The Canadians have right-wing media freaks too

Brazeau and friends talking about Trudeau -
a still from the movie "God Save Justin Trudeau"

Thanks to my interest in the Canadian boxing event in 2012 between Justin Trudeau and Patrick Brazeau I unfortunately learned who Ezra Levant is.

Levant is your standard obnoxious right-winger who combines Ann Coulter's shameless disdain for the truth with Rush Limbaugh's bluster (and Limbaugh's disdain for the truth.) But he's Canadian.

Many Canadians already hate Levant for his vicious attacks especially on the Trudeau family and his bigotry. He is also a frequent plaintiff in libel lawsuits.

And then there is what I consider Levant's homoerotic obsession with Justin Trudeau - I found Youtube footage from 2011 where Levant calls Trudeau "Shiny Pony" - I thought he coined the term for the boxing match in 2012. 

Although we are supposed to believe that Levant is simply being deliberately outrageous and ironical with his constant over-the-top commentary about Trudeau's hair and appearance, I think there is something real underneath it all. And Levant certainly wouldn't be the first masculinity-obsessed conservative in a closet. 

I sensed Levant's ironical-but-real frisson while watching the boxing-related videos, but the 2011 video is what really convinced me. After Levant brushes the mane of a "My Little Pony" toy while talking to it as if it is Trudeau, he plays a clip of Trudeau yelling an obscenity in Parliament. After the clip ends:

    LEVANT 

Did you hear that heckle? Shiny Pony, I don't care if you called the Environment Minister a piece of shit. When you say those bad words all I hear are the sounds of angels whispering in my ear. 

(He kisses the toy and tells it "I love you.")

 And you did apologize in your best substitute high school drama teacher way, didn't yah? 

(plays the clip of Trudeau apologizing)

 Oh Shiny Pony, I love you, I love your hair, even your Zorro-like Three Musketeers facial hair.

The lady methinks doth faux-ironically protest too much. Trudeau looks amazing with the long hair and goatee. Trudeau is one of the very few men who can look good in any facial hair configuration. 

And then Levant really gives himself away:

You're so serious now, you're so grown up, I love it, you're so authoritative now, I trust you to lead our country through these troubled times. I can imagine you going head to head with the Vladimir Putins and the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads of the world.

Thing is, Levant and other conservatives love that kind of behavior: swearing and being authoritative. That's exactly what they love about Donald Trump. 

Levant, teaming up with another Canadian asshole I recently discovered, hardcore misogynist Gavin McInnes, explicitly declared just a few days ago that Donald Trump's win is "a return to masculinity." 

Although to be fair, Levant did publish a video of Gavin McInnes making out with Milo Yiannopoulos (the gay neo-nazi darling of Simon and Schuster.) Don't worry, right-wing homophobes they didn't really mean it - it was faux-ironical-fake and they only did it to upset fundamentalist Muslims. Yiannopoulos for his part allowed that Trudeau has a face "begging to be cum on."

It's kind of sweet the way right-wingers make a big ole daisy-chain like that.

Levant isn't sincerely bothered by Trudeau's lack of government experience either: Donald Trump had even less government experience on being elected president than Trudeau had on being elected prime minister. 

Since Levant is faux-ironical-faking disapproval of Trudeau's behavior and lack of government experience, what else is he faux-ironical-faking about his feelings for Justin Trudeau? 

Oddly enough, someone posted a video on Youtube listing five reasons why Levant might be gay and none of them was about Levant's obsession with Trudeau. The Urban Dictionary also appears to believe that Levant is a closeted homosexual.

Now of course I sympathize with Levant's desire for Trudeau - millions of straight women and gay men and bisexuals do. But his obsession with Trudeau on a personal level while pretending to hate his guts is truly creepy.

Here is the latest from Levant's Twitter feed. This comic book came out in August and so it's doubtful this photo is recent. So Levant posted it just... because... 

More important than Levant's amour fou pour Justin Trudeau is his absolute shittiness as a journalist. And he does consider himself a journalist, and not in the faux-ironical-faking sense either. He went whining to Justin Trudeau last month when the United Nations organization didn't believe that he and his sleazy The Rebel were real journalists.

Since Levant has so much animus towards Trudeau (again, possibly the result of repressed homoerotic lust) it was no surprise that during the boxing match Levant claimed Trudeau's tattoo was fake. But Levant claimed to adore Brazeau, constantly praising his he-man toughness in contrast to Trudeau's alleged effeminacy. So you'd think that Levant would at least have enough respect for Brazeau to get his facts straight about him. But he absolutely refused to remember that Brazeau was Algonquin and kept calling him a Métis (pronounced may-tea) even though Brazeau corrected him, himself, during an interview, and then during the boxing match the other announcer mentioned early on that Brazeau was Algonquin and Levant still called him Métis. Like any right-winger, Levant is not especially concerned about the facts. And probably in his mind all First Nations are alike anyway.

I'm not sure if Levant was saying that Trudeau's tattoo was a fake tattoo or a real tattoo but not real aboriginal art. Or both. In any case, it is a real tattoo and also real aboriginal in that the tattoo was based on the art of a First Nations man:

Robert Davidson, a Northwest Coast artist of Haida descent, is a master carver of totem poles and masks and works in a variety of other media as a printmaker, painter and jeweler. 

I found this photo of Trudeau which is very unusual - it shows the world tattoo Trudeau got in his 20s before he had the Haida design added around it when he was 40. I certainly enjoy this photo. I'm guessing Ezra Levant really really enjoys it too.

UPDATE ON LEVANT - via a Twitter parody account "Narrated Ezra Levant" I discovered that Levant resigned from being a lawyer before they had a chance to disbar him. Reminds me a little of Roy Cohn in ANGELS IN AMERICA.

While a resignation during a disciplinary proceeding can be deemed a disbarment, Mr. Levant said he has applied under a section of the Alberta Legal Professional Act which permits lawyers to resign without disbarment when there are no outstanding conduct issues that warrant disbarment.

Justin Trudeau plays rope-a-dope and Trump is the dope

The Canadian Kid

It was so obvious Trump was going to come out of the G7 looking like a fool.

Like so many others, Trump completely underestimated Justin Trudeau - who long ago assembled a team to prepare for Trump to throw the inevitable trade tantrum. As the NYTimes said:

The Canadians could see the trouble looming in the summer of 2016. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s trade minister at the time, found herself, along with millions of Canadians, fixated on the unfolding United States presidential election, and it was becoming impossible to overlook the gathering clouds of protectionism. 

Trudeau and team studied and learned well that you can't get down into the mud with Trump - he is a creature of mud and he has the home advantage. They are remaining calm and polite which is driving Trump crazy - he doesn't understand calm and polite.

And Trudeau set the stage long ago by being so cordial to Trump and the feckless Ivanka - Trump assumed Trudeau was another toady like the Republicans he so routinely rolls over. He thought he was going to roll over Trudeau.

If you watch the documentary "God Save Justin Trudeau" you can see Trudeau doing the same with the conservatives in his own country in 2012 who thought Patrick Brazeau was going to crush him in the boxing ring. They just couldn't imagine this polite friendly guy could be strong.

As this Guardian review of "God Save Justin Trudeau" notes: 

Film-makers Eric Ruel and Guylaine Maroist depict Trudeau’s spectacular victory in October as a fight, showing it was exquisitely planned from the start.

Trump of course doesn't understand planning & preparation as he famously kept saying he was going to go into talks with Kim Jong Un and just wing it.

It turns out Trump still doesn't get what happened with Trudeau, and still can't understand how Trudeau, whom Trump thought was a little wimp, just like the right-wing Canadians did before Trudeau crushed Patrick Brazeau in the boxing ring, could stand up to him. According to this piece in Vanity Fair, TRUMP SPENDS NORTH KOREA DEBRIEF OBSESSING OVER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: 

Yes, speaking to reporters in Singapore following his summit with gulag enthusiast Kim, Trump continued to lash out at our mild-mannered neighbor to the north and promised to mete out more financial punishments for allies that dare match his provocations. 

“When I got out to the plane,” Trump said. “I think that Justin probably didn’t know that Air Force One has about 20 televisions. And I see the television and he’s giving a news conference about how he will not be pushed around by the United States and I say push him around? We just shook hands. It was very friendly . . . No, I have a good relationship with Justin Trudeau. I really did, other than he had a news conference, that he had because he assumed I was in an airplane and I wasn’t watching. He learned. That’s going to cost a lot of money for the people of Canada. He learned. You can’t do that. You can’t do that. We have a big trade deficit with Canada . . . It’s either $17 [billion] but could actually be $100 billion. You know they put out a document, I don’t know if you saw it. They didn’t want me to see it, but we found it. Perhaps they were trying to show the power they have. It’s close to [a] $100 billion-a-year loss with Canada. They don’t take our farm products—many of them.”

In the movie "God Save Justin Trudeau" you can see Trudeau talking about how he is often underestimated. And nobody underestimated him more than narcissist ignoramus bully Donald J. Trump, the perfect target for Trudeau and his exquisite planning.

They are the Walrus, goo goo ga joob

It really startles me now, how little the election of Justin Trudeau registered with me. I am a regular reader, as anybody who follows this blog would know (like maybe three people but anyway...) of Paul Krugman and of The New Yorker and both Krugman and the New Yorker wrote about the election win. I must have read both, or at least read the Krugman piece and noted the existence of the New Yorker piece, but I have no recollection of either.

And the New Yorker piece mentions Krugman:

Trudeau is now set to become, among other things, Paul Krugman’s favorite politician, since he promises to follow an economic plan that might have been hatched on the right-hand column of the Times’s Op-Ed page: raise taxes on the rich and unapologetically do some deficit spending in order to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and its middle class.

I would have remembered if I had read that. Being Krugman's favorite politician means quite a bit to me.

Via the New Yorker article I discovered a piece in the Canadian magazine The Walrus, (a magazine I had never read or heard of before) and I was really pleased to see that the author confirmed my own conclusions about the character of Justin Trudeau - and that's pretty significant considering that the author Jonathan Kay collaborated on Trudeau's autobiography "Common Ground." So he probably knows Trudeau better than anybody outside of Justin's family and close friends. Kay writes:

He’s someone who desperately wants to do the right thing. Who believes that what he does and says can set things right; that he can heal people and relationships; that he can make people like him and—a sad fantasy for many children of divorce—one another.

As I blogged a couple of weeks ago:

(I love him) also because he is always trying to do the right thing. He's super-conscious and for the most part carries it off with a fair amount of grace and not too much self-consciousness. And he almost doesn't have to - he's pretty much Canadian royalty, as the son of former Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau. The fact that he tries so hard to do the right thing makes him so admirable.

Kay made his observation in reference to a story Trudeau told about his relationship with his mother (I mentioned a couple of others in a previous blog post.) This story jumped out at me too, for its poignance and its exposure of the character of an endearing adolescent:

I spent more than thirty hours interviewing Trudeau. He told me hundreds of stories, not all of which made their way into the book. But there is one, from his young childhood—during the period after his mother, Margaret, abandoned the family—that stands out clearly.
“Whenever I knew my mother was on her way to visit 24 Sussex, I could barely contain my excitement, and began planning my welcome,” is how Trudeau tells the story in Common Ground:

On one occasion I decided to mark her arrival with a musical theme. I had received a small record player as a gift and enjoyed playing the hits of the day—“the day” being the early 1980s—especially Journey’s romantic ballad “Open Arms.” I had heard my mother say how much she liked the Journey song, and I decided that this would be the soundtrack to her entrance at 24 Sussex after one particularly long absence. I waited for her to arrive in her VW Rabbit before cueing up my tiny, tinny record player in my room upstairs. As she opened the door and entered the foyer I cranked up the volume and rushed to the top of the stairs. “Listen, mom,” I yelled down to her. “It’s our song!” Her reaction was to stare up at me, happy to see me but a little confused because she couldn’t hear the music at all. The volume on my record player was about half the level of a modern cell phone. I remember being crushed by that, so desperate was I to inject a sense of magic into every moment that we did have together as a family.

When Common Ground was published in 2014, and the Trudeau camp chose to disclose my role in preparing it, lots of friends asked me some variation on the question: “What’s he like? ” I would say, “Read the book.” And like clockwork, they would roll their eyes and reply, “No—what’s he really like? ” The underlying assumption is that books of this type are mere propaganda. Depending on the politics of the person asking me the question, there usually was some suggestion that, behind closed doors, Trudeau is either a closet socialist or a corporate shill. That he is a thumb-sucking ignoramus who is spoon-fed his lines by Gerald Butts—or a tactical genius who wears his glibness and childlike enthusiasms as a political mask. That he is a tormented scion who is desperate to rise to his father’s epic legacy—or who bitterly detests the old man’s oversized shadow. Since we have spent the last decade trying to figure out the “secret agenda” of Stephen Harper, it was perhaps inevitable that the country would become convinced that there is some “real” Justin Trudeau lurking below the surface.
You can find the real Justin right there, at the top of those stairs, playing his record player.

That last sentence especially is as perfect, concise a summation of a politician's character as any you're likely to see, right up there with another favorite of mine, the line from the New Yorker's David Remnick about Obama: His practiced calm is beyond reckoning.

Kay also addresses the phenomenon of Trudeau being considered just a pretty dummy - or at least less of an intellectual than his father. I could see that was bullshit even before I read "Common Ground" - and Kay of course spent quite a bit of time with Trudeau during the writing of the book and so is in a position to evaluate Trudeau's mind:

Pretty, yes. Dummy, no.

Trudeau probably reads more than any other politician I know. And yet you wouldn’t know this from the way he talks about ideas: His boyish, eager-to-please personality leads him to project publicly in a way that can seem intellectually unsophisticated. Political oratory always sounds best when it’s relaxed and natural. Trudeau’s hyperactive personality makes that a difficult act for him to pull off.

I admit that I am sometimes guilty of idealizing Canada, in light of the election of Trudeau vs. Trump and for other reasons, but Canada is dragged down by anti-intellectuals the same as in the United States - although perhaps not to the same degree. But I think that Trudeau's coming off as more of a regular guy and less of a brainiac serves him well. His being thought of as not-so-bright makes him much more palatable to the know-nothing slobs of Canada. Obama's and Hillary Clinton's obvious intellectual superiority were resented by many Americans and it worked against them.

Obama only squeaked into office, in my opinion, thanks to the overwhelming support of African Americans and the fact that his first opponent's running mate was Sarah Palin and his second opponent was Mitt Romney, who came off as a rich prig, and made Obama look like a regular guy by comparison. Women didn't support Clinton the way blacks supported Obama, since women suffer more from Stockholm Syndrome. But if Trump had gone up against Obama there's a good chance Obama would have lost. In spite of what Obama claims.

But I digress.

Trudeau should keep doing what he's doing.

I have to say, I was surprised by the reason given for the selection of the name "The Walrus" for this magazine. I immediately assumed it was from "Through the Looking Glass."

But no, it's a Canadian thing.

The Canadian Kid

"The Canadian Kid" headed for the ring

Before I discovered the movie "God Save Justin Trudeau" I watched a ton of videos related to the 2012 boxing match between Justin Trudeau, now the Prime Minister of Canada and Patrick Brazeau, now the day manager of a strip club (true story) and not once did I hear anybody refer to Trudeau as "The Canadian Kid" in spite of the fact that he walked into the ring wearing a robe with those words emblazoned on the back.

Patrick Brazeau's robe said "Brazz Knuckles Brazeau" and he was called that many times, especially by right-wing commentator Ezra Levant. It's a curious thing. Trudeau was referred to by the match announcer as "The Papineau Pugilist" on several occasions, never anything else.

In any case, this is what The Canadian Kid had to say after the match, as recorded in the movie "God Save Justin Trudeau."

Q: So how does it feel? 

   TRUDEAU 

It feels really good. I had a game plan that I was going to stick to - I knew he was going to come in heavy and hard, right off the bat, but I also knew that I was going to be able to take anything he threw at me. And when he did he emptied himself out and I just kept going. 

What was it in my training that allowed me to do that? It wasn’t my training, it’s how I am. I take hits and I keep going. That’s a lesson that Pat learned tonight, maybe a few other people learnt tonight but we’ll see how it goes. 

Q: What have you proved for Justin Trudeau for the liberal party? 

I proved that a liberal can take a punch. I proved that we’re not people who can be counted out even though we seem nicer, and a little more touchy-feely and we believe in good things and we believe in giving opportunities to people and we don’t trash talk as much and we don’t go negative.  But we can hit really hard and we can take anything they give at us, because the heart pushes further than anything else.

In his autobiography, Trudeau had this to say about his approach to the fight:

A week before the fight, Matt Whitteker, my trainer in Ottawa, asked about my fight plan. I told him how I thought it would go: Brazeau would throw everything he had at me early. I'd spend the first round keeping him away with my jab and reach, and let him tire himself out. By the second round I'd have more gas than him and take the initiative, and perhaps in the third round I'd go for the knockout. Matt smiled at my confidence and teased: "Oh you'll wait for the third round to knock him him out, will you?"

Having just re-watched the movie for the seventh or eighth time, I could swear that in the training scene shown just before the actual match, Trudeau, coached by his Montreal trainer Ali Nestor Charles (you can see his Linked In profile here, written in French bien sur) is actually practicing being hit hard in the head and being stunned in the ring. Which paid off when he was being pummeled by Brazeau in the first round.

But then, what do I know about boxing?

But I do know something about unrequited love, which brings me to Ezra Levant's for Justin Trudeau.

Here is the photo that triggered Ezra Levant's epic meltdown (a family asked Trudeau to be in their bridal photos), in which he called the entire Trudeau family sluts. You can't get the video of the meltdown, they removed it (and apologized to Justin Trudeau) but here's a transcript of an interview Levant gave about the incident. Levant is a foul little pustule of a man.

If that photo triggered him, I can just imagine what this one did. I can't find the video for this kiss, but I did find a very brief clip from another moment in that show (the March 4, 2012 episode of "Tout Le Monde En Parle" just a few weeks before the boxing match ) with Trudeau's wife jocularly suggesting he kiss a different man.

I still can't figure out where the Canadian alt-right stands on homosexuality though. I questioned Judgy Bitch on her blog about it but so far only her flying monkeys have responded. She once referred to Trudeau as a "faggot" but she also claims to love self-described faggot Milo Yiannopoulous - and certainly Levant had no qualms about publishing a video of famous misogynist Gavin McInnes making out with Yiannopoulous.

There's some very weird logical dissonance going on with the far right - I mean even more than usual.

Let the Macron - Trudeau awesomeness competition begin!

Justin Trudeau gave a shout-out to Macron for appointing women in half of the positions in his cabinet - something Trudeau did in 2015.

But also - Macron did Trudeau one better in the Donald Trump handshake competition today.

When Trudeau first met Trump, he famously held his ground against Trump's famously weirdly aggressive handshake. Trudeau was much-praised for his defensive actions versus Trump, including the pre-emptive left-hand shoulder grab seen here.

Well instead of playing perfect defense, Macron played offense!

When Mr. Trump greeted Emmanuel Macron, the recently elected president of France, the two leaders exchanged pleasantries before grabbing each other’s hands in what began as a manly greeting and ended as a kind of good-natured death grip. 

Jaws clenching, faces alternating between smiles and grimaces, the two men shook until Mr. Trump’s knuckles turned white. At one point, the president tried to pull away, only to have Mr. Macron clasp his hand even harder and keep pumping. Finally, the second time Mr. Trump pulled away, Mr. Macron let him go.

I got a huge kick out of Paste Magazine's blow-by-blow of the Trump-Macron handshake:

At the 20-second mark, Trump attempts his patented “Trump Pump”—the forceful pull into the body which has destroyed so many world leaders. This time, though, the movie is almost indiscernible, and that’s because Macron counters it so quickly, and with such brute muscle, that Trump gained less than an inch of leverage, and in fact wound up losing ground as a result of Macron’s crushing defense. We saw Trudeau manage to withstand the same move in Washington, but with him, it was a matter of survival, while Macron actually took the offensive. It’s clear that he studied the film of the Trudeau encounter, and decided on the risky gamble of taking his response one step farther and playing for a win. 

It paid off. After this daring maneuver, a stunned Trump was unable to recover. Macron, smile widening, continued to pump from the elbow and increase the strength of his grip on Trump’s hand, exerting pressure on the American president’s exposed knuckles. At the 23-second mark, now barely smiling, Trump broke eye contact first—a rarity—and turned to the photographers in desperation. He held on gamely for another split-second, but then came the critical moment that turned the handshake world on its head:
He tried to let go. Watch closely, and you can see his fingers release. Macron’s grip is clearly too much for him, and five seconds was all he could withstand. It’s a remarkable concession for such a proud man, and, unbelievably, Macron wouldn’t let him go. As if to emphasize his victory, and deepen Trump’s shame, Macron redoubled his grip. Trump’s fingers fluttered once, attempting to close the grip, but then released again. It was an absolutely vicious move from the Frenchman, and undoubtedly some scholars will question whether it violates the spirit of the game.  

Finally, Macron shows a bit of late mercy and releases Trump’s hand, while saying “thank you very much” in English—a subtle hint to Trump that he has just dominated him in the public eye, and can now use the language of the vanquished enemy to assert the victory. 

In all, the brutal six-second bout was shorter than most of Trump’s engagements, and shorter by a second than his draw with Trudeau. Macron was the kind of opponent he had not seen before, and was frankly not prepared for. It was a savage win for the French president, punctuated by a dose of humiliation, and it will inevitably tarnish the legacy of Trump, whose aura of invincibility has been irrevocably punctured. By a Frenchman.
In related news, expect America’s entire nuclear arsenal to fall on Paris by the end of the week.

It does seem probable that Macron sees Trudeau as his rival in the male politician heartthrob competition and figures he might be able to beat him.

Personally I think Trudeau is handsomer than Macron - mostly because Trudeau has all that hair and I have a thing about hair. But in every other respect they are pretty evenly matched, and of course Macron's marriage is more 21st-century than Trudeau's. But it's so great that there are two prominent young male world leaders who are self-declared feminists. I am looking forward to each of them trying to prove they are the coolest - because let's face it, since Obama has gone, Trudeau has had no serious rival, so Macro will keep him from resting on his feminist laurels. This is a great thing.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

Christine LaGarde's unusual reaction to Justin Trudeau

It's safe to say that not a lot of women would have the reaction that Christine LaGarde has on looking over her shoulder and seeing Justin Trudeau. Damn that's cold. I bet Trudeau was sure surprised too.

I immediately recognized LaGarde because she's featured fairly prominently in the movie Inside Job. The other people here are of course Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.


 

THE CAUCASIAN TALK CIRCLE

An Illustrated Play

by N. G. McClernan

(Enter MERKEL, LAGARDE, MACRON talking amongst themselves in a circle.)

(Enter TRUDEAU.) 

       MERKEL

Yes but you're always very detailed.

       (Macron laughs)

       (Trudeau walks over to the group and stands behind Lagarde.)

       LAGARDE
       (looking over her shoulder)

Oh. It’s you.

(Trudeau smiles. Lagarde ignores Trudeau and turns her back to him. Trudeau remains standing, wondering WTF.)

       MACRON

I believe we have to go over THERE. Let’s go over THERE.

       (The circle breaks up. Trudeau goes for Merkel.)

       TRUDEAU

I just want to say 'good morning.'

       (Trudeau gives Merkel bises.)

       TRUDEAU

Hah HAH! I still got it!

THE END

The Global Alt-Right Movement

It seems pretty clear that Putin always favors the most extreme right-winger in any country's national election. Not only is it increasingly undeniable that Putin gave all kinds of assistance to Trump in winning the election, he's also clearly hoping that friend-of-Nazis Marine Le Pen will win the French presidential election. Le Pen met with Putin in March.

And it's clear that there is a well-funded network of right-wingers aiding and abetting Putin's campaign of destabilizing the West.

Here is a response by Gerald Butts to a tweet by Mike Cernovich praising Ezra Levant. I have blogged about Levant over the past few months, primarily focusing on his insane obsession with Justin Trudeau (which I suspect is partly fueled by homoerotic desire.) Cernovich is a deranged nut job who pushed the deranged Pizzagate conspiracy that almost ended up getting people killed.

Meanwhile Alex Jones, the deranged nut job who also pushed Pizzagate has his lawyer claiming that he's a "performance artist." 

“He is a performance artist,” attorney Randall Wilhite told a judge, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
The radio host has been known to peddle conspiracy theories without any evidence, including that 9/11 was an inside job, Sandy Hook was “completely fake with actors” and the government is using chemicals in the water to turn people gay.
He also perpetuated the “Pizzagate” theory that Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders were running a child sex trafficking ring run out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, before eventually apologizing.

I immediately thought of Mike Daisey, an actual performance artist who dabbled in hard reporting before being repudiated by This American Life. Daisey's excuse for why he should be forgiven for making up stories about Chinese employees of Apple was that he is a performance artist and nobody should have ever taken him literally.

Now I despise Mike Daisey, a hateful Berniebro and all-around asshole, but not even I think he's as bad as Alex Jones. Nobody almost got killed thanks to Daisey. But Jones and Daisey both feel they can say anything they want and then refuse to be held responsible for it. And they get away with it. Neither seems to have suffered in his career in the least from this behavior. But Alex Jones is a monster, Mike Daisey is just an asshole.

So who is Gerald Butts? He's "Principal Secretary to PM Trudeau" according to his Twitter profile. I first heard of Butts while reading Trudeau's autobiography. They go back to college. According to his Wikipedia page:

Stemming from a two-decade-long friendship, Butts became the senior political adviser to Justin Trudeau in 2012.[2] Therefore, he is among the five people with whom Trudeau consults regularly.[8] He assisted on the vast majority of policies on which Trudeau campaigned.[8]

And according to Trudeau:

Butts & Trudeau in college about 1993

(a mutual friend) beckoned to a long-haired guy standing nearby, and introduced him as Gerry Butt, Vice-President of the McGill Debating Union. Today, almost twenty-five years later, Gerald is not just still a best friend; he is my closest advisor as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. 

[obviously the team went onto bigger things after Trudeau's autobiography was published.]

On Gerry's invitation, I joined the Debating Union, where we became fast friends and I spent the next year honing my skills and traveling to tournaments. It was an education on its own, focusing my ability to think on my feet, to spot a weakness in an opponent's argument and exploit in with the right combination of logic and turn of phrase.

Probably we have Butts to thank more than anybody except Pierre Trudeau for mon premiere ministre d'amour.

But also, if Butts believes there is an interconnected, international far-right movement, chances are Trudeau believes it too, although it's not guaranteed since Butts does explicitly say in his Twitter profile that "Tweets are personal views."

But this is important. The Canadians are fully aware of the danger of the far-right network. Something I'm not sure American politicians are paying enough attention to.

Trudeaun't go breaking my heart

Hotness Summit

It seems that New York Magazine might be as enthralled by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as I am - I just discovered they have an ongoing series there called Trudeaun't go breaking my heart, the series which dares to ask the question Why Don’t I Ever Run Into Shirtless Justin Trudeau While Hiking? and sadly observes of the meeting between Obama and Trudeau that the Historic Hotness Summit Did Not End With a Kiss.

NYM discusses the wondrousness that is Trudeau:

There are so many reasons to love Justin Trudeau: He appointed a bunch of women to his cabinet. He’s half of North America’s greatest political bromance. He has great hair. But high among them is unwavering dedication to feminism, and declaring himself a feminist.
During an interview with Vox, Trudeau went expanded on his feminist cred. “I talk about the fact that I’m a feminist as often as I can, and each time I do it gets a huge reaction and the Twitter verse explodes,” he said. “I will keep saying that until there’s no more reaction.”

However there are some women who can resist the Trudeau charm and unsurprisingly it's horrific, hate-filled, right-wing women like the MRA's favorite, extremist nutbar Andrea "Judgy Bitch" Hardie, who is Canadian and who (under a new Twitter identity because she was banned under the old one) called for the assassination of Trudeau.

Isn't there a Canadian Secret Service that keeps tabs on freaks like this? Here's her blog where she provides her city/province. Those responsible for protecting the life of the Prime Minister should look into it.

Her paranoid ranting seems completely misplaced though - the fact that his wife is an unhinged right-wing crank who called for the assassination of their Prime Minister four months ago doesn't seem to have had any impact whatsoever on the career of her husband Dr. Tim Hardie. 

Andrea "Judgy Bitch" Hardie

This is the difference between the right and the left. I'm pretty sure if Hardie was an unhinged leftist (and there are no leftists as unhinged as rightists as far as I know) calling for the assassination of Trump, Trump's cultists would have forced Hardie and her family into hiding, using death threats they used on a labor leader; and death and rape threats on a teenage girl, who merely criticized Trump.

I left a message on her most recent blog post about Trudeau, asking her if she ever heard from the Canadian secret service for her treacherous intentions. If she responds I will report it here.


Now to get the image of Women Against Feminism's poster girl out of your mind, here is Trudeau and his splendiferous cabinet, putting the Monster-elect's cabinet to shame. O Canada indeed.

Yes another post about Justin Trudeau - I CAN'T HELP MYSELF!

This video is from 2012, when Trudeau fought a conservative member of the Canadian government for charity. The odds were three-to-one against Trudeau.

You can hear the various dismissive remarks about him from the commentators: they call him a "shiny pony" and refer to his yoga and ballet training, jazzercise, his rope skipping. "He seems like my 4-year-old daughter." "He's a high-school drama teacher and this is called over-acting my friend, he's a dramatic thespian."

Trudeau does not do well in the first round and you can hear the commentators licking their chops for his defeat. The more obnoxious of the two commentators suggests it is a one-round fight.

So it makes it very dramatically satisfying when Trudeau comes back in round two and beats the crap out of "Brass Knuckles" Brazeau. By the end of the last round Brazeau's nose is bleeding. As it said in the next day's National Post: Justin Trudeau scores major upset in Fight for the Cure boxing match over Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau.

Possibly my favorite part of this fight is at the end after Trudeau is declared the winner and he's being interviewed by one of the commentators about Brazeau and Trudea says: "everyone's a winner here tonight."

A speaking of Trudeau's yoga training... 

AHH YOU'RE KILLING ME JUSTIN TRUDEAU!

Just like his father... 

Fun fact - Pierre Trudeau dated a very young Kim Cattrall. Causing 60 Minutes to believe Cattrall was Justin's mother.

21st Century Men: Macron, Obama, Trudeau

I finally saw the movie "20th Century Women" on the recommendation of an actor I worked with this year. I'm not sure exactly why she recommended it to me, possibly because I'm around the same age as the character played by Annette Bening - although I think the hair style they gave her character is awful and makes her look older. But the actor also might have recommended it to me because it mentions feminism - a lot more than any non-documentary movie I've ever seen - and I happened to mention during one of our rehearsals that Justin Trudeau was the perfect man because of his self-declared feminism.

I'm sure he isn't really a perfect man, but he's pretty damn great. Of course people on the far left complain about him because no politician is good enough for them since Lenin. I've already had unpleasant exchanges with some of them on Twitter. It's my theory that the Far Left is forever hoping for a perfect father figure to make all their socialist dreams come true - and Bernie Sanders was happy to try to step into that role.

"20th Century Women" was OK. There isn't much of a story but it has some nice moments. And there's that talk of feminism. But if you had told me back in 1979 that one day there would be a head of state who proudly declared himself a feminist, I'd have thought you were smoking too much weed.

And it's funny because the principles of feminism were fairly well-agreed upon in the young person circles I traveled in back then. I guess I just never expected the rest of the world to catch up to feminism as fast as it did. Which doesn't make sense since the rest of the developed world has long since caught up with us quasi-hippies on the issue of natural foods and vegetarianism: Whole Foods has been a national chain since the 90s. In 1979 if you wanted tofu or herbal tea you couldn't get them at the grocery store, you had to go to a small funky health food store in a big city.

Justin Trudeau was the first head of state, male or female, that I ever heard of who referred to himself as a feminist.

I just melt every time Justin Trudeau declares himself to be a feminist as he did yet again recently in this appearance in Toronto sponsored by the NYTimes.

But only fairly recently have I discovered there are other self-declared feminist heads of state.

Obama is a self-declared feminist:

But one thing that makes me optimistic for (his daughters) is that this is an extraordinary time to be a woman. The progress we’ve made in the past 100 years, 50 years, and, yes, even the past eight years has made life significantly better for my daughters than it was for my grandmothers. And I say that not just as President but also as a feminist.

Emmanuel Macron is also a self-declared feminist as I wrote about recently.

Here's Macron teaming up with Arnold Schwarteznegger to make the planet great again.

Obama, Trudeau and Macron all had very different upbringings. Macron is the son of two small-town doctors, Obama was raised by a single mother who was a kind of academic bohemian, and Trudeau spent much of his childhood with his father the Prime Minister. But one thing they all have in common is that none of their mothers were stay-at-home housewives. And Obama and Macron both seemed to have had very close relationships with their maternal grandmothers.

Obama

Obama had been braced for the possibility the woman whom he credits with raising him might not live to see possibly his proudest moment as he headed into the election in which he is favoured over John McCain. With so much at stake in the final hours before the polls, Obama carried on campaigning last night, telling a crowd in Charlotte, North Carolina: "She has gone home, and she died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side."

Macron

But his refuge was the flat of his grandmother Manette, where he went after school and at weekends. Manette’s mother, a cleaner, had been illiterate, and education had become a family obsession. Manette, who had worked as a headteacher, spent hours having her grandson read aloud. “After school, we’d drink hot chocolate and listen to Chopin,” he recalled. “His self-confidence comes from his grandmother,” said François-Xavier Bourmaud, Macron’s biographer. “She was a reformist socialist who coloured his political engagement very young.”

As for Trudeau, I don't know what his connection with his grandmothers was like but he certainly had a very complex relationship with his mother as I blogged about here.

It should be noted that Obama, Macron and Trudeau all have apparent admiration for each other - Obama and Trudeau famously have a "bromance"; Trudeau and Macron were videotaped having a long talk during the G7 summit - in French of course - and Macron called Obama during his presidential campaign for advice - and for an excellent public relations coup.

How wonderful that these most excellent of men declare themselves to be feminists - outloud, in public proudly. The word "feminist" matters.

Don't tell Obama words don't matter.

The three of them all seem to have excellent relationships with their wives and with women in general. But it's one thing that these three excellent men are good husbands and fathers (step-father in Macron's case) and self-declared feminists - it's another thing that each of them has achieved the highest elected office in their respective lands.

And that just blows my mind. I never thought I'd see such a thing. A failure of the imagination on my part? Or an inclination to be anti-authoritarian, or maybe a life-long pessimism habit. 

But seriously, wow. 

I love these 21st Century Men.

The semi-known Trudeau

Together again!

So I'm all about Macron these days but what about mon premiere ministre d'amour?

I mentioned that many Americans didn't know who Trudeau was when he was elected Prime Minister in October 2015. Well it looks like he's still not as well known as you would think, consider probably 99.99 % of Canadians know who Donald Trump is:

Almost 50 per cent of Americans don’t know who Justin Trudeau is: poll

 A new poll offers some insight into how American respondents see foreign leaders, including Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Americans have a more favourable than unfavourable view of Trudeau, according to the survey by Public Policy Polling.
It says he’s viewed positively by 31 per cent of Americans, negatively by 20 per cent, and is unknown to almost half of respondents.

And now I have a good excuse to post another photo of Trudeau.

I found this appearance by Trudeau at what appears to be the Canadian version of the White House Correspondents dinner (which Trump skipped this year.) Trudeau is surprisingly bitchy here - in English and French, of course. It's a nice change of pace. Granted some of this is strictly inside-baseball Canadian politics, but he does get in some other joke material, not only Sean Spicer, but also his handshake with Trump and a reference to #trudeaueulogies.

Dear Sweet Canada

In honor of Trump's inauguration, I decided to dedicate the bottom of this week's NYCPlaywrights Saturday email (where I put links to items of theatrical interest, grouped by a single theme) to Canada.

Starting with Justin Trudeau reciting Shakespeare.

Could you imagine Trump reciting Shakespeare? No, of course not because Trump is a thug and a slob.

Like so many Americans, I never paid attention to Canada. Which, when you think about it, is just so weird. First because Canadians certainly think about the USA. Here is Trudeau talking to some kids about Trump - it's a good bet that few American students know who Justin Trudeau is -  hell, plenty of adult Americans have no idea who he is, as this Youtube video so clearly illustrates.

But another reason it's weird is because Canada is a giant country. It's the second biggest country in the world after Russia (USA is #3) although sure, they only have one-tenth the population of the US but still. A giant country is sitting there, less than 300 miles from where I live, and it is directly across a river from the northern border of the state I live in.  Which is a really big state, but still.

It's only because of my new-found admiration for Justin Trudeau that I think about Canada as much as I do now. Prior to discovering my Premier Ministre D'Amour,  the only things I thought about Canada was that Joni Mitchell is Canadian, and that the plot of the South Park movie was a plan to invade Canada ("Blame Canada - with all the hockey hullabaloo, and that bitch Anne Murray too, Blame Canada, they aren't even a real country anyway.")

So I was doing some Googling around, looking for interesting items related to Canadian theater - this item was particularly ghastly - Canada's Hamilton Theatre inundated with angry Americans mistaking it for 'Hamilton' - when I came across information about a play called TRUDEAU STORIES, currently playing at the Great Canadian Theater Company about a young woman who had a Platonic relationship with Pierre Trudeau in the 1980s.

Then I found this podcast interview with the author and I really want to go see this show. I am seriously considering the idea of driving up to Ottawa (which is the capitol of Canada in case you didn't know, and you probably didn't even though it's the capitol of a GIANT COUNTRY) next week.  It's only a 7 hour drive - about the same distance as Washington DC.

In the podcast the author of the play, Brooke Johnson, mentions that people ask her if Justin Trudeau has ever shown up and she said no, although of course she would love it if he did. Maybe he'll show up this Tuesday when I am (maybe) there - SELFIE TIME!

The US is so lucky to have such a good neighbor on our longest border. We really don't appreciate Canada enough, partly because they're so good to us. But although Justin Trudeau can tell you, as he does in this video, that 35 of our united states list Canada as their #1 export destination, Donald Trump, the greatest humiliation of this country (and I once believed that was George W. Bush) most certainly does not know that.

Also, I don't think Donald Trump cares whether Americans would be hurt by a trade war, as JTRU seems to believe. Donald Trump only cares about using his position to LOOT the United States on behalf of himself and Vladimir Putin.

We would really be screwed if Canada came to hate us. We have to stop taking Canada's niceness for granted.

What I'm saying is, we need to start having more appreciation for our dear sweet GIANT neighbor to the north.

Oh baby

Justin Trudeau in Rolling Stone:

Then he gives the press corps a high-five. 

"The back and forth between the press and government is essential to any good democracy," he says. "When you're at your best, it reminds us and challenges us to be at ours. So thank you all for your tireless work."
Where are we? Narnia? Coachella recovery tent? 2009? We are in Ottawa, Ontario, a mere 560 miles from Washington, D.C.

And yet, we are half a world away. Join me as we visit a nation led by a man who wore a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy T-shirt on national television, rides a unicycle and welcomed 40,000 Syrian refugees with open arms.

This article arrives just in time for Donald Trump's disgusting and perverted speech at the Boy Scout jamboree.

Imagine for a half-second what would have happened if Obama or either Clinton had ever alluded glowingly to a yacht sex party in a speech to a bunch of kids. Fox News headquarters in Manhattan would have sunk halfway to the earth's core from the weight of all the outrage.

I have some issues with the Rolling Stone piece on Trudeau. It says 'His critics call him "shiny pony."' but even a quick Google search on trudeau, shiny pony indicates what I could have told author Stephen Rodrick - the expression was invented by, and almost exclusively used by Trudeau-obsessive Ezra Levant.

But I did love the ending:

Trudeau heads back toward his three-car motorcade that stops at all red lights. In the hall, a couple hundred kids hold signs that say "Hope" and "Respect." They grab his sleeve and then skitter away wearing giant smiles. It would have been corny if it had not been so goddamned beautiful. This is Trudeau's vision of what a country can be. His land races toward inclusion, while our nation builds walls and lusts for an era of vanilla homogeneity that ain't coming back. At this moment, Justin Trudeau's Canada looks like a beautiful place to ride out an American storm.

Bonus Rolling Stone article about Trudeau & Macron.


Oh dear god this man is killing me.

I discover more about Canada: meet Tabatha Southey & Jonathan Kay's mom

I didn't even know who Justin Trudeau was until he came to the United States in early 2016 and such a big deal was made about his bromance with Obama. But even that barely registered. It was sort of like, oh, I guess they have a new Prime Minister in Canada now and he's young and handsome and gets along well with the President.

It took the election of Donald Trump to really make me appreciate Canada and Justin Trudeau.

There were so many things I didn't know about Canada until the past year. For instance, the capital is Ottawa, not Toronto. Did you know that? If you're like most Americans, you didn't. Here are Americans being asked who Justin Trudeau is right after he was elected.

So of course I had no idea who Tabatha Southey was.

While researching Steve Pinker's connections to the alt-right I came to realize that Quillette, which he frequently linked to from Twitter (although at this point not since January 31), was not only frequently running pro-evolutionary psychology articles but was running evo-psycho articles by people who not only believe in the innate intellectual inferiority of blacks, but in some cases believe that black people are also more innately criminal than other "races." Those people happen to be American college professors specializing in Criminal Justice. Some of them had also appeared on alt-right Stefan Molyneux's Youtube channel. A couple of their articles for Quillette have been reposted at white supremacist American Renaissance.

So my antennae have been out for Quillette content on Twitter, and when I came across Tabatha Southey's comment,  festooned with a Great Auk, I naturally Liked and Retweeted it. And naturally got into arguments with people who attacked her on the thread. But for all I knew she was just some random person with good taste.

And even when Jonathan Kay (who I knew of only because he ghost-wrote Justin Trudeau's "Common Ground") and his fellow Quillette author Debrah Soh, (whom I had also never heard of prior to this string of events) were freaking out about Southey's remark about Quillette, days later, I still wasn't clued in.

Then I Googled her. Turns out she's a big fucking deal in the Canadian literary scene. And has been for at least over a decade. So big that according to Kay, Ezra Levant even attacked her on Sun News (the video is unfortunately no longer available.) And she in turn has written about Levant. I'm surprised I didn't read that piece, because I was Googling for stories about Levant at that time in connection with the awful events of Charlottesville.

And now I realize I have already linked to an article by Southey on this blog on January 28, a piece in Maclean's which asks the immortal question: Is Jordan Peterson the stupid man's smart person?

Which Hackette's hacks are still mad about.

Jonathan Kay sniffed that the Effin Birds project isn't funny but actually it is. I don't think Kay has much of a sense of humor though. Southey made good use of his Tweet.

In turns out that Kay is pretty vicious: he told people to block me on Twitter saying I was "Not right above the shoulders" in response to my pointing out that Quillette provides wingnut welfare to hacks. Although since he is a three-time (so far) author at Quillette, I don't suppose his response was exactly a calm and disinterested assessment of my rightness above the shoulders.

I posted that on my Twitter and asked if he's always been that vicious. I was told he was like his mother, a Canadian right-winger, except she is "even worse." 

This is Kay's mother. No surprise she's a fan of Christina "Koch hack" Sommers and Jordan "lobster man" Peterson.

I sure have learned a lot about Canadians in the past year.

Anyway, back to Southey - in spite of Kay's comment she is still quite funny. The funniest I've found so far is from a couple of years ago. I LOL'd.

For a while when I was a little girl, my older brother and I made a lot of underwear jokes. We were like the George Burns and Gracie Allen of undergarments, only loud, and our routines were mostly just one of us saying the word "underwear," and the other one laughing; anyone else saying the word "underwear" could easily set us off as well.
Getting us dressed in the morning took forever. Trips to the laundromat were so gleeful, it was like the dryers emitted laughing gas. Finally, my poor mother reached the end of her knicker-quip tether, and this is what she did: One Saturday morning she took all the underwear in the house: mine, my brother's, hers and my dad's Y-fronts – a cotton comedy cornerstone right there – and she put them all on my parents' bed and basically said, "You have until sundown, go nuts." And that's what we did, and then, almost miraculously, we were done with underwear. 

And so I'm going to offer the world a chance to do much the same now. World, you have one week to make Hot Justin Trudeau jokes, and enjoy sexy-world-leader innuendo with impunity. Please make the most of this week and then, come Nov. 1, let's be done with this. 

You want to say, "Whoa, I'd respect his arctic sovereignty," this is your moment.
Dying to shout, "Man, I'd enter that into my Hansard," when images of Justin Trudeau come on the TV screen at your local bar, you go right ahead. 

Any journalists thinking of asking, "Hey, soon-to-be-prime mister, did it hurt when you fell from heaven, and do you feel that the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affected your rate of descent?" at Mr. Trudeau's next press conference, this is your time. 

Want to comment, "I know he's prime minister but he's welcome to be chief of my staff" on the next news article you see speculating about the Trudeau cabinet picks, by all means, do so now. 

Ditto "I'd like to be first past his post," and "I'll bet that's a right honourable member."

Although perhaps my laugh was partly out of guilt since I have been known to say that Justin Trudeau can eat my poutine any time.

And this piece about Damore is brilliant.

While he’s hardly alone, Damore’s laborious effort provides indisputable evidence of the attitudes that many women in STEM face. When a woman submits her resume, she knows it may be read by a Damore. When she negotiates a raise—an arena in which she’s damned if she does and, as the Google memo explains, too innately high in “agreeableness” if she doesn’t—she weighs the possibility that she’s negotiating with a Damore. When a woman takes maternity leave, she wonders how many of her colleagues are Damores, dismissing her as someone innately lacking the “drive for status.” 

Damores are everywhere. Great flocks of Damores perch in their offices—or worse, on the corner of your desk when you’re up to your neck in stack traces—depositing their opinions on IQ differences on passersby and filling the air with their cry of “Women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas.”