SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS

Well, I seem to have become a periodic blogger. Don’t know why this has happened, but bad habits are rarely improved by empty promises, so I hesitate to suggest I’m going to change. For the next while I’ll blog only when I’m moved to do so. Feel free to check in on the same basis. If I do a special series, for Christmas, the vernal equinox, or Sadie Hawkins Day for example, I’ll send out an email notice.

World Cup – Soccer really is a beautiful thing, BUT THE VUVUZELA IS NOT. I understand that some people insist that it’s traditional, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. Fruit cake’s traditional, which only means that some people still like making it despite the fact that no one likes eating it. One fruit cake, therefore, is socially acceptable at a wedding, or as many as half a dozen at the inauguration of a president or the crowning of a king, but thirty-thousand fruit cakes, consumed continually for nine hours a day over a two week period, is... well... excessive.

And besides, do we really know where this vuvuzela “tradition” comes from? I’ve heard that the name comes from the Zulu word “vuvu” meaning to fart in the direction of your enemies, or perhaps from the old Dutch Afrikaner word “fuzala” to fart back. Is this really the tone FIFA wants to import into “The Beautiful Game” on the international stage? And what about the old British tradition of drunken brawling, mayhem, and setting fire to cars and public buildings? At least that tradition needs no explanation. Who doesn’t understand a punch in the head?

Parliament – I was relieved this morning when I heard that Parliament is shutting down for the summer. Or are they just taking a break to print more money?. Regardless, we won’t have to listen to the caterwauling of question period for a while. Now that’s where a few thousand vuvuzela might come in handy.

Shocked and Appalled – Long-time and legendary White House Press Corps reporter, Helen Thomas, has been dismissed from her post for suggesting that the Jews in Israel should “go home... to Poland, Germany,... America and everywhere else.”. And the much less legendary NDP Member of Parliament, Libby Davies, is facing demands for her dismissal for saying the same thing as Thomas, though any fair minded observer can see she did not. Perhaps one of the reasons this Middle East mess has gone on for generations is that no one in their right mind will think aloud about the matter for fear of being vilified as an anti-Semitic bigot. Thus the conversation is turned over to the wrong-minded and those who don’t care about being called bigots because they are.

I have never been a fan of Libby Davies, but it is quite clear that she was questioning Israel’s boycott of Gaza, not its right to exist. And, though Helen Thomas was challenging Israel’s legitimacy, she was clearly expressing frustration over the boycott, not seriously calling on Jews to “go home”. It’s like someone, in the context of a First Nations protest over the residential schools, saying that Europeans in Canada should go back to Europe. Not a useful idea, but a quite legitimate and understandable sentiment.

The serious concern here, however, is not the comments of Thomas or Davies, but all this “I’m offended” nonsense. It’s simply a rhetorical trick, like a soccer player rolling all over the pitch, trying to draw a penalty, when everyone can see that he’s not really injured. Being “shocked and appalled” is a way of controlling the debate and intimidating opponents. It works, but at the cost of shutting down legitimate discussion. Then all we have left to us is hostility and genuine offence.

People need to grow up and learn the value of free speech and expression. We must allow opponents to speak their minds, even if we honestly feel insulted from time to time. If people cannot throw out their ideas because they are continually received as insults, eventually someone is going to throw a rock. Let’s keep the conversations going.