Yo Kanye, We're Really Happy For You, We'll Let You Finish

Kanye West has been signed to perform at the closing ceremonies of the Pan-Am games in Toronto. My first reaction to this is that it's such a Toronto thing to do.

It's reminiscent of SARS-stock, the concert to announce that Toronto was open for business following the SARS outbreak. It had the basic problem that they were trying to advertise their city by hosting a concert of The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, and other acts who were almost completely from other places. The message came out as, "Toronto is great, because we can afford to hire famous people." CNN had the best line, commenting that this was the first time Keith Richards has been used as a symbol of public health. It was a great indication of how Toronto desperately wants to publicize itself, but doesn't really know how.

The irony is that although Toronto often seems quite separate from the smaller communities of Southern Ontario, it still has essentially the same mentality. A small town down the 401 from Toronto might think the key to being taken seriously is to get a Walmart, not considering that lots of places have Walmarts. Similarly, Toronto tries to get world respect by gathering more of the things other big cities have.

And that leads to perhaps the strangest part of this hire-famous-foreigners phenomena: the officials responsible are so oblivious. When questioned about the choice, the head of the games said that the closing ceremonies of most sports events have big acts, so this is not unusual. A quick look at recent Olympic closing ceremonies show that they do indeed feature big acts, but he didn't seem to notice the pattern that it's always big acts from the host country. Even our antipodean doppelgänger Australia had a performance of every musician they've ever produced except AC/DC.

And news reports (usually emulating from Toronto) don't seem to get it either. One CBC report began by flatly starting that people were uncomfortable with Kanye because he isn't a nice person, dredging up the footage of him interrupting Taylor Swift. They then proceeded to show person-on-the-street interviews about it, all of whom criticized the choice based on West's not being Canadian.  So it seems many of us - even Torontonians - do get it, it will just take a while to filter to the top.