NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
SUNDAY SPECTATOR
September 14, 2008
Heather's malice
I should like to defend Heather Mallick today, with both enthusiasm, and distaste. This defence is not strictly necessary, at the moment, as she is a writer with fanatic leftwing views, and therefore quite unlikely to be hauled before Canada’s various “human rights” kangaroo courts, or any of the other contemporary administrative tribunals that regulate public speech. For such institutions are themselves staffed by leftwing fanatics, and have thus consistently focused their ministrations on rightwing people; especially faithful Christians, but the occasional rightwing Jew.Ms Mallick is a reasonably well-known journalist, at least within the “Canadian club” of the mainstream media (MSM); an unlikely member of which I am, too. She was a little notorious at the Globe and Mail for the baiting tone of her effusions there, until she and the paper went visibly different ways. Then she was taken aboard the CBC, where she now writes a website column only a little wilder than what she wrote before. I might not have noticed her column on Sarah Palin, last week, had it not been called to my attention by several dozen correspondents in the United States, and two in Canada -- all of whom seemed irritated by it. Later I noticed discussion on sundry blogs, and even in the National Post: overwhelmingly unfavourable to Ms Mallick. At this point, I hope my reader is wondering, “What did she say?” A bunch of things, though nothing breathtakingly original. Mrs Palin was depicted as a “toned-down porn actress” appealing to male Republican “sexual inadequates”; her daughter Bristol as a teen-mum “pramface”; her husband Todd as an abnormal parent, complacent in the “prodding of his daughter” by some redneck “ratboy.” Their son Track going off to war in Iraq, “appears terrified,” etc. The delegates to the Republican convention were characterized as “white trash” -- “the demographic that sullies America’s name” -- and as the ignorant stooges of “violently rich” men who “run the party.” And so forth. Readers with a taste for still ruder remarks may consult that column itself, if CBC is still posting it when this column appears. If not, the title was, “A Mighty Wind blows through the Republican convention,” and it will be banked in the Internet somewhere. A parallel column Ms Mallick wrote for the Guardian Unlimited website in England made largely the same points, but more grimly and primly. I much preferred the CBC version. Typical “conservatives,” my outraged correspondents were, to a man (and woman), careful to say they don’t want Ms Mallick censored or prosecuted for writing such things, that she has “a right” to say what she pleases. They only contest her right to be paid by the Canadian taxpayer, through her gig at the CBC. Now, if I were the Generalissimo of Canada, the CBC would be the first billion dollars I’d save, but until that happy hour arrives, I only wish they’d publish Ms Mallick’s scribblings more prominently. Several reasons for this. The first, of course, is that by doing so, they will bring the day nearer when the CBC will be, ahem, “privatized.” But my second reason is more generous. I think Ms Mallick expresses openly what many, quite possibly most of her MSM colleagues are actually thinking, and in my experience, actually saying in social gatherings and while working away from the microphones -- though seldom with such ebullience. Ms Mallick is rare in being so refreshingly candid, on the record. Where such prejudices as hers exist, it is an advantage to everyone to have them expressed openly, discussed openly, demolished openly. Far worse is the poison in people who think like Ms Mallick, but contain themselves within the shallow literary conventions of “journalistic objectivity.” I actually enjoy reading Ms Mallick’s blow-outs. I laugh out loud at many of her phrases and juxtapositions -- the more, the farther they go “over the top” -- and wince only when I think she has missed a good chance to shoot even higher. Moreover, her assertions are often so malignantly unreasonable that one may extract some truth by reversing them. And her half-truths must necessarily contain some modest corn seed of reality. Laughter is an excellent guide: for truth is near, wherever there is spontaneous laughter. Anger, on the other hand, makes one blind, and I regret that some of my correspondents became so outraged, that they missed the joy in reading such a screed. “Hatred” and “racism” and “sexism” and “homophobia” and “Islamophobia” and “intolerance” and a few more ideologically twisted terms have been made into crimes in this country. People on the Right are being prosecuted now; those on the Left could as easily be prosecuted later under the same laws -- as in Germany, when the Nazis used inherited, vaguely-written “hate speech” laws from the Weimar Republic, to prosecute the very sort of people who wrote them. To paraphrase an obscure interpreter of Voltaire: “I do not agree with what Heather Mallick says, but I will defend to the death her right to say it.” David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top