Somehow, a melancholy TikTok video mutated into an unavoidable topic for news media in August, as information-based employment annoyances started weighing more heavily ahead of Labour Day. Yet it’s not quite clear what “quiet quitting” stands for—beyond that it was bound to draw a backlash from experts advising against it, if it’s even happening at all.
The tweet that took some time
The prime ministerial account weighed in with words about the most recent wave of vile harassment directed at journalists, some of whom shared the threats on social media. But words from Justin Trudeau can’t possibly solve this issue, particularly in a week when the federal government had its own scandal due to funding a vile tweeter to run media seminars.
Ana Poilievre has entered the chat. Pierre’s wife tweeting a link to “7 times Trudeau met with pedophiles, terrorists and extremists” led prominent Liberals to decry this as disturbing behaviour from the spouse of a likely Conservative leader. Ana previously clapped back at a CBC reporter who suggested she was the beneficiary of nepotism in Ottawa.
Standards get violated by advice
Three months after Ellie Tesher announced her daughter Lisi is now the co-writer of her longtime Toronto Star advice column, a reply to a letter got wider attention than usual. Their response said a woman whose boyfriend was pointing a gun at her was at fault due to her past infidelity. What made it into print was excised online and replaced by a disclaimer:
Gerald Potterton dead at 91. One of the pioneers of animation at the National Film Board of Canada after moving from London, England, to Montreal in 1954, he quit the NFB to work on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. Later, he directed the big-screen Heavy Metal. Potterton was also the focus of a documentary about his life and career, The Flying Animator.
Finally, a taste of machinations
Doug and the Slugs and Me is a documentary about filmmaker Teresa Alfeld’s pursuit of information about her childhood best friend’s dad, goofy Canadian rock star Doug Bennett, who died in 2004 at age 52. It’s soon getting screen time at the Vancouver International Film Festival, with a talking-heads cast that includes former area journalist Bob Geldof: