George Allen Knows What He Can Do With My Macaca

I’ve made up my mind. I’m never reading the Western Standard’s blog, The Shotgun, ever again. To this point, I’ve been reading Ezra Levant’s electronic equivalent of used toilet paper as a public service to you, my droogies, ’cause somebody’s gotta keep an eye on the lunatics of the extreme Right. But lately, the unfiltered bigotry is even too much for my jaded and world-weary eyes. You know, I can almost tolerate a bit of racism now and then, if it’s an occasional lapse cached in between insightful commentary. But, increasingly and unsurprisingly, the writers and commenters on that site (and presumably the paper itself) are just proving to be historically ignorant dumbasses.

A recent thread had this priceless comment about Native peoples:

"Tear up the treaties. The Natives don't respect our laws so to hell with them. Why should we show respect for treaties when they continually spit in our faces and blame us for their own shortcomings?" -Liz J

Did you laugh, too? Or cry? Or simply shake your head and grumble? How bad is public education in Canada when people blieve it was the aboriginals who failed to honour treaties?

Interestingly, there are some who theorize that the Standard, despite catering to a dedicated audience of hardcore bigots, is in mortal peril of bankruptcy. As one commenter on the cited blog puts it:

"Levant has nothing to say and says it very loudly. For him, libel's just another word for nothing left to say." -Greg Felton

Speaking of bigotry, my people are at it again. A new restaurant in Mumbai is, um, Hitler-themed. (Insert forehead slapping sound here.)

And you can’t have a post about bigotry without talking about the US Republican party, right? Check out this video of comments made by Sen. George Allen (R). Allen picks out the sole non-white person in the audience (an American citizen by birth, by the way), calls him a “Macaca” several times, and adds, “Welcome to America.” (Apparently, “Macaca” is a slur against Arab Africans.) This Washington Post article ridicules Allen’s office’s lame attempts to explain away the Senator’s racist comments. Before you think this is an isolated incident, apparently Allen has a long history of hatin’ on the dark folks.

So with all this disturbing racist stuff today, let’s end with a little more fluff, shall we? My favouritest Canadian foreign affairs pundit, Eric Margolis, is being invited back to TVOntario for the new current affairs show, The Agenda. A bit of a disclaimer: many years ago, I wrote a very positive review of Eric’s excellent book, War At The Top Of The World for India Currents Magazine. (One of the critic quotes on his website is from my article.) As a result, Eric and I enjoyed a brief correspondence. He is a charming and well-informed gentleman, though he wears his defensible biases on his sleeve. The story is that Eric walked out of his TVO gig because the producers were slanting the show toward the neocon Right. Perhaps one good thing has come from the demise of Studio 2: Eric Margolis may be returning to my TV screen.

But it’s not all good news in TV land. Another great Canadian show, Street Cents, has been cancelled. If you’ve never seen it, Street Cents is a kids’ show that teaches young ‘uns how to shop responsibly and how to be immune from the forces of consumerism which abound. What is the CBC thinking?

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