Rebel News Podcast - January 08, 2019


Radio-Canada's “brilliant” sketch spoofing Trudeau's India trip condemned as “racist” (Guest host： David Menzies)

Hosted by
David Menzies
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Donald Trump Lauren Gunter Lauren Bolsonaro Maria Fonseca Sam Harris Silver Bain Benny Hill Maha Khan Andrea Prophet Muhammad Sheila Gunn-Reed Russell Peters Anita Kranjic Ashtwin Nair Rick Mercer Ferdy Frog Idi Amin Zoolander and 7 more
Rebel Roundup： Guests Sheila Gunn Reid, Ben Davies & Keean Bexte! Toronto Star hails McKenna as top “business” leader — while she helps destroy Canada’s economy (Guest host： Sheila Gunn Reid)

Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

140.31

Word count

3,240

Sentence count

243

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The mainstream media is quick to call it, you guessed it, racism. Tonight, Justin Trudeau is mocked in an annual French satirical show, and the mainstream media in Canada is quick and furious. And the good news is, one needn t speak a single word of French to bust a gut over it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Tonight, Justin Trudeau is mocked in an annual French satirical show
00:00:04.240 and the mainstream media is quick to call it, you guessed it, racist.
00:00:10.000 It's January 7th, I'm David Menzies and this is the Ezra Levent Show.
00:00:20.000 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:00:23.900 There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
00:00:27.480 You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.
00:00:30.580 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it
00:00:34.560 is because it's my bloody right to do so.
00:00:41.320 Sadly, I am unilingual, but the good news is,
00:00:45.440 is that one needn't speak a single word of French to bust a gut
00:00:49.500 over Radio Canada's New Year's Eve sketch that was part of the network's annual bye-bye show
00:00:55.860 that satirized the Trudeau clan's disastrous trip to India in 2018.
00:01:02.560 Of course, the usual suspects think there's absolutely nothing funny
00:01:07.240 about the Trudeopian sketch which combines Bollywood with wacky tabacky.
00:01:12.980 In any event, because all comedy is subjective,
00:01:16.440 you be the judge, folks.
00:01:17.640 Here's the sketch in its entirety with English subtitles.
00:01:21.820 Mr. Monsieur le Premier ministre,
00:01:25.800 the decision to buy the Pipeline Trans-Canada
00:01:27.400 will be against us.
00:01:28.220 The province is almost producing
00:01:29.860 pretty much everybody's Gasçane Research and Cash
00:01:31.200 And the population does always have a rule from the dossier Netflix.
00:01:32.660 The current pad of popular語one is a big hombre that's all on the internet.
00:01:34.560 It's enough. I need a bit of a bit of a disconnect.
00:01:37.780 Good evening, Mr. Premier ministre.
00:01:39.640 You will make a good one.
00:02:09.640 When I visit a country, I always have a good habit. With a foulard or a turban, we talk about it mondialement. 1.00
00:02:33.640 C'est le plus joli, oui, c'est le plus beau. Tout le monde aime Justin Trudeau. Il a les plus belles dents. Il les montre très souvent. C'est une vedette internationale. Je rêve pas chez le méchant Donald.
00:02:45.640 Il est vraiment beaucoup plus gentil que le président des États-Unis. J'aime beaucoup l'environnement, la nature et les océans. Mais tout ça ne m'empêche pas d'acheter un pipeline en Alberta.
00:03:03.640 Il aime l'Arabie Saoudite. Il aime aussi les déficits. Il ne touche pas aux paradis fiscaux. Oui, c'est notre bon Justin Trudeau.
00:03:28.640 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
00:03:32.640 La, la, la, la, la, la.
00:03:35.640 La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
00:03:41.560 Brilliant. You know, that's the sort of edgy humour one rarely sees on Radio
00:03:59.080 Canada's English counterpart, the CBC. But we live in a day and age of I exist,
00:04:05.940 therefore I am offended. And while 2019 is all of one week old, the grief industry is still in
00:04:14.580 overdrive because evidently this sketch was racist to Indians. And wow, did the press in English
00:04:23.580 Canada, ranging from the Toronto Star, of course, to the National Post, sadly, really ginned up this
00:04:32.420 story lambasting Radio Canada for being so disrespectful? I mean, gee, didn't Radio
00:04:39.320 Canada get the memo? You know, that the media party shall be on the government payroll to the tune of
00:04:45.180 595 million this year? What the hell were those francophones thinking running a parody of the
00:04:52.860 media party's number one benefactor? 2019 is a year the media party plays nice with the Trudeau
00:05:00.660 Liberals. The most over-the-top pearl-clutching surely came via Global News Toronto.
00:05:07.720 The bye-bye on Radio Canada is well known for poking fun at politicians, and the 2018 version
00:05:14.140 was no different. In this segment, an actor depicts Justin Trudeau smoking cannabis, and then he breaks
00:05:19.740 out into a Bollywood-style dance, an obvious jab at the Prime Minister's controversial trip to India
00:05:25.320 last February. But within Montreal's Indian community, this has raised anger. It's not the
00:05:31.040 first time, you know, I'm experiencing some sort of prejudice or racism. I see it as racism. For one,
00:05:38.660 there's the dancing, which Ina Powick and Ashtwin Nair both do professionally. Even the way that
00:05:44.060 Prime Minister Trudeau's actor in the skit was dancing, it's very mocking. But the upset doesn't stop
00:05:53.880 there. Cows are very sacred to many Hindus, and to have cows kicked, it's very insulting. And this
00:06:02.380 depiction of a snake charmer. To depict them is actually a mockery of their ancient tradition.
00:06:08.900 Oh, geez. Now, along with the Prophet Muhammad, we can't depict snake charmers? 0.94
00:06:15.020 Enough is enough. I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane. 1.00
00:06:23.880 Oh, by the way, did you notice that scene in which cardboard cows are knocked down? The assault 1.00
00:06:30.420 is carried out by a gorilla that is meant to resemble Donald Trump. Gee, I wonder why there's
00:06:37.120 no outcry about this egregious act of speciesism. And why is it when a comedy troupe parodies Indian 1.00
00:06:45.960 culture? That's cultural appropriation somehow. But when Prime Minister Zoolander himself does the
00:06:53.160 Bollywood thing, that's okay. I mean, check out the real Justin Trudeau doing some Indian 0.94
00:06:59.700 dancing at the India-Canada Association of Montreal a few years ago.
00:07:06.700 You know, folks, I really tried to avoid ad hominid attacks. But what an idiot. And yet, the hate-on by the PC snowflakes continues. 1.00
00:07:13.700 You know, folks, I really tried to avoid ad hominid attacks. But what an idiot. And yet, the 1.00
00:07:34.240 hate-on by the PC snowflakes continues. I love this over-the-top posting in the Radio Canada comment section
00:07:40.920 by Maha Khan, who stated,
00:07:44.580 I've experienced a lot of ignorance and racism growing up. However, I've never in my life been as offended
00:07:51.480 as I was after watching this video. The most disgusting video of all time. End quote.
00:07:59.300 I think I'll defer to Mr. Shatner to respond to that.
00:08:10.000 But at the time of writing, Radio Canada does not, thankfully, appear to be caving into its critics
00:08:19.160 and issuing any sort of mea culpa. Nor should it. If anyone needs to apologize, it is surely the Prime
00:08:26.560 Minister. That Indian trip was an off-the-chart fiasco. A costly endeavor that did nothing but
00:08:35.260 give Canada a black eye on the international stage. And that's the thing, isn't it? With its
00:08:41.400 bye-bye show, Radio Canada is striving to be intentionally funny. But our Prime Minister,
00:08:48.240 well, he just can't help himself when it comes to being unintentionally funny.
00:08:52.060 All the while doing such great damage to this country in the process. And there's nothing even
00:08:59.640 remotely humorous about that.
00:09:01.900 Well, as I made note of in the monologue, a genuinely funny sketch lampooning Prime Minister Trudeau
00:09:23.940 on Radio Canada is almost being treated as a hate crime in certain circles. But not when it comes to
00:09:31.200 Lorne Gunter, who recently wrote a column in the Edmonton Sun entitled, Relax! It's OK to make light
00:09:38.280 of Trudeau's India trip. And joining me now from Edmonton is Lorne Gunter. Happy New Year to you,
00:09:45.140 my friend.
00:09:46.260 Happy New Year to you.
00:09:47.200 Thank you. Now, it is a new year, Lorne, all right. But it looks like the same old,
00:09:52.460 same old, bizarro world PC nonsense is steaming ahead at Warp Factor 5. Lorne,
00:09:59.220 forgive my lack of cultural sensitivity, but I didn't even know that knocking over cardboard cows
00:10:05.480 and making fun of snake charmers was the sort of material that might get you hauled in front of a
00:10:11.400 human rights tribunal.
00:10:12.660 Neither did I. And I think when you said steaming ahead, that's exactly what this is,
00:10:18.360 is just steaming. The Radio Canada has a show called Bye Bye every New Year's Eve. And apparently
00:10:27.620 it's one of the highest rated shows on the entire network. People tune in every year to see who they
00:10:33.140 lambaste and lampoon and just generally make fun of. And this year, one of the main sketches was one of
00:10:41.580 an actor playing Justin Trudeau, who in a marijuana induced haze, thinks of a way to
00:10:49.900 bring up his sagging popularity by going to India. And we all know what happened with the prime
00:10:57.320 minister in India and his Mr. Dress Up Tour of the subcontinent and all the costume changes. And even
00:11:05.240 Indian media were saying he's out Indian the Indians. So he's too Indian for India, is what one of the
00:11:14.840 main newspapers in India said of the prime minister's tour. So he's ripe for plucking at the end of the
00:11:22.460 year and ripe for lampooning. But unfortunately, because an ape dressed or sort of a Donald Trump 0.95
00:11:31.760 looking ape kicks over a couple of cardboard cows, and because Trudeau himself plays a little
00:11:38.960 recorder like a snake charmer and two gasoline hoses come waving out of baskets next to him,
00:11:48.320 some people in the Indo-Canadian community have complained that this is racist, it's insensitive
00:11:54.240 to their culture, etc. Of course it's insensitive to their culture. That's what lampooning is all
00:12:00.740 about. That's what satire is for. And if you cannot have lampooning of culture, if you can't
00:12:06.620 have lampooning of politicians, then democracy suffers. I mean, it sounds like a big, giant leap
00:12:14.580 there. But first of all, if you can't lampoon your leaders, then who's really in charge? In a democracy,
00:12:21.840 people are supposed to be in charge. Too many times we aren't already. But if we can't make fun of our
00:12:28.280 leaders for fear of reprisal, then certainly we're not in charge. That's number one. And number two is,
00:12:34.740 of course, everybody has to be the subject of lampooning or the potential subject of ridicule. That's just
00:12:43.780 the way democracy and free speech works. And too often now, what with gender identity and racial identity and 0.99
00:12:53.940 social media and political correctness, there just isn't any humor anymore. Because everybody's so
00:13:02.620 quick to be outraged when they perceive their identity to have been offended. And I just thought...
00:13:10.320 If I can touch upon that point, you mentioned members of the Indian community in Canada.
00:13:14.400 I would like to think, and I think I'm right about this, the Indians I know can give a joke as well 0.99
00:13:20.200 as take one. They love the Apu character in The Simpsons. Yet somehow the mainstream media digs up
00:13:27.280 through their Rolodex, the grief industry dispensers. I mean, you quoted one woman in your
00:13:33.820 column, Khan, and this is what she said about the sketch. I've experienced a lot of ignorance and
00:13:39.860 racism growing up. However, I've never in my life been as offended as I am after watching this video,
00:13:46.280 the most disgusting video of all time. You know what, Lorne? I would say to this, if you're an Indian 1.00
00:13:51.980 living in Canada, and that was the most disgusting and the most offensive video you've ever come
00:13:57.900 across, you've had a really easy go of fitting into Canadian society. Exactly. That's not even the
00:14:04.180 most disgusting video that was posted to the internet in the hour that that one was posted to. I guarantee 0.98
00:14:10.580 you there are far more offensive, not just politically and culturally, but actually visually
00:14:16.060 offensive videos that were posted to the internet within 10 minutes of that one being posted. If you
00:14:22.440 watch Saturday Night Live, if you watch This Hour Has 22 Minutes, if you watch the old Rick Mercer
00:14:27.820 report, you saw sketches like this every week, two and three and four sketches every week. This is
00:14:33.700 nothing out of the ordinary. It is nothing that requires the grief industry, as you correctly called it,
00:14:39.960 to get up on its high horse and say that bad things are being done in the name of humor.
00:14:47.500 You have to be able to take a joke. And that was something that we all understood until very
00:14:52.700 recently. And I think something you were touching on just a minute or two ago there is very important.
00:14:58.620 It's not always the people in the culture who are members of the race or members of the community
00:15:05.600 who are the ones who are taking offense. It's an awful lot of times it's white liberals who are
00:15:12.980 guilty about this, who take offense on behalf of communities that they're not part of. They're so
00:15:19.460 worried about political correctness that they stand up for people who themselves are not offended.
00:15:25.020 I mean, Canada's number one comedian right now is Russell Peters, who's an Indo-Canadian,
00:15:30.600 well-known around the world, takes issue and makes fun of all sorts of racial stereotypes and cultural
00:15:38.700 stereotypes and norms. He's hilarious. He picks on people in the audience all the time based on
00:15:45.280 their identity and gets away with it because he's really, really funny. So I think that...
00:15:52.260 Can I interject here? Because I think you've touched upon something very important here.
00:15:55.860 When I look back at the TV shows I loved when I was younger in the 70s and 80s,
00:16:01.360 Benny Hill, Monty Python, they were merciless in terms of parroting ethnic group. I mean, 0.79
00:16:08.260 for goodness sake, Benny Hill used to wear blackface when he depicted Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
00:16:13.760 And there was nothing. No, I'll cry. Can you give me an idea what your theory is that in the 40 or so
00:16:21.200 years since then, why have things changed so much that we are all so hypersensitive about any kind
00:16:29.300 of jokes regarding a race or a religion? Well, first of all, I think there is, as I mentioned
00:16:36.820 just a minute ago, this white liberal guilt that, you know, we have to show how sensitive and tolerant
00:16:44.640 we are by standing up for all the other little communities around us whenever we believe they're
00:16:51.160 being offended and we have to stamp down any kind of expression that might be offensive. I think
00:16:56.880 there's also, this has been accelerated by social media because now all of a sudden people who didn't
00:17:04.660 realize they were part of a community have all sorts of thousands of followers or thousands of people
00:17:09.960 they can follow who have the same identity. And rather than just sucking things up, now they can
00:17:17.140 sit around to let it stew with other people who have the same characteristics. And then the third thing
00:17:23.360 is, it's just this instant outrage that you, you now have a largely anonymous way of expressing your
00:17:30.460 outrage. You don't have to accept the consequences of your outrage and your fury. And you get to vent all of
00:17:39.640 this on social media and very seldom does it ever come back on you. So it's, it's easy to be outraged.
00:17:47.660 It's possible to find other people who have like-minded outrage. And then of course, there's
00:17:52.820 the forces of political correctness who think they need to get into every decision, every statement,
00:17:58.920 every action by every person and make sure that there's nothing in any of them that offends anyone else.
00:18:04.980 So sad. Lauren, one last question, and we've got about a minute, if you can answer it in that time
00:18:09.440 frame. I got the vibe from the mainstream media coverage of this, that it was almost like
00:18:16.940 overwhelmingly negative about Radio Canada having the temerity to air this in the first place. And
00:18:23.880 what I sort of took from that is almost, you know, where, you know, it was kind of like, guys,
00:18:29.900 didn't you get the memo? We're getting a $595 million bailout this year. We're not supposed to
00:18:35.060 be upsetting Daddy Big Bucks Trudeau. What are you thinking? What's your take on that, Lauren?
00:18:40.960 You know what? I don't think there's as much of that that's overt. But what I worry about in that
00:18:45.720 $600 million gift to media is that people will subconsciously start pulling punches. They'll
00:18:52.980 subconsciously start saying things nicer about the government or asking softer questions,
00:18:57.820 not probing quite as hard. That's my big concern about that. And I can see in some of the response
00:19:04.420 to this Radio Canada skit that that's sort of happening already.
00:19:09.440 Fantastic. Well, Lauren, we'll have to wrap it here. The good news, let's leave it on a positive
00:19:13.060 note. To my knowledge, as of right now, Radio Canada has not apologized.
00:19:17.640 They have not.
00:19:18.240 That is an anomaly in this day and age. So good on them.
00:19:21.360 They refuse to apologize. So that's good for them.
00:19:24.500 Absolutely. Lauren, thank you so much. And again, Happy New Year to you, my friend.
00:19:28.100 You too.
00:19:28.820 Great. And keep it here, folks. More of the Ezra Levent show to follow right after this.
00:19:42.800 For starters, on New Year's Day, the so-called animal rights activists blocked traffic at a
00:19:48.300 major Toronto intersection as they staged a die-in to, get this, protest the inauguration
00:19:55.540 of Brazil's new president, Mr. Bolsonaro. According to a CTV report, organizers of the protest say
00:20:02.820 nearly 50 people participated. Here's a photo that ran with the CTV piece.
00:20:09.160 I'm counting 19 people, including the ones who appear to be wearing oversized Muppet costumes.
00:20:15.260 Now, some activists held signs urging President Bolsonaro to, quote, go vegan or we die, end
00:20:23.340 quote. Huh. Let's see now. Go vegan or die, eh? You know, I think I'm opting for the electric
00:20:29.920 share, please. I kind of like the idea of leaving behind one final little carbon footprint as
00:20:35.540 I depart to the suite hereafter. Even so, Anita Kranjic is an organizer with Toronto Climate 1.00
00:20:42.540 Save and the Extinction Rebellion. Gee, that sounds like a whole lot of activism. Anyway,
00:20:49.820 she told CTV that vegans want Bolsonaro to live on a plant-based diet for a month. That's right.
00:20:56.600 Do they want him to be as miserable as your average vegan? Well, lots of feedback regarding
00:21:03.360 those militant Toronto vegans staging a die-in protest against South America's most egregious
00:21:10.300 regime. No, not Venezuela. We're talking Brazil here. Gee, do you think there was something
00:21:17.340 more to this protest than the pursuit of veggies? In any event, here's what some of you had to
00:21:23.460 say. James Harris writes, someone should set up a hot dog stand next to their protests.
00:21:30.360 Oh, I don't know, James. In this day and age, that might just be construed as a hate crime.
00:21:36.600 And Silver Bain writes, doesn't eating tons of veggies like Brussels sprouts and cabbage
00:21:42.040 make them fart as much as the cows they claim are the highest methane producers? Surely we could pop 0.94
00:21:48.280 bubble covers over cow pasture and make use of all that gas. Then at least the cows have an excuse 1.00
00:21:55.480 to go on living. Indeed, Silver Bain, and we'd have an excuse to go on eating them. Maria Fonseca writes,
00:22:04.640 I'm vegan, but I agree this is getting out of hand with this stupid vegan people. Well, thanks for 0.99
00:22:11.180 weighing in, Maria. But here's my question. Are most vegans reasonable people like you? Or are you the
00:22:18.200 proverbial statistical anomaly? And Andrea writes, bring vegetables to Venezuela? They need food now.
00:22:25.860 Oh, that's just for starters, Andrea. Don't forget about Venezuela's toilet paper shortage, too.
00:22:32.640 Funny, though, that because Venezuela is a wannabe socialist panacea, that country gets a pass,
00:22:39.560 but a nation now being ruled by someone known as Brazil's Donald Trump gets vilified. And Ferdy Frog
00:22:47.480 writes, I'm a transvegan. I eat just meat, but identify as a vegan. Now that, folks, is my kind
00:22:56.540 of transsexual vegan. Well, thanks for watching, as we'll be back on Wednesday. Tomorrow, Sheila Gunn-Reed 0.75
00:23:03.060 will be filling in. Have yourself a good night.