Drinker of bad wine and writer of many things. Alexander writes fiction, manages a team of SEOs, and dabbles in food history. He also has a Doctorate in North American Religion and Culture and used to teach at Concordia University.
A piece of poetry I wrote last year (and then modified), and submitted earlier this one, has also just been picked up and published. Who would have ever figured that one out? I have to admit, it’s a pretty nerdy literary piece.
Be sure to check out “Mephistopheles” in Right Hand Pointing.
Last August, I sold my first story. Today, I’ve just been published.
My speculative flash fiction story “Guernica” made it to (web) print over at the Urban Fantasist’s Grievous Angel publication.
Time for a nice glass of Islay.
The Toronto Sun is a rag of a newspaper, hardly worth the effort to wipe one’s ass.
I’ve known this for a long time (as have most Canadians), but it seems that the paper has to constantly remind us lest we forget.
As part of the Sun News Network (Canada’s Fox News), the Sun revels in making unsubstantiated claims, spouting anti-choice and anti-liberal rhetoric and generally printing the craziest shit they can legally get away with.
Earlier today, I was reading the news through Google as I often do. However, this morning, some of the Sun’s garbage-fumed headlines drifted to the front page and assault the nostrils of anyone seeking to read Canadian news.
Here’s the title of one little bomb:
“Berkeley riots ‘sadly ironic’ at home of free speech”
It was evident, to anyone even mildly aware of their political slant, to see where this was going. Free speech (hate speech) is something to be protected (violently) from the bad people (“lefties”) out to get it.
Yada yada yada.
The subtitle is the true golden shit covered nugget that really seals the deal:
“First Amendment choked by smoke bombs, pepper spray”
How poetic. The First Amendment anthropomorphized and savaged. Might as well pin an eagle on it and show up to work with your stars and stripes button up.
Needless to say, I decided to read further – even knowing that it would pump up their read count by one. I did it because I knew I was in for a treat. A shitty, unpleasant treat.
I won’t dignify the article with more than a few lines of discussion, but in a nutshell the author is calls out a bunch of legal protestors a bunch of violent yahoos, shits on the reasons why they are protesting, and then upholds a neo-Nazi as the emblem of a good citizen.
Let’s examine some tidbits:
“The lightning rod was Milo Yiannopoulos, a polarizing 33-year-old”
Polarizing is a polite way of putting it since he follows up with pointing out his views had been “labelled by his many critics as racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim and white supremacist.”
Gee, what a controversial figure. There really are two sides to him. One that is a racist neo-Nazi and the other as… um…
Well, after calling the protesters hypocrites for not enjoying the company of racists, our author goes on to state:
“While it is difficult to agree with an arguably fascist-minded provocateur like Yiannopoulos, he is not wrong.”
So basically, the author agrees with a fascist-minded provocateur.
When commenting on how a protester at the even held a sign reading “Hate Speech is Not Free Speech” our Toronto Sun author proudly goes on to state that:
“This, of course, is not true – at least not as long as speeches judged by some to be hate speeches do not directly promote or incite criminal actions.”
Somehow he managed to shit on not just the people who have rightly pointed that “free speech” does not include “hate speech” under its protection, he shot the middle finger in their direction by suggesting that people who call out hate speech are the minority opinion on the matter.
On the bright side, at least the Sun News Network TV channel was mercifully short-lived.