A whiff of BLM grapeshot, and Ashton caves
It is a great wide world in which the strangest things bring people together. Two prominent feminists, from different political parties, one of whom is already a leader, the other seeking that status, have found themselves in the judgment court of the inquisitional Black Lives Matter branch plant in Canada. Just over a month ago, our pridefully feminist Prime Minister was left withering in the rhetorical wind from a blast issued by BLM Toronto’s megaphonic Yusra Khogali.
The stupendous gust aimed straight at the Prime Minister carried the accusation that Trudeau — a veritable Bambi of inclusivity and non- discrimination — was a “white supremacist terrorist.” A combo David- Duke- bin- Laden of our frozen, peace, order and good government North.
Is there is some extreme and hyperdistant point at which the finite merges into the infinite? Probably not, a rustic education deprives me of certainty on the matter. But should such a point exist, it must obviously extend ( at least) to the very edges of our vast ever-retreating cosmos. Only such an unfathomable distance could serve as an approximate measure of how far the BLM’s rude slur is from the facts of the case. The one adjective in the whole string of ugliness mudballed at Trudeau that fits is “white,” and even that is not one he would ever emphasize. Whatever thoughts Trudeau has, they are not, ever, conditioned by his skin colour. If Justin Trudeau is a racist menace, Bambi is a great white woodland shark.
In short, Khogali’s captious catcall was a baseless and crude, as I wrote in these very pages a few weeks back. But why settle for a hit when you can work on a streak? This week another division of BLM, the Vancouver clubhouse, decided to take down another feminist — this time an intersec- tional one ( feminism is a cube of many squares) — and a candidate for the leadership of the NDP, Ms Niki Ashton. Ashton, vigorous and stout- hearted as any in the Parliamentary playpen, a social justice warrior of highest repute, offered an attributed quotation from a Beyoncé song to her candidacy’s announcement. She took three words ( preposition, definite article and adjective) from the opening stanza of that fine ballad Irreplaceable, which, so you may savour its peerless wordplay and invention, I offer here in full. To the left, to the left To the left, to the left To the left, to the left The Muse of pop is a parsimonious sprite if this is anything to go by. Shakespeare, it is not. More properly it belongs to those regions of genius in which soars our own Canadian bard, the Cheese king of Parnassus, James McIntyre.
McIntyre, whom I have also celebrated in these pages, gave the world unutterably squalid versicles in his rhapsody to the Queen of Cheeses — verses that have choked the Canadian poetic impulse for near a century. Too good not to offer, once more, a sample. I believe if there is global warming, this is really what started it, so ripe is the rhyme:
The ancient poets e’er did dream That Canada was land of cream, They ne’er imagined it could flow In this cold land of ice cream and snow, Where everything did solid freeze They ne’er hoped or looked for cheese.
But back f rom t hese l ofty heights, lest we faint, to our theme. Ashton, a proud leftist, was innocently underlining her “leftness” and burnishing those feminist credentials already alluded to, by citing Beyoncé. Beyoncé is herself a declared feminist ( fleshpants and booty division) who lodged the ode Bootylicious into the common stock of human memory with lines only a Cheese poet could envy: “I don’t think you ready for this jelly."
Ashton’s tr i bute, however, captured the hair- trigger ire of a monitor from the BLM Vancouver diocese, who instantly let fire one of those bolts from Twitter’s angry cloud that are so frequent these days, flailing Ashton for “appropriating Black culture,” requesting an immediate “Delete” and scorching her for a callous affront to the ineffable ideals of “intersectional feminism.”
Call The Hague. Assemble the blue helmets. Summon Louise Arbour. NDP candidate disses Beyoncé; invades intersectional feminism! BLM feminist under trigger warning fire! Security Council meeting on North Korea suspended! To your Safe Spaces, everyone, quickly!
I would call this foolish, but it is too foolish to call foolish. The same applies to petty, pointless, wrong, irritating, smug, smallminded and witless. But here’s the rub. Ashton, seeking the leadership of a national political party, bowed and genuflected to this inanity instantly, waved the surrender flag — I dare not call it white in this context — and apologized. One hopes her platform does not include courage. At least Justin Trudeau, when he felt the wound of being called white and supremacist and terrorist, had the fortitude to ignore the lunacy hurled at him. Ashton capitulated utterly, and rounded off her retreat with the bold declaration that she “would not tolerate racism or hate-speech directed at BLM or any other movement.”
To which the question may innocently be asked, where was the “racism or hate- speech” in the phrase “to the left” and how was it directed at anyone? The whole episode is rank with the conspicuous righteousness Black Lives Matter radiates on every issue, and virtue- signalling from both parties so thick as to be suffocating. Of the two feminists we have studied here, I conclude Justin Trudeau, Liberal — male — to be the sturdier.
Note: I’ve sent a copy of this ( two pages) to Rachel “Scoop” Maddow of MSNBC, a tease- master of the likes not seen ( ahem) since Gypsy Rose Lee.
I WOULD CALL THIS FOOLISH, BUT IT IS TOO FOOLISH...