Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘janet bagnall’

Some rare insight from a columnist who I usually disagree with, the Gazette’s Janet Bagnall:

Palin is a true-blue representative of her party. She is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and against gay marriage. Her opposition to abortion extends to cases of rape and incest. The women who backed Hillary Clinton’s historic run for the nomination for presidency don’t generally ascribe to those values.

[ . . . ]

Tokenism is an insult, an insidious one whose effects are difficult to erase over time. People will forget that there were other options on the Republican table, capable, long-serving, proven women like Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas – and that McCain ignored them in favour of doing something headline-grabbing. That effect is already starting to wear off. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll this week found, “Three quarters of all voters think McCain chose a female running mate specifically because he thought adding a woman to the Republican ticket would help him win in November.”

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the otherwise politically-savvy selection of Palin. Choosing a candidate solely because she’s a woman is no better than systematically denying opportunities to qualified people because they are women.

And while McCain no doubt sees Palin’s stance on issues like abortion and gun control as qualifications, not drawbacks, given the socially conservative voters he’s trying to attract, the fact remains that Palin is much less qualified than the myriad other choices that McCain had – of both genders. She was chosen for her youth (to contrast McCain’s age) and her gender, proving that tokenism is no better than discrimination, after all.

In a not-so-shocking twist, turns out Michael Moore made up the whole thing as a publicity stunt (via Damian Penny):

Dissecting the current dust-up, it seems clear that Disney never intended to distribute Moore’s film. Maybe the Mousketeers are cowards, but at least they are consistent. And Moore is whining now only to hype the pre-Cannes buzz. Sources report that Miramax never planned to release the Moore film, that it was always slated to come out through Lions Gate.

Let’s see, what’s the appropriate reaction here? Ah yes: Liar, liar!

Incidentally, it’s a lie that seems to have caught on. This morning on the radio, Terry DiMonte was decrying “censorship” and saying that he hoped it cost Dubya the election. Moore himself is planning to speak in Toronto today (probably in front of a crowd lapping up his anti-Americanisms like poetry). And I guess it’s not all that shocking that he would try to sell the film on a publicity wave of controversy. But when the lies come from a so-called “documentarian”, it sure says something about his credibility.

Update: Why does it not surprise me in the least that Janet Bagnall has been sucked in?

Janet Bagnall wrote an editorial in Friday’s Gazette defending Jaggi Singh. The thrust of her argument seems to be pretty much a parroting of what Singh himself loves to claim: that he’s an innocent victim being persecuted by the forces of evil.

Jaggi Singh is a test case for Canadian democracy. Can he exercise his right to freedom of assembly? Or his right to protest peacefully? Or speak freely? We’re not doing too well on the democratic front if Singh is anyone to go by. The answers to those three questions are no, no and no.

There are several problems with Bagnall’s argument, however. First of all, Singh’s right to “protest peacefully” is not in question. But as everyone knows, September 9th was anything but peaceful. All the people whining about the criminalization of dissent don’t seem to get that they can’t excuse criminal behaviour by calling it dissent. Protesting something doesn’t give you the right to beat people up, destroy property, or instigate violence.

Secondly, Singh is not a Concordia student, and the university is under no obligation to allow him to hang around campus. If every time he shows up there’s trouble, it’s perfectly reasonable to kick him out.

Thirdly, Bagnall is basing her opinion on the following claims:

I find it hard not to conclude that in some way university administrators and justice officials take Singh’s views, and his insistence on defending them in public, as a personal insult. This is genuinely worrisome. He has not physically attacked anyone. He has not damaged property. He has not led a riot or a protest. He has exercised his rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and here he is, once again, arrested. This comes a little too close to a police state.

However, the police had enough evidence to arrest him. So Janet Bagnall seems to be simply taking Jaggi Singh’s word for the fact that he didn’t lead a riot or a protest, or attack or destroy anyone or anything. Last I checked, his say-so wasn’t exactly credible evidence. He’s made so many ridiculously faulty claims in the past few months that anyone who chooses to take his word on anything ought to have their head examined. If the courts find enough evidence to convict him of a crime, then that is the true test – not Bagnall’s hero-worship of the man.

Singh was not arrested for the protest last Monday, which was mainly peaceful, but for his involvement in the disgusting riot of September 9th. This alone should prove an important point: Nobody’s trying to shut down protest, even when they disagree. They’re trying to shut down violence. And it is the rioters who are seemingly incapable of seeing the difference.