I’m ashamed to be Canadian (but what else is new?)
Here’s my report about the Guy Earle case (“Canada charges comedian with not being funny“), and here’s Mark Steyn’s eloquent commentary.
Now, here’s today’s report on the verdict:
After sitting outside, the group was brought inside by staff when the patio closed and they were seated near the stage during the comedy performance, hosted by Earle.
After seeing Pardy and Broomsgrove kiss, Earle directed homophobic and profanity-laced comments at their table from the stage, according to the tribunal’s reasons for decision.
Pardy, who was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, said she felt threatened and humiliated.
The respondents denied they discriminated and Earle argued he was just dealing with hecklers.
Earle has been ordered to pay Pardy $15,000 for injury to dignity, feelings, and self respect.
Zesty and Ismail have been ordered to pay Pardy $7,500 for injury to dignity, feelings, and self respect.
Pardy is also to be paid for lost wages and interest on the awards of damages.
***
UPDATE: here’s the PDF of the decision.
I invite you to heckle the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal — here is their contact information — (Note they are on Pacific Time)
1170 – 605 Robson Street
Vancouver, B.C. V6B 5J3
phone: 604 775-2000
fax: 604 775-2020
toll free (in B.C.) : 1 888 440-8844
BCHumanRightsTribunal@gov.bc.ca
(And here are the names of their full-time members.)
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UPDATE: Binks weighs in, noting that this is “what happens when you’re not Mark Steyn.”
(I’d counter that Earle had a chance to “be Mark Steyn,” but chose to remain a confused liberal, even donating some money to a gay charity in an attempt at atonement. It didn’t do him any good, as we see now [and as we all told him at the time.]
(I’m reminded of Theo Van Gogh’s last words — “Can’t we talk this over?” — as his throat was slashed by a belligerent Muslim on a public sidewalk in civilized, sophisticated pot-head haven, Amsterdam.
(No. Guy Earle’s worldview crashed down around his head one evening, and he was struck by the debris and never recovered.)
Humans like inequalities, when the balance is in their favour. A lesbian comedian mocking a heckling straight couple is the flavour of the times; vice-versa? Why, that’s a Hate Crime, according to the petty comedy-police of the BCHRT. Guy Earle: THOUGHT CRIMINAL!
The Keystone Kops of the BCHRT were the ones who wasted a pretty penny in Maclean’s lawyers, magisterially deciding whether or not Mark Steyn were real funny, or not real funny.They had alleged “humour” experts, even, and blustering Sock-Puppets, and everything. Two-ring circus, maybe.
Said marsupial show-trial got live-blogged, blogged, media-attention, and Steyn-friendly bloggers onsite for moral and media-support. Guy Earle? I honestly thought he’d been acquitted of said foolishness. (…)
I dunno if Guy Earle is going to appeal this bullshite, but I would. Nor do I know if he has a legal defence fund, but if so, let’s donate to help him. After all, the BCHRT and their kin are all our grubby little secret police, tolerated and intolerant, crushing little people when they can get away with it, just because they say so. $15 000.00 is real money to ordinary peoples.
And no giant anti-lesbian pogrom broke out after Guy Earle’s stupid comments. Thousands of corpses did not litter the street as Guyite minions cleansed the are of Sapphic offenders.
The BCHRT is a little KGB, a mini-Gestapo, and should be treated as such.
UPDATE — further to yesterday’s back and forth with Ed Driscoll on John Cleese and “anti-Establishment” satire, here is one commenter:
…what happens when the Marx Bros. no longer have a ship to stow away on as outcasts that make fun of the captain and challenge the stodginess of the passengers. What happens when the entire ship sides with the outcasts and half the people on board are stowaways?
The liberal Left definitely had its own ideas on how to move forward from the 60s but also defined itself by what it was against, much the way teenagers do against their parents and why some people believe that decriminalizing marijuana works – when it’s not naughty any more young people lose interest. What happens when we all agree with Monty Python and there’s nothing left of the ancien regime to laugh at?
What happens when you win and your parents are discredited and even dead, no longer around to rail against?
What happens is what happens in all revolutions: the inmates take over the asylum. Rebels become the establishment, the institutions and their leather jackets, jeans and tattoos become silly and empty escutcheons of a by-gone era – after all, every one has tattoos now. There are no more enemies or humor because revolutions do not mock themselves.
Going back to the idea of the new generation of Monty Pythons finding a way to impose their own satire – well, they haven’t. How can you make fun of adults who admit their culture is debauched and irrelevant? How can you make Monty Python-like attacks on minorities that have absolutely no sense of humor about themselves from anyone but themselves and that little enough?
Is there a new troupe of comedians that will make ‘The Life of Mohammed” or “The Marx Bros. and the Dome of the Rock’? Can such a thing be done only by a muslim comedy troupe and if so, where are they?
The new generation and its minority constituents, as I say, has no sense of humor about itself because they see themselves as some type of social crusaders or engineers whose work is above reproach. How do you write a comedy sketch that effectively mocks John Stewart?
To date, the adherents and inheritors of political correctness remain unassailed and unassailable in their own domain. A new satirical movie true to its goal would invoke words like ‘retard’ or the new establishment of the Congressional Black Caucus or La Raza or the Democrats.
Humor attacks a type of perceived fascist behavior but Conservatives are increasingly occupying the philosophical space of rebels by default if not intellectually and so don’t make such easy targets any more but at the same time lack the wit to produce a Monty Python from a grass roots base that would ‘get it’.
UPDATE: from the “please eat me last, Mr. Crocodile” files… Sheesh… a commenter at SDA reports:
Earle was just on Adler and described himself as a leaning left socialist, and a Layton supporter. The left shuts down one of their own. Ha. And they still don’t get it.
UPDATE: Ezra Levant spoke to Guy Earle on his show today…
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