Time Immortal

…would remind the media that [as far as I know] she herself has not whined about the blatantly biased and sexist coverage of her and her daughters’ situation, and that if they wish to, they should challenge her directly on the issues.

Since she has not herself whined, and especially if she can get across the message that she can take care of herself on this issue to the McCain campaign handlers in a public manner, she can defuse the “you criticised Clinton” line.

Also, if she takes the media head-on about these issues, she can talk about its similarity to Obama’s desire for black males and to the general good outcomes for children, as well as demonstrate that she can be a ’supermom’ as VP and mother of five (and soon to be grandmother), just as the feminists claim women can be. She can show it by describing how, I don’t know, she could do it as governor of a state and adaptions which would need to be made for the more demanding, but executive (like being a governor), VP position.

Interspersed could be the exposition of policies and goals for her administration (her administration? - John who???…) to show she is capable of being VP.

If she does not let her surrogates coddle her too much, especially on issues where her opponents are sounding like their strawman enemies (ie: the 50’s sitcom dad as enemy of feminists), she can put the…ahem…panties..ahem…of her detractors in an even more confusing knot as she shows herself to be the liberated woman they clamour for but fall short of because the lack the…ahem…ovaries…ahem…to fully implement their ’superwoman’ agendas (principally, but not wholly, by their lack of fecundity — are you really a superwoman if you have one child and a career but emasculate your partner, such that he fulfills both his and most of his partner’s responsibilities to the child) in the process? Todd Palin is not emasculated nor is there only one child or even only ‘perfect’ children).

It would be awesome for her campaign (her campaign…John who???) if she could show herself to be the competent, capable, fertile, reforming conservative and classical feminist (sans eugenics) that would make the establishment…ahem…soil..ahem…their pantsuit suitpants.

…and in the course of an investigation, as well! Imagine that!

It’s a strange story of how a Chinese restaurant got hauled before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal by a serial plaintiff on fraudluent charges of sexism. Apparently, said plaintiff was targeting small Asian restaurants (”mom and pop shops”) that posted job advertisments for waitresses (said plaintiff’s complaint, then, was that the restaurants were sexist and biased against him, a male).

And yes, the B.C. HRC went along with the sham, at least for a while.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Apparently, those times are now over — segregation is the hot new trend in enlightened progressive thinking. Who knew?

In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Muhammad.

At Harvard, that’s called progress.

Well put. And thus “progress” comes full circle. In Minneapolis last year, the airport licensing authority, faced with a mainly Muslim crew of cab drivers refusing to carry the blind, persons with six-packs of Bud, slatternly women, etc, proposed instituting two types of taxis with differently colored lights, one of which would indicate the driver was prepared to carry members of identity groups that offend Islam. Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.

At this point, I find myself wondering something. I’d very much love to have children — Grace and I definitely plan to have kids, in fact, and we’re presently trying to decide between two and four young’uns. But I have to wonder: in however many years there are between this moment and the moment we drop our first child off for his/her first day of school, will I still feel comfortable sending my child to a school with Muslim students? Will I be comfortable sending my child to a school where a goodly percentage of the students might be Muslim?

I grow less and less comfortable with the trend I see in society, where supposed progressives and people who supposedly value the equal rights of all persons, back down in the face of peculiar and nonsensical demands from Muslims. What needed to happen at Harvard was that an administrator needed to tell the people lobbying for segregated swimming that segretation ended back in the 1960s or 1970s, and that at any rate Harvard is not in Alabama — female Muslim students are welcome to choose between using the facility according to the existing schedule or not using it. What happened instead should properly be condemned as sexist.

In a strange way, though, stories like this also make me smile. It’s nice to realize that most Christians aren’t paralyzed and neurotic about the concept of co-ed swimming in public facilities. If the followers of the false prophet want to be uptight about it, more’s the better — one day, people will begin to see them for the fools they are.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Anita Perron sends in a response to this article, which I confess was offered as much in the spirit of “tongue in cheek” as it was in the spirit of seriousness. Let me be clear: I consider racism to be a vile thing indeed. But please…an election sign gets vandalized in Mill Woods and we’re calling out the Edmonton Police Service to give this matter their full and undivided attention? When Edmonton leads the nation in gun-related murders (perpetrated, for the most part, by gangs or people affiliated with the drug trade)?

Priorities, people, priorities.

Ms. Perron writes:

I agree with the police who are tying to find the perpetrators of the vandalism to Gill’s sign. Racism is an ugly snake that pokes its head out sometimes, but the rest of the snake is hidden. If there is racism on the sign, you can bet there is a lot more hidden in Edmonton as well as throughout Canada.

I don’t think it is a teenage prank. I think it is an adult amd probably a Conservative who is trying to scare people off from voting for Ms. Gill because she is not white and male. The whole city should be trying to find out who did this.. not only the police.

I’m willing to believe that Racism exists in many corners of Canada, and to be fair I’m actually also willing to give people the right to express racist sentiments, so long as in their expression they do not cross the line into incitement of violence. I’m a freespeecher, so of course I’d say that.

Note, O Reader, that just because I think racists should be allowed to preach their filth does not mean I agree with them, anymore than I agree with Commies or socialists (who I believe also have every right to talk nonsense in public forums). It just means I think they have a right to say what they want to say…so that the rest of us can either choose to listen to them or (more likely) choose to ignore them, or to demonstrate that we do not agree with them or their bigotry in some manner which a) is legal and b) does not interfere with their right to free speech.

Of course, there are many forms of bigotry, and let us pause in the discussion for just a moment to note the bigotry in which Ms. Perron herself engages. She assumes the perpetrator to be “a Conservative”. Notice the capital ‘C’, O Reader: Ms. Perron assumes that the vandals are registered members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta. Because clearly, only a Conservative party member would ever dare to deface a Liberal election sign.

She also expresses her conviction that the motive for the vandalism was because Aman Gill is “not white and male.” In other words, she assumes that the perpetrator was a white, male member of the Progressive Conservative party who acted out of racism and sexism.

Ms. Perron’s bigotry, then, is the assumption that members of the Conservative party are a) sexist and b) racist by definition. I don’t point this out, incidentally, to excuse what was done to Aman Gill’s election sign — my intent is simply to remark on the fact that Ms. Perron is every bit as much a bigot as the men she decries.

The fact of the matter is, there are many female MLAs. There are many MLAs who are members of ethnic minorities. Surprisingly, some of them are even members of the Conservative party! These people include Cindy Ady, Pearl Calahasen (the first Métis woman elected to public office in Alberta), Gary Mar, Hung Pham, Shiraz Shariff, and Janis Tarchuk. There are many female members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta, and many members thereof who are from ethnic minorities. It’s a…what’s the word?…diverse group. Yes, it’s probably mostly comprised of whites…but then, that would make it representative of the population of Alberta, wouldn’t it? And yes, it may well comprise more men than women (certainly this is true when one looks at elected MLAs; I don’t have membership data for the party as a whole), but this is not a fault of sexism — it’s just a reflection of the fact that fewer women than men feel moved to enter the realm of politics as a career.

I think, then, that the claim that this vandalism against Ms. Gill was motivated by racism and/or sexism within the Conservative party of Alberta is specious at best, and outright false more likely.

It’s just much more likely that this act of vandalism was indeed a teenage prank — heck, for all we know, the perpetrators weren’t even white (they may not even have been male, but I think that might be assuming too much). This is Mill Woods overall, which in many cases has become a community of (and for) ethnic minorities in Edmonton.

But that’s not the point either. The point is that, while the racism is detestable, in the end it’s just the word “Paki” spray-painted on an election sign. There’s no incitement to violence here, and no permanent damage done. If anything, Ms. Gill will benefit from this incident — she’s certainly not going to hurt for the publicity it has given her, and it might even cause a few voters to shift their support to her out of sympathy or solidarity.

Meanwhile (and again, I cannot stress enough that this is Mill Woods, a.k.a. Mill Hood), I’m sure that were the police to go not five blocks in any direction from where this vandalism occurred, they’d find a drug pusher or a pimp. Okay, I’ll be charitable — ten blocks. Point is, there’s a lot of “hard” crime that EPS could be dealing with; compared to any example thereof, this sole act of vandalism is a non-starter.

The “whole city” shouldn’t be trying to find out who did this. The “whole city” should be trying to banish every drug pusher and pimp from within the Greater Edmonton Area, clamouring for the incarceration (and, if possible, deportation) of those men and women whose chosen trade has turned this city into a country-wide leader in the category of violent death.