Monday 4 October 2010

Free Speech has Nothing - Nothing! - to do with it.

Our gutless band of tighty-righties seems to think the cancelation of Ann Coulter’s stand-up gig at the University of Ottawa last March had something to do with Free Speech. It does not. It has to do with the Conservative Student Club's incompetence in organizing a bit of neo-con agitprop promoted by Ezra Levant and supported by the usual suspects.

The University of Ottawa had nothing to gain and a great deal to lose by being seen to agree with the malevolent fabrications - and hateful claims, as defined in Canada - of a provocatrice/performance/con artist marketed under the guise of a legitimate speaker for conservatism.

Ann Coulter remains available to speak (not free, though I doubt that she commands the same 6-figure fees that Sarah Palin does) and, as individuals, people (even those associated with the University of Ottawa) remain free to hear her - if you belong to the right groups. But there are no circumstances in which the University of Ottawa in an official capacity could have anything whatsoever to do with Ann Coulter or the hate speech she expresses, or the views she promotes.

Un grand merci to Jay Currie who provided the template for this post.

4 comments:

Beijing York said...

Touché dBO!

fern hill said...

IOKIYAC.

Well done, dBO.

k'in said...

Poor Coultergeist...she's a victim of innovation.

Call me cynical, but I truly believe she was trolling for headlines when her gig in the capital of Canuckistan got "cancelled". She's yesterday's ghoul. The tea-baggers are fixated on shinier objects i.e. Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell.

The Mound of Sound said...

Janet, what the hell has happened to the Left/Centre-Left that we're absorbed in this navel-gazing? Yes, Stephen Harper is a shit and, by definition,that makes Anne Coulter a shit - but that only matters if we can change the political center in Canada. The way we're going, they win - and they know it.

Would be "progressives" need to understand what that means and what that demands of them. I say that in the context of climate change and every other environmental challenge that confronts us.

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