Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 211 Editor's Choice: 44
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Dolores Umbridge in Alberta
[Read the article: The Noxious Fruits of Hate Speech laws]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Having slogged through nearly all of 34 pages of posts, I apologize if I'm late to the discussion and don't observe decorum by quoting and attributing appropriately. I don't have enough caches in my Clipboard to handle all of you.
Although some of the Canadian posters may not believe this, there are Americans who are thoroughly familiar with Canadian customs and politics. I've lived most of my life in Detroit and Seattle where the CBC has always been available to me. I've spent weeks in Vancouver and Toronto and have travelled to all ten provinces. I work with a lot of Canadians, and have read widely in Canadian politics and culture. I think I "get" Canadians as well as it's possible for an American who has never lived there permanently to do.
Yes, we too have commissions to deal with discrimination in housing and the like. What we don't have is a commission whose brief is so wide that it could let a complaint like this get through. There are two reasons for this. The first is that in order to make a complaint under American antidisrimination laws you would have to show, in your complaint, how the discrimination against you damaged not your psyche, but some protected interest such as a right to employment or housing or participation in a government program. Publishing these cartoons would not come close, so the complaint would be dismissed out of hand without an answer being required. Second, though, even if such damage were alleged, the free speech rights of the speaker would be balanced against the allegations and they would still be dismissed.
This is why everytime posters have made the distinction between "fines" and "compensation", I've gotten more and more confused. What is the compensation alleged to be for? I find it hard to see how cartoons published in an obscure, failing magazine could damage anyone pecuniarily. Particularly when the cartoons are of the Prophet Muhammad whom, as others have pointed out, has been dead for some centuries. Particularly since these are merely reprints of cartoons published in Denmark to some serious international controversy, and thus their publication by the failing Canadian magazine could only have minimal additional impact.
In short, it's hard for me to see why the Alberta commission didn't merely send the complainants a note saying, "sorry, nice try" (good Canadian expressions) instead of allowing both sides to play their little flame wars.
Having to answer the complaint was the problem for me. I watched the video and the officious investigator taking her notes reminded me of Dolores Umbridge more than anyone. I kept expecting her to say "hem hem." The point Rowling was making with Umbridge was that officious bureaucrats adminstering bad laws in a facially neutral way can create great harm. I don't think this case is all that different.
Finally, to the gentlemen posting about zionist "war crimes" which he took to be a "fact," I am a fourth generation Zionist, I don't like a majority of the policies of the current Israeli adminstration, but war crimes are never a "fact" when you are merely alleging them.
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Another Expatriate Weighs In
[Read the article: Is Mitt Romney taking Michigan for a ride?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I too am a native Michigander and a longtime expatriate.
I know the day the Michigan economy died, and it was Yom Kippur 1973. I knew it then, when I was still in high school, yet the people who have been running the state and the domestic auto industry still haven't gotten it, 35 year later. Since the first oil embargo, the need for a change in how autos were made has been self-evident. Instead, American auto manufacturers have tried everything they can find to deny the reality.
I don't know the numbers, but I expect that in October 1973 fewer cars were made in Korea than at any one plant from downriver to Flint. You know what happened.
The funny thing is that the auto industry grew up in Detroit because a failed railcar industry had left an infrastructure and skilled workers available to let it grow. If Michigan were to turn its back (finally) on the auto industry as the be-all and end-all of its economy (hey, we have boats here in Washington, and people pull them with Toyota Tacomas), it could happen again. But so long as they want to fight NAFTA, fight CAFE, ignore the reality that the legacy health care costs are heavy anchors on change, things will just continue as they have for the past 35 years until one day they wake up and see there's nothing left at all.
Mitt Romney, of course, is an idiot. His remark about how no one in Michigan has an accent tells you how unprepared he is to be president of this country. Here's a hint, Mitt: there are a lot of people in Michigan who have accents. Not many of them are Republicans, though, and there's a reason for that.