Juno News - June 15, 2020


Everyone Is Cancelled


Episode Stats

Length

31 minutes

Words per Minute

185.07281

Word Count

5,876

Sentence Count

4

Misogynist Sentences

13

Hate Speech Sentences

8


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:00:09.800 north the andrew lawton show starts right now
00:00:18.480 welcome everyone to another edition of the andrew lawton show you're tuned into canada's
00:00:25.820 most irreverent talk show here on true north back again no i wasn't canceled i wasn't joining the
00:00:32.280 ever-growing list of people who have been taken off the air fired dismissed from their jobs
00:00:36.920 during what's been called the racism reckoning of 2020 i was on vacation and as you can see from
00:00:42.880 the backdrop behind me it's a little bit different than the one we've typically been using i i was
00:00:47.160 moving and as such setting up the new studio and it's not entirely complete yet so bear with us if
00:00:54.020 we have a few issues with the lighting or the sound or if the the roof caves in on me it is not
00:00:59.260 intentional and we'll try to get things in the next couple of weeks back up to standard i i had these
00:01:04.360 grand illusions that you know everything would be fine and i would just sit down and do the show and
00:01:09.100 it would all be done but unfortunately life doesn't always work as seamlessly as that but i i think we've
00:01:14.180 gotten for the most part a good enough quality here that we can do a show so i appreciate very much
00:01:19.400 all of you who checked in on me in the week that i was gone and uh wondered where i was
00:01:23.960 which was uh i think zero people but in any case thank you uh we are going to talk about uh really
00:01:30.200 all the things that well not all the things that i missed in the last week because there were way too
00:01:34.600 many it was ended up being an inconvenient week to be off uh but going to be talking about i guess
00:01:39.220 the one theme that has emerged throughout all of that and the one that i i just talked about in more
00:01:45.120 of a joking sense a moment ago what's been called the racism reckoning of 2020 so this is like me too
00:01:51.840 on steroids where every time you log into your computer you find that someone else has been fired
00:01:57.580 someone else has lost their job they've been uh canceled as it is and what's so interesting about this
00:02:04.620 is that there isn't actually the behavior tied to these things like there was with the me too movement
00:02:13.200 you know the me too movement which i'd say by and large was a net positive uh despite issues that
00:02:18.200 came up but later on and it did actually expose some pretty terrible people what's happening now
00:02:23.860 is going after people for anything and everything regardless of whether they've done anything wrong
00:02:30.500 and in fact in most cases when they haven't and you look at what's happened here let's just talk
00:02:36.480 about a couple of examples for one wendy mesley who i've never actually met wendy if i understand
00:02:43.340 maybe once or twice but i don't think i've actually met her and she is is again just your garden variety
00:02:49.180 cbc left-leaning host this is a woman who gets hit more often than not for being unfair to conservatives
00:02:56.140 in her coverage and she is taken off the air for the alleged crime of using the word that no one is
00:03:03.440 ever supposed to use and the whole coverage of this has been dripping with innuendo as a matter
00:03:08.600 of fact i think i am pretty confident i know what word but i'm not going to say it because no one has
00:03:14.480 actually reported what word but the thing about it is that wendy mesley didn't say it on air she didn't
00:03:21.320 say it in a derogatory way it doesn't sound like she attacked anyone she was having a meeting with her
00:03:26.480 colleagues and at this meeting she quoted as she says she quoted a reporter she said in the context
00:03:33.360 of an editorial discussion about current issues regarding race i used a word that should never
00:03:38.880 be used it was not aimed at anyone i was quoting a journalist we were intending to interview on a
00:03:44.160 panel discussion about coverage of racial inequality she apologized said no one like her should ever use
00:03:51.020 it but now she has been taken off the air cbc is figuring out what they want to do with her
00:03:55.980 and all for not even saying anything that was an attack on someone which means that someone at cbc
00:04:02.240 decided that in 2020 we can no longer give people the benefit of the doubt journalists in a newsroom
00:04:08.720 environment cannot speak freely about the news they seek to cover now as someone who has worked in
00:04:15.560 newsrooms this is a big problem here because in newsrooms you're supposed to be able to sit around
00:04:19.840 and speak in an unfiltered way so that you can understand what the story is and from there you
00:04:27.880 can then decide okay what can we report what can we say on air that's a pretty standard practice no one
00:04:34.580 that i've seen anywhere has accused wendy messley of racism which makes this example such an interesting
00:04:40.400 test case for what's going on because everyone knows and everyone should know that she is not guilty
00:04:45.740 of the crime for which she's being punished but it doesn't matter because in this era in 2020 you don't
00:04:52.000 get to say anything without being under the microscope and that microscope now just has an automatic hammer
00:04:57.960 it's not just where there's a little bit of scrutiny or skepticism it's judge jury and executioner all in
00:05:04.160 one fell swoop and there's a piece of the daily beast that has been everyone who's lost their job
00:05:11.560 they keep a running tally of everyone who they can find from anywhere in the world who's lost their
00:05:17.200 job because of all of this and wendy messley was actually on their list as well as the ceo of crossfit
00:05:22.980 who said that they're not mourning at their office george floyd you had other people as well that are
00:05:30.560 lesser known because it's not just about the celebrities here it's about the everyday ordinary people
00:05:35.900 that don't by the way have a life or a bank account to fall back on that are the most hurt by these
00:05:42.860 things you're getting i mean look at just one example here this uh professor from alberta where
00:05:50.000 and again this is just so unfortunate that this is happening she says biological sex is real
00:05:57.100 an anthropology professor and then she finds herself out on her rear end no job so this is katherine
00:06:03.700 lowry who is an associate chair of undergrad programs in the department of anthropology
00:06:08.660 she said what is a belief system held by a lot of people that biological women are women that
00:06:15.720 biological men are men and such a thing which used to be a statement of biological fact is still a
00:06:21.960 statement of biological fact but it's one that gets you fired and it gets you canceled and gets the
00:06:27.280 mob in full swing at you which is also what's been happening to jk rowling and if you forgive me for
00:06:35.140 going rapid fire through all of these names this is the big one here because jk rowling is your
00:06:41.320 much like wendy mesley by the way woman who checks off all the boxes of the left she's a big believer in the
00:06:49.840 welfare state she's big on gay rights she's a feminist she votes labor she's outspoken on labor issues she does
00:06:56.260 all of the things that you're supposed to do as a lefty in the 21st century and for and by and large
00:07:01.620 that's been fine harry potter has been held up as a model not just of great fiction and great literature
00:07:07.620 but as a way of life as a way for people to have an identity for you know oddballs to feel like they
00:07:13.860 belong harry potter has defined a generation and jk rowling was the one who made that happen the writer
00:07:20.820 of these books which became the movies the spin-offs and all of that and they're books that i've read as
00:07:25.300 well and they're phenomenal books and even if they're not your cup of tea you have to acknowledge
00:07:30.580 what she has created there and by the way her personal story is incredible she talked about
00:07:36.180 this last week as a matter of fact surviving domestic abuse uh we know that she was also uh
00:07:41.460 very much in in a i don't know if poverty is the right word but we know that she was in very dire
00:07:46.100 financial straits she powered through she saw her dream but now she is no longer the left has no time
00:07:52.340 for people that check off all the boxes but one you have to check off all of the boxes now
00:07:58.980 and jk rowling doesn't actually everyone thought she did but she only checks off all of them but one
00:08:04.980 she doesn't go along with the new belief of the left right now the intersectional belief
00:08:10.580 that you can just decide one day to be a woman and then you're a woman and that you have to be afforded
00:08:16.420 not just all of the legal rights but all of the social acceptance of that and that's what she
00:08:23.540 doesn't believe now this is something called radical feminism it's a school of thought when i
00:08:28.100 say radical feminism i'm not accusing them of being radicals because in fact the radical feminists are no
00:08:33.620 longer the radicals in this but a radical feminist someone who typically believes that porn is wrong
00:08:39.700 prostitution is wrong and that someone with a penis cannot be a biological woman you can debate this
00:08:46.100 you can discuss this well you can't now that's the problem you should be able to debate this and you
00:08:51.460 should be able to discuss this and jk rowling actually has become denigrated and derided for
00:08:58.660 having this fundamental belief and it goes back several months when a woman in the uk lost her job
00:09:04.820 for saying that uh biological women are women and only biological women are women and and jk rowling
00:09:11.140 stood up for uh this uh british public servant and then she's tweeted a couple of times since then
00:09:17.300 or liked a couple of tweets about articles to do with this and and then she's gone through this ringer
00:09:23.860 where everyone says you have to cancel jk rowling everyone said you have to burn her books you have
00:09:29.060 to boycott her and all of this stuff because she's now a big dirty transphobe to them all
00:09:33.780 and what's fascinating about jk rowling is that she is someone who fundamentally believes in the
00:09:41.540 rights and dignity of everyone she says she believes in the rights and dignity for trans people
00:09:47.780 and she would protect those rights and stand up for their rights and stand up for the right to live
00:09:52.260 their lives her point is the feminist point which is that my experience as a woman not mine her experience
00:09:58.420 as a woman is not something that can be shared by someone who hasn't lived through that
00:10:04.980 and that's a again a point that should be discussed can be discussed freely but it is a
00:10:10.580 biological fact what she is saying and now you look at what has come of this she had to write this
00:10:16.420 3800 word explanatory essay where she talks about her beliefs on this on sex and gender you have people
00:10:24.420 all of a sudden wondering are we still allowed to like the books uh you have people that are
00:10:28.660 saying hmm i i wonder you know how this is going to beat all the trans people that have bought your
00:10:32.740 books in the past and and resonated with them so so now there is a movement of people that seeks to
00:10:38.500 not just uh tell her she's wrong but to destroy her and to start erasing this legacy that she's built this
00:10:46.420 generation defining legacy that she created that now is being called into question
00:10:51.780 and it got so bad daniel well actually not just daniel radcliffe all of the the harry potter actors
00:10:58.340 uh daniel radcliffe emma watson rupert grint uh they've all come out because they've now had to
00:11:03.620 to distance themselves from uh jk rowling and say that no no trans women are women trans trans it's
00:11:08.900 it's it's undisputable it's it's not debatable uh so now daniel radcliffe was uh commenting on
00:11:15.460 this and uh trying to tell people that no no you can still like harry potter and and also think that
00:11:20.260 uh jk rowling's position deprives transgender people of their dignity he said that in a blog
00:11:25.620 post written at the trevor project now there's a canadian tie into this and i want to share this
00:11:33.220 segment that appeared on cbc now as a general rule i wasn't spending my vacation watching cbc
00:11:38.500 and certainly i don't watch cbc kids but this clip did come across my radar online now this is a show
00:11:45.300 that cbc kids does called recap and it is meant to be a news television program for children if you
00:11:53.460 look at the recap page it's for children ages six and up and this is meant to be a recap of real news
00:12:00.660 in the world of real news fake news clickbait and hot takes and this is meant to unclutter
00:12:06.660 the minds of children and tell them the news now i wasn't watching the news when i was six and i ended up
00:12:11.700 fine but uh cbc kids wants to give kids the real deal so this is how they reported on the jk rowling
00:12:19.460 trans flap well i've been following this jk rowling controversy and it all started with a tweet she made
00:12:25.860 actually it started with this headline creating a more equal post-covid 19 world for people who
00:12:31.380 menstruate jk took issue with the word people being used maybe she was trying to be funny but she hinted
00:12:38.020 that the publication should have stuck with using the word women some fans pointed out that there
00:12:42.980 are lots of those who menstruate who don't identify as women and then things got a little messy lots of
00:12:48.180 tweets back and forth and at one point jk fired back with my life has been shaped by being female and i
00:12:54.180 don't think it's hateful to say so it's 2020 releasing these kind of statements online is not a good look
00:13:01.300 and hasn't she been accused of transphobic stuff in the past um yeah last year she was criticized
00:13:07.940 for supporting a woman who was fired after saying that trans women weren't real women sis read the room
00:13:14.660 there are so many conversations right now about equality justice and racism is it any surprise that
00:13:21.460 the story is blowing up right now exactly it's pride month too and this week daniel radcliffe harry potter
00:13:27.380 himself reacted with an essay advocating for trans lives i thought he addressed the whole thing really
00:13:33.380 well and i liked how he expressed his hopes that people don't lose their love for the books themselves
00:13:38.500 or forget the valuable lessons that they learned from them i have not read the books i have not seen
00:13:43.860 the movies don't come at me okay maya get out of here what well i did watch the movies and seeing daniel
00:13:52.180 advocate for what he believes in is so inspiring and also i loved how he signed his letter as dan
00:13:59.460 definitely had a big major glow up only you would notice such a small detail sean do we think this
00:14:04.580 will have a long lasting impact on her career i think that this will diminish the amount of respect
00:14:10.100 that jk rowling has acquired over the years but her writing is just so exceptional and renowned that i
00:14:15.700 don't think the hype's ever going to die down no so okay a lot in that two minutes of nonsense there
00:14:22.180 so for starters they call her transphobic uh they call daniel radcliffe inspiring for advocating for
00:14:29.620 what he believes in which i find hilarious it's transphobic when she talks about what she believes in
00:14:34.980 but when daniel radcliffe does it's an inspiration to us all uh they tell kids that no it doesn't matter
00:14:42.020 if you menstruate or not that's not how you define whether or not you're a woman and more importantly
00:14:46.820 they basically say that there is no debate on this so if you're a six-year-old and i would hope that
00:14:53.380 you're not immersed in the world of trans politics at age six but if you're a six-year-old and you have
00:14:58.500 a vague understanding of the issue because i know they start teaching a lot of these things younger and
00:15:02.500 younger this is now telling you that there is a way to view this and only one way and no discussion so
00:15:10.260 i'm not one of these people that says oh won't somebody please think of the children you know
00:15:14.180 what i'm talking about oh won't somebody please think of the children but i am one of these people
00:15:20.820 that thinks you need to have age-appropriate discussions and you need to understand the
00:15:25.380 complexity of the issues that you are bringing to children and and i'm sorry but trans politics
00:15:32.020 which is what this is this isn't about trans science this isn't about trans health this isn't
00:15:36.260 even about the personal identities of the children in question this is about trans politics and you
00:15:41.780 can't condense that and try to make it about whether jk rowling is right or wrong in a two-minute clip
00:15:47.620 for six year olds so what cbc is doing here and by the way this is cbc uh kids which has promoted the
00:15:54.260 drag children in the past which i didn't even know was a thing until i saw the cbc clip circulating so
00:16:00.020 they clearly are very uh hell-bent on promoting these gender identity issues to a child audience
00:16:06.980 but the problem right now is that they are and i i hate using the word indoctrinating because it sounds
00:16:13.220 so conspiratorial but there is an indoctrination here because what cbc kids is doing is ignoring
00:16:20.740 the fact that there's a debate ignoring the fact that there's a biological science issue here
00:16:25.700 and mocking a beloved children's and young adults author for saying something and basically telling
00:16:33.540 kids from the age of six and up that oh no one should talk about this and the one guy on there
00:16:38.340 says that oh you know no one should be posting anything like this online so you know whether
00:16:42.340 kids grow up to have a an understanding based on what's in a two-minute cbc kids clip i don't know
00:16:48.180 and i i would certainly hope not that this doesn't have a transformative effect on them
00:16:53.300 but it still does put this agenda forward uh subverting what parents think subverting what
00:16:59.380 science thinks uh subverting uh what's going on in education here and it's just fundamentally at odds
00:17:05.140 with fact and you can be by the way as pro-trans and pro-gender identity as you want to be will
00:17:12.900 well still recognizing that there are differences between biological women and trans women between
00:17:18.500 biological men and trans men you can have those discussions and when you look at the implications
00:17:25.140 of of accepting that there is no difference which is what a lot of the radical activists want you to
00:17:30.020 accept you have to understand the contradictions that are there and douglas murray has talked about
00:17:35.700 this in his latest book the madness of crowds how the reality is that a lot of the trans rights that
00:17:42.660 are claimed will butt up against gay rights they'll butt up against women's rights if you say that a
00:17:48.740 woman has the right to a shelter free of men for example a trans man or a trans woman who is a
00:17:56.020 biological male going to that shelter is going to force a conflict of those rights jk rowling herself
00:18:02.260 said in one of her tweets that without sex there is no same-sex attraction so how can you have your
00:18:08.100 identity as a homosexual say if the sexual identity is not actually there that a woman isn't a woman
00:18:15.540 or a man isn't a man and i don't expect to solve all these issues right now in fact i don't expect to
00:18:21.300 solve any of them but i do think that it is absolutely wrong for cbc to be in a child focused video
00:18:31.700 pushing forward a narrative and an agenda that is just plain wrong is not age appropriate
00:18:37.620 and more importantly is so far from the mandate of cbc that i have no idea how this product even
00:18:42.900 exists and look when we're talking about cbc if they put this same package out for adults i think
00:18:51.060 it would be absolutely inappropriate because it is not impartial it's not a news show it's it's not
00:18:56.900 a news clip it's an opinion clip but when you're making it a news clip for children somehow it flies
00:19:03.140 under the radar and is allowed and they the fact that they view this as being the answer
00:19:09.300 to confusion rather than the source of confusion shows that cbc is the one that is desperately faced
00:19:16.340 with its own confusion we've got to take a break when we come back more of the andrew lawton show here
00:19:20.660 on true north you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show
00:19:32.260 welcome back to the andrew lawton show i mentioned this a little bit earlier on that your entire
00:19:38.260 legacy can be eroded if you don't meet the standards of june 2020 it doesn't matter what you've said what
00:19:45.380 you've done it doesn't even matter what you think you can't stand up when the mob wants to take you
00:19:50.980 down and it's not just jk rowling it's not just wendy mesley it's not just the head of crossfit
00:19:56.500 everyone who's ever lived on this earth right now is facing this from winston churchill to gandhi
00:20:02.900 no one is making it through now the thing with gandhi that i find interesting is that i've been critical
00:20:08.260 of aspects of gandhi's uh past myself and and i've not done this because i want to take down a statue
00:20:15.460 i just think there tends to be uh pardon the the phrasing here a whitewashing of gandhi's life and
00:20:21.460 now despite that criticism i'm now like having to defend gandhi because the mob is trying to remove
00:20:27.060 gandhi the great indian peace activist because he's racist there's a statue of gandhi
00:20:33.620 in uh in leicester england and now uh you have people saying that he he was uh it may have been
00:20:39.700 indian he may have been a minority uh but he has well documented anti-black racism so the statue has to
00:20:45.620 go you have winston churchill whose statue actually had to be barricaded in so that it could not be
00:20:53.860 destroyed everyone was going to take down uh winston churchill uh they were spray painting racist on him
00:20:59.220 and people have been uh trying to knock it down and now they're talking about removing that statue
00:21:04.340 from the public square and i've seen that statue several times it's in parliament square across
00:21:09.940 from westminster palace in the united kingdom in london or in in westminster i guess and and now
00:21:15.860 there's talk about moving winston churchill's statue which by the way moving winston churchill can't
00:21:20.900 be an easy feat to a museum because in a museum it's all about context rather than celebration
00:21:26.980 and this is what they do because this happened when we were talking in canada about statues of
00:21:31.940 prime ministers and there was a time when no one could actually figure out what to do with sir john
00:21:37.780 a mcdonald's statue and and people were saying well no no it's it's it's fine to have it in a museum
00:21:43.780 because that's the proper context for it but oh no you can't have it in a public square you can't
00:21:48.500 have it in a place where people aren't going to be told uh that he was a big stinking dirty racist
00:21:53.380 uh but you can do that in a museum in the same way that you can have swastikas and nazi memorabilia
00:21:57.860 in a museum because it's in context and i get it i get a lot of the issues with uh the confederate
00:22:04.100 statues in the u.s i get a lot of the issues that people have with historic figures who we find uh you
00:22:09.780 know might not pass the standards we set out now but that is not what these sorts of statues are about
00:22:16.420 and i don't even want to address uh in what i'm saying now the confederate issues because that's i
00:22:21.300 think a bigger discussion and one uh that not being an american and certainly not being from the
00:22:25.460 south i'm not equipped to deal with right now but when you're talking about people like winston
00:22:31.620 churchill without whom we would not have the world we live in today you cannot say that the negatives
00:22:39.860 outweigh the positives you can say that the positives outweigh the negatives when you're talking
00:22:44.740 about people like gandhi there is a positive legacy that dwarfs the negative when you're talking
00:22:51.060 about martin luther king the positive dwarfs the negative and the fact is the people who have
00:22:56.500 done great things in not great times by very the very nature of what they've done lived in times
00:23:05.060 where things were acceptable that aren't today and that's the whole point of it i mean winston
00:23:11.700 churchill lived in an era where anti-semitism was acceptable because he lived in the era in which
00:23:17.460 nazi germany exists now winston churchill not an anti-semite obviously but i say that that he was a
00:23:22.820 product of a time when pretty bad things happened which is why there was a place which is why there
00:23:28.500 was a void that needed good things to happen and why it needed good men and women to rise up and fight
00:23:35.780 and stand for something and winston churchill did that so these pathetic so-called anti-fascist ninnies who
00:23:43.380 themselves are the fascists do not have any understanding of history they do not have any
00:23:48.500 understanding of common sense they do not have any respect for the people that paved the path that
00:23:54.420 allowed them the freedom to be complete and utter wankers and this is now flying what we're seeing in
00:24:01.540 the last couple of weeks is that these beliefs that were once fringe are now being accepted as mainstream
00:24:07.140 taking down statues was once fringe now it's something to be encouraged i remember a few years
00:24:12.900 ago when black lives matter was held up as being a fringe group and now you've got police chiefs and
00:24:17.940 politicians kneeling before them kneeling before them this group that was derided as fringe just a
00:24:24.820 few years back because they were calling for an abolition of the family unit they were calling for
00:24:30.340 complete social upheaval dismantle of capitalism and now you've got politicians like justin trudeau chiefs of
00:24:36.260 police uh taking a knee before them uh and in some cases like looking up to them and this is what's
00:24:42.900 happening now never believe that i don't want to call them revolutionaries but never believe that
00:24:48.020 that a revolution is not possible because the things that we dismiss and scoff at and mock one day
00:24:54.340 uh you know in a year are things that we are kneeling before and bowing before as a society and there's
00:25:01.460 a danger in this what we are now living through is a reckoning where no one is safe from the scourge of
00:25:07.620 the mob where no statue is safe and no historic figure is safe from being redefined and as such
00:25:15.060 maligned and no one is talking about what we are building in the place of these and i don't just mean
00:25:21.300 what we're physically building in the place of the statues because they would rather have an empty imprint
00:25:26.100 on the ground than winston churchill there despite vanquishing fascism and defeating uh hitler uh you
00:25:32.260 have a lot of these people that are just wanting to destroy they don't want to create anything
00:25:37.540 if you were to ask these antifa activists what's next they don't have an answer because they aren't
00:25:43.860 actually interested in building anything they want to destroy capitalism they want to destroy the family
00:25:48.260 they want to destroy the statues they want to burn the history books they want to destroy the careers
00:25:52.260 uh and and it's all under the guise of defeating racism which by the way it's not really what
00:25:56.660 they're they're interested in if you want to take down systemic racism today uh winston churchill's
00:26:03.060 statue is neither a literal or symbolic a step towards that it's nothing it does nothing if you take down
00:26:11.700 winston churchill's statue you have not made things easier for black people you've not made things easier
00:26:16.580 for other people of color you've not made things easier for women for gay people you've done nothing
00:26:22.020 except leave a hole in the ground that's all you've done and that will be the legacy of these
00:26:27.700 antifa activists they will have left holes in the ground and nothing more and they have never and
00:26:33.620 will never create anything in their lives now obviously i am wanting to defend the legacies of
00:26:42.500 winston churchill and i'm wanting to defend uh the legacies of other people uh by the way i forgot to
00:26:48.500 mention this earlier uh there some companies are trying to get out ahead of it and they don't want
00:26:52.980 anything to that they're doing to be called offensive so nickelodeon has announced that
00:26:57.060 spongebob squarepants is now a member of the lgbtq community they tweeted uh we're celebrating pride with
00:27:03.860 the lgbtq community and their allies this month and every month uh then they have three photos there
00:27:09.300 and one of them is a spongebob so pretty soon spongebob is gay was trending on twitter now again i i don't
00:27:15.380 know how an anthropomorphic uh sponge that lives under the sea has a sexual identity at all uh but
00:27:21.860 spongebob is a member of the community so uh clearly what's happening is companies like nickelodeon are
00:27:26.980 looking around and saying okay uh we got to do something we we got to do something or we're going
00:27:30.740 to get cancelled too uh who can we make gay spongebob there done so what's happening now is that everyone
00:27:37.620 is bending the knee metaphorically and literally to towards this cultural trend now whether it's a
00:27:44.980 fad or not i don't know and i have actually had in the last few days uh some debates about this with
00:27:50.660 people in my life where i don't think it's a fad i think that this is going to be the new reality
00:27:55.700 because we no longer are prepared to call this out and anyone who would have is being silenced you look
00:28:01.940 at rex murphy a prolific canadian columnist uh says what a lot of people were telling me uh two weeks
00:28:07.700 ago that canada is not a systemically racist country he wasn't saying that racism doesn't exist
00:28:13.780 he wasn't saying that we shouldn't fight racism or push back he was just saying that it's unfair to
00:28:19.380 call canada by and large a country steeped in racist steeped in racism and this did not just get
00:28:27.460 him to be criticized online which rex murphy can handle and is part of an opinion column it's part
00:28:32.740 of writing you write something they write something back but it actually got a tremendous campaign
00:28:38.820 underway from his so-called colleagues at the national post and other post media papers signing
00:28:44.660 a letter to such a point that the company had to have a town hall at the end of which they put an
00:28:50.420 editor's note on his column basically apologizing for it apologizing saying it didn't pass editorial
00:28:56.740 standards but they haven't uh said what went wrong in it and what was actually objectionable about it
00:29:02.740 and then uh this is now going to greet anyone that reads this column until the end of time a stamp on
00:29:08.660 it that basically says we no longer stand by our columnist that's what post media is saying and for
00:29:14.740 all of the the writers and reporters and columnists at post media that dared to say he should not have
00:29:22.260 been allowed to say that they're not just saying we disagree with that they're saying
00:29:25.460 this should not have been published and if he were to write the same thing today it would not
00:29:31.780 be published that's what the pope the paper has said now yes free speech does not mean you have the
00:29:37.220 right to a platform i get that and i'm not saying that post media is under any legal obligation to
00:29:42.100 publish this column or any other column that rex murphy or someone else writes i'm talking about the
00:29:47.620 cultural forces at play here people that believe rex should not have been allowed to write this that no
00:29:53.940 one should be allowed to read it that no one should be allowed to look up at a statue of winston
00:29:58.500 churchill and decide for themselves whether they like it this is not a trend or a fad that's going to
00:30:04.500 go away quickly because all of the institutions that need to exist as a backstop for this insanity
00:30:12.980 are bending the knee newspapers that have historically stood up for freedom of the press
00:30:19.140 organizations that have normally protected and preserved history people that have normally stood
00:30:25.940 up and said no we are sticking to our guns here are all giving in and that's why i don't think this
00:30:32.180 is going to be a flash in the pan that goes away now can i predict what happens next no but i can say
00:30:38.340 it won't be pretty and the only way to stop this and by the way uh what the this is isn't fully clear
00:30:44.900 right now because this started about being about anti-black police brutality and then it become
00:30:51.060 about anti-black racism in general and now it's about transgender rights and capitalism and everything
00:30:57.700 else so this is what happens you get people that are perennial activists that don't really need an
00:31:02.100 excuse to protest that want to seize any little weakness they can any chink in the armor they can so
00:31:09.060 that they can penetrate through and i am going to tell you right now that if you bend the knee you're
00:31:16.180 pretty soon going to be flat on your face we've got to wrap things up my thanks to all of you for
00:31:22.020 tuning in we'll be back in just a couple of days with more of canada's most irreverent talk show
00:31:26.740 thank you god bless and good day canada thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show
00:31:30.980 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news