 There is an old story about Pierre Trudeau from before he was a
politician. He was playing tennis with friends one day when he got word
that an ongoing labour dispute was about to turn violent. Apparently,
the company had hired strike-breakers to come in and knock some
strikers' heads together. The Quebec government was standing by, just
'monitoring' the situation -aka doing nothing. Trudeau supposedly, as
the story goes, left the tennis court immediately, hopped in his sport
car (convertible I'm sure) and whipped out to the picket line. Along
the way, he rounded up as many journalists as he could. I can just
imagine the scene! Striking workers with placards on one side,
knuckle-dragging thugs with baseball bats and chains on the other, the
Quebec provincial police standing back "monitoring". And into this
ready-to-blow powder keg, Trudeau slips in with a gaggle of press. I
can see him in my mind's eye, wearing his white tennis outfit, sweater
tied about his shoulders. Racquet in hand, the future PM begins an
impromptu news conference about workers rights, the abuse of big
business and the indifference of the Fat Cats in Quebec City.
Priceless!
Fast forward almost 50 years. A good sized mob
converges on a meeting hall on the University of Ottawa campus. They
are there to shout down a speech and Q&A time by American right-wing
commentator Ann Coulter. The mob succeeds. While Canada's Freedom of
Expression is not quite identical to America's Freedom of Speech, they
are similar enough for this discussion. Coulter never got a chance to
express her opinion. Setting aside the belief some have that she is
some right-wing nut job (I'm not saying what I think of her), wouldn't
it be better to let her speak? Her own opinions will reveal the quality
of her character. In a thinking culture, and with this speaker
especially, the more she talks, the less real impact she is likely to
have. There are limits to expression in Canada. Had Coulter got up and
started inciting riot (did she do that anyway, without speaking?) or
yelling "Kill all Muslims! Kill all Jews! Kill all Christians!", she
would have been shut down. Let her be, write her off as irrelevant, and
suddenly the right-wig nut job has not clothes.
What irked
me was that Coulter did the US Cable news rounds afterwards, claiming to
have been victimized. Sorry Coulter- you play in the big leagues,
you're bound to have a pitch thrown at you occasionally. You're no
victim! You knew what could happen when you stood in the batters box.
Victims are people who have had some terrible act perpetrated against
them. Think abused spouse. Think helpless children sexually attacked
by priest, pastor or pediatrician. Think Palestinian children being
used as human shields as Israeli attack helicopters launch missiles into
a residential area, with both sides trying to take the moral high
ground by weeping over their blood. Think university students on a Tel
Aviv bus, blown to bits by a suicide bomber. Think Warsaw Ghetto. Think
gas chamber. Think mass graves and ethnic cleansing. But Ann Coulter a
victim? Please.
But maybe, in typical Canadian fashion, we
should make Coulter the poster child for political victim-hood. Ya-
let's play with that idea for a second. We invite her back to Canada to
apologize to her. Lots of hand-wringing and weeping and gnashing of
teeth, a nice dinner on Parliament Hill, maybe even a a plaque, and a
cheque. Ya, a big cheque. We could have lots of press coverage, but no
TV camera's, because recognizing someones official victim status in
high definition would be gauche. There would be speeches, and
presentations, and Ann Coulter would leave with the title of "official
victim". And you know what would happen next? That victim label would
stick to her like fleas to a hound dog. Everyone would know her story
by just looking at her. When she got up to speak, people would go,
"Aww- there's Ann the victim. Some students were unkind to her once in
Ottawa." No one would hear a word she had to say, and if they did, it
would be dismissed, "Because victims do tend to talk that way." When
Ann stood up on her soap box to scream about Muslims riding camels and
not flying in airplanes, instead of shocking anyone she would be greeted
with a room full of, "Poor dear! It's not her fault, she's a victim.
Let's give her some money. And flowers. Ya- lots of flowers."
In
the UK general election this week, Prime Minister (for now) Gordon
Brown got into trouble. He was confronted on a campaign stop by a woman
who kept pestering him about what he was going to do with all these
"filthy" eastern European immigrants that were taking jobs from "real"
Brits. Brown did his best to assuage her fears. When he got back in
the car to leave, the PM forgot about the wireless mic he still had on.
He was overheard telling a staffer about that "bigoted woman". Soon
the tape of Brown's private comments were everywhere. He had to go back
and apologize to the woman later that day. The press played it out
like the woman was a victim, and Brown was the evil bully. No one ever
mentioned that the woman was a bigot. You walk like a duck and
talk like a duck, don't be surprised when people mistake you for a duck.
In
some countries, people who are hated are victimized. Think European
Jewry in the 1930's and 1940's. Think Rwanda in the 90's. Think Sudan
today. Nowadays, in 'civilised' societies, the unliked and unwashed are
made out to be victims. We give them big cheques, and flowers, and
apologies and labels, so we don't have to acknowledge their significance
ever again. We do it so often, there's no room and not enough help for
people who are really victims. Don't we diminish real victims
everywhere when we ask them to share a table with the likes of Ann
Coulter? It's getting hard to tell who is holding the placards and who
is holding the baseball bats and chains. I guess we'll have to keep
monitoring the situation. Tennis anyone?
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