Thursday, March 25, 2010

Who's to Blame for the Coulter Fiasco?

The Ceeb's Neil McDonald blames Ezra Levant, lefty-baiter extraordinaire:
...That kind of left-wing baiting is more or less what he was doing when I first met him in 1993. Then, he was a law student at the University of Alberta and he had just pranked everyone by tacking up notices claiming the school was discriminating against Jews.

When outraged students showed up at a protest he organized, they were treated to an attack on the university's quota system, which reserved spots at the law school specifically for native students. Levant, a Jew, would not qualify for one of these reserved seats.

Predictably, native students claimed this was hate speech and, just as predictably, the dean of student affairs wrote Levant threatening to expel him.

When I interviewed him for the CBC, he was happily relishing the uproar.

Fast forward 17 years to this week and Levant had provoked another university official, this time University of Ottawa provost Francois Houle, into writing another letter...
Yes, had there been no Levant to "provoke" Provost Houle into warning Coulter that her unfettered expression could lead to criminal charges, none of this would have happened.

Meanwhile, a letter-writer to steynonline blames Neil's employer, the Ceeb:
I was at the Coulter/University of Ottawa fiasco, and I have to tell you, the media lied. There was a civil lineup of about 800 people wanting to get into Ms Coulter's engagement, and there was a group near the door of about 50 or so (obnoxious) protesters.


Campus security— or lack thereof— didn't know how to deal with the situation. Apparently, one of the protesters pulled a fire alarm, but the fire department came and all was clear. Then some of the protesters rushed the door, and a few minutes later the event was cancelled.

CBC, of course, whipped up the protesters and— voila!— the cameras were turned on. CBC also said that there were thousands of protesters (huge lie), and The Citizen stated that there were hundreds of protesters (big lie). Again, in reality, it was about 50 or 60 protesters. Lastly, the line of civil people dispersed calmly, but disappointed… then nine police cars came to the late and pointless rescue.

CBC loves this kind of stuff— especially the ones who like to cut and splice.

1 comment:

Jim R said...

From what I have seen of the pics and movie clips, 1000 people and maybe 4 security sheeples, let about a half-dozen noisey children instigate another maybe two dozens to get noise with chants, and stop 1000 or more people, many of them paid patrons, from enjoying a nite out.

The disgrace here is there was nothing done to eject these very few instigators, and the totally hapless 'security' guards just stood by and let a very few brats ruin a whole big university event.

How is this going to help security control future events when other brats can see here on the net just how easy it was to get control of large public events, and adults. Pathetic and dangerous in the longer term, and not just for freedom of speech and assembly, but plain old civil gatherings of anykind.