Juno News - Canadian media freak out over new Italian Prime Minister

00:00:00.000 Let's talk about the big media freakout this week though, firing on all cylinders and that was the

00:00:06.380 election of Georgia Maloney in Italy as the Prime Minister Designate. Now this is a broad coalition

00:00:14.760 that we have here. The legacy media have not at all been too keen on this and neither has I should

00:00:22.820 say Justin Trudeau or Melanie Jolie or the foreign policy apparatus of Canada, none of whom have given

00:00:29.080 the obligatory congratulatory message that they gave to Mario Draghi, that they gave to Emmanuel

00:00:35.020 Macron, that they gave to Anthony Albanese. But there's been a particularly bizarre mainstream

00:00:42.280 media take that's like trying to weave this into a weird global and Canadian context. I was having

00:00:49.100 trouble following this one, Harrison. Maybe you can make some sense of it. Well, right. So what they're

00:00:53.220 trying to do here and what we've seen from a couple of other legacy media sources this week is to try

00:00:57.840 and take the election of Georgia Maloney and what we're seeing in Iran, for example, with the

00:01:03.260 protest, the protest against the mandatory hijab there. They're trying to basically say that because

00:01:09.080 of this, because of the election of the first female prime minister in Italy, women's rights are 0.92

00:01:14.960 under attack in Italy. Try and follow that logic along with us because we're having some trouble

00:01:19.820 ourselves. But supposedly, Andrew, women's rights are under attack across the world and they're kind of

00:01:25.100 using the protest in Iran and the election of Georgia Maloney to say, well, look, this is what's

00:01:29.980 going on. We've got we've got women protesting for their rights in Iran when in Italy, a bunch of

00:01:34.940 Italians just voted in some patriarchal first female prime minister. Again, it's very difficult to follow

00:01:41.280 along with the logic here, but we're trying our best. And then on top of that, Andrew, what they're

00:01:45.380 trying to do, what we've seen from a lot of legacy media sources is to say, actually, the protest in

00:01:50.440 Iran are, you know, you can almost compare the struggles that the women are facing in Iran to

00:01:56.340 what is going on in Quebec with Bill C-21. So again, we've got we've got this this one article

00:02:01.480 from the Toronto Star where this columnist is trying to mix all three together. She's trying to

00:02:06.320 basically say that the election of Georgia Maloney spells, you know, danger for women's rights in 0.83

00:02:11.180 Italy, again, which is hilarious. And then, you know, the protest in Iran for women's freedom

00:02:15.900 can be equated somehow to the protest in Quebec against Bill C-21, which is about which is about

00:02:22.560 basically saying if you work in the public service, you can't have religious attire on. I'm not going

00:02:27.060 to defend Bill C-21. I don't personally agree with it. But again, the idea that we can compare the two

00:02:31.560 together is ridiculous. And then, of course, to add on top of that, this this idea, Andrew, that

00:02:35.620 Georgia Maloney's election upholds the patriarchy in Italy, in Europe. Try and try and, you know, 0.99

00:02:41.360 help me out with this one, Andrew. Yeah, I mean, let's first off just explain that away. What they

00:02:46.300 don't like is that she's pro-life and pro-family. They don't like that she supports families that

00:02:52.180 have a traditional structure, which again, I'm a libertarian. I don't support restricting gay

00:02:56.740 marriage, but they don't like that she's pro-life, that she doesn't like abortion. They like that she 0.99

00:03:01.280 is taking that Viktor Orban position of believing that strong families build strong societies, which I

00:03:06.960 don't think is a controversial thing. But it's interesting how we hear all of the time this

00:03:11.740 hand-wringing about how we need more representation and more women in politics. And then you get a 1.00

00:03:15.880 woman who's elected to a very prominent position in Italy, the head of that country's government,

00:03:22.000 a G7 nation. And all of a sudden, well, she's not the right kind of woman. And this column

00:03:26.440 in the Toronto Star makes this point that Maloney is an example of how representation in circles of

00:03:32.760 power is meaningless if the representative does not also challenge the existing hierarchy and bias.

00:03:38.700 The difference with Iran is it doesn't care to make its patriarchy palatable. So the implication 0.90

00:03:45.120 is that Iran and Italy are both patriarchies. And Italy, though, is so particularly progressive

00:03:51.120 because Italy has a woman as the patriarch. Now, woman as the... 1.00

00:03:56.860 I'm rusty on my Latin, but I think that means gender, non-binary, gender-neutral patriarch does.

00:04:09.140 So you can have a male patriarch, a female patriarch, a genderqueer, non-binary patriarch. Doesn't matter. 0.99

00:04:16.460 You can have any kind of arc you want with that. But it's absurd and it's offensive. And it's like

00:04:21.880 saying if you didn't like Barack Obama's policies that, well, he's not really the first black president

00:04:27.560 because, you know, he's not voting the right way or something like that. She is a female that's risen 0.77

00:04:33.940 up, the first prime minister of Italy. You don't have to like her. You don't have to respect her.

00:04:39.200 But it's amazing how they move the goalposts just to rationalize away that. And as for like

00:04:45.340 linking Italy and Iran and Quebec, I've had to write columns on deadline before when I really don't know

00:04:51.220 what I'm going to say. This strikes me as that, where it's like, oh, I've got to submit 800 words.

00:04:55.680 I'm only at 300. Quebec. Let's throw something about Quebec in. That's good for 200 to 300 words.

00:05:03.580 And then, oh, shoot, I'm still 200 down. Italy, Iran. Yeah, okay. Italy, Iran, Quebec. Yeah, we'll do those three.

00:05:10.220 It's like one of these things is not like the other, but anyway.

00:05:15.340 All right.

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Juno News - October 04, 2022

Canadian media freak out over new Italian Prime Minister

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