about themselves.

Let's be frank: There are many, many people who work hard all year round to bring show after show. They've all been quietly, thanklessly doing this for years. They support local acts, open venues and recording studios and otherwise facilitate a self-sustaining music scene or two. Montreal owes something to them, yet they never call in the favour. They just keep working.

Then, enter the leeches and "up-and-coming band speculators" who constantly pat themselves on the back and publicly congratulate themselves on how they're all volunteer (paid employees do volunteer, after all) and how they're non-profit (thanks, government grant money). Please let me stop hearing about how great POP Montreal is from people who actually work for POP Montreal. Whatever credibility they might have is lost every time one of them sits down to hammer out a glowing missive about their own company. I will make it a point to never go to a POP Montreal event, and they're simple to avoid! I just look for the billowing stream of BS rising into the sky.

» Mitur Benesderty

Masculinists vs. feminists

This is in response to feminist Françoise David's interview last week. The other day I was walking on St-Laurent and decided to count female drivers versus male drivers. Female drivers proved numerous. They drive expensive cars and SUVs, and there are just as many female drivers as male ones. So, contrary to feminist propaganda, women are not that poor.

Another surprising fact is that the poorest of the poor, the homeless, are male nine times out of 10. It is obvious that females are either not as poor, or somewhere else. Could it be that they're artificially inflating feminist statistics on the number of ladies needing centres for so-called battered women? I know one or two ladies who go there for all kinds of reasons (drug-induced stupor for example). They can spend the night in a warm bed, are fed and most of all are pitied because they are poor women victims of a brutally patriarchal society. Meanwhile, their male counterparts sleep outside and beg for food.

What is the ratio of men's shelters to women's shelters, I wonder? Maybe that's why there are so many more homeless guys. How come little boys at school are more often put on Ritalin than little girls? Could it be because 30 years of feminism has made schools a bit more unwelcoming for boys who have more energy to spend, like to explore and display healthy competitiveness?

By the way, Ritalin is sometimes used as speed by some of the previously mentioned homeless guys - maybe they got an early start at school? Why is it that there are more women than men in universities? Medical schools are 80 per cent female in some universities. Could it be because of positive discrimination and sexist quotas imposed on male would-be doctors?

Definitely, feminists are better at whining and complaining that they never have enough funds for their ‘‘projects,'' such as another study on how to further demonize men or how to siphon their salaries after an unfair judgement based on false accusations.

Go have look at Quebec Web sites like l'Après-rupture, Content d'être un gars, la Coalition pour la défense des droits des hommes du Québec and many more for disturbing statistics on the amount of tax dollars poured into the feminist artificially guilt-inducing machine. These sites arose on their own and don't get a cent from the government.

Do I think Feminism went too far? You bet.

» Jim Bovey, Member of l'Après-rupture, www.lapresrupture.qc.ca

Kristian Gravenor assumes that it is women's duty to breed the next generation to "pay our pension and bag our groceries when we're in our fading dotage." (Dotage implies faded, by the way.)

In this allegedly progressive society - and its allegedly progressive up-and-coming generation of leadership - I would expect solutions to the problems of income security and labour force would lie in the area of capitalist practice and ideology - not on the backs of women.

As for the women of Generation Whatever - the "Feminism? We're sooo over it" set - get hip. With guys like this (who is this putz anyway?) and millions like him, you could find yourselves in Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale before you know it. Only it won't be a metaphor this time.

» Marilyn Casselman

Corrections:

The correct e-mail address to report UFO sightings is canadianuforeport@hotmail.com. The Rosemont couple mentioned in the UFO story were in fact celebrating Greece's victory in the Euro Cup, not the World Cup. Apologies to Greece fans everywhere.

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