Would the Prime Minister treat a white cabinet minister like this?

PM Chrystia Freeland and her front man Justin today reprimanded the country's top military officer for some personnel decisions arising out of the never-ending Canadian Forces sexual harassment scandal.

Normally that should be the job of the Defence Minister, Harjit Sajjan. He's the guy who helped Justin burnish his bona fides by becoming our first Defence Minister to sport a turban. Just within the past week Justin had assured the public he maintains full confidence in the man.

Alas, that was before Chrystia, aka Justin's brain, clued him in as to which way the winds of political correctitude were blowing. As in, look chump, a vagina trumps a turban any day. If anyone knows those fickle winds it's Chrystia. When making a speech about Canada's threat horizon as Foreign Minister, she listed "incels" right alongside Putin, commies, and terrorists. You'd have be among the PC cognoscenti for that to happen. 

As for Sajjan, once both the PM and the deputy PM talk for you in the media, they really aren't that into you anymore. Do the honourable thing and resign.

Wang Dang Sweet Poontang...

A couple of hundred years before anyone could imagine such a thing, Terrible Ted was trolling Political Correctitude.

Cat scratch fever?

Get the fuck outta here!

Back in the day, Terrible Ted was a rebel...


What is he now?

Revisiting the genius of the pot-addled hillbilly in the age of political correctitude

I thought this quite clever when I wrote it almost five years ago.

Still do! In fact, if anything, it's ageing rather well!

The trouble with immigrants

I see where Karen Wang has been shelved as the Liberal candidate for Burnaby South after party apparatchiks found out she'd referred to her primary competition, NDP leader-without-a-seat Jagmeet Singh, as an "Indian."

Jagmeet has been the lame-duck NDP leader since he became NDP leader, but thus far nobody has had the politically incorrect effrontery to refer to him as "Indian."

We're talking about Indians from India, of course, not the Canadian variety... you know, the folks we swindled out of this land. Karen had the temerity not only to note that Jagmeet was "Indian," but she suggested to her Chinese constituency that if they all voted along ethnic lines, they could collectively deny him a seat in the House, thereby rendering the lame duck even lamer.

Cue the moral outrage! The Lib party elite desperately want Jagmeet to win in Burnaby, mainly because they want a lame-duck NDP leader to run against in the next federal election. God forbid the NDP come up with someone remotely appealing as the leader they'd have to face!

So Wang's candidacy has been duly rescinded to appease the gods of political correctitude, but also to serve the interests of the party elite.

Here's how the always astute CBC reports the matter;

"Recent online comments by Karen Wang are not aligned with the values of the Liberal Party of Canada," said a statement from the party.

"The Liberal Party has a clear commitment to positive politics and support for Canadian diversity, and the same is always expected of our candidates."

So Karen Wang's sin was to appeal to the ethnic identity of voters in Burnaby South.

That's the trouble with immigrants. Sometimes they remember where they came from. Sometimes they even remember the ethnic rivalries of the places they came from. That's obviously a taboo in our politically correct climate.

Because diversity is our strength...

My own clan were DP immigrants from Germany who got off the boat at Pier 21 in 1956. Of course we remembered where we came from! The fact that the Germans had lost two world wars in rapid succession was never allowed to becloud our belief that we were superior in every way to Poles, Greeks, Italians... just about everyone, come to think of it! That's just the way of the world...

Or at least it used to be.

In the fullness of time, our extended clan eventually adopted, married into, became business partners with, or sponsored as refugees virtually every ethnicity under the sun! 

The world today is in the hands of folks who write books like "Maximum Canada." That's the McKinsey & Co vision of a Canada with a hundred million citizens who all cleave to a generic and politically correct version of nationhood where "diversity is our strength..."

Whatever that means.

Karen Wang is obviously too smart to internalize that bullshit.


Diversity will only become a strength when we can call out, comment on, and at the end of the day, respect our differences.

(Postscript 25.1.2019  My dear parents recently had their DNA tested by one of those ancestry outfits, and apparently their German DNA is swamped by Swedish and East European DNA... so we weren't really all that "German" after all.)

The wages of sin

Sin doesn't always pay a wage. Quite a lot of us have been conditioned into sinning for no recompense whatsoever.

We're sinning for free!

That's gotta stop. It's no wonder sin doesn't pay a wage; we're putting out for nothing.


I loved those old school British comedies.

Doctor in the House. What a hilarious show!

Are you being served?...

Monty Python, the Carry on crowd... they're all part of a Brit tradition.

And they'd none of them have a chance in hell of getting on the big stage today.


Not in this era of political correctitude.

Making homophobia cool again

Gay-bashing and fag jokes seem to be making a comeback. Is the tide of political correctitude finally receding?

Polite society has overtly shunned homophobia for at least a quarter century now, but apparently if you really really despise someone, well, it's once again OK to call them a fag.

I've noted this tendency before. How do intelligent people like Colbert and others justify queer slurs to get an easy laugh? It's enough to put me off watching their stuff, and if they're doing it and their audience finds it amusing, then maybe we haven't made the kind of progress these past few decades that we thought.

That ultimate bastion of mainstream liberalism, the New York Times, is now in on the gay-bashing.

Oh, look how clever we are!... we called out Trump and Putin as gay lovers!!! Aren't we just sooo witty!

Well no, you're not, actually.

Do you seriously think garbage like this hurts Trump or Putin? No, but it helps make life more difficult for innumerable young people who may be struggling with their identity. They've got more than enough on their plates without the NYT legitimizing their ostracization.

What's next?

Perhaps the n-word will make a comeback?

Selective outrage

I see where Kim Campbell, who was Canada's first female PM for about 15 minutes back in the nineties, has called out those slutty female news anchors who have the temerity to show bare arms on your evening newscast.

Well!

Bare arms undermine credibility, apparently.

Oh Kim!

Kim Kim Kim!

You have no idea how deluded you are.

Kim seems to think your evening news is about the news.

Get with the program, Kim. News is not news. It's content. It's entertainment. Us male viewers with the male gaze WANT to see bare arms...

By the way, and I ask this parenthetically, was there actually a TV show called "Naked News," wherein the female anchor removed her clothing while reading the news? Seems I saw it once or twice.

I personally didn't get it. I don't need to see the news-reader jiggling her girls while she's informing me of the latest suicide bombing in Baghdad. That's a combo that short-changes both boobs and Baghdad.

But back to Kim.

Kim's egregious breach of the protocols of political correctitude left me no option but to marvel at how out of touch this political icon is... but we expect this from Conservative politicos.

It also lead me to marvel at how quickly the story disappeared.

Had Stephen Harper or Patrick Brown or, god forbid, Donald Trump made such an asinine comment, we'd be hearing about it for days on end.

But Kim Campbell is Canada's first woman PM.

Therefore, she gets a free pass.

Twilight of the rock and roll Gods

It can't be much longer before the wave of whatever it is that just took down Weinstein is going to start nibbling away at the legacies of our rock and roll icons.

Ian Dury had a hit with "sex and drugs and rock and roll" back in the day.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

The drugs were ubiquitous and so was the sex, but here's the pivotal question; how "consensual" was the sex?

All these rock icons who boast of having had thousands of women may now be held to account.

I was an avid reader of Lester Bangs. Remember him? His reportage focused on sexual impropriety as much as it focused on music. Of course, back in the day, it wasn't "impropriety," it was liberation and letting it all hang out. And it was all good, wasn't it?

Sure it was! It's highly ironic that the high priest of licentiousness, Hugh Hefner, passed away almost without comment just before the Weinstein scandal broke. How does Hugh get a pass while Weinstein gets crucified? Weren't they all part of the same fame game?

As long as society worships fame and money and power, young people who crave fame will do whatever they can to ingratiate themselves with money and power.

Say what you will about Weinstein, but he was playing the game the way it's always been played. To pretend shock and dismay at the revelations coming out today is beyond disingenuous. Insofar as political correctitude is indeed a force, we'll be seeing a lot of careers crumble in the months ahead.

Wave bye-bye to your rock and roll icons...

Fallish weather at Falling Downs

I remember walking into the wee cottage inhabited by my old pal Robert and his wife Lisa some thirty years ago and remarking on the "fallish" weather.

Robert was a serious dude toying with a master's degree in English Lit at the time, and he wasted no time in correcting my grammar.

"It's not fallish, Neumann. It's autumnal."

I am functionally illiterate in several languages, but I took that lesson to heart. I can't help but think of Robert every time the weather turns autumnal. My old pal Robert never completed that degree, but he did turn out to be a guy who has managed to eke out a living as a writer and artist, and even got an invite to the Junos on account of one of his creations.

Not sure what he would have done with that "master's" degree. Marcus Gee has a goodly take-down of the corruption of language in his column at the Globe today. Gee is sufficiently genteel to avoid any references to "snowflakes," but he's more or less on board with my assessment of the Massey College brouhaha I wrote about two weeks ago.

That "chief" thing at the Toronto School Board is quite the exercise in political correctitude, is it not? I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before the title of CEO is erased from our vocabulary. It's derogatory to indigenous Canadians, so we are told. Stop using the word "chief" and everything will be cool.

If we don't use the word "chief," potable water will miraculously appear on reservations nationwide, and the horrendous suicide epidemic will be curtailed overnight...

Ya right.

Just like the way black folks started going to college instead of prison when we stopped calling them the n-word.

That's the problem with political correctitude. It allows well-intentioned (mostly) white folks to imagine that they're doing something while they're doing nothing.

But it is definitely turning fallish here at Falling Downs. Every day we see the geese tighten up their flying vees. In mid-summer those vees more often than not looked like W's or Y's or god knows what. There was interminable honking as the boss goose reprimanded the newbies.

Honk honk honk... fall back, Brucie, move up, Betty... and what the hell are you doing over there?... we're supposed to be a fucking "V"...

Lately they've got their shit together. Their overflights look a lot less like misshapen letters of the alphabet and a lot more like the proud Canadians who will imminently head off to beshit the beaches of the Carolinas for the next six months.

My old pal Robert is now my pal Iris. Lisa is long out of the picture. Ya, shit happens, I guess. At least I think she's still my pal, although I've not heard from her for a spell.

Him?

Her?

Who cares?

A friend is a friend is a friend...

And the weather has turned fallish here at Falling Downs.

U of Goo mired in PC poo

Oh, how the times have changed.

My fat ass graced or disgraced the U of G campus for a few semesters back in the early eighties. I made my contribution to campus life by penning a few diatribes for the Ontarion and subsidizing the campus pubs to the best of my ability.

Alas, it seems that was not nearly enough.

According to reports from legit media sources, the Student Union at UG had collective kittens over a Lou Reed tune that has been an anthem among queerish folks for close to fifty years.

Take a walk on the wild side indeed!

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

Academic freedom takes a siesta at Yale

Apparently the concept of academic freedom does not apply when the academic is writing Yelp reviews.

What's unusual about this story is that it marks a rare instance of the wet blanket of political correctitude being used to smother a non-white voice in the alleged interest of upholding the dignity of white folks. That's a departure from the sort of issues we have come to expect university administrators to hold back the academic freedom card on.

Dean Chu lost no time in issuing an appropriately grovelling apology.

Pity.

Journalism is over

But journalism schools are not. Not yet, anyway.

Sooner or later the young keeners who want to become the next Oriana Fallaci or I.F. Stone will have to face a new reality. There is no place in contemporary journalism for that kind of reportage.

Me and the Farm Manager travelled to Port Elgin today for Pumpkinfest. We go for the cars, not the pumpkins. It costs five bucks to see the pumpkins. The cars are free. It's one of the finest free car shows you'll ever get anywhere.

Thirty years ago I was doing a bit of writing for my college paper, the Ontarion. Interviewed the President of the Ontario Veterinary College for a story. By the time I got home there was a message on my answering machine from his secretary; he'd like to see the story before it came out. As in he'd "like to see" it or else.

Or else what?

He was the top dog at the most prestigious school at U of Goo.

I was a dumbshit undergrad with writerly pretensions.

He wore a Rolex.

I wore a Timex.

Or else what do you think?

Big turn-out of vintage muscle cars today, and also a lot of old pick-ups. My spirits were buoyed by the FM's attraction to a number of fifty's era trucks. I can almost see myself bringing home a mid-fifties hot-rodded F-100 and getting away with it...

Almost.

Nice turn out of sixties and seventies muscle cars; Super Bees, Road Runners, and so forth. What a shame that you can go to your local Subaru dealer and buy a car off the lot that will smoke those "muscle cars" in the quarter mile, never mind what they'll do to you in a corner.

There were a number of big block Chevys on display, including a supercharged Chevelle with wheelie bars. You can go to your local Dodge dealer and order up a four-door Dodge Charger that will leave your supercharged Chevelle with its wheelie bars twenty car-lengths behind in a drag race.

On the way home I stopped at the Korean variety store and picked up my Saturday Globe and Mail for $5.25. Joked with the guy behind the counter about when it might become a six dollar newspaper.

Probably next month, we agreed.

When I related that exchange to the FM, she rejoindered, "journalism is over."

And she's right.

Would Bernstein or Woodward get past their unpaid internship today? Or Seymour Hersh? I doubt it.

Helen Thomas had a great thing going till she ran afoul of the winds of political correctitude.

If those winds are strong enough to silence a veteran journo like her, imagine how they must intimidate some newbie hoping to impress on her unpaid internship.

We've still got a few folks speaking truth to power. Gideon Levy and Robert Fisk come to mind. But by and large the media space is now occupied by complacent and compliant J-school grads who will tweet and blog and Facebook according to their employers expectations.

The Farm Manager was right.

Journalism is over.

Shits and giggles on the campaign trail

It all started innocently enough. After a dinner party at Trump's palatial penthouse in Manhattan, Donald and his pals the Clintons sketched out the rough outlines of a Trump '16 campaign.

It wouldn't take more than a few months out of #therealdonaldjtrump's career of perpetual self-promotion, and, by golly, those few months would be consumed with perpetual self-promotion! There's a win-win for sure!

Trump, a dyed-in-the-wool Manhattan liberal, would run as a Republican, just to stir up shit in elephant land for the duration of the primaries. Make the Republicans look like dork-shits while making Hillsy look golden in comparison.

No serious person in America, including Donald J. Trump and the Clintons, dreamed that Donald might actually win the Republican nomination over that stable of establishment bum-boys.

But he did.

And that's where things started to go off the rails for the Clinton-Trump conspiracy to take over America.

Suddenly Mr. Trump realized that maybe, just maybe, he could gorf down the whole enchilada all by himself. Yes, all he had to do was stab his old pal Hillsy in the back, and the oval office was as good as won.

So he went for it.

And by God, look at where he is today! Running neck and neck with Hillsy even in the most egregiously biased polls!

Even after the entirety of the Republican establishment's Deep State PNAC apparatchiki has joined the Hillsy camp.

Even after the entirety of the mainstream media propaganda apparatus has jettisoned every last principle of professional journalism to dump on Trump.

He's a racist! (Let's just ignore the entire pool of Trumpian imagery that suggests he was more than cordial with the likes of Jesse Jackson, Ali, Don King, Reverend Al, etc...)

He's a misogynist! (Impossible to deny that he has referred to certain female critics in wildly misogynist terms.)

He's a cheat! (Hey, the only people who file 12,000 page tax returns are really rich people who pay zero taxes, but I'm sure it was all legal.)

He has made complimentary comments about Bad Vlad, the foreign leader most reviled by the PNAC crowd because he hasn't signed off on the Brzezinski plan for America's full-spectrum dominance of the planet in perpetuity.

What the elites don't realize is that every one of these charges just endears Trump to the rubes who long ago turned their backs on the contagion of political correctitude.

They just figure he called some fat ugly bitch a fat ugly bitch?...  This bald breach of PC etiquette should have voters turning their backs on Trump in droves.

In fact, it has the opposite effect.

And doesn't he have a profoundly problematic relationship with the elephant in the elephant room, AIPAC? One day he's going to be "more balanced" in his approach to Israel/Palestine, and the ziocentric media panics...

But today Bibi pays a house-call... what to make of that?

Who knows?

Trump is a wild card, a loose canon,  and at least another half dozen cliches all rolled up in a phenom unlike anything American politics has seen in the modern era.

In November he will destroy Hillary in the election.

By January he'll be dead.

Rape culture; the golden step-child of jock culture

Two related stories are making news in the Ottawa Citizen today.

One is about an alleged gang rape by members of the University of Ottawa's hockey team. The school has taken the unprecedented step of suspending all hockey operations on the men's side indefinitely.

The second is about the sexual harassment of the female leader of the Student Association at the same university, Anne-Marie Roy.

I remember what I considered the dark days of over-cooked feminism, when folks like Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin got an awful lot of traction, at least in university environments, for theories that basically made all men out to be rapists and all male-female sexual encounters rape.

Gals, that's just way over the top, I thought at the time. At the time, of course, "gals" was an abusive term... they were "wimmin" or something...

They had their heyday well over a generation ago. I would have thought that with an entire generation and more treated to the non-stop saturation scale consciousness raising and an environment of strict political correctitude on campus, that the stories we read today would be relics of a dark and hoary past.

I've obviously been wrong.

The young men in these stories conduct themselves as though the last fifty years of feminism never even happened. How is such a thing possible?

I don't know, but I'll venture a theory or two that might begin a discussion. 

One factor is the culture of entitlement that surrounds elite athletes. By the time hockey players are at the Junior or the varsity level they are well accustomed to being surrounded by pretty girls who make themselves available. There is a thriving groupie culture around every one of those teams in every city and town and on every campus in the land. While I don't want to over-generalize, and there are notable exceptions, elite athletes are not typically revered for their above-average intelligence or their sensitive caring natures.

It's not hard to imagine that once a not-too-bright up-and-coming professional athlete (and virtually all these guys think they'll eventually sign a multi-million dollar contract) has been immersed in this atmosphere for a few years, he simply cannot grasp the idea that not every young female is eager to spread her legs for him.

Any co-ed who has too much to drink at a post-game party is, in that young man's mind, giving informed consent by the fact of her being there.

Another factor is the rise of social media and technology, and the desensitization of young people, both male and female, to sex, violence, and sexualized violence. In my youth pornography was difficult and expensive to access. For kids today, unlimited access to hard-core porn for free begins when they can log on to a computer.

That's got to impact the attitudes that kids grow into as they grow up.

And not in a good way.

Which leaves us with those stories out of Ottawa today. What is the answer? I don't know, but I fear that far from being aberrations, stories such as these will become more commonplace going forward.