In one recent national newscast, I saw not one but two instances of life imitating art, the first one in a fatal way that bespeaks of something wrong with people.

Some readers may recall a Steven Spielberg movie a few years ago called The Terminal, with Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Hanks played an immigrant landing in a large international airport (possibly LAX, I'm not sure), and due to political happenings in his home country, immigration officials were unable to let him in to the U.S., nor was he allowed to return to this country.

So, lost in limbo, Hanks the immigrant wanders the airport terminal and ends up living and surviving there, even becoming a successful worker in construction projects around the terminal. As with most movies, things eventually work out, although not necessarily ideally - but at least he lived and went on with his life.

In real life, in Vancouver, a Polish immigrant ended up getting tazered and died, and his heart-broken mother is left without answers as to why her only son couldn't get help.

There are still some details to come out on this case, I'm sure, but from what I could gather, this Polish man boarded a plane for the first time in his life, and left to come join his mother in Vancouver and become a Canadian. What happened, however, is he ran into some sort of difficulty at the airport and was detained for somewhere around 12 hours. He didn't know a word in English, and was trying to find someone who could help him, but was unable to.

His mother believes that, as he could not make himself understood to anyone and no one tried to help him (or seemed to), he understandably became very agitated and upset. He was in the locked secure area of the airport and was unable to get out or leave, and he didn't know why, and the airport people didn't see fit to find him a Polish translator to help out. The police felt for whatever reason they had to restrain him with tazers, which inject a high voltage of electricity into a person to render them immobile. It is not intended to be used in such a way that it's lethal force.

What strikes me is that this was an instance where a visitor to our country desperately needed someone who could help him communicate; thus, if it was indeed necessary at all to have him in the airport all those hours, then it could have been explained to him. That is the very least that could've been done, but no compassion was to be found, no help, and he was abandoned.

His mother waited at least 10 hours and eventually went back home without her son, not knowing where he was or why he wasn't able to come through customs. As a Canadian, I feel ashamed there was no compassion, and no attempt to make any kind of communication to the man or to his mother.

The second example of life imitating art was word that a political satirist on TV, Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, was running for the presidency (but only in South Carolina). He said later he announced it in jest, as part of his poking fun at the presidential candidates presently making the rounds in the U.S.'s incomprehensibly long and drawn-out presidential election process.

But there was a recent movie, Man of the Year, where a popular TV political satirist did exactly the same thing; the character, played by Robin Williams, went on to win the presidency, shocking the entire nation. It came out later that it was due to a glitch in the computer program set up for the voting process, and he didn't go through with the presidency (with relief).

Wouldn't you just look if this happened in real life? There are some people who are actually taking Colbert's declaration seriously, suggesting his name should be on a ballot. It's hard to say if that would be a good idea or not; that would be like CBC's Rick Mercer tossing his name in to our provincial election to run for premier - and then getting elected because he was so popular!

Stranger things have happened.