Trudeau’s ‘peoplekind’ comment was hardly a joke
On a good day, it’s difficult to take Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seriously. The man — or should I say, the person — has a long track record of saying really stupid and embarrassing things.
Trudeau’s best excuse for his habit of sticking his foot in his mouth is to later say he wasn’t being serious. He simply shrugs it off and insists he was telling a “bad joke.”
Trudeau was just kidding, for instance, when he said he admired China’s “basic dictatorship.” Sure, someone posed a serious question — what country do you admire most? — and it appeared like Trudeau was sincerely responding. But given how stupid his answer was, he must have been kidding, right?
Likewise, Trudeau was only joking when he said that Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Crimea because he was mad that the Russian hockey team lost during the 2014 Winter Olympics.
When Trudeau doesn’t have a thoughtful comment or a deeper understanding of an important issue, he is left cracking jokes. And bad ones at that.
Last week, once again, Trudeau is blaming a firestorm of negative publicity on a misunderstood joke.
You see, when Trudeau interrupted a female student in Edmonton and told her to say “peoplekind” rather than “mankind,” it was just a “dumb joke.”
It was dumb, all right. But Trudeau wasn’t joking. The comment reveals the prime minister’s eagerness to signal virtue when it comes to feminism and political correctness, while adhering to a far-left ideology. Trudeau is part of the crowd that seeks to dismantle the English language and change the meaning of words to advance a rigid dogma.
“We like to say peoplekind, not necessarily mankind, because it’s more inclusive,” said Trudeau.
When Trudeau says “we” he is referring to his philosophical bedfellows, including radical feminists, leftist ideologues and the perpetually offended mob of social justice warriors.
Trudeau does his best to put a friendly face on an extreme ideology, but there are real consequences to this type of identity politics seeping its way into our culture and government.
Trudeau’s “bad joke” on language comes just days after his Liberal Party passed a bill to change the lyrics of our national anthem.
According to the politically correct zealots inside the Liberal Party of Canada, the lyrics “in all thy sons command” are sexist and exclude women. And so, the Liberals rammed through a bill to change these lyrics to the unpoetic, but feminist-approved, “in all of us command.”
Is that just a bad joke too? Maybe we should just sing, “in all peoplekind command.”
The knee-jerk reaction to change the lyrics of O Canada is driven by the same impulse that led Trudeau to invent a new word while scolding a young woman for the crime of wrong-speak.
The “peoplekind” comment went viral across the English-speaking world because it’s an absurd example of the logical next steps for those pushing the dogma of political correctness. There will always be another offensive word to rid from our vocabulary, and another attack on freedom of speech in the name of political correctness.
Trudeau can try to shrug it off as just another stupid joke. But the truth is far more revealing.
When Trudeau accidentally lets his guard down and goes off script, we get a glimpse of the man, err, the person, in charge of running our government: a smug feminist with a dangerous agenda.
Candice Malcolm is an author and a columnist with the Toronto Sun and Postmedia. This first appeared in the Toronto Sun.