How exciting! Monsieur Steyn, Freedom Fighter… dabbling in the Theatre of the Absurd with opinion pieces like “Iraq has never had it so good”, and this amazing bit of surrealism “Rumsfeld’s view that one shouldn’t do it with once-a-decade force, but with a lighter, faster touch has been vindicated” Ouch! Threatre of the Absurd all right. I look forward to watching this as well, Monsieur Wells. Thanks for the tip.

The sock puppets have claimed for months that they wish to start a debate. But when Steyn asked that the show be converted to debate format, they declined, saying that they were not prepared. Fascinating.
I’m also surprised that they managed to dupe the show into listing them as “complainants”, when in fact it is public knowledge that they are not, that they are in fact misrepresenting themselves. I’m sure Steyn will point that out.

Perhaps being in a debate with a professional bully on a day’s notice didn’t sit well with the folks. Either way, such a discussion is a typical Steynian sideshow.

But hey, while we’re engaging in scurious allegations — why doesn’t somebody suggest that a supposedly fair-minded journalist going to bat for a right-wing extremist would be considered in some circles to be, oh I don’t know, sock puppetry? That sounds like it could have a tenuous relationship with fact and generate some attention. And at the end of the day, what could be more important than that?

It seems some people think it’s perfectly fine to haul a writer into court for writing down facts. As long as someone is offended it should be barred – never mind that this would eliminate all opinion writing in Canda. Not only that, the writer should just sit there and take it, pay 6 figure lawyer fees and 5 figure fines, and watch while his name is dragged into the mud on TV in the adjoining room.

As far as I could tell, the sock puppets were always changing their minds – when it came down to pointing out what exactly in the excerpt was hate, they said it was the spirit of it. When asked to pinpoint the “spirit” of it, they said it was not that article, it was the fact that there were a number of articles. When asked why, if it were a number of articles, the complaint pinpointed specifics from Steyn’s article, they said they just wanted media coverage. When asked why they could not just publish on the CIC web site, they pointed out that Maclean’s has a large readership. When it was pointed out that they have had opinion pieces published in almost every major newspaper and magazin in Canada, and also that Maclean’s had published many letters rebutting the article, they pointed out that they wanted something specifically written by themselves in the very same publication as Steyn’s article. And then once again it was back to what was specific about Steyn’s article, and then once again they’s day it was not the article itself, it was the spirit of it, and so on.

It was like a merry-go round. In court, if Steyn just shows this show on tape, that should be enough to prove the complaint is frivolous.

Well, the three complainants were definitely law students. They got a chance to say their piece and spent as much time as possible whining about process, who got what time, etc. A waste of time.

Kudos to TVO and Steve Paikin for giving Steyn a chance to air views from a conservative, or to use the Canadian parlance, “right wing extremist”, point of view. Not something you often see on Canadian television, and refreshing to see while it’s still legal.

On the subject of stultifying PC conformity I noticed that the George Stroumboulopoulos program “The Hour” elected not to air an interview with Steyn that had been scheduled to air today. The interview with Steyn can be seen on the website of The Hour, however. Strombo’s discomfort is palpable. The show that was aired in it’s place led with an interview of Naomi Klein of all people. Trudeaupia indeed. Sometimes Canada can be unutterably depressing.