Charles McVety the Stooge

Oh, HAPPY HAPPY DAY.

While this is old-ish news to some of my fans, I just discovered today that "Reverend" Charles McVety had his TV show canceled, earlier this month. For those who don't know, McVety is basically Canada's answer to Pat Robertson: an overzealous bigot, claiming to be devoutly Christian, who often tells lies to attack anyone who isn't a straight, white, God-fearing conservative Christian (hence why he was voted the Dishonurable Mention in the 2010 Douchebag of the Year awards).

Anyway, what started all of this is that back in December, he said on Word TV that (among other things) gay pride parades are sex festivals that promote pedophilia. Needless to say, this is not true -- and someone complained to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, seeing as this is against their rules. The Council agreed, and the show was suspended for a couple of days.

Of course, McVety and his supporters have claimed that this was political persecution, despite providing no evidence whatsoever that their claims about homosexuals and transgendered people are correct.

Several weeks later, the television station in question (Crossroads Television) -- a right-wing Christian station, believe it or not -- announced that Word TV would be removed permanently from their schedule, because McVety refused to change his behaviour. Sure enough, McVety is ONCE AGAIN claiming to be persecuted, and is suing his former employers.

Charles, maybe no-one ever explained it to you, but when you play a particular game, you're supposed to follow the rules. You clearly are not. You are going to lose.

(and besides, McVety is in a hell of a place to complain about being censored, given some of his previous crusades)

Of course, McVety STILL isn't getting the message -- just this morning (Feb. 8, 2011), he was on AM 640 (a Toronto talk radio station), crying that the sky is going to fall, because the Harper government is considering recognizing the legal rights of transgendered people. Admittedly, this is rather surprising, given that Harper tends to obey social bigots like McVety all the time, but anyway... What's McVety's main concern? Well, other than claiming that (like gay marriage) this will destroy society and pave the way for legalized pedophilia (um, right...), he's concerned about his daughter showering with what is technically a man, at the gym or pool.

As I've already stated, I would hope that any transgendered woman showering around a child would have the courtesy to show SOME modesty around them. In any case, he would appear to either not know or not care, that there are plenty of female sex offenders in North America (you could pretty much flip a coin, to determine which it is). Besides, how does McVety know that his daughter is any more comfortable with showering around strange women? Or, for that matter, that she's comfortable with Dear Old Daddy dragging her into his crusades (and thereby involuntarily putting the mental image of his showering daughter into the public consciousness).

If there is a God, this guy's time has come and gone, and before very long he personally will be gone forever.

Parting Words (final regular episode)

George Galloway vs. Stephen Harper

Now things might get interesting for Stephen Harper...

Canada's Federal Court ruled earlier this week in the case of ex-Scottish MP George Galloway, whom the Harper government banned from entering Canada a year and a half ago, for supposedly supporting a terrorist organization. While the appeal itself (on Galloway's behalf) was thrown out, because Galloway never formally challenged the ban, the ruling also made it abundantly clear that the government was out of line and banned him solely for political reasons (ie. criticizing Israel). Almost immediately, Galloway was announced to be coming to Canada for a speaking engagement this weekend.

Honestly, I'd love to see Harper's cronies try to pull something this time. The whole reason that the "terrorist organization" bullshit didn't work was because all that Galloway did was donate food, medicine and diapers to the Palestinian people (albeit through Hamas). Frankly, even if Hamas were inclined to hold on to those goods, they'd be pretty hard-pressed to find ways to conduct terrorism with them. Then again, this is using logic on Zionist sociopaths who think that trying to bring wheelchairs to Gaza warrants storming a passenger ship in international waters, and shooting civilians armed with sticks (at best).

Besides, if Galloway's actions really did count as supporting terrorism, he would definitely have been arrested by now, and he never has been. That tells me pretty clearly that HarperCons are talking out of their asses.

Furthermore, I find it very rich that the same people demanding that Galloway be silenced -- er, I mean "kept from our country" -- rolled out the red carpet for Ann Coulter, who not only made what can be called direct threats against Canada, but is a genuine Anti-Semite and terrorist sympathizer (look up her remarks on Timothy McVeigh if you think I pulled that one out of my ass). Galloway's critics keep playing the Jew Hater and Terrorist cards, so let's see them get serious.

It's for reasons like this that any claim the right wing has, to be the true heroes of free speech, goes up in smoke pathetically easily.

Young People Fucking, Part 2!

Well, I'm actually a bit surprised. You all would know by now, I've been following the controversy around the movie Young People Fucking quite closely, and with a certain amount of sarcasm. This was helped by the fact that a while ago, I was able to find it on YouTube and started watching it, but then it got pulled. I saw enough to have a general idea of what it was like, so between that and reading additional reviews I said in a previous episode that it was really overrated as far as filth goes. Well, I finally saw it in full a few days ago -- it turns out that it just now came out on DVD... and it turns out I may have to eat some words.

Now, I didn't see much more in the second half than I did the first half, as far as anything racy goes. That being said, I'll say that chalking up the nudity to "just a couple of boobs and butts" was over simplifying it, there was actually quite a bit of nudity as the movie went on. I'm not terribly bothered by that, but since it could throw some people I should point that out. Also, while the action still isn't super explicit, the staging does get more revealing than I indicated the first time around. I honestly apologize for that.

What this comes down to is the really loaded question surrounding the movie -- is it porn? Well in the hardcore sense, definitely not. As I've said before, there are much more deserving candidates than this in the indie film category. But, by definition you can make a decent argument for it being a kind of softcore. I'll get to that in more detail later.

That being said, to say that movies like this contribute to the so-called moral decay of society is really stretching it. This sort of movie is definitely not marketed to kids, and to be honest it's so obscure outside of cultural circles that I wouldn't be surprised if most people haven't even heard of it. For that matter, it's not the sort of movie that places like Blockbuster just put out front for everyone to see -- in fact, for a while I was convinced that it didn't really carry it, and there was some misprint in the new releases. It was actually buried in a pretty odd place. In other words, if parents actually do their jobs and keep their kids away from this stuff, both by talking about it with them and by actually blocking them from it where necessary, the kids would be fine. To be blunt, it isn't fair to try to censor filmmakers just because some parents are asleep at the switch.

Anyway, the problem with basing a very important public policy on a movie like this is that it's not only wide open to abuse -- as Charles McVety's disturbing attitude towards the harmless Breakfast with Scot makes very clear -- but there definitely needs to be clear, multi-lateral grounds for labelling any movie as obscene. Now, I very rarely agree with the Family Action Coalition on ANYTHING, but as I've said before Young People Fucking *may* indeed qualify as a kind of mild pornography. In any event, the smart thing to do would be to have multiple people in the government review this kind of material... and preferably people who don't have some sort of ax to grind, or a few marbles missing. I can't emphasize that last part enough, not only because of the aforementioned Mr. McVety, but I can honestly remember a Christian group in the U.S. that thought Attack of the Clones was sexually explicit, because Natalie Portman wore a shoulder less dress a couple of scenes. I'm completely serious. People that neurotic about the human body make me wonder if they shower, bathe, and go swimming with their eyes closed.

The really silly part about this was how overblown it got. What any religious group trying to block questionable media never quite seem to realize is that the more you preach against something, the more it becomes known, and the more people get curious about it. In other words, whether this movie was obscene or not, McVety gave it all the free publicity it ever needed, especially by refusing to see the thing in full, and going so far as to flat out lie about it having things like an orgy in it. So if the filmmakers would have been frugal enough to make it as a no-budget movie -- which, take it from someone who's done that, would be easy as pie -- they wouldn't have needed the tax credit in the first place! The ad royalties alone would have made them their money back. But I digress... The point is, censorship is a really dangerous thing for the government to get into, and if it ever does it had better make damn sure it knows what it's talking about. Enough said.

Young People Fucking (review)

Those of you who've been following my rants against Charles McVety and Bill C-10 would probably have heard of a movie with the unfortunate title Young People Fucking. More than any other film in recent history, this one movie has been trumped up by conservatives as a reason for tax money to be pulled from certain films made in this country -- even if they feel the government should be able to do that totally in secret. So you know I just had to make it my life's mission to see this so-called travesty for itself... if only I could find it.

My quest to watch and review this movie could probably make a decent comedy film of its own; it only played in one theatre in all of Hamilton, which stopped showing it the week I decided to go see it, the only rental store in my area doesn't carry it -- which is a little funny, considering that it does carry a movie called Wicked Sins, but anyway... -- and when I finally found it on YouTube it was taken down just as I got halfway through the movie. So unfortunately, this is really an incomplete video, and I'm going to have to base my opinions on what I did see, plus do what McVety has always refused to do: research other articles.

The premise is very simple: we follow four couples and one threesome one night, as they all knock boots. Along the way, they discover that sex is much more complicated than meets the eye, partly because no matter how casual or raunchy it may be, it's impossible to separate it from love. So right out of the gate we have some irony; religious conservatives are slagging a movie that actually promotes a message of love and connection, which you'd think they'd be happy to see.

The most common form of slander -- I mean, criticism -- by Mr. McVety about this movie is that it's supposedly pornographic. Admittedly the scenes are very suggestive, and once in a while there is a shot of coupling that leaves very little to the imagination... but that's quite rare. In the forty minutes or so that I caught, I saw maybe a half dozen or so breast shots, and one bare butt, all filmed pretty discreetly. Also, the sex scenes in question showed little more than continuous hip-grinding, rather than any explicit shots of penetration. According to every single review I have read -- both professional and amateur -- this is the extent of the sex in this movie. I kid you not.

It reminds me a little of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre; it has a reputation for being shockingly graphic bloodbath, but when you look at it it isn't very gory at all. Hell, I'm not even sure there's that much blood in it!

Let's break this down: if Young People Fucking is to be called porn for showing the odd boob and butt, then so are MASH, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, most horror movies, Animal House, Not Another Teen Movie, The Last Picture Show, Braveheart, at least four Highlander movies, much of Monty Python's handiwork, and this is just off the top of my head.

We could then go the route of the MPAA and go after hip thrusts; after all, they have a policy of banning movies if they have more than a certain number of humps at a time -- which I find a little strange, considering that some of the more degrading sex acts I can think of don't involve any hip thrusting. If people bumping pelvises makes this movie porn, then you can also say the same of The Shawshank Redemption, Scary Movie, Hellraiser, the original Halloween, American History X, at least three Highlander movies, The Last Picture Show... you get the idea. The point is, it's a really flimsy place to label anything as porn.

I don't dispute that there are movies out there that are so explicit in their sex scenes as to be interchangeable with hardcore porn -- the American-made Shortbus being a perfect example -- but as far as protecting the morals of the public, there would appear to be far better places to start than Young People Fucking. For example, Taking Lives was filmed in Canada, and features a sex scene that has very prolonged shots of Angelina Jolie getting her clothes ripped off and her pounded against her entire hotel room, showing the full monty along the way. But, since it was produced by an American company, it would have been exempt from the rules of Bill C-10. For that matter, what about the Saw movies, which are notorious for extreme levels of gore and relentless torture scenes? They're shot in Canada, but no, they're made by Americans too. If you really want to take the hypocrisy to its logical conclusion, one has to wonder what Charles McVety would have said, if The Passion of the Christ were financed with our tax dollars... I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that he'd call that exactly the kind of morally enriched entertainment we should be showing to all cross-bearing Canadian families.

The scary part of all of this is that this little scheme from the so-called Moral Majority almost worked -- it took a huge outcry to get the Senate to investigate Bill C-10, and even then the government wanted no part of it. In fact they, like McVety, have refused to see this movie. Do these sort of clandestine, fundamentalist oppressors really sound like the sort of people we should have running Canada? When a theocracy rears its head halfway around the world, the first reaction is to bomb the hell out of it, yet when the same type of thing happens at home, it seems we welcome it with open arms. And people wonder why I'm not patriotic. Enough said.