{"id":20315,"date":"2018-04-04T20:52:51","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T00:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20315"},"modified":"2018-04-04T20:52:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T00:52:51","slug":"brocks-banter-sex-religion-and-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-sex-religion-and-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Sex, religion and politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dark chocolate with quinoa and hemp hearts.
\nI was braced for the worst, but this was pretty mild from what I had been expecting.
\nThis Easter, as we all know, was unusual in that it fell on April Fool\u2019s Day.
\nAs such, not only was I braced for the worst, I expected the worst. There seemed to be infinite possibilities on how this day might go awry.
\nThese possibilities ranged from the benign, like unwrapping colourful egg-shaped foil only to discover an array of red and green grapes underneath the surface, to\u2026well, to the more macabre, like coming downstairs on Easter Morning and finding an Alex Forrest-inspired treat bubbling away on the stove.
\nPerhaps given what\u2019s going on in the world right now, people thought April Fool\u2019s jokes would be relatively pointless, almost anticlimactic. After all, isn\u2019t there a sense right now of living in a time where very few things are actually out of the ordinary?
\nAnyway, if you expect the worst, chances are you\u2019re rarely let down.
\nAlthough I admit to being slightly disappointed that nobody tried to prank me, or ladle out a stew that just wasn\u2019t suited for the occasion, I was, however, heartened that the Easter Bunny decided to hop right up to the prank line by going full-on hipster and delivering the aforementioned dark chocolate with quinoa and hemp hearts treat.
\nAfter looking up exactly what a hemp heart was \u2013 after all, it didn\u2019t look anything like an artichoke heart or heart of romaine \u2013 and getting assurances that it is indeed something you eat rather than smoke, it actually turned out pretty good.
\nScore One for the Easter Bunny.
\nAfter a few squares had been consumed, it was time for the traditional family gathering.
\nYou all know the score: these occasions, regardless of the family you actually belong to, go one of two ways: a warm and lovely family reunion, or a veritable melee that, somewhere along the way, goes spectacularly off the rails.
\nI wasn\u2019t sure what to expect this time around.
\nA few weeks ago, I was at a dinner party for five. Admittedly, it was an unusually odd number for a dinner party, but it seemed to work. Conversation seemed to flow like wine \u2013 as did the wine itself. Within just an hour, we had covered topics ranging from the upcoming Provincial Election, the ongoing debate over the Progressive Conservatives\u2019 plans for sex-ed reform, philosophical fires stoked by Toronto academics over the use of preferred pronouns, and the revival of the religious right.
\nIn short, a lot of bases were covered.
\n\u201cWow,\u201d said one of the guests at around the 90 minute mark. \u201cWe\u2019ve already covered sex, religion and politics. Now what?\u201d
\nUp until very recently, the old etiquette staple was that these were the three topics that were simply not to be covered in what was described as \u201cpolite\u201d conversation.
\nA prime example of this is in the classic \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d when Professor Higgins takes Eliza Doolittle to Ascot to \u201ctry her out\u201d after a crash course not only in etiquette, but elocution.
\nBrainstorming possible topics of conversation before the main event, Higgins advises her of the path forward: \u201cThe weather and everybody\u2019s health.\u201d
\nOf course, this newfangled \u201csmall talk\u201d doesn\u2019t necessarily go as planned, but it serves the purpose.
\nThe dinner party I attended last month proved that discussing sex, religion and politics can indeed be discussed in relatively polite company, leading not to screaming matches, storms around the room, tossed food, a drink in the face, or flounces out the door.
\nThe same held true for my family\u2019s Easter Dinner on Sunday night.
\nAs tradition dictates, our family gathering was once again hosted by my aunt and cousin at their home in the southernmost tip of what has colloquially become known, for better or worse, as the heart of Ford Nation.
\nBack when such a term was first coined, Rob was at his zenith as a politician and provided no shortage of heated dinner table fodder at the time. Now that it was a colloquialism that is very much at the forefront of our minds once again, I was more than curious as to whether dinner table conversation could once again withstand the topics of sex, religion and politics.
\nThankfully, not only did it withstand that heady trifecta, but it conspired to create an enlightening atmosphere where political views had evolved and contrary opinions and different perspectives were almost as tantalizing as the food on the table.
\nBoth Easter Dinner and last month\u2019s dinner party were almost balms for this particular writer\u2019s soul.
\nNot too long ago, I was zeroing in on despair observing \u2013 but not often participating in \u2013 some of the threads of public discourse making themselves known online.
\nWe all know about fake news, the ill-informed people who seem to have made it their calling to disseminate the good word, the manufactured bots \u2013 or bots-for-hire \u2013 designed solely to spread misinformation, but there seems to be a growing trend of people simply wanting to shut off all dissenting voices.
\nA handful of friends, for example, recently published near-manifestos on just what constituted a proper reply to anything they happened to post on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Although there were a number of points from each individual, it all boiled down to these essentials: \u201cOnly reply to a post if you happen to agree with an opinion. All others will be banned.\u201d \u201cA Facebook wall is a \u2018curated\u2019 page. Navigate at your own risk.\u201d And, although it wasn\u2019t explicitly stated, \u201cDon\u2019t interrupt my echo chamber.\u201d
\nThese are mindsets I am seeing with greater and greater frequency as the weeks and months roll on, so these past two experiences were unexpectedly refreshing.
\nPerhaps this hive mind mentality is limited to social media, but I found it encouraging that, at least in person, these conversations actually provided valuable and informed discourse. It might have led to changed opinions \u2013 it might not \u2013 but these conversations were had.
\nAnd that\u2019s the important thing.
\nIt left me with a feeling of hope \u2013 but tempered with hope as well that this was not a simple April Fool\u2019s prank.
\nIf so, I\u2019d gladly trade my chocolate-covered quinoa and hemp hearts for more conversation.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Dark chocolate with quinoa and hemp hearts. I was braced for the worst, but this was pretty mild from what I had been expecting. This Easter, as we all know, was unusual in that it fell on April Fool\u2019s Day. As such, not only was I braced for the worst, I expected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5hF","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-12 07:33:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}