A living tribute:
A Russian businessman who set up a museum dedicated to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was electrocuted and bludgeoned to death on Friday, media reported.
Mansbridgio de’ Medici: the declining years
On the Sunday, April 18th edition of The National, the teaser for an upcoming story consisted entirely of these twelve words:
At the end of the day: Rahim Jaffer, Ms. Guergis – Cocaine? Hookers?
I’m not a fan of the CBC, obviously, but that is a good one. They’ve taken the sort of blithe, craven, entitled, almost joyous unaccountability that we associate with the Liberal remora of the Adscam years and applied it to journalism, and they’ve maintained this approach even as it all slowly unravels. Anyone who got all his news from The National could be forgiven for thinking that Canada had been on the right track under the Liberals, but that our government has been plagued by a series of mini-scandals and outrages ever since the Conservatives took power. The truth – that a solid, scandal-free government has taken us through an unprecedented international financial storm and left us in the best shape of any country in the world – would be supplanted by the CBC’s hammering, partisan narrative that the Conservatives’ reign has amounted to a tireless litany of fabricated scandals, of “damning evidence” and “new and explosive allegations” and “political firestorms.”
Defenders of the CBC continue to say there’s no bias; what’s unsettling is that they always say it with a straight face. Anyone who has actually watched the National over the last fifteen years – as opposed to just talking nonstop about how unbiased it is, or saying “naw, I don’t watch it, there’s too much Liberal bias” – knows full well that if a Shawinigate were to occur tomorrow, but with Stephen Harper in Jean Chretien’s role, it would be a top-of-the-hour outrage for months, if not years. If you doubt it, ask yourself this: if the actions of a blowhard former Conservative MP, turfed years ago by his own party, who bragged about his ability to access government money in an attempt to make himself appear important, but in the end *received no money whatsoever* from the government, warrants speculative, innuendo-driven, top-of-the-hour, five-alarm, government-scandal coverage for weeks on end, how would The National even begin to cover a Conservative version of Shawinigate or Adscam? It’s hard to even imagine. They’d surely need three new channels, twenty new reporters, an eighty-trailer mobile war room, and nightly special reports – “A nation in crisis! How did we get to this point?”
Now that the Conservatives are belatedly taking on the CBC, by focusing, as a start, on the CBC’s presentation of EKOS pollster Frank Graves as a putatively unbiased, non-partisan expert on the Canadian political scene, the straight-faced crowd who defend the CBC are pretending – because that’s what it is, pretending – that the Conservatives are only unhappy with Frank Graves’ CBC appearances because he’s a partisan:
Check your plates
A Virginia NASCAR fan’s vanity license plate was recalled by the state’s DMV after “motorists and Muslims groups complained that his Virginia vanity license plate…was really code for neo-Nazi, white supremacist sentiments.”
Douglas Story says his plate, 14CV88, was “an homage to the car numbers of his favourite NASCAR drivers: Tony Stewart, who drives car No. 14, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who drives No. 88,” and that CV is common shorthand for “Sons of Confederate Veterans.”
Not so, according to Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, who said “his group looked into the meaning of the numbers 14 and 88 after receiving complaints about Story’s license plates. He said the group found that among neo-Nazis, 88 refers to ‘Heil Hitler,’ because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.”
Okay. So what about the 14?
White supremacists sometimes use the number 14, Hooper said, as shorthand for the 14-word motto, ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.’
Story, who had a large anti-Islam sticker on the back of his Ford F-150 until he removed it, says “There is absolutely no way I’d have anything to do with Hitler or Nazis….My sister-in-law and my niece are Jewish. I went to my niece’s bat mitzvah when she turned thirteen three years ago…”
Three years ago?
Hmm….
The Short March Sideways
On the Sunday, April 25 edition of The National, the CBC did a dedicated report, pre-announced as such, on the recent oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Reporter Peter Akman began thusly: “The stakes have changed drastically on the choppy waters of the Gulf of Mexico when a drilling platform exploded and sank this week. Officials thought the environmental damage was limited to a surface spill, but now they’ve discovered the underwater oil well is leaking.” Rear Adm. Mary Landry of the U.S. Coast Guard was shown saying “This is a serious incident and has the potential to be a major spill. I’m not going to quantify, I’m not going to use any major numbers now, it’s way too early to project.” Akman then explained “The oil rig platform drilling 65 kilometres off Louisiana burst into flames on Tuesday. Now, British Petroleum is saying at least 160,000 litres of oil are pouring into the water each day.” A BP spokesman was then shown explaining the details of the ongoing efforts to stop the leak.
Oh, and here, verbatim, is the conclusion of Akman’s report on that oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:
“Environmentalists point out (that) Alberta’s oil sands remain as dirty as ever, polluting not only the water, but also the air and the land. Peter Akman, CBC News, Calgary.”
Oh well. We’re all paying for the CBC, so…
“One thing that I’ve gotten off on lately…”
“The bigger you get, the more maggots you can crush with your weight…”
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Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) SDA Late Nite Radio.
The music of Christian church services can range from the practically monotone, vaguely medieval sounds of some eastern Orthodox churches, to the all-out, exultant, virtually free-form testimonial shouting of some Pentecostal services. Tonight’s music, excerpted from a live broadcast of a Chicago area show called The Breakthrough Hour, is of the latter variety…and then some.
Watch and listen as powerhouse gospel legend Delores “Honey” Sykes, backed by a remarkable group of musicians on bass, drums, piano and organ, builds the energy, moment by moment, until the entire congregation is dancing in the aisles. Just when the whole thing threatens to get out of control, it does, and a Sunday evening church service turns into a riot of music and sales: as the band plays on wildly in the background, a woman takes the broadcast mic and begins offering audio and video cassettes, carefully enunciating the prices right down to the ninety-five cents, and then, while she’s talking over top of the band and the shouting congregation, the pastor, Apostle Dr. Richard D. Henton, can no longer contain himself and commences to shouting into his mic – “Come on now! Owww!” – from his throne-like chair on the side of the stage.
Christianity, commerce, and a dance riot all rolled into one – only in America, as Don King would say. Here then, without further ado, former Chicago Duncanaire Delores Sykes exhorts all to understand that when your troubles are squeezing the life out of you, that’s when you’ve got to Stretch Out.
The thread is open for your Reader Tips.
The Liberals are coming
Hopefully they understand that they’ll have to entertain themselves once they get here.
The Alberta wing of the Federal Liberal party recently announced that their Annual General Meeting and Policy Convention will be held in Lethbridge, Alberta from April 30th to May 2nd. The online invitation, fulsomely replete with a photo of a windfarm with a rainbow behind it, boasts a star-studded lineup that includes one-woman klan extinguisher Hedy Fry, House of Commons Fake-Outrage Choir first tenor Ralph Goodale, and future five-term Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Alas, a charter bus which was to depart from Edmonton – the only place in Alberta that even remotely resembles a Liberal enclave – was canceled. Apparently, the Liberals “could not find 35 people in the 1 million person metro Edmonton region who wanted to make the trip.”
In related news, the Chippendale Dancers’s scheduled June 8th performance in Bali has been canceled….
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Anyone who has ever stumbled across MTV – in a restaurant, for example – has heard the sort of music discharged by poodle-haircut-sporting wannabe-Satan types who clearly spend too much time in front of a mirror. Puffing out their lips and sneering like tattooed, cross-dressing derelicts, they wear their uber-coolness like a self-inflicted injury as they blast twenty-thousand watts of dehumanizing noise to drugged-up kids with STDs and nose rings. Oddly, they never seem to take any pleasure in performing their music.
Tonight we take a happy joyride in the opposite direction, and hand the stage over to the enduring one-man phenomenon known as Walter Ostanek, aka Canada’s Polka King. Flying blissfully under, over and around popular music’s radar, this legendary performer has been known throughout his more than fifty-year career for his ability to lift the spirits of his fans, many of whom are of European immigrant stock, with his live performances and his over eighty high-quality records and CDs . His Slovenian-style (sometimes called Cleveland-style) polkas evoke good food and good times with family, friends, and neighbours, and are always delivered with a smile. We’re talking about a man who knows what side his bread is buttered on:
To Walter Ostanek, the title, “Canada’s Polka King” is much more than just a name. It is a special honour that carries with it an obligation to a special dedication and a promise to his fans and followers that wherever and whenever the Walter Ostanek Band appears in public, the band will do their utmost to please the audience and keep them happy.
That they surely do. Here then, performing with his crack band, is three time Grammy Award winner, International Polka Hall of Fame inductee, member of the Order of Canada, and proud owner of Ostanek’s Music Centre in St. Catherines Ontario – which carries a wide range of musical instruments including a selection of quality button and piano accordions, and whose friendly staff will walk you through the process of finding the right accordion for your price range and skill level – Walter Ostanek – he’s the fellow in the white shirt on the left – as he makes three or four generations of folks forget their troubles on the dance floor with the merry musical announcement that yes, indeed, it’s Polka Time!
You are invited to type out your merry Reader Tips in the comments.
Cleanup on gate eleven
Sometimes the answer is right under our noses:
Here’s a solution to all the controversy over full-body scanners at airports.
Have a booth that you can step into that will not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have on you.
It would be a win-win situation for everyone and would eliminate this crap about racial profiling. This method would also obviate the need for a long and expensive trial. Justice would be swift and quick.
This elegant solution would also benefit people flying standby:
I can just see it now: You’re in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion. Shortly thereafter, an announcement comes over the PA system, “Attention standby passengers, we now have a seat available on flight number….”
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Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) SDA Late Nite Radio.
Recently there’s been a bit of a behind-the-scenes scandal at the LNR studios: one particular commenter, Loretta, claims that another commenter – let’s call her “Carol” – has been boasting about having an affair with Loretta’s husband. A rather steamed Loretta writes, via email,
“She’s absolutely full of it. When my husband picks up trash, he puts it in a garbage can. And that’s what Carol looks like to me – pitiful trash. If she comes anywhere near me I swear I’m going to grab her by the hair and lift her off of the ground.”
“I’m not saying my husband is a saint – ’cause he ain’t – and that he won’t flirt with other women. What I am saying is that if Carol doesn’t back off I’m going to show her what a real woman is. She thinks she’s hot stuff? Well, if she’s got the guts, she should say to my face all this stuff she’s been saying to other people.”
“She’s been boasting about this supposed mutual attraction between her and my husband; well, mark my word, if she doesn’t shut up she’s going to find herself on a one-way trip to Fist City.”
I felt it was in the interests of public safety to publish the warning. Now, leave me out of it.
The thread is open for your Reader Tips.
The right stuff
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about who should be appointed as our next governor-general. Rick Hansen would be terrific, in my opinion, but L. Ian MacDonald has come up with an inspired suggestion: Clara Hughes.
Assuming she’d be willing to take on the role, I think she’d be an absolutely brilliant choice. She’s a real light in this world, and she exemplifies Canadians’ best historic qualities: decency, hard work, courage, kindness, integrity, spirit, and a thoroughgoing modesty.
What do you think? Who else would be a good pick?
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Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) SDA Late Nite Radio.
In The Adventure of English, Melvin Bragg’s fascinating and highly-readable book about the origins of our language, the author describes how an English speaker who hears someone speaking in Frisian, our nearest ancestral language, may get an odd, persistent feeling that he is this close to understanding what’s being said. Many of the words are almost identical (“goose” is goes, “butter” is buter, “sleep” is sliepe, “sea” is see, “cheese” is tsiis, and so on) but are simply pronounced a bit differently, and in that sense, he notes, Frisian is not so very different from England’s regional Geordie dialect, for example, and only slightly less comprehensible.
Stanley Unwin, tonight’s featured performer, was a British comedic actor with a peculiar and artful talent for speaking in a way that left listeners similarly hovering on the edge of comprehension. His unusual word constructions all sounded vaguely familiar, and he was so reassuringly English in his mannerisms and delivery that listeners who – inevitably, and by design, of course – could never quite parse the always convincing-sounding point he was making always felt that the shortfall must be their own fault, and that they would surely understand him if only they listened a bit more closely. Unwin traced the origins of his “strange but strangely comprehensible lexicon” to the day when his mother, who had tripped on the way home from work, told him that she’d “‘falolloped’ in front of a tram and grazed her ‘kneeclappers.'” His own use of language would later show that same sort of Joycean creativity: Elvis “wasp-waist and swivel-hippy” Presley, for example, was “tilty hibbers’n stick out the torso’n wobble both knee-clappers’n singit…”
Tonight’s selection, from the British film Carry On Regardless, is an excerpt of a scene in which Unwin’s baffling argot results in him being mistaken for a job applicant when he is in fact the business’ landlord trying to tell the owners that he has found another tenant. Watch the hilarious facial expressions of Miss Cooling at 2:37, as she hovers in a state of mild, diligence-induced torment: she doesn’t have the first clue as to what Unwin is saying, but his tone and cadence and and intonation are so eloquent-sounding as to leave her troubled by the possibility that he is speaking quite comprehensibly, and that she’s just not picking up on it – a self-doubt surely validated by Kenneth Williams’ character’s casual ability to precisely restate Unwin’s – apparently clear – position.
Here it is then, for your amusement: Stanley Unwin baffles the Carry On Team.
The thread is open for your Reader Tips.
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Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) Late Nite Radio.
Every note of music, every voice that ever stirred the air prior to advent of the earliest sound-recording technology is gone forever. No one will ever hear Chopin playing his nocturnes, or an ancient Greek bard singing of the exploits of the gods as he strums his lyre, or hear the ringing voice of an 18th century Scottish balladeer. Because of a unique confluence of particular circumstances, though, tonight’s featured performer moves the line back – just a bit – and provides a tantalizing window into the pre-recording era sounds of mid-19th century American music.
David Harrison Macon was born in 1870 in Tennessee, the son of a distiller and former Confederate civil war captain. When he was 12 his father purchased Nashville’s Broadway Hotel, a famous hub for an assortment traveling minstrels and vaudevillians, where Macon would soak up hundreds of songs and lyrics and styles from older performers, some of whom had been playing their songs continuously since well before the civil war. After his father was stabbed to death the hotel was sold, and Macon began his 30-some year career as a muleskinner. Hauling goods between the towns of Woodbury and Murfreesboro, he always had his banjo with him as he sung to his mules and entertained passersby. By the time the voluble, musically deft and wisecracking Macon entered an early studio for the first time when he was in his mid-fifties, he was a real-life character, first and foremost; his recordings weren’t carefully-scripted studio creations but rather a documentation, replete with foot stomps and shouts and hollers, of a lifelong entertainer whose sensibility and music had been forged in an earlier era.
This wisecracking, entertaining, human-jukebox known professionally as Uncle Dave Macon takes us as close as we will ever get to hearing the sounds, styles and mannerisms of the US civil war-era music. In this 1926 recording mash up of “A-Monday Was My Courtin’ Day” and the 1844 song “Old Grey Goose”, he avows with a wink that he won’t get drunk no more Way Down The Old Plank Road.
You are invited, as always, to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.
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Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) Late Nite Radio.
The success of so-called progressives in the last few decades in positioning themselves as the adjudicators of respect, tolerance, and freedom is surely the great irony of our age. Those who most typically call their opponents fascists, or some variant of the word, are the same people who feel perfectly justified in using mob rule to silence opposing views. This sort of cultural success in flipping the truth on its head even manifests in the most powerful office in the world: the current President has had a long association with a man who participated in the bombing of the Capitol buildings and the Pentagon, and yet high-ranking Democrats serving under him feel perfectly entitled to deign to characterize, with a straight face, regular mom and pop folks who disagree with the Democrats’ policies as being a radical fringe of extremists, while much of the legacy media happily parrots this bald-faced inversion of the truth.
This sorry state of affairs is at least partially the fault of conservatives who have played into the hands of unreasonable opponents by constantly asserting the need to maintain a spirit of cooperation, even as their opponents make volubly clear through their words and actions that they have absolutely no interest in doing the same. This assumption that compromise and bipartisanship is always the reasonable approach is badly mistaken because it not only presupposes, in the face of evidence to the contrary, that one’s opponents are equally well-intentioned and willing to meet halfway, but it also ignores the unpleasant reality that certain freedoms, once bargained away, may never be regained without bloodshed.
Tonight’s jaunty song selection is dedicated here to conservatives who think that cooperating and plea-bargaining with intransigent opponents is a win-win, that there is no such thing as us versus them, and that supineness will invite respect and facilitate compromise on the part of one’s opponent. Here’s Tom Lehrer’s fiercely satirical paean to fair play at any cost, Fight Fiercely Harvard.
You are invited, as always, to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.
It’s On
Mark Steyn:
I try to be a sunny the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full kinda guy, but it’s hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished….
Mathew Vadum:
America suffered an atrocity of catastrophic proportions last night and it’s not clear if the nation will ever recover.
David Horowitz:
The President was right about one thing. The vote on Obamacare tonight was a historic one. The Democratic Party has…revealed itself to be an anti-democratic Party and an anti-liberty party. It is a party that has demonstrated its contempt for the Constitutional framework, for the democratic process, and for the expressed will of the American people. Its brazen contempt for the compact that holds the diverse factions of this country together has initiated a political war at home that will extend not only into the next elections but into the next generations….The people of this nation are still sovereign, and their voice will be heard. Tonight’s vote was lost but it is not the end of the battle. It is the beginning.
From the “Idaho Health Freedom Act”, passed last week:
The power to require or regulate a person’s choice in the mode of securing health care services, or to impose a penalty related thereto, is not found in the Constitution of the United States of America, and is therefore a power reserved to the people pursuant to the Ninth Amendment, and to the several states pursuant to the Tenth Amendment. The state of Idaho hereby exercises its sovereign power to declare the public policy of the state of Idaho regarding the right of all persons residing in the state of Idaho in choosing the mode of securing health care services.
It is hereby declared that the public policy of the state of Idaho, consistent with our constitutionally recognized and inalienable rights of liberty, is that every person within the state of Idaho is and shall be free to choose or decline to choose any mode of securing health care services without penalty or threat of penalty.
The thread is open for your comments, quotes, links, etc.
Reader Tips
Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) Late Nite Radio. In honour of the fact that yesterday was St. Paddy’s day, aka the day on which sensible people go straight home after work in order to avoid encounters with drunken revelers of every ethnic background wearing “Kiss me, I’m Irish” t-shirts, tonight we feature the walking distilleries known as The Pogues performing a song written by their — highly flammable — lead singer Shane MacGowan called If I Should Fall From Grace With God.
Please move small pets and elderly family members to a safe area, and refrain from throwing beer bottles.
You are invited, as always, to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.
But I have a condition…
You’ve got to wonder sometimes if this whole “human rights” thing hasn’t gone too far:
A union representing Dutch nurses will launch a national campaign Friday against demands for sexual services by patients who claim it should be part of their standard care.
The union, NU’91, is calling the campaign “I Draw The Line Here,” with an advert that features a young woman covering her face with crossed hands.
A more effective advert would show a trio of brawny Dutch-Calvinist nurses advancing with a pillow…
Rampaging gangs of Toyotas rough up the elderly and the bankrupt
Last week a 61-year old named James Sikes, who filed for bankruptcy several years ago, found himself unable to stop his 2008 Toyota Prius as it raced along the highway at over 90 miles per hour. The 911 dispatcher “repeatedly pleaded with Sikes to shift into neutral. He simply refused…..”
Fun fact: the gear shift in the 2008 Toyota Prius is conveniently mounted so that one can shift while keeping both hands on the wheel.
“I thought about” shifting into neutral, Sikes said at a televised press conference the day after the incident. But “I had never played with this kind of a transmission, especially when you’re driving, and I was actually afraid to do that.”
Might there be more going on behind the scenes of this whole “Toyota scandal” than the average MSM-watcher is aware of? Theodore H. Frank, in the Washington Examiner:
We went through this a generation ago with the Audi 5000 and other autos accused of sudden acceleration, and, again, mysterious unknowable car components were supposedly at fault….Back then, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)…found that sudden acceleration was several times more likely among elderly drivers than young drivers…”
We’re seeing the same pattern again today. Initial reports of a problem, followed by dozens of new reports “coming to light” as people seek to blame their earlier accidents on sudden acceleration.
(…)
In the 24 (Toyota) cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89—and I’m leaving out the son whose age wasn’t identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.
Hmmm. Clearly, it’s time for a class-action age-discrimination lawsuit against foreign car manufacturer Toyota. Their customers’ lives, after all, “can suddenly become hell-on-wheels.”
“Now, leaving aside the facts, just for a few years…”
Everyone knows the details already, but the basic facts are essential here: former MP Rahim Jaffer was charged last year with drunk driving and drug possession. Several days ago, under an agreement reached between his lawyer and an Ontario provincial Crown prosecutor, Jaffer pleaded guilty to lesser charges. The provincial prosecutor said there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction on the more serious charges; according to this report, police sources said that “a rookie OPP officer failed to follow proper procedures during a strip search of Jaffer.”
Now, keeping in mind that at the time he was charged Jaffer was neither a Conservative MP nor working for the Conservatives in any capacity whatsoever (they had long since elbowed him out of the nomination race in his riding), and that his plea deal was reached with the Crown prosecutor, not the judge, in a provincial jurisdiction that the federal government absolutely has no say in, take a look at a sampling of what various media and opposition members had to say:
David Akin: “Turns out the judge in the case, Doug Maund, is a long-time Tory.” Jane Taber: “Stephen Harper’s tough-on-crime Conservatives were accused of being not-so-tough when it comes to one of their own…” Akin, again: “Jaffer’s former caucus colleagues immediately tried to distance themselves from the (Crown prosecutor’s) decision.” Peter Mansbridge, introducing the top story on The National: “As a Conservative Member of Parliament Rahim Jaffer was known for his tough stand on crime. Now, the opposition says he’s a Tory example of another kind: hypocrisy!” Liberal MP Anita Neville, seen bellowing in the HOC on The National: “The Conservatives are conspicuously silent…when the law is being flouted by one of their own.” Toronto Lawyer Russell Silverstein, on The National: “You know, when the public sees somebody charged with drunk driving and possession of cocaine who’s politically connected…” Unidentified man-on-the-street, on The National: “Ex-Conservative MP, married to the Minister of State for Women’s Affairs – I mean obviously they’re going to drop the charges, they had no choice.” (all emph. mine)
The attempts to attach Jaffer’s actions to the Conservative government (“one of their own“) were pure partisan ridiculousness, and almost laughable; what was not even slightly laughable, in those several days of coverage, were the efforts of various media and opposition members to raise, in a sideways fashion – i.e., without being accountable for it – a constant insinuation that the Conservative government interfered behind the scenes in a decision made by a provincial crown prosecutor. For two days and nights, a serious allegation which there was no evidence for became unmistakably threaded into the subtext of the coverage of what was, unaccountably, the biggest news story in the country.
While various other media members also joined in, it was once again the CBC who led the charge, displaying a perfected reversal of the sort of coverage they gave the Liberals. When in 1996 Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien was ordered by a judge to answer a charge of assault, and Quebec’s Justice Minister announced a few hours later that he would not allow the case to proceed, there were no insinuations that there had been any political interference. When Jean Chretien’s son Michel was charged in 2002 with sexual assault, illegal confinement, and sodomy, the mother of the victim stated that she had been pressured by a sitting Liberal MP to not press criminal charges. She said the MP told her –
“…(Chretien) is the Prime Minister, he has all the power and he will fight this case for Michel. Then she told me that ‘a lot of dirty things are going to come up about your past and the media will be there’…I almost changed my mind (about pressing charges) because of that.”
Remember the CBC’s top-of-the-hour news story on that? Well, me neither, because there wasn’t one. And yet somehow, in the last two days, a provincial crown prosecutor’s decision, in a case involving a former MP, now a private citizen, somehow managed to become attached, with great deal of hyperventilating outrage, to the Conservatives. How does that happen, exactly? Only Mansbridge’s hairdresser knows for sure, but consider, in isolation, the CBC’s decision to nationally broadcast, in their top-of-the-hour story, the following statement:
“Ex-Conservative MP, married to the Minister of State for Women’s affairs, I mean, obviously they’re going to drop the charges, they had no choice.”
Interesting. Suppose some non-taxpayer-funded news network – let’s call it Fox News Canada – aired an unidentified man-in-the-street’s assertion that Michael Ignatieff beats his wife if she leaves dirty dishes in the sink. The network, and the reporter, would surely be required to provide some evidence to back up the statement or else face very serious consequences. It wouldn’t t even begin to suffice, as either a legal or moral defense, one wouldn’t think, for the network – or the reporter or the producer – to say “hey, we didn’t say that at all, it was some guy in the street.” To the contrary, the only justification for airing such a statement would be if it was made by a known public figure, at which point there might be some justification for covering it, albeit without repeating the allegation, and only in the context of a story noting that politician X made a serious allegation about Ignatieff without any proof to back it up; there could certainly be no journalistic justification whatsoever for airing such a statement from some unidentified man in the street, and any broadcaster who aired such a serious accusation without proof would be liable for it, and held to account.
Someone at the CBC made a decision to broadcast, coast-to-coast, an unidentified individual’s statement that a particular provincial Crown prosecutor – someone who has a name, a professional reputation, and a family – rendered a decision based not on the law he’s been sworn to uphold but on political interference from someone outside his jurisdiction, and that our sitting government illegally interfered in a court case in a provincial jurisdiction – and all without one single shred of evidence.
Was it urgent, serious, and of public importance for the CBC to nationally broadcast a categorical, unproven allegation of serious wrongdoing made by an unidentified member of the public? Was the unidentified individual’s honest statement of opinion in any way based on fact? Has the CBC – would the CBC – ever broadcast an allegation of serious wrongdoing by a Liberal government that had absolutely no basis in fact?
No, no, and no.
Vile, unethical, unprofessional journalism – and it only costs us a billion dollars a year.
You know, there oughta be a law…
Freedom for oppressors in the name of tolerance
Somali-born Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been living for years under mortal threat as a direct consequence of her criticism of fundamentalist Islam. Sadly, there’s no shortage of western intellectuals willing to criticize her for her views on Islam and skate disingenuously around the edges of blaming her for the situation she finds herself in.
In his essay Enlightenment fundamentalism, or racism of the anti-racists? Pascal Bruckner takes aim at the cultural mindset of such critics, focusing on two in particular: academic Timothy Garton Ash, who deemed Hirsi Ali irresponsible, and a “simplistic Enlightenment fundamentalist,” and writer/academic Ian Buruma, who in a New York Times column titled Hard Luck for a Hard-Liner wrote the following statement, which perfectly exemplifies the – almost aggravating – willful blindness of so many in the west: “Ms. Hirsi Ali…had referred a few weeks ago to the ‘terror regime of political correctness ruling our nation.’ It was as though she were being punished in a timid country for being an outspoken critic of Islam.”
Bruckner:
Relativism demands that we see our values simply as the beliefs of the particular tribe we call the West. Multiculturalism is the result of this process. Born in Canada in 1971, its principle aim is to assure the peaceful cohabitation of populations of different ethnic or racial origins on the same territory. In multiculturalism, every human group has a singularity and legitimacy that form the basis of its right to exist, conditioning its interaction with others. The criteria of just and unjust, criminal and barbarian, disappear before the absolute criterion of respect for difference. There is no longer any eternal truth: the belief in this stems from naïve ethnocentrism.
Anyone with a mind to contend timidly that liberty is indivisible, that the life of a human being has the same value everywhere, that amputating a thief’s hand or stoning an adulteress is intolerable everywhere, is duly arraigned in the name of the necessary equality of cultures. As a result, we can turn a blind eye to how others live and suffer once they’ve been parked in the ghetto of their particularity….This is the paradox of multiculturalism: it accords the same treatment to all communities, but not to the people who form them, denying them the freedom to liberate themselves from their own traditions. Instead: recognition of the group, oppression of the individual…
In the putative name of respecting race, he notes, “individuals are imprisoned in an ethnic or racial definition.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for her part, clearly understands what’s going on far more than her critics do:
“Colonisation and slavery have created a sentiment of culpability in the West that leads people to adulate foreign traditions. This is a lazy, even racist attitude.”