Godspeed to CBC'S new host Massa
Hijab-wearing anchor target of unwarranted attacks
Last week, a new prime time show premièred on CBC'S News Network. Canada Tonight is hosted by Ginella Massa. Only a few days in and she's already steering the ship like a seasoned captain. I witnessed her prowess first-hand, as I was a guest on the show, discussing American insurgence, a new kind of vice-president and Canadian-american actress Kim Cattrall going rogue.
The show airs nationwide. In various opinion pieces in Quebec media, it has already given way to not particularly clever dog-whistling. Massa, you see, wears a hijab. It's a first for an anchor on Canadian television and a sign that the medium, at its best, can be a reflection of the country's diversity. But never mind all that. Going after a woman and her personal beliefs and a network that respects them will get you more clicks on the internet. Woof.
If I were to believe what her critics wrote, I'd conclude that Massa — because of her hijab — cannot be objective about a series of news topics and that, furthermore, her view is clouded because she believes the God she prays to is better than mine and that of her other non-muslim guests. That intellectual shortcut is complete malarkey, and I say that as a practising Catholic — just like Joe Biden, only the second Catholic elected president in the history of the United States. If he can do his job while being unapologetically a man of faith, Massa can certainly do hers.
We should all be outraged by injustice — religious, racial or otherwise, and whether it affects you directly or not.
As a churchgoing person, I don't see the Bible as an Ikea-like catalogue of instructions to life. I believe, for instance, in a woman's obvious right to choose and to do what she wants with her own body. I also, for example, believe and support a person's right to love whomever they damn please. I understand where the move away from religion by many Quebecers comes from, and why it came to be. But does that rupture make us incapable of comprehending that religion is not synonymous with overzealousness?
For decades, I've been wearing a red string bracelet on my left wrist, because I love its symbolism in various religions that are not mine. I relate to the principle of Ramadan as it resembles that of Lent, which I, along with many of the world's more than one billion Catholics, observe every year. My copy of the Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness has so many passages highlighted in yellow that it looks like the textbook of a student about to write an exam. I know my religion doesn't supersede any other. I believe one's faith can be a hybrid of many beliefs borrowed from various religions, because religions have commonalities.
Last week's vandalism at the Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in Westmount made me scared and livid. Not only because it's a place I like and have been to many times, but also because attacking one religion is an assault on all of them.
I don't think my God is better than the one you believe in. And certainly, I'm not more virtuous than those who believe in no God at all. One of the great lessons from 2020 is that we should all be outraged by injustice — religious, racial or otherwise, and whether it affects you directly or not — because it's only as a collectivity that we can eradicate it.
I feel the same about the attacks against Massa and those against the synagogue. It's not a Muslim thing or a Jewish matter. These gratuitous concerted efforts to diminish a person and a place of worship because of beliefs are firstclass tickets to Intoleranceville. They should be denounced in unison, regardless of the type of pulpit we get our sermons from, because that destination is not one we should want to live in.