More media buzz for Shakedown
Here are some quick tid-bits from recent days that mention Shakedown:
From Martin Levin, of the Globe and Mail:
I am appalled by the sanctimonious social-policy-making of various human rights bodies across Canada, whose roles seem to have morphed from defenders of those unfairly treated in jobs and housing to advocates for anyone with a personal grievance, and on to thought police. Too Orwellian to bear. So, although I may have disputes with both Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, who were raked over the corrective coals by various HRCs, I support them entirely in their decisions to say what they said, think what they thought and resist the quasi-fascistic authority of these extra-legal bodies.
And don't get me started - though I seem to be a self-starter here - on the pusillanimous reaction of much of our press, who should be the most resounding advocates of free speech - to the Danish cartoons business of a few years back. Some media claimed that they refrained from republishing them on the grounds that they were sensitive to the offense some Muslims might take. But last time I looked, the right not to be offended was not considered among the great human freedoms. If it were, nobody could say or write anything very interesting or provocative. Don't call it sensitivity (not in itself a bad thing) when it's really cowardice.
Eye Weekly (links from the original):
[Shakedown] at least has half-a-memoir worth of story to tell, based on the author’s experience of being dragged through a government-sanctioned system that spent 900 days chewing over (ultimately dismissed) complaints about infamous Danish cartoon reprints in his own crotchety political magazine, the Western Standard. Predictably, the parochial voice of that publication is also the voice of Shakedown — leaving Levant’s off-the-cuff stand-up routine about the farcical aspects of Human Rights Commissions to live appearances, like earlier this week at the Indigo store at the Royal Bank Plaza. (Comic relief provided by the fact that Indigo had kept that contentious Western Standard issue off its racks.)
The fact that Levant’s battle owes plenty to Web 2.0 — especially YouTube clips of his initial HRC showdown — doesn’t go unacknowledged: “If all this had happened In 1996 instead of 2006, few would know anything about my battle. Even if I had videotaped the interrogation, so what? At most, I’d have been able to get a short excerpt on a TV newscast. Even if the people who saw it found it outrageous, there would have been no outlet through which to channel their anger.” PayPal also get props for helping Levant build a war chest to fight radical jihadists. “In short, the internet saved me.”
...Playing up the fact that he’s got the entire political spectrum on his free-speech side is part of the sales pitch: still, Levant can’t be as surprised as he lets on that Shakedown earned plaudits in EYE WEEKLY senior editor Edward Keenan’s Notebook column this week, given how similar sentiments have been expressed in those pages over the last 16 months — including a flattering feature story on Levant last June...
NOW Magazine, Eye's competitor, is the only pro-censorship magazine in Canada, as far as I can tell. Which is sort of like being the only chicken in the country who is pro-Colonel Sanders. Here's what NOW said about that same Indigo book signing:
Book monopoly that Heather built scrapes the bottom of the barrel with book signing for Western Standard bearer and one-time Reform party hack Ezra Levant and his one-man crusade against "corrupt" human rights tribunals.
My first thought upon reading this was gratitude -- perhaps their publicity was partly to credit for the great turn-out at that event.
My second thought was a flashback to my strange radio debate with NOW's editor, Susan Cole, who has a very intricate system of rules for who is allowed to make what jokes -- so intricate, she herself hasn't quite figured it out yet. She says only black people can make black jokes, for example. But what about people like Barack Obama, who is half black and half white? Cole hadn't quite got around to writing down all the rules for comedy. It gets complicated -- and I bet we'll see the return of words like quadroon and octaroon. After all, if you're rights are based on your race, your race -- always an inexact business -- becomes very important. In Cole's world, there would be thousands of rules about who can say what -- and a human rights commission to enforce those rules.
My third thought, which I entertained for a moment too long, was that NOW Magazine has offended me under section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. I'm not talking about NOW's charge that I'm a "one-time Reform party hack", which actually makes me quite sentimental. No, I mean their allegation that I'm on a "crusade". A crusade, people! Crusade? I'm Jewish!
I need to blow my hate crime whistle. Stop hate-criming me, NOW Magazine! (Susan, that's a joke. Is it okay?)
Dan Gardner on the Ottawa Citizen's blog:
In a liberal democracy, censorship not only fails, it does precisely the opposite of what it's intended to do: There is no better promotion for a person, film, idea, or book than the threat or reality of censorship.
I've been hammering on that point for some time now because, as obvious as it is, plenty of people still don't get it and so they continue to play into the hands of those who do.
George Galloway gets it. Mark Steyn gets it. And Ezra Levant? As perfectly illustrated by the following ad for his new book -- a best-seller, by the way -- he really gets it.
Just Right's review:
...At first I was reluctant to start reading [Shakedown]. I’d read nearly everything he’s written and spoken on the subject of "Human Rights" Commissions and free speech. I religiously follow his web-site along with several others that concentrate on these issues. I’ve written over seventy-five blog posts myself.
But, to my pleasant surprise, once I started reading "Shakedown" I found I couldn’t put it down. There was some new material though, mostly, it was a familiar story. But the familiar stuff was freshly presented, and; the Kafkaesque nightmare that our so-called "human rights" bureaucracy has forced its victims to endure and the threat it poses to our liberty remain endlessly fascinating. Also, reading Ezra’s book has refreshed my contempt for the official "human rights" industry and for its blatant abuses of fundamental rights.
"Shakedown" is an important book that will be instrumental in the fight to force the repeal of Section 13 of the Human Rights Act and the reform of our "human rights" bureaucracies.
One gripe: I expect that I and many, many others will be using "Shakedown" as a reference in the months and years to come. And this is a "book", not a "pamphlet". A useful reference "book" should have an index, which I understand is fairly simple to more or less automatically generate these days.
Fair point -- I've had a few other folks mention that. McClelland & Stewart just ordered a third printing of the book, and there was no time to make such an addition. But I'll ask them if an index is possible for any future editions, including the paperback editions.
Skippy Stalin's review:
Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the Mohammad cartoons. What cannot be debated is that the government has absolutely no place in that debate. Even if you think that the cartoons shouldn't be published, you cannot argue that the state should prohibit their publication or punish it and still consider yourself a supporter of freedom.
...I doubt that my country's liberals would be quite as supportive if the genocidal Islamists that some have taken to their bosoms were targeted, which they have not as yet been. In that, some liberals are supportive of a very unequal justice. Or they think that some people can advocate the destruction of the Jewish people without consequence, but not others. This presumably depends on your skin tone, accent and place of worship.
If the monstrous and wrongheaded Human Rights Commissions are ever reformed or abolished, it will be in large part because of Shakedown and the work that Ezra Levant and others have done. It is a rarity in Canadian publishing, both successful and rewarding to read.
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