Ezra Levant Shrieks "Muslim! Muslim!"

Ezra demonstrates why the Western Standard couldn't find enough readers to make a good go of it. He writes of last weeks Calgary bus crash:

"Every detail was examined [by reporters] except one: The woman who was the school bus driver was wearing a Muslim-style head covering that blocked her peripheral vision. "

He concludes:

What matters is that a school bus driver was allowed to operate while wearing a hood.

Clearly, that is an unacceptable risk -- and something that should be banned by common sense.

Ten years ago, to say that head scarves on bus drivers should be prohibited would have been uncontroversial.

But to say so today is to be called Islamophobic -- even if the bus driver in question was not a Muslim.

So, the logic is: the bus driver was wearing head-gear that vaguely resembles a hijab, and if reporters didn't note this fact, its out of political correctness.

Well, there's a couple of other possibilities.

One is that the reporters involved spent five minutes with google. I did: the pretty gal up top is wearing a babushka, the lady below a hijab. Now, at one minute 35 or so of the youtube video below, the bus driver in question appears, and from the knot under the chin I'm betting heavy that she's wearing the former variety of headscarf.

The other explanation is that our hypothesized reporters viewed some version of the video in a less fevered state of race hate and paranoia than little Ezra, and noted that the headscarf, whatever type of headscarf it might be, seemed wrapped pretty close to the skull and did not really seem to be impeding the bus-driver's vision.

PS. Anyone know how to grab a frame from a youtube video and save as a .jpg.?

Winston Churchill: Anti-?

In 1937, Winston Churchill wrote this article, which has only recently been uncovered:

...they are inviting persecution -- that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer.

[...]

[THE TYPICAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE MYSTERY RACE] looks different. He thinks differently. He has a different tradition and background. He refuses to be absorbed.

So, a brief quizz. What race is Churchill criticizing for failing to assimilate? And did his charge, in its historical context, have merit, or were his comments racist? Does his charge have merit today? Actually, probably it does not. But then why do we ask some tribes to change their dress habits, for example, and not others?

(Note: I might be a bit heavy handed on the comments this time out, assuming there are comments. The evil bald one might be out there, waiting to pounce.)

And as a PS, if anyone has found a link to the entire article, I would love to read it. At the time, Churchill's secretary advised him it would be "inadvisable" to publish this and it never saw the light of day.

Free McClelland!

Why?

1) Because he did apologize, and even though his apology is all of 50 words long and reads like it was spit from between busted teeth, that's good enough for me.

2) Because it sends a big Fuck You! to the evil bald one, a man who still embraces "punk" even as he closes in on 50, which is basically admitting that he's played guitar for thirty years and still can't do the third chord.

3) Because McClelland has taught us a useful lesson about political discourse: if you want to slag off a race/religious or ethnic group, for God sake don't fuck with them Jews! They've got gnarly powers! McClelland learned the hard way, and he got off easy. He's lucky his credit rating didn't go up in flames on him! My advice is: pick one of those small ex-communist Eastern European countries where they're all half-starved, or someplace in Asia where they're tiny and but don't know kung fu. Nobody gives a shit what you say about those people. And nobody gives a shit if you diss the Muslims either, come to think of it, but that's a bit like picking on a little girl. And leave the Irish alone, because we're sweet and not very tall anyway, and don't bug the rastamen, because they've got cool hair and Bob Marley. Of course, RACISM IS WRONG, BIGOTRY IS WRONG and we musn't condone them. But if you come from a multi-ethnic city like Toronto for example where there's a hundred different varieties of annoying people, perfection is not possible, and its best to stick to the rules I'm laying down should you suffer a moment of weakness.

4) Because McClelland has inspired me to my own apology. April, I was wrong to call Belinda a slut. Or rather, I was wrong to omit the fact that Peter McKay is five times the slut she is, flying from town to town on tax-payer money and banging anything that moves until he's so dehydrated and fuzzed out that he can't piss straight or figure out what city he's in. In fact, I was personally shocked, and I think it is a discredit to our Western Phallocracy, that a guy should be able to get away with such lechery just because he's sexxxy. Had I known this, I could have got laid way more often when I was young! Instead, I thought you were supposed to behave honorably, but fuck that shit, right? Alas, it's too late for me! In any case, Belinda can sleep with as many hockey players as she wants, and I won't say a word! I wash my hands of the whole situation! (But could she at least try one of the smaller, skill players? You know: smaller, but skilled. Not big and dumb. At least someone who's had a 30 goal season)

5) Because the blogosphere is not for wimps, and the Progressive Blogosphere needs more assholes like McClelland. If all we've got are panty-waists, girly-men, goody-two shoes, hair farmers, leaf eaters, bed wetters, navel gazers, nose pickers, washed up bag men, sniffy ponces, and metrosexual suit wearing sissies, the Conservative movement will eat us for breakfast.

Note: I've got no dog in any dispute between McClelland and Cherniak. In fact, if anything it would work out best for me if McClelland just disappeared from the scene. Then I'd be a shew in for the bald one's annual worst blogger award. With Robert around, I've got competition.