Thursday, June 14, 2012

Ezra Levant and Right Wing Hypocrisy

Canada's version of Glenn Beck, is a former Harperite bigot named Ezra Levant. He may be most infamous for his re-printing of the infamous Mark Steyn Mohammud cartoons, that so incensed Muslims in Europe that it sparked a race war. He regularly loves to spread hate speech, cloaked in the fake sanctimony of free speech -- I say "Fake", because he openly despises and assaults anyone who questions far-right policy.

So naturally, he's one of the headline pundits on Sun News... for the couple of dozen people who actually care enough to watch it. Sure enough, he regularly causes trouble, and just recently lost it with the head of Chiquita Banana by telling him ON THE AIR to "have sex with his mother". Granted, it was in Spanish, but enough viewers understood the obscenity to complain to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, who slammed Levant and Sun News for airing the vulgarity.

True to form, Sun News has so far not apologized in any form, and Levant openly refuses to, calling it censorship of a private business (ignoring, as usual, that Sun News is subsidized by tax money). Now, the problem that the Northern Teabaggers refuse to get, is that the CBSC is AN INDUSTRY REGULATOR, not a part of the government -- which, let's be honest, would probably PRAISE what their propaganda people do, at all times. Furthermore, it's long been accepted that -- with very few exceptions -- YOU DO NOT SWEAR ON TELEVISION, especially towards a GUEST on one of your programs. Come to think of it, I wonder what these same mouth-breathers said, when Nipplegate caused the far-right to moan about the supposed lack-of-morality on our airwaves.

But I digress.

All of that is basically just back story. The main reason I'm writing about this, is because it's hardly the first time Ezra Levant has caused legal problems, over his big and unethical mouth. He has been sued MULTIPLE times, for libel, in his Sun Media newspaper columns -- and lost. In laymen's terms, he has been taken to the cleaners -- REPEATEDLY -- for LYING. Granted, I personally do not know what kind of flak his employers received, for those messes, but it's fair to say it wasn't something they wanted to deal with. And now, we have the same blundering idiot, endangering a multi-million dollar television network's broadcasting license -- and several people's jobs -- because he lacks the basic mental filter to act like an adult, with someone you invited to your workplace.

To be blunt, if I ever spoke like that, to someone in any job I have ever held, I would be immediately fired. If I were a big-wig at Quebecor (Sun Media's parent company), I would kick Levant's ass to the curb, not only because he's unprofessional as hell, but because HE COULD GET ME SHUT DOWN. Yet as of this writing, Levant is still employed with Sun Media. I can only assume, that it's because he generates controversy -- in other words, he's paid to be a troll. I know that people like this, completely lack a moral core, so I won't bother arguing with them about what such a disgusting association says about them. However, maybe they will finally get the message, when the CRTC looks at this complaint in a few years -- and Levant's response to it -- and decides that Sun News has no place on the air.

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