Again!
This time they're gathering round to share their wisdom at the "Global Forum for Inclusion," something cooked up by the folks at the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. According to their full-page ad in the Globe and Mail yesterday, I'm welcome to join the conversation... if I buy a ticket, of course!
Toronto people are suckers for this kind of foolishness. Remember when David Frum and Steve Bannon duked it out (metaphorically) last year? Or when the ridiculous phony Tony Blair took on Christopher Hitchens? That spectacle had Tony speaking for God, if such an absurdity can be imagined.
What caught my eye was the picture of leading world thinker Nadya Tolokonnikova right at the top and centre of that advert. As near as I can tell, the thought that Nadya thinks most often is, "what can I do for my next publicity stunt?" She's had a history of publicity stunts since dropping out of Moscow State University, and scored her biggest coup with the infamous "Punk Prayer" at Moscow's Christ the Saviour cathedral in 2012.
That put Pussy Riot on the international map, and while it didn't sell a lot of copies, it did get the attention of various A-list professional do-gooders like Madonna. Yup, if you break into a Moscow church and shriek "fuck Putin" for a couple of minutes, you've established your bona fides as a legitimate public intellectual in the Nations of Virtue.
The Institute for Canadian Citizenship is a government-funded "charity" invented as a sinecure to keep outgoing governor-general Adrienne Clarkson busy after her six gruelling years as Her Majesty's rep in Canada. Since we've already paid for this shindig once, with our tax dollars, why should we pay again for tickets?
Then again, if these folks truly believe that Tolokonnikova belongs anywhere near a list of the world's top thinkers, I'm pretty sure I'd be disappointed.
Those 40+ top thinkers will have to have their conversation without me.
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