Should the government ban meanness？ This politician thinks so.
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Summary
A bill introduced in the Massachusetts legislature would ban a word, but not just any word. It would ban the word "bitch." What does that mean? And who gets to decide? Ezra takes a break from politics to talk about it.
Transcript
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Hello, my rebels. Today, I take a short break from politics and talk about a strange bill
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introduced in the legislature of Massachusetts to ban a word. Just one word, weirdly. What do
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you think the word is? I'll tell you in a second. Hey, in the meantime, can you consider becoming
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a premium subscriber? Go to premium.rebelnews.com. It's $8 a month. You get the video version
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of this podcast, as well as David Menzies' weekly show, Sheila Gunn-Reed's weekly show,
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and you help keep the rebel afloat. All right. Without any further ado, here's the show
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about the word so bad, they want to ban it in Boston.
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Tonight, it's mean to be mean, but should government ban meanness? One politician thinks
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so. It's October 23rd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's
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I saw this story out of Massachusetts, and I'm going to talk about it because maybe we need
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a very short break from the Canadian election. Oh, we will keep talking about the Canadian
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election and its reverberations, but I thought this was an interesting story, and although
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it's American, I think the principle is universal across the Anglosphere. Look at this.
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Bill to ban the B word heard at the State House. Which B word? Bill? Ban? Bully? No, no, the word
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bitch. I'm not sure why the Boston Herald is suddenly so shy about using that word. This Google search
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shows they've published the word nearly 400 times. Sorry if that word is hard on your ears. It's not a
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swear, by the way. It can definitely be offensive. Here's Webster's Dictionary on the subject. They say
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there are four different meanings of the word. The first one is the female of the dog or some other
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carnivorous mammals. So it's just a technical term, a scientific term. That's what Webster says.
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The second one is the offensive term, a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman. The third is a generic
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term that Webster doesn't even call offensive, something that is extremely difficult, objectionable,
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or unpleasant. And then they give an example. Aspirin overdoses are a bitch to treat. Pamela
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Grimm. So they're quoting a female author using the term in that neutral way. The fourth is how I
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usually use the word, if I use it, to complain. Informal complaint. My biggest bitch with all of CBS
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golf is that there's no personalization. Chuck Howard. Now, there are other uses of this word,
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obviously, and I don't propose to go into all of them because that's not really my point other than
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to say the obvious. The word can be used in a great many ways, including in an endearing way by women to
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take ownership of the positive aspects of the word, I think. That's words for you. Context is a lot.
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We can all agree that the N word is racist, but it's also ubiquitous in rap music sung by black
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musicians. So are you really going to ban it? And who gets to decide that? This goofy guy?
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That's the guy who introduced the bill. Let's look at the story a little bit.
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A bill to outlaw the B word, the term for a female dog that is commonly used to slander women,
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is being slammed on both ends of the political spectrum as a case of government overreach and
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censorship. While I detest the use of the B word and the N word and the word fag, etc.,
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I love the Constitution more and question the constitutionality of bills like this, said
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Arlene Isaacson, co-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.
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The concern is specifically about the right to free speech, including speech that I hate.
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Well, that's pretty encouraging, isn't it? Not only that the first quote in this news story is in
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defense of free speech, but that it's from a woman and a gay woman, no less. That's very encouraging to
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me. Here's more from the story. It's a very, very slippery slope. And at the end of the slippery
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slope is the anti-Webster's, the dictionary of words we can never use. Conservative political
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consultant Chip Jones told the Herald, we continually replace the right and responsibility of people to
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defend themselves from physical and emotional harm with government intervention. When we replace an
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individual's right or responsibility to defend themselves, we weaken people in society. That's
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pretty smart. I mean, seriously, you will never be able to ban words in real life. I'm sorry.
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Maybe instead of pretending that you can, how about equipping people with the skills to cope
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with real life and either ignore idiots or learn how to respond? Here's the Massachusetts legislature
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home page for this bill. It really is a bill. I checked. It's called an act regarding the use
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of offensive words, except for they have words in plural. It's just one word they're banning.
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The operative section of the bill is so short, it's just two sentences long. I'll read the whole
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thing to you. A person who uses the word bitch directed at another person to accost, annoy,
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degrade or demean the other person shall be considered to be a disorderly person in violation
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of this section and shall be subject to the penalties provided in subsections A and B. A
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violation of this subsection may be reported by the person to whom the offensive language
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was directed at or by any witness to such incident. That's it. That's the whole proposed lie. I just read
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the whole thing to you. Now, I showed you an example a moment ago of how it's possible for
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the word bitch to be used positively, just like it's possible for gay people or black people or
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other minorities to take a pejorative word and take ownership of it and to use it on themselves to
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take the power away. Language is complicated that way, isn't it? You could have two women who are best
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friends and they could greet each other by using the word bitch. You really could. It's an inside joke.
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It's a form of compliment, whatever. I don't need to explain this. No one needs to explain
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how they talk. But if this law were to pass, and I don't think it will, simply accosting someone,
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that was the word they used, with the word bitch is now against the law? And look at the second
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sentence in the law. If you are called the word bitch, you can report the crime, says the law,
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but so can anyone else who just sees or hears it. Seriously, two friends or two enemies or two
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kids or two people, free citizens in America, no less, home of the first amendment, could use the
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word bitch. And anyone who hears that can become a police informant and get them charged. That's the
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plain meaning of the bill. I read it to you. It's just two sentences long. I read you the whole thing.
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Is that the worst word in the world, by the way? I can think of other sexist words that are far worse.
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Frankly, I spend some time in the UK, and they use the C word over there so casually,
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it would make your hair stand up like a porcupine. Why isn't this legislator, Dan Hunt, seeking to ban
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that word? Not that I want him to, of course, but what a weird, weird choice to ban just one word,
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even though the law says it'll ban words. Like I say, like Webster's Dictionary says, the word bitch
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has inoffensive meanings and has offensive meanings, both. I guess it's like the word dick, which can be
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a nickname for someone named Richard. It can also mean a detective. It can also mean an idiot.
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Or a mean idiot. Pretty much the female, the male version of the word bitch, I guess. And of course,
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it's slang for male generalists too. I'm not trying to tell you every dirty word I know. I'm just making
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the point, why is this weird censor, Dan Hunt, being such a dick about things? And why only about
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one word that he really, really doesn't like? Is this some form of weird virtue signaling to prove
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what a male feminist he is? That's my hunch. He'll abide any other derogatory word, any racist words,
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homophobic words, even anti-male slurs. There are some. But the one thing you just can't say around
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is the word bitch. Or he'll call the police, even if he has to do it personally. Hey, can I call
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Dan Hunt a bitch? Maybe in the sense of whining and complaining, right? It doesn't have the sexist
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connotation then, does it? I remember back at Sun News when I did a video about Justin Trudeau kissing
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another man's bride on her wedding day. He was a stranger to them. He just encountered them and
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he literally went up to the bride and kissed her in the place of the groom. How super gross was that?
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I talked a bit on that show at Sun News about how Pierre Trudeau set such a terrible example for
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Justin, how Pierre endlessly cheated on Margaret Trudeau and then how she cheated on him back. I can't
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remember if I reported back then about how Pierre Trudeau would beat Margaret Trudeau physically
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so badly that she'd have a black eye the next morning. All of this was reported at the time,
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by the way. None of this is secret. None of this is news, really. And I suggested that Justin Trudeau
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had grown up with such a terrible experience, terrible role models about how men and women,
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husbands and wives are supposed to act towards each other. Maybe that's why Trudeau today is a
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groper who puts his hands on any woman he wants to because Pierre Trudeau taught him he could.
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It's just weird, really, like his dad. Because you're very handsome. Thank you, Justin.
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Kiss him! I think because... Yeah, it's just a weird guy. Now Trudeau, senior, Pierre Trudeau,
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it was really macho to cheat on his wife Margaret. And weirdly, Margaret Trudeau herself used that
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exact word in newspaper stories about how Pierre Trudeau would beat her, but then be really macho
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afterwards. She said that. That's so gross. That's the home Justin Trudeau grew up in,
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that it's macho to beat a woman. And if you're part of that macho culture, you might call Pierre
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Trudeau a stud, S-T-U-D. He's a stud. He slept with any woman he wanted to, and he put those
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little ladies in their place, punched them if you had to. That was Pierre Trudeau. But in my Sun News
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video, I flipped the script because if you're a woman who sleeps around, you get called a different
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name, don't you? So I decided to use that word to describe Pierre Trudeau. Not Margaret Trudeau,
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but Pierre Trudeau. I called Pierre Trudeau a slightly different word than stud. Still a four
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letter word that starts with S, but I called him, instead of S-T-U-D, I called him S-L-U-T. I called
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him a slut, which is a very odd thing to call a man, but why not? Would it not be sexist to only use
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that word against women, which I've never done, actually? And holy cow did Justin Trudeau blow his
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top when I called Pierre Trudeau a slut. He complained to Brian Mulrooney, I'm not kidding,
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who called the boss of Sun News, who was ordered to apologize to Justin Trudeau. Of course, I didn't
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apologize to Trudeau. The TV station ran something on the screen that's their right to do so. But you
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see my point? But that was Justin Trudeau just being nervous about the issue of his treatment of
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women being discussed politically. Now he's prime minister. I'm sure he still calls up the heads of
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TV stations. But now he might call up police, too, if he likes. In fact, part of his new election
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platform is censorship of social media. Social media companies now only have 24 hours to ban
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something when he complains, when his platform becomes enacted. So yeah, this, back to Massachusetts,
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this buffoonish bully in Boston wants to ban a B-word. That's a lot of Bs, eh? The buffoonish bully in
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Boston wants to ban the B-word. It sounds like a Dr. Seuss book. But it's virtue signaling on his part,
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I think. It's hypocritical for sure. It's weird. It's unenforceable, I think. But it shows the
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mentality of leftists. They want to lock you up. They want people to literally call the cops on you
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for using words they don't like, even if everyone else is fine or fine enough with them.
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I don't think I've ever called someone a bitch on TV before. And the only person I've ever called a
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slut, actually, in my whole life, is Pierre Trudeau. And I obviously stand by that. It's true.
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But even if you don't like any of these mean words, even if you don't like the t-shirts,
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and really, I don't. I think they're sort of gross. If I saw someone wearing that shirt and my kids were
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around, I'd say, what are you doing wearing that around kids? Well, I think we still have to push
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back and defend free speech, even rude speech. Maybe especially we have to defend rude speech.
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Because if we don't draw the line there, if we don't defend rude speech today, and we give that up,
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well, they'll come for the polite speech tomorrow. Oh, by the way, I've set up a little website,
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danhuntisabitch.com. Seriously, click on it. danhuntisabitch.com. Sorry. I guess I should report
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myself to police now, right? Stay with us for more.
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Welcome back. Well, until about a dozen years ago, I was the publisher of a magazine
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called the Western Standard, and I really enjoyed it. I didn't know at the time that
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that was like getting into the horse and buggy business right before the Model T was invented.
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We were born in, I think, 2004, just as the internet was coming in to slaughter every print
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magazine there was. We had a website, but it was before websites could properly be monetized.
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Anyways, it was a labor of love. We published 83 of these things, including two of my favorite
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editions. One was the original Libranos, where we had a poster we sent to all our subscribers across
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the country. And another was when we published the Danish Cartoons of Mohammed. Of course, that led to
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a human rights complaint, the ripple effects of which continue to this day. But alas, the Western
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Standard folded, but it is being revived. When we shut down the magazine, one of our executives,
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Matthew Johnson bought all the rights, and he, along with our next guest, have revived the publication
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as a website-only project. And our guest today is part of the team giving new life to that old byline,
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that old masthead, rather, our friend, Derek Fildebrandt, who joins us now via Skype from Calgary.
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Well, you know what? I have such fond memories of the Western Standard. I worked there for four
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years. I was the publisher of it. It's been dormant for more than a decade. Tell me about
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your plans to revive it, along with Matthew Johnson, one of our original executives.
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Well, I'm really excited. I'm stepping into very big shoes here. I remember the Western Standard was
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that while I was in university, and it was a bright light and otherwise very dark place of
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the modern Marxist campus. I was at Carleton University at the time, which was amongst the
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worst of them. And I remember I'd skip a few meals a month and eat ramen noodles or something,
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just so I could afford my Western Standard subscription. Remember, I would always flip
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straight to the back, read some Mark Stein first, and then begin from the cover with you. It was such a
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great publication, and it was a badly needed voice, independent voice for the West. And I was very
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sad when it went under. I think you still owe me a nine-month subscription left, but I heard that
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from a few people today, that they still have some. So we're really excited to be relaunching the
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Western Standard, trying to step into the very big shoes that you and others left when it
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unfortunately closed. We launched today our website's westernstandardonline.com. And we're
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online with opinion, news. We're doing our first video on podcasts today as well. And our hope is
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actually to get to a quarterly print edition sometime in the new year. So right now, we're just
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building a team. We've got some great writers and contributors for us right now. We're hoping to
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very quickly grow that team. Well, that's great to hear. You know, I'm just looking at a couple of
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these editions I have here. This is from literally 13 years ago, but some of the issues are the same.
00:18:05.800
Why so many people hate Toronto? Canada's Unitedist Professors, Al Jazeera's All-Star Canadians,
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Eco-Terror Strikes, Will the West Survive? These are all questions that haven't been answered in 13 years.
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Tell me, I mean, your timing is interesting because, of course, the West just had an enormous
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setback. Justin Trudeau managed to cling to power. The federal conservatives actually lost ground in
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Quebec, barely made a dent in Ontario. It's not much more than what Preston Manning and Stockwell Day did
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more than a dozen years ago. And I think the West is on the back foot. This time, the oil patch is being
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destroyed by the liberals, the NDP, the Greens and the Bloc in a way we haven't seen before.
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Do you guys have an editorial mission that goes to Western Canada as opposed to, you know,
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in reaction to that? I mean, we're based here in Toronto. We consider ourselves pro-Western, but
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the Western standard suggests that you are about the West for the West. What are you going to do
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in regards to Trudeau's war on the West? Yeah, very good question. Well, the Western standard in
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its time, I believe you ran it out of Calgary when the original Western standard was in publication.
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We're run out of Calgary again. Our editorial direction is fighting for a strong and free Western
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Canada. And people have different feelings about what that looks like. I believe in a sovereign
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Western Canada. Western Canada is supposed to be defined differently depending on what provinces
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you're putting in that category. But we're taking a strong editorial position for a sovereign Western
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Canada. And sovereignty can mean a new deal for Alberta, Saskatchewan and other Western provinces
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within Confederation, which I really hope is the best possible outcome we can achieve.
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But I really don't believe that reform is particularly likely. The Conservative Party of Canada is not
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particularly that much stronger in seat count than the old reform party was. But it doesn't have that
00:20:16.500
strong Western voice that reform or the alliance had. My hope is that Alberta, Saskatchewan and others
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can put forward concrete, real demands for constitutional reform within Canada. But failing that,
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if we cannot fix this country, which I believe deserves to be fixed. So I love Canada. I'm born a
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Canadian. I wish to die a Canadian. But if it can't be fixed, I do believe independence needs to be on
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the agenda. So the Western standard is going to be a platform for us to debate the Western question in a
00:20:49.700
thoughtful and meaningful fashion. We've got writers from different perspectives. We've got, I don't think,
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any status quo Federalists, but we've certainly got people in the reform camp about how we can track
00:21:00.920
fixed Confederation and people in the independence camp who think that it's just beyond repair and it's
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time to go. And of course, some people in between those two positions. So we've already got some pieces
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on Western standard online right now. Really trying to give a platform to the debate that Westerners are
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already having, but it's not being heard out with sufficient volume in the mainstream corporate
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press. Let me ask you one last question, because I'm just flipping through these old issues.
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And I was reminded that I want a copy of the Muhammad edition. That's right.
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I'm reminded that the back page, the inside back page ad of all our issues was bought by Air Canada.
00:21:45.880
That was the most expensive page in the whole magazine. Air Canada bought it. And there was no
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such thing a dozen years ago as de-platforming. It just wasn't a thing. And we had all sorts of ads,
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you know, even by banks. Here's another airline called Harmony Airline. I mean, it was just
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leafing through these old editions. I have a lot of sentimental nostalgia,
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but the most amazing thing to me is brands that today would be so afraid to be associated with
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anything Western, conservative, troublemakey. Back then, it wasn't even a thing. How are you guys
00:22:30.760
going to make money? What's the business model? Is it a donations model? Is it a membership model?
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Because I don't know if it's even possible to do an advertising model these days.
00:22:42.680
Well, you're certainly right in that de-platforming is a phenomenon quite disconnected from the way it was
00:22:50.760
even just a decade ago, where a lot of major companies are just terrified of being associated
00:22:57.320
with anything vaguely controversial on the right. We're beginning today, now that we're launched and
00:23:04.920
up and going. We're going to begin to look for some advertisers ourselves. We'll see how much
00:23:08.680
luck we get. But I'm optimistic that we can at least make a dent there. But we're going to rely
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primarily on memberships. And we've already started to have a flood of memberships today.
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We don't have a paywall. Everything is open. There's no paywall whatsoever on the Western
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Standard website. But we're asking people to become members at $10 a month. On the membership
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section of the website, you can see a stamp that says certified 100% media bailout free,
00:23:35.400
something I know that Rebel is also certified for. And we're asking people to consider becoming
00:23:43.000
voluntary members to support what we're doing. There's a lot of content on the internet, but if
00:23:47.960
you want good content, it's going to cost some money. And so we're asking people to become members
00:23:53.160
at $10 a month to support the work we're doing. We still have the exact same mission statement as
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the old Western Standard, the independent voice of the new West. That hasn't changed. It's mission
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we're continuing. I looked at that, and I thought about doing something new, and I thought, no,
00:24:10.920
it hasn't changed. So we're asking people to become members and consider supporting the work that we do.
00:24:16.840
All right. Well, I tell you, I'll be keeping an eye peeled because not only for historical reasons,
00:24:23.160
am I curious what will be done with the brand? But of course, the Western voice is more important
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than ever. I am a Westerner at heart, and we have great reporters in Alberta, Kian Bextie in Calgary,
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and Sheila Gunn-Reed in Edmonton. But we are headquartered in Toronto, and we don't just focus on the
00:24:42.040
West. So it'll be interesting to take a look and see how you fellas do it. Good luck out there.
00:24:46.600
Well, let me know if you have any good cartoon ideas. Sorry, go ahead.
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Let me know if you have any good cartoon ideas for us. Yeah, that's right. Well,
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that certainly got us some attention. Not all of it. Welcome. But yeah, that was one of our key
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moments. Well, thank you, Derek. And the website, again, for folks who want to check it out is
00:25:04.920
westernstandardonline.com. Is that right, Derek? You got it. All right. Well, keep in touch. And
00:25:12.920
it's good to have another voice out there that's not controlled by Justin Trudeau. So we wish you the
00:25:17.800
best of luck. Well, thank you very much, Ezra. Thanks for having me on. All right. My pleasure.
00:25:21.800
Well, there you have it. Derek Fildebrandt, along with former Western Standard Executive Matthew
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Johnston, has revived the Mesthead, the brand. And we wish them the best. Stay with us. More Ahead on the Rebel.
00:25:33.960
Hey, welcome back on my show yesterday about the results of the election and Western alienation,
00:25:47.480
Don Wright. I'm horrified at the suggestion that Alberta should join the U.S. in any way.
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The corruption and decline is accelerating. Why would we jump on a sinking ship? Western Canada
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is more than capable of standing on our own two feet, on our own values. We do not need to join the U.S.
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We will negotiate our future on our terms. Don, you make some very good points there.
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And there's so many different ways that Alberta could have a future. It could try to renegotiate
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things within Confederation. Quebec certainly has, haven't they? Not just customs, but constitutional
00:26:20.140
things. Quebec controls its own immigration in a way that other provinces don't. Quebec has its own
00:26:24.940
pension plan. There's so many things Quebec does within Confederation that Alberta could do.
00:26:29.380
Alberta could be independence. It could go for a sovereignty association. It could still be a
00:26:40.660
part of the Commonwealth and have the Queen, or it could join the United States either as a state or as
00:26:46.660
a territory. I think there's probably about a half dozen ways it could move forward. And the benefit of
00:26:53.540
Alberta is starting to go down that road is if you're aiming for independence, maybe you'll get
00:27:01.940
a lot of concessions within Confederation that will make people say, okay, we may as well stick
00:27:07.860
around. That's what happened in Quebec. Or maybe Albertans will say, hey, this isn't as bad as all
00:27:16.020
the skeptics warned. Let's just do it. Let's be like Singapore. Let's be like Hong Kong, except for
00:27:21.540
neither Singapore nor Hong Kong is sitting on 200 billion barrels of oil. Liz writes, I think the rest
00:27:29.300
of Canada will be surprised at what the West could accomplish, as well as how well it could protect
00:27:33.380
itself if left to its own devices. That's true. But Alberta has only not even five million people in it.
00:27:41.380
And when you've got that much wealth, it becomes a plaything for more powerful people.
00:27:48.500
It goes without saying that if Alberta started to go down this road, all the media would immediately
00:27:53.540
turn against it because the Calgary Herald, the Calgary Sun, the Edmonton Journal, the Edmonton Sun,
00:27:57.860
CTV, Global, CBC, all the radio, the chorus radio stations, they're all owned in Toronto by a half dozen
00:28:04.820
companies, maybe. So they would absolutely destroy anyone who suggested Alberta leaves. It wouldn't
00:28:11.620
be like the media that's in love with the Bloc Quebecois. You would also see foreign environmental
00:28:16.660
groups just go caray zay, as if they're not right now. They would just absolutely come in. You would
00:28:23.700
see, I mean, why wouldn't you see $100 million worth of political meddling? Every single year,
00:28:29.700
Alberta ships, what, $15 billion more to Ottawa than it gets back. It's a tremendous rate of return to
00:28:35.860
spend $100 million to preserve that. So it would be a hell of a fight. Tim writes,
00:28:41.700
I'm astonished that it took so long for the West to wake up. We have far more in common with the
00:28:45.700
US border states than we ever had with central Canada. There's a lot of truth there. I mean,
00:28:51.060
Alberta, Montana, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, even British Columbia, Washington State. There's a lot
00:29:00.340
more commonality there. I mean, if you've ever been to Vancouver and ever been to Seattle, they're
00:29:04.820
almost sister cities. Winnipeg and Chicago, I think, I thought they might be Saskatchewan,
00:29:12.660
and I don't know. I mean, you can only go so far with those analogies. But certainly,
00:29:18.740
right at the border, they're very similar. But more to the point, I don't think Montana hates
00:29:25.380
Alberta. I don't think Idaho hates Alberta. But it's pretty clear that a lot of liberals,
00:29:32.820
especially in Quebec and Ontario, do. Not everybody. Not everybody. I remind you,
00:29:36.820
a third of people in Ontario voted conservative. And not everyone who voted liberal hates the West.
00:29:42.180
But hating the West is clearly the political currency of the day, of the year, of the generation. I mean,
00:29:48.180
I'm sorry, you can't deny it. Well, folks, that's the show for today. Until tomorrow,
00:29:52.740
on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night. Keep fighting for freedom.