Sun News Network's big mouths, small-town look

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, May 9, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 24 Comments

Getty Images; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

Sun News Network expected to be attacked for its politics—not its professionalism. But the reviews of the conservative-leaning news channel have pointed out that it looks amateurish: “The sets and lighting are Spartan,” wrote Brad Oswald of the Winnipeg Free Press; Globe and Mail critic John Doyle called it “cheap, cheesy, terrible television.” That’s not a charge often levelled at Sun’s U.S. model, Fox News, whose high production values are acknowledged even by people who hate it. If Sun has trouble looking classy, it has nothing to do with the rather modest short skirts and sleeveless dresses; it may be because of the unexciting scenes behind them.

The hyper-patriotic Sun turned to the Toronto-based AKA Creative Group to design the sets. Andrew Kinsella, AKA’s president, feels they created “a style that Canadians have never seen before,” but adds that it would be “a lot more expensive to work with the big-name [design] competitors south of the border.” But on screen, the American competitors sometimes look more spectacular. Ezra Levant’s The Source is modelled on Glenn Beck’s soon-to-be-cancelled Fox show; it has the host do wacky conservative things like destroy a bush to show his contempt for Earth Day. But Beck’s program has an elaborate set and there’s creative use of camera angles and lighting. Levant’s set, dominated by two fairly small TV screens with his name on them, looks much more low-tech. And like many of the Sun shows, the backgrounds are often monolithically blue, which can give news shows a feeling of sameness: U.S. set designer Jim Fenhagen, who designed shows like ABC World News Tonight, hasn’t seen Sun but told Maclean’s that as a general rule, “doing blue sets is pretty old-fashioned now.”

While some Sun programs make good use of space—Kinsella is proud of the main news hub, with a “retractable rear-projection screen as well as flexibility for the host to move freely from one area to another”—others don’t look much more big-budget than the average local newscast. Some of the daytime shows feature the familiar sight of announcers at a desk with a drab-looking newsroom in the background, the kind of thing Fenhagen tried to avoid when he created the newsroom set for ABC: “Usually the main shot is all the people back there and you can’t get rid of them, which I think is a mistake.” Conservative TV host Michael Coren, who has appeared as a guest on Sun, considers the overall look “sharp and modern” but added that “because of the number of linked interviews with guests around the country, there is always going to be a certain limitation to the overall look.” But those limitations may mean the Sun hosts can’t compete with a Fox personality like Megyn Kelly, the network’s aggressively blond daytime star, who yells at guests against a stylish background of glass, metal and flickering screens.

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This Week: Newsmakers

By Nancy MacDonald, Julia Belluz and staff - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Danny Moloshok/Reuters

Harper: Monarchy is a man’s job

Queen Elizabeth II only came to the throne because she had no brothers, and Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first son will leapfrog any older sisters to become king, thanks to a 300-year-old act. Now Britain’s deputy PM, Nick Clegg, wants to reform the law. The move requires the agreement of Commonwealth countries directly affected. New Zealand’s PM, John Key, supports the change. Not Stephen Harper: “The successor to the throne is a man,” he said this week. “The next successor to the throne is a man. I don’t think Canadians want to open a debate on the monarchy…at this time.” It’s the same unerring instinct that’s characterized the treatment of female Tory cabinet ministers—think Lisa Raitt, Helena Guergis—and which observers say has limited Harper’s appeal among female voters. Good man, Mr. Harper, good man.

A rapidly Freying narrative

Bestselling Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson is facing buckets of bad press following a 60 Minutes report that questioned his work with his charity, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), for schools in remote Pakistan and Afghanistan. It alleged some schools don’t exist, or haven’t received support from CAI, and that Mortenson uses the charity as a “private ATM machine.” Then there are allegations Mortenson was never kidnapped by the Taliban in Waziristan, as he wrote. Mansur Khan Mahsud told The Daily Beast he played host to Mortenson in Waziristan and was shocked to get a call from Into Thin Air author Jon Krakauer (a former Mortenson supporter) telling him the author had described the experience as a kidnapping. Mortenson’s publisher is investigating.

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The Harper government will not be distracted

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 11, 2011 at 1:34 PM - 71 Comments

Conservative Senator Don Meredith wants Michael Ignatieff to apologize for a phrase that is not inherently racist.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley wants a federal employee in Brampton disciplined for sending an insulting email from his government account to a Sun columnist (who, it is probably necessary to note, volunteered for the Conservative campaign in 2008).

Dictatorship oil

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 2:07 PM - 64 Comments

First, a correction. The list of oil sources posted here should have read: Algeria, the United Kingdom, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Angola, Iraq, Mexico, Venezuela, Russia and the United States. You’ll note that, in the original post, Iran was listed where Angola should have been. My apologies to to the good people of Angola.

Meanwhile, Ezra Levant, seemingly the inspiration for the government’s new rhetoric, continues to draw a line between good oil and bad oil: the former including our crude, the latter including crude from suppliers such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Algeria. In total, those four nations account for about 40% of our oil imports.

How ethical is your oil?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 7, 2011 at 5:32 PM - 188 Comments

The Environment Minister observed yesterday (around the 12-minute mark of that interview) that Canada is a supplier of ethical oil—a phrase recently employed by Ezra Levant—because the revenues derived from that oil are not used to “fund terrorism or the destabilization of other governments.” This may or may not beg questions about the origins of our own oil imports.

The latest release of Statistics Canada’s Energy Statistics Handbook lists our sources of crude oil and equivalents going back to 1989. Our noted individual sources in 2010 (through September) were, in order: Algeria, the United Kingdom, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Mexico, Venezuela, Russia and the United States.

A conservative love-in in Quebec

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

RLQ co-founder Joanne Marcotte (right) and Conservative MP Maxime Bernier | Francis Vachon/CP

There are many places in the country where a self-described “Jewish redneck from Calgary” would get a standing ovation for preaching his liberal-baiting, small-government, pro-oil-sands gospel. Conventional wisdom suggests that Quebec, home to powerful unions and subsidized daycare, isn’t one of them.

Yet, there was conservative commentator, author and cheery scourge of the left Ezra Levant in front of an overflow crowd at a Quebec City hotel last weekend, deriding government intervention and touting the wonders of Alberta’s oily bounty—in English, no less—and winning roars of approval.

The people behind Réseau Liberté-Québec were ebullient. The RLQ, which calls itself a “citizens’ movement” and not a political party, managed to bring together a fair chunk of the province’s fractured conservative movement in one place, attract considerable media attention, and even draw the ire of a few token lefties, who delivered a load of horse manure to the hotel steps earlier in the day. “Quebec’s right is more and more ardent, tenacious, resilient and credible,” whooped RLQ co-founder Joanne Marcotte in a speech.

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Coulter, live and loud in Calgary

By Colby Cosh - Friday, March 26, 2010 at 2:00 AM - 375 Comments

At the Red and White Club on the grounds of Calgary’s McMahon Stadium tonight, more than 900 attendees gave Ann Coulter a remarkable, thunderous ovation. But they cheered, I would almost swear, with even greater volume for Ezra Levant, co-organizer of Coulter’s tour. I’m a friend of Ezra’s, but I had never seen him speak on home turf before. The love was palpable and astonishing. I suppose he is part of the city’s image, the legend it tells of itself, at this point.

And—chalk this up to bias if you like—he gives a heck of a speech. The stubbornest Stalinist alive would have been stirred by his fierce defence of strong free-speech norms as a social truce in which all have a stake. He made a particular point of noting that women, ethnic minorities, and gays and lesbians would never have attained civil rights if they had waited around for the Establishment to endow them out of the goodness of its heart. They could not have won an open power struggle; they had to engage in persuasive speech that, at first, offended contemporary sensibilities. Is it cynical and manipulative for Ezra to go into that territory? Maybe a little. But is what he says true and relevant? Indubitably.

The component of Ezra’s introduction for Coulter that rang a little false was the civic self-congratulation. “This is Calgary, not Ottawa,” he bellowed, inducing positively demented applause. “We’re interested in a diversity of ideas, debated vigorously and freely. Places like the University of Ottawa talk about diversity, but they don’t actually mean it, do they?” The fact is, Calgary’s anti-everything left managed a pretty good turnout, perhaps fifty strong, and they did no less to try to interrupt and drown out Coulter’s talk, and perhaps more on the whole, than the U of Ottawa students. But they faced a much tougher tactical situation: a free-standing, isolated venue on a hillside, virtually a fortress; crowd-control gates and wooden barricades on the exterior; and a whole squadron of bicycle and foot police, perhaps upwards of a dozen.

Uncowed, the antis attempted to rush the main doors of the building as Ezra was winding up his intro, spiderwebbing the glass with boot damage, and they battered the exterior windows of the club throughout Coulter’s main talk. Tomorrow morning’s news story may be “Calgary gets right what Ottawa could not”; I wonder, however, how things would have looked if Coulter had visited Calgary first and caught the Cowtown police less well-prepared.

(Incidentally, a pro-tip for the two guys who tried to dress as Klansmen: real KKK outfits have separate hoods. If you go for the one-piece look, you are not a scary symbol of race hatred: you are a scary symbol of the laziness of six-year-olds at Halloween.)

Eventually She came out. I paid little attention (and some of you will be relieved to hear it) to Coulter’s litany of familiar one-liners; I’m not sure anyone paid the words much heed, including Ann Coulter herself. As the thrumming of the protest outside grew louder and began to be punctuated with blows and crashes, she made sure to keep one eye in the direction of the stairway, doubtless ready to make a hasty exit behind the curtain at any moment. The atmosphere of danger, and her consciousness of it, made her seem curiously vulnerable, even as she vaporized hostile interlocutors in the Q&A session. Coulter, if you’re wondering, and you are, is more attractive in person than on camera. She is thus something of a contrast, in this regard, to Sarah Palin. (Meow!) Dame’s not my type, but you find out the second you write about Ann Coulter that she has many open admirers, and a LOT more haters who are unadmitted admirers―unadmitted perhaps even to themselves.

She really is a gifted comic. It was unfortunate that she didn’t bring Calgary new material, but this was a case where the medium truly was the message. During the Q&A, a young female U of Calgary student stood to say that there are “Jesus Was a Muslim” signs all over campus and she isn’t sure how she should react. Coulter, with a simple “Huh” and a nonplussed look, had the room in stitches.

Still, the more interesting action was outside all night―and I don’t mean the rioting, but the small-group discussions amongst smokers, latecomers who couldn’t get in, curious U of C campus-dwellers, and stray protesters. Here, on the grass, ordinary people talked sincerely to each other without punchlines or slogans or sneering. They seemed to be a different species altogether from the formidable, mantis-like Coulter and her mesmerizing blonde mane.

Coulter: the she-devil in her own words

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 11:38 PM - 296 Comments

Ezra Levant, who was present at the venue for tonight’s aborted Ann Coulter talk at the University of Ottawa, spotted my quickie weblog entry about the cancelled event and had me chat briefly with the leggy agitator. Coulter tells Maclean’s she never had the chance to move on from a private dinner reception at which she was signing books, meeting local conservatives, and waiting for the all-clear from her bodyguard, who was on the scene at the university. “I was just reviewing my speech. It was a fine little speech, and by the way, I cut it down so we could have an extensive question-and-answer period. I gathered that I was going to have a very exciting crowd tonight.”

The police, Coulter says, “had been warning my bodyguard all day that they were putting up [messages] on Facebook: ‘Bring rocks, bring sticks, you gotta hurt Ann Coulter tonight, don’t let her speak.’ And the cops eventually said, we’ve got a bad feeling, this isn’t gonna happen. And they shut it down.”

Coulter agrees with the suggestion that conservative speakers face greater dangers and nuisances in trying to encounter audiences on university campuses. “I speak at a lot of college campuses and I need a bodyguard… Michael Moore does not; Judy Rebick does not. I think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have spoken tonight with less controversy.” She dismisses the possibility, however, that things are ever likely to change. “Unfortunately, conservatives are too polite, so they will never get a taste of their own medicine in that regard, in terms of angry mobs with sticks and rocks.”

She accuses the University of Ottawa’s academic vice-president, Francois Houle, of “inspiring hatred” toward her with his epistolary warning to her that she needed to be conscious of Canada’s criminal prohibitions of hate speech. Indeed, she says she intends, with Levant’s help, to ask police to proceed with exactly the same charges against Houle.

“He described the law to me very carefully—any speech that incites hatred toward someone based on membership in an identifiable group can be criminally prosecuted. Well, before I even set foot in Canada, he had identified me as having criminal proclivities because I belong to an identifiable group: conservatives. Or it could be because I’m a Christian, I’m a Presbyterian. I’m a female conservative. If what Francois Houle did to me is not a hate crime, then nothing is.”

After the event was cancelled by the police, Coulter says she went to her hotel room to relax and had a surreal moment. “I was watching the local news, which was all hockey and Ann Coulter, and some nut came on claiming that he was the organizer behind my speech. [murmurs in background] OK, his name is Craig Chandler. I sent an e-mail to my bodyguard saying Craig Chandler is disinvited from the event in Calgary. He’s on TV claiming to be the organizer and denouncing me!”

Rights and Democracy: Well aren't we busy

By Paul Wells - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 7:40 PM - 105 Comments

Ezra Levant has access to a lot of documents from Rights and Democracy, showing discretionary spending he really doesn’t like. Clearly admirers of the organization’s new board are prepared to fight really hard to see that the recent changes there stick. We’ll see whether their opponents have similar amounts of fight in them.

UPDATE: Ezra calls Rights and Democracy’s $110,000 cheque to the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights “a deliberate and flagrant contradiction to Canada’s foreign policy.” You know who else cut a cheque to the United Nations just four months after Rights and Democracy did? The Conservative government of Stephen Harper. For $73 million. I’m telling you, these UN-lovers are everywhere.

Steyn and Levant on free speech, and what MPs are thinking of doing about it

By John Geddes - Monday, October 5, 2009 at 7:34 PM - 64 Comments

A tandem appearance by Maclean’s columnist Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, former publisher of the Western Standard magazine, made for an unusually entertaining first day of hearings at a parliamentary committee probing the controversial powers of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Steyn and Levant were called as witnesses by the House of Commons Justice Committee because they have both clashed with the commission and emerged as impassioned advocates for the repeal of Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, which gives the commission the authority to investigate complaints about hate speech.

They put on the anticipated lively show as the committee launched deliberations on Section 13. At one point, Steyn called the human rights commission’s investigators “psychologically disturbed.” Levant catalogued allegations of outrageous entrapment techniques he says have been used by the commission in an “out of control” hunt for hate-speakers to drag before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

But if the two media-star witnesses were the focus of attention in Parliament’s Railway Committee Room, the inclinations of mostly anonymous MPs sitting on the committee could end up being the real story as its work progresses.

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Rockin' out against the man with Jason Kenney

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 3:25 PM - 34 Comments

I met Lindy at a party in Montreal once.  He was quite tall. And his girlfriend said she was an actor for medical school seminars. Like Kramer in that Seinfeld episode.

Anyway. Lindy now sings songs about Ezra Levant, apparently. He’s quite popular with libertarians. And, as you’ll see at the end of this video, Jason Kenney.

Mitchel Raphael on a hill feeding frenzy

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 1 Comment

Those people on the Hill sure like free food

The Canadian Pork Council held a BBQ on the Hill (free pulled pork sandwiches!) to publicize the safety of their product in the midst of swine flu panic. It was the longest lineup Capital Diary had ever seen for a Hill reception. The final 30 people did not even get meat—some of them grabbed buns to soak up the leftover liquid in the serving pan. New Democrat Peter Stoffer was one of the few MPs who waited his turn in the endless line, even when organizers tried to pull him to the front for preferential treatment. The line went slower when cabinet ministers like Gerry Ritz (Agriculture) and Jean-Pierre Blackburn (National Revenue) took over from staff to do the serving. Everyone from Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq to Grit Leader Michael Ignatieff was chomping down. Conservative MP Shelly Glover noted she loves ham. “My kids live off of it,” says the mother of five, who was elected in the last election. (She is on leave from the Winnipeg Police Service, where she used to investigate crack houses and went undercover as a sex-trade worker.) Quipped deputy Speaker Andrew Scheer at the BBQ: “This is the good kind of pork on Parliament Hill.”

Who knew Justin had a tattoo?

Last year, Nova Scotia Grit Mike Savage was the lone MP to take up the Canadian Paraplegic Association’s challenge to spend a day in a wheelchair. This year, several politicians participated, including Conservative MP Dona Cadman and senators such as Olympic skiing gold medallist Nancy Greene Raine. They experienced first-hand the challenges of being in a wheelchair—travelling over carpets or hitting inaccessible committee rooms on the Hill. The day ended with wheelchair races. When Justin Trudeau took on his Toronto Liberal colleague Martha Hall Findlay, he suggested she remove her jacket. When she did and it was revealed she was sleeveless underneath, Trudeau, who was already without a jacket and tie, stripped down to his sleeveless undershirt. (A few people were surprised to see a small tattoo of the earth on his upper left arm.) He won for fastest male MP, but beat Hall Findlay only by a slim margin. It should be noted, however, that Hall Findlay had a “wardrobe malfunction.” Her bra straps slipped off her shoulders and she had to pause to push them back up.

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Ezra Levant’s big beef and new book

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 72 Comments

Ezra Levant held the Ottawa launch of his new book, Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights. Levant is the journalist and Conservative activist who was taken to the Alberta Human Rights Commission when he published the controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in the Western Standard.

(Left to right) Ezra Levant, Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein and Maclean’s columnist/keynote speaker Mark Steyn.

Transport Minister John Baird (right) and Tory staffer Chris Lawton.

Keynote speaker Mark Steyn.

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Enough's enough

By Ezra Levant - Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 2:08 PM - 63 Comments

If British Columbia sounds like the land that common sense forgot when it comes to human rights, there’s good reason. Many of the most ridiculous case studies discussed in this book originate in that province.

Take, for instance, the time the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal declared that a McDonald’s restaurant employee had the human right not to wash her hands, even when she worked in the kitchen, and instead should be accommodated by finding her another job in the organization where handwashing was not essential. In theory this makes sense; but in practice, McDonald’s, who ought to know, say that there aren’t any positions that don’t require handwashing.

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Human rights racket

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 18 Comments

If, when the history is written, 2008 turns out to be the beginning of the end for Canada’s human rights commissions, the beginning of the beginning of the end will no doubt prove to be the moment last January, in a dingy office in downtown Calgary, when Ezra Levant switched on his video camera.

Levant, then the publisher of the Western Standard magazine, had been summoned to appear before an investigator with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission. His crime? Publishing the famous “Danish cartoons,” a collection of images of the prophet Muhammad that had set off anti-Western protests across the Muslim world. A single complaint from a local imam had been enough to plunge Levant and his magazine into a two-year, $100,000 bureaucratic nightmare. And that’s just his own costs: with 15 staff assigned full-time to his case, he reckons the cost to Alberta taxpayers at upwards of $500,000.

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Ezra Levant, liberal

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 10:36 PM - 95 Comments

Ezra Levant swing by the office this afternoon; he was in town pimping his new book Shakedown, a pretty devastating look at the Human Rights industry in Canada. I’ve never met him before, but he seemed almost giddy when he showed up, fresh from a signing at a downtown Chapters where — apparently — there was a healthy lineup to get him to sign copies of the book.

Good on him. I was never a huge fan of Ezra’s political leanings, and the Western Standard was not really my cup of tea. But printing the Danish cartoons was courageous, and his subsequent fight with the AHRC was deeply principled and very nicely handled. Anyway, we had a nice chat for an hour or so, about everything from the origins of the human rights commissions to constitutional interpretation to the Galloway affair. He’s smart, engaging as hell, and his book is going to sell boatloads.

I’ll have a review of the book soon, and I might try to publish our discussion as a Q&A somewhere. Meanwhile, my personal  takeaway from our discussion is the subject line of this post. More later.

More Canadian than thou

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 5:43 PM - 96 Comments

As noted, last night’s battle of teenage hockey players was very important and deeply meaningful. Indeed, it was nothing less than a profound window into our national soul, and the very hearts of our political leaders.

Stephen Taylor explains.

Hockey games usually provide photo-ops for Canadian politicians to awkwardly rub shoulders with “every day” Canadians and pretend to show interest in the game that the rest of us plebs know and love. However, Stephen Harper, a man with an interest that could be described as a genuine but fanatical love of the game (maintained by his trademark calm) was there not only for the gold medal game, but most – if not all – of team Canada’s games during the entire tournament. As for photo-ops, our country’s leader looked at ease with a shirt-less gold-painted-with-Canada-logo-on-chest superfan as he gave thumbs up for a fan photo. The Prime Minister also took the opportunity of hanging out with the team before games in the dressing room. One reporter explained to me that usually such a moment would have racked the nerves of a team. However, for a man at ease in this element, wearing a leather jacket and jeans, having laced skates, taped sticks and socks many times before, the PM was just another hockey dad.

Michael Ignatieff was also in attendence but only for the gold medal game. The Liberal leader and grandson of a Russian tsar took a break from writing a book on his family history long enough to recognize the tournament and descend to mingle with the masses. Ignatieff had a rare chance of witnessing a Canadian hockey victory while living in Canada – the distinguished academic has been largely abroad since the late 60s. A friend joked that Ignatieff told TSN, “I am a fan of the game of hockey, but not necessarily a hockey fan.” For the two men, Harper and Ignatieff, hockey underscores a vital political strength and a vital political weakness. For the Prime Minister, voters select someone they see in themselves and they pick someone who understands and shares their concerns. For Ignatieff, voters will sever him if he cannot genuinely tie himself with the threads that line our hearts.

We’re a nation bound by our love of hockey.

In fairness, Mr. Ignatieff’s been Liberal leader for nearly a month. It’s really about time his Canadianness was questioned. His predecessor had the job for mere days before doubt was cast on his.

Megapundit: Flummery! Flimshaw! Flim-flam! Bumf!

By selley - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 1:14 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Don Martin and Lawrence Martin on Election Fever!; L. Ian MacDonald on Obama’s speech.

The power of speech
The pundits offer advice for Barack Obama and sympathy, at best, for Hillary Clinton.

All Obama has to do tomorrow night, L. Ian MacDonald opines in the Montreal Gazette, is “deliver on what the first George Bush called ‘the vision thing’, … tell his story to those Americans who haven’t heard it, … [and] confront the nagging doubts of whether America is ready for a black president,” and do it all in a speech that’s better than any he’s made thus far. No small task. Thus, MacDonald suggests Obama consult John F. Kennedy’s 1960 nomination acceptance speech, in which he “squarely addressed … whether America was prepared to elect a Catholic president,” and Bill Clinton’s in 1992 for inspiration on how to tell his personal story.

The Toronto Star‘s Thomas Walkom heard very little about Obama in Clinton’s speech last night and a whole lot of “cold logic”—i.e., that Americans who want “things like … universal health care” should want a Democrat in the White House, flawed and male though he may be. In other words: “Forget your reservations about Obama; he’s better than the alternative.” But Clinton’s attempt to sell suspicious female voters on Michelle Obama as the woman’s voice in the White House must have been galling, Walkom suggests, given that in emphasizing “her loyal brother, her stay-at-home mom and her two daughters,” Mrs. Obama had “chose[n] to pander to America’s ingrained prejudice against strong-minded women.”

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So Much Bigger Than Ezra

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

It’s been an odd experience working on my story that appears in this week’s print edition of Maclean’s. Some of the Canadians I have talked to about his incredibly important subject — freedom of expression — seem to lose their love of freedom and their s**t their cool when confronted by two words: Ezra. Levant. I spoke to one intellectual luminary whose ability to make a rational argument not to mention his sense of decorum suddenly deserted him and the best he could muster at the mention of Levant was to compare him to a walking piece of male anatomy. Fine. I get it. A lot of people don’t like Levant and a lot of people disagree with him and a lot of people are offended that he published the Muhammed cartoons in his magazine. How can I put this simply? With apologies to the band: This.is.Bigger.Than.Ezra.

So much bigger.

When you read the story — and it’s long and complicated — please note the comments of Louise Arbour, as well as those of the UN rapporteur on free speech. This is not a right wing or left wing issue.

In a nutshell:

“…Pakistan and the other nations that have banded together in the Organization of the Islamic Conference have been leading a remarkably successful campaign through the United Nations to enshrine in international law prohibitions against “defamation of religions,” particularly Islam. Their aim is to empower governments around the world to punish anyone who commits the “heinous act” of defaming Islam. Critics say it is an attempt to globalize laws against blasphemy that exist in some Muslim countries — and that the movement has already succeeded in suppressing open discussion in international forums of issues such as female genital mutilation, honour killings and gay rights. …”

Maclean’s: Stifling Free Speech Globally