UPDATED! New info after the jump!
I think most emphatically not:
Staffer fired as Conservatives scurry from sex film screening
OTTAWA — A provocative movie about the sex lives of young people is too hot for some Conservatives to handle – and a parliamentary staffer has been fired for ordering tickets to a special screening.
Tory MPs are denying they ever planned to watch the film “Young People F**king” even though several of their names appeared on an RSVP list for an Ottawa viewing Thursday night.
The movie has fuelled censorship debate around a Conservative bill that would deny tax credits to productions deemed “contrary to public policy” by the government.
An assistant to MP Gary Goodyear from Cambridge, Ont. was fired after Goodyear’s name showed up on the screening guest list. She had in fact ordered the ticket for herself.
“I do not want to see his reputation harmed over something so trivial and untrue,” wrote Victoria van Eyk in a clarifying e-mail early Tuesday to The Canadian Press.
“The simple fact is we ordered an extra invitation for our files, and so that I may attend the film or pass the invitation on to someone who WOULD, in fact, enjoy a movie like that.”
The emphatic effort to clear her boss of any such predilection was apparently sent just before she was dismissed. No one in Goodyear’s office returned calls.
Yeah, I think I’ll be in attendance, but no worries; the identities of Conservative MPs and staffers will be obscured for their own protection. (I’d suggest that they think long and hard about what kind of employer would fire them simply for going to a movie, but you know what? I suspect that some of them are already doing just that.)
UPDATE – More details on the firing from the Waterloo Record, including some choice quotes from the assistant that seem to contradict her boss’s version of events, and further, make me sad:
[...] Van Eyk says she deserved her punishment because Goodyear specifically told her not respond to an invitation to a screening of “Young People F——.” She did anyway, and Goodyear’s name appeared on the RSVP list, along with several other Conservative MPs. “I have no bitterness toward him at all,” van Eyk said in an interview from Ottawa. “It’s completely my fault.” [...] Other Tories suggested van Eyk’s firing was an over-the-top reaction to being associated with a racy film. Goodyear said his assistant’s dismissal was a private matter and not connected to the issue over the tickets, he said. “I don’t think there’s a relationship . . . . She was dismissed, but not because she wanted to go see the movie. It’s a coincidence, if anything.”
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