Unanswered Questions About Canada’s Secret Mass Surveillance State

1. How long has the Canadian government and law enforcement agencies been secretly seeking Canadians’ private data in general?

2. How long has the government and law enforcement agencies been secretly requesting Canadians’ private data specifically from Canadian telecoms?

3. Who are they targeting and why?

4. Does the government and law enforcement have a secret arrangement with Canadian telecoms that permits the sharing of Canadians’ private data without their knowledge?

5. Do the telecoms get financially compensated for such requests?

6. Why were there more than a million requests for private data in 2011?

7. Has that number gone up since then?

8. How many Canadians overall have been targeted for their private data?

9. How many foreigners living in Canada overall have been targeted for their private data?

10. Does Prime Minister Stephen Harper authorize any or all of these requests?  If not, who is responsible?

11. Is the government and law enforcement agencies requesting private data of Harper’s opponents be they NDP or Liberal politicians, activists or journalists?

12. How many Ottawa officials were aware of these secret requests?

13. How many private data requests led to arrests, trials and convictions?

14. Why weren’t Canadians informed of these requests?

15. How many warrants have been issued for these private data requests and how many have been warrantless?

16. If the government and law enforcement were only requesting “names and addresses” from Bell Canada, why didn’t they just search for this publicly available information online or through a phone book?

17. Besides Bell Canada, who are the other eight telecoms that have received these requests?

18. How many have been refused by any or all of these telecoms?

19. Are the telecoms not saying much because they’ve been muzzled by secret Canadian federal law?

20. What is the actual private data being requested?

21. Is it metadata?  Email addresses and messages?  Phone calls?  Web chats?  Cam chats?  Social media postings?  Medical files?  Licenses?  Voting information?  Other private information?

22. What happens to this data once it’s in the hands of the government and/or law enforcement?

23. Is it being collected and stored in a secret information database?

24. If it is indeed being collected, how long is it in storage?

25. Who has access to this requested private data?

26. Has any of this private data, if retained, been destroyed?

27. Has any of this private data been shared with the NSA or any other intelligence agency outside Canada?

28. Does the government and law enforcement request Canadians’ private information through Canadian Internet companies?

29. How many privacy data requests are part of secret “terrorism” investigations?

30. Where are the whistleblowers?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
11:39 p.m.

UPDATE:  A possible answer to number 28.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, May 8, 2014
6:49 p.m.

A Life Of Deprivation

I keep making the same mistake
Letting refusal be my guide
A life of deprivation
Setting my pleasure aside

I feel naked without my anger
Blind without intensity
A life of infuriation
Mind consumed with density

The hatred seeps through
It’s getting harder to deny
Resentment rises
In the blink of an eye

Shielded by paranoia
Relentless in its pursuit
A master of persuasion
Defenseless and mute

Pushing through the terror
An impossible slog
Intense concentration
Won’t alleviate this fog

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, April 26, 2014
6:57 p.m.

Movie 43

What’s more offensive?  A movie filled with bad jokes about incest, racism, sexism, bodily fluids and homosexuality?  Or the dozens of famous performers who agreed to be filmed saying those bad jokes out loud willingly for scale?

After suffering through Movie 43, I can’t decide.  Nevertheless, this laughless debacle is a strong candidate for Worst Movie Of All Time.  If you value your life, you’ll avoid this cinematic monstrosity at all costs.

Dennis Quaid plays a desperately psychotic screenwriter who manages to convince a wimpy movie executive (Greg Kinnear) to hear his pitch for a new movie.  With a straight face, he claims it will be smart and witty and have heart.  Like The Help.

But here’s the thing.  He doesn’t pitch a proper feature.  He pitches a series of bizarre shorts instead.  And they’re all terrible.

In the first one, Kate Winslet is fixed up with an overachieving New Yorker (Hugh Jackman) for a dinner date.  He’s on the cover of a local magazine.  The headline asks why is he still single.  It turns out he has a ball sack attached to his neck.  Mystery solved.

At the restaurant, however, Winslet appears to be the only one who notices his deformity.  She gingerly tries to find out what the deal is but Jackman always thinks she’s talking about something else.  She should’ve asked why they agreed to do this humiliating scene together.

If this sight gag sounds familiar, that’s because it was originally used in one of the Men In Black movies.  (Remember the Ballchinia alien?  Now that was funny.)  But Movie 43 isn’t interested in making you laugh.  Its real agenda is testing your endurance for gross stupidity.

And so, for many painful minutes, there are several shots of poor Jackman with that fake ball sack on his neck as poor Winslet tries not to dwell on it and vomit.

Then, mercifully and without resolution, it’s on to the next pitch from Quaid.  A couple (Liev Schreiber & Naomi Watts) entertains another couple (Julie Ann Emery & Alex Cranmer) who just moved into their neighbourhood.  We learn that Schreiber & Watts home school their teenage son Kevin (Jeremy Allen White) with a disturbing twist.  They live to humiliate him at every possible moment.

The idea is to simulate a real high school experience for him straight out of Welcome To The Dollhouse.  Kevin gets bad marks, hazed, bullied and sexually humiliated on a daily basis by both his parents.  How bad does it get?  He gets deflowered by his own mother.

Next pitch.  Chris Pratt from Parks & Recreation is about to propose to his girlfriend of 16 months (Anna Faris from Scary Movie) when she suggests he defecate on her.

And that’s when Greg Kinnear cries uncle.  He tries to throw Quaid out of his office but this nutjob has a gun and a grenade.  Kinnear pretends to not have the power to greenlight a movie.  Quaid is undeterred.  So Kinnear proposes they ask his boss (rapper Common, if you can believe it) for permission.  Common wonders why he’s interrupting his meeting with Seth MacFarlane.  (MacFarlane’s pitch is no better than anything Quaid proposes, by the way.)  He also wonders why Kinnear can’t just be a man and say yes to Quaid.  Then, he inexplicably announces that he had sex with his wife.

Suddenly tired of being emasculated, Kinnear entertains more of Quaid’s dopey ideas – the creepy couple in the grocery store;  the young girl who freaks out her makeout partner, her brother, their dad and her dad by having her first period at an inopportune moment; a pervy Batman ruining Robin’s speed dates; a kidnapped, tortured leprechaun; Halle Berry and Stephen Merchant (HBO’s Hello Ladies) trying to one-up each other with boring truths and obnoxious dares during a blind date – while plotting his revenge.

Quaid also suggests commercials in between these shorts:  a Tampax ad involving models and a ravenous shark; teary-eyed little kids hiding in ATMs, vending machines and photocopiers; the dangerous iBabe.

At no point do any of these segments produce a genuinely inspired laugh.  Not one.  You just sit there incredulous that all this major talent (some of whom have won Oscars) were perfectly ok subjecting themselves to such inanity.  Then you remember this is Hollywood where embarrassing actors is a treasured pastime.

The last two segments – a basketball coach (Terrance Howard) telling his insecure team they’ll beat the White Knights purely because they’re all black (it’s set in 1959); a perverted cartoon cat’s hate-filled jealousy towards his owner’s girlfriend – are just as gruesome.  (Another segment, one involving a guy fucking dead bodies, was wisely excised.  Even hacks have their standards.)

If there’s one recurring theme that’s more tired than the rest (and there are plenty to choose from), it’s the anti-gay material.  In the real world we’re finally starting to appreciate and accept the LGBT community for who they really are:  good and decent folk who just happen to be attracted to their own sex.  They are not a threat in any shape or form to us easily frightened, often misguided heteros.

And yet in this movie, man-on-man blowjob jokes, particularly in the context of coercion and humiliation, are so unbearably plentiful even a straight guy like me is offended.  (Don’t get me started on Stephen Merchant’s unfortunate tattoo.)

The fact that certain characters in this movie complain about some of these awful jokes without offering any biting satirical counterpoints of their own greatly increases your burgeoning depression.

There’s nothing more unpleasant than a humourless comedy.  Movie 43 might be the worst one ever made.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, April 20, 2014
2:41 p.m.

The Shocking, Sudden Death Of The Ultimate Warrior

It had been almost 18 years since he last appeared on Monday Night Raw.  But there he was on the most recent edition of the program, his famous entrance music blasting away as he walked gingerly to the ring, greeting fans at ringside.  Once inside the squared circle, for old time’s sake, he shook the ropes.

The power was gone.  But it was great seeing him again.

Then, he cut a promo.  In the middle of it he put on a mask that resembled his famous war paint.  Suddenly, there was renewed intensity in his voice, something we hadn’t heard from him in a WWE ring in almost 20 years.

He wasn’t selling a feud or a pay-per-view.  He didn’t even pitch his new DVD.  He was only there for one reason:  to thank the fans for making him a legend in the business and for not forgetting him.  He even did his famous growl a couple of times (which always sounded like he was clearing his sinuses).

Then, he tried shaking the top rope again.  (The same result.  Still no power.)

Then, he climbed out of the ring, looking just as weak as he did upon entering it but beaming, nonetheless.  After walking back up the ramp, this grey-haired man was gone.

Little did anyone know, it would be the last time he would ever be seen on live TV.

Just a little while ago, Triple H broke the news.  The Ultimate Warrior is dead.

Jim Hellwig, the eccentric, polarizing conservative who played him, is no more.

Just like that.  Wow.

Before he entered the WWF in 1987, the former bodybuilder briefly worked for the short-lived UWF (Universal Wrestling Federation) where he was teamed with another ex-bodybuilder named Steve Borden.  (They actually trained together.)  First they were The Freedom Fighters.  Hellwig was Justice and Borden was Flash.  Then they were The Blade Runners (one of the many Road Warrior knock-offs of the time).  Warrior was Rock, Borden was Sting (yes, that Sting).  Dutch Mandell (Zeb Colter in today’s WWE) was their manager.

Apparently, Rock and Sting didn’t get along, which might explain why the team split very quickly.

Rock then arrived in World Class Championship Wrestling (the Von Erich territory in Texas with ties to the NWA) and was briefly repackaged as The Dingo Warrior.  Gary Hart managed him.  When he finally made the jump to the WWF, he grew out his hair, lost the moustache and would ultimately drop Dingo from his name-o.  (Before he debuted on TV, he was still using it at live house shows.)  He kept the make-up and the shoelaces tied around his arms, however.

Warrior was never going to be a stellar mat technician like a Bret Hart.  Brute strength and agility were all he needed to get over as a monster babyface.  And he was never going to be a great talker.  Incoherence mixed with over-the-top intensity made him the laughingstock of his peers but unintentionally added to his mystique.  (Remember, he was billed as being from Parts Unknown, and often looked to the heavens for strength and support.  He wasn’t supposed to be calm and rational.)

I only had the privilege of seeing the man wrestle twice in person, both times at Hamilton’s then-named Copps Coliseum.  He did not disappoint.  He squashed Steve Lombardi in a quick match in late December 1987 and was one of the participants in the Royal Rumble match at the first annual supercard held the following January.  (Hacksaw Jim Duggan won.)

He was just as fired up and frenetic as he appeared on TV.  While he has had his many critics, there was no mistaking his connection with the fans.  We embraced him wholeheartedly because his energy was just too contagious.  He was my last Halloween costume.  (I had his orange T-shirt.)

During a period where getting a title push was a really big deal, Warrior got three in the WWF.  He was a two-time InterContinental Champion as well as World Champion.  I’ll never forget watching SummerSlam 88 on closed circuit TV at Copps wondering who would replace the “injured” Brutus Beefcake in his IC title match with The Honky Tonk Man.

As soon as that famous music hit, we all knew.  In less than a minute, Warrior squashed Honky to win the strap.  Poor Honky didn’t even have time to climb out of his sparkly red jumpsuit.

Warrior got the push reportedly because he was disgruntled and threatening to leave the company if he wasn’t given a title run.  Beefcake, who got taken out of the match in the build-up to the show thanks to an attack by Outlaw Ron Bass, was actually supposed to win that night after working a program with Honky for almost a year.  He would never get a second chance.

It ended up working out in the end because Warrior would work an awesome program with Ravishing Rick Rude.  After Rude attacked him during their 1989 Royal Rumble posedown (which Warrior was winning), an IC title match was booked for WrestleMania V.  Thanks to Bobby Heenan’s quick thinking, Rude stole the title.  After coming up short in rematches on TV and house shows, Warrior would regain the title in their much superior SummerSlam 89 encounter, which might be the best match he ever wrestled.  (At the 1990 SummerSlam, they had a decent cage match for the world title.  Warrior won that one, too.)

After snagging back the InterContinental Championship, it was on to WWF Champion Hulk Hogan.  At the 1990 Royal Rumble, after both of them cleared everybody else out of the ring, the two champions stared each other down, much to the crowd’s delight.  It was a test to see if the crowd was up for a possible one-on-one match between the two.  Needless to say, it got everyone talking.

Three months later at WrestleMania VI, The Ultimate Challenge was on.  Both titles were on the line.  It was the first WrestleMania I wouldn’t see live (I would have to wait for the video) and I was convinced that Hogan would win.  In fact, he was my preference.  All my friends picked Warrior which led to passionate arguments.

They were right.  Hogan didn’t stand to gain anything from winning a mid-card title but Warrior stood to gain everything from the WWF Championship.  Sure enough, at the end of the match Hogan missed his patented leg drop and Warrior splashed him for the win.  (Hogan wanted some time off, reportedly.)

Because the WWF had two separate live show tours (one headlined by its world champion, the other featuring its IC titleholder in main events), Warrior had to vacate his secondary strap which I still think was stupid.  Nevertheless, the match with Hogan was both influential and suspenseful.  If I had seen it live, I would’ve been crushed, even more so than I was when I read about it on April 2.

I’m not sure how long Warrior’s world title reign was supposed to last but I was always amused by how it actually ended.  It was clear that the WWF wanted Sgt. Slaughter (during his Iraqi sympathizer period which, to this day, doesn’t make any sense) to go into WrestleMania VII with the belt so he could pass it on to Hogan for his third reign.

So Slaughter got the shot against Warrior at the ’91 Royal Rumble.  In the build-up to the match, both Macho King Randy Savage and Sensational Queen Sherri failed to convince the WWF Champion to put the title on the line against the former champion.  So, during the Rumble match with Slaughter, they did everything in their power to cost Warrior the championship.  Their antics were hilarious both then and now.

Thoroughly pissed off, Warrior challenged Savage to a retirement match at WrestleMania VII.  It was the only time I ever remembered him not running like a lunatic to the ring.

It was a spectacular encounter (far more engrossing than Hogan/Slaughter which remains one of the worst WM main events ever) filled with some memorable moments like Savage delivering five consecutive flying elbow drops and still not getting the victory.  After Warrior caught his second wind, The Macho King was temporarily retired.  (He would be reinstated later that summer to feud with Jake Roberts.)

More than a year later at the 1992 SummerSlam, Savage, now once again the WWF Champion, defended the title against his future tag team partner (they would be collectively known as The Ultimate Maniacs; Jesse Ventura often referred to Warrior by the singular version of that name).  Both were babyfaces at the time who also had to contend with the outside interference of Mr. Perfect and Ric Flair.  The original plan was for Warrior to align with the heels and become champion again but reportedly, he absolutely refused.  So, instead of paying off a storyline where one of the men in this match would become a villain (who would “sell out”?), there was a chaotic finish where the heels attacked Savage and Warrior.  Regardless, I still enjoyed it.

It would be the last memorable match in the Warrior’s career.  Although he would briefly return in 1996 (he squashed Triple H at WrestleMania 12) and even had a short run with WCW in 1998 (where he would put over Hulk Hogan in a belated, less-respected rematch), he was already past his prime.  He would officially retire in 1999 but did work an indie match with Orlando Jordan (JBL’s former crony) in 2008.

Before his recent reconciliation with Vince McMahon and the WWE (he had just been inducted into their Hall Of Fame on Saturday), Warrior was a longtime punching bag for various former colleagues like Ted DiBiase and Jake The Snake Roberts.  In 2005, he was reportedly buried on The Self-Destruction Of The Ultimate Warrior, a single-disc DVD that features relentless mocking and imitations of his crazy promos by legends like Ric Flair and Christian, among other notable complaints.

As he noted in his Hall of Fame speech, he was deeply hurt by the comments.  But thanks to making peace, the new three-disc DVD, Ultimate Warrior:  The Ultimate Collection, is now available.  It features a brand new interview with the man himself.

The coincidentally timed release of it will give much-needed solace to his many fans including famous ones like CM Punk (who Warrior had openly praised on more than one occasion) and Seth Rollins of The Shield who credits him for inspiring his interest in being a pro wrestler in the first place.

The legacy of The Ultimate Warrior is messy.  He was tough to get along with backstage.  Legends like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels dismiss him as a limited muscleman who lacked their considerable technical skills.  He could be clumsy in the ring.  (Not every Gorilla Press Slam went smoothly.)  He wasn’t a great talker.  He could be demanding.  And his political views were not exactly mainstream.

But by God, he was fun to watch.  And he had a killer theme song that’s held up remarkably well.

Seeing him tangle with the likes of Rude, Savage and Hogan in key, high profile matches at the height of my WWF fandom are among my most enduring memories as a young wrestling fan.  What he lacked in technique, he made up for in intensity.  He rarely made sense when he talked but I didn’t care.  His madness was funny, even if that wasn’t the intent.  I was a Warrior fan through and through (except when he fought Hogan) and truth be told, I still am.

If there’s any solace to be had from this sudden, shocking, devastating news (he leaves behind a second wife and two daughters), it’s that Warrior (his legal name since 1993) didn’t die bitter.  Whatever animosity existed between himself and various colleagues has now been extinguished.  Wrestlers on Twitter have nothing but kind things to say about him.  His final experience with the company this past weekend was uniformly positive.  (He even gamely posed for photos with fans the day he died.)

We don’t always get the ending we want in life.  There’s always that sense of unfinished business.  But 54-year-old Warrior was able to do what so many in the business never get a chance to experience.

He got a final victory lap.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
3:43 a.m.

UPDATE:  Warrior died of a massive heart attack.  According to those who saw him during WrestleMania weekend, he didn’t look well.  His widow, Dana, has issued a public statement thanking everyone for their support.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, April 17, 2014
2:10 a.m.

How The Real Suey Park Is Just As Ignorant As The Fake Stephen Colbert

It’s so easy to be ignorant.  All you have to do is act without reason or compassion.

Last week, Suey Park did just that.

The 23-year-old Korean-American activist ordered her more than 20000 Twitter followers to make her hashtag – #CancelColbert – a trending topic by including it in their own tweets.  As a result, the campaign attracted massive online media attention.  (Salon.com posted no less than seven articles about it on their site alone.)

Now why did Park want to cancel The Colbert Report?  Because of this joke posted on the show’s official Twitter account.  (Both were eventually deleted.)

She found it offensive, arguing that fighting racism with more racism is still racism.  (The joke was taken from a segment mocking Washington Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder and his insultingly named charity, The Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation.  Native American groups have been trying unsuccessfully to convince him to change the name of the team.  His response has been to half-heartedly pander to them in the most insensitive manner imaginable.)

First of all, who made her the spokesman of what is and isn’t acceptable satire?  Second of all, if only her simple logic were so persuasive.

Throughout the last several decades, numerous comedians and actors have used the language of racists in order to discredit and make fun of their dangerously false ideologies.  It’s always a risky technique.  If your pointed barbs don’t get laughs, the audience can easily turn on you.  But when done effectively, they’re laughing and thinking simultaneously.  Comedic satire is always at its best when it clicks on multiple levels.  It’s not meant to be taken literally, obviously.  Ms. Park knows that despite struggling mightily to be successfully satirical herself.  (Choosing “Angry Asian Woman” as your Twitter name and then proceeding to be just that in interview after interview is clearly missing the point.)

Consider All In The Family.  Its lead character was Archie Bunker who regularly insulted his Polish-American son-in-law Michael by calling him a “dumb Polack” even though he was a thoughtful Liberal.  Archie made numerous remarks about various ethnicities that were often offensive (his reference to Latinos and African-Americans as “spics and spades” in the pilot, for instance).  But because the character was inarticulate and clueless (he frequently misused words and employed distorted reasoning without any self-awareness), and his terminal grumpiness (he was rarely kind to his long-suffering wife Edith), he was a hilarious self-parody, an artificial, uninformed object of deserved derision.  Not unlike Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Also consider stand-ups like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Sarah Silverman, Dave Chappelle, Patton Oswalt and Chris Rock who’ve often used racially charged language to make broader points in their own comedic social commentaries.  Or how about Nigger Hatin’ Hat, a recurring song parody heard on The Howard Stern Show which knocks former rival Don Imus’ awful treatment of black people?  Or Throw The Jew Down The Well, the song Jewish-British performance artist Sasha Baron Cohen convinced unsuspecting white Americans in a bar to sing along with as Borat on his old Da Ali G Show?

Stephen Colbert is part of this rich anti-racist comic tradition.  The Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, as Ms. Park also knows, is the satirical version, a know-nothing conservative pundit specifically designed to emulate the closed-minded, anti-science paranoia of Fox News Channel types like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and longtime radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh.  He’s a carefully designed buffoon meant to savagely eviscerate all of their one-dimensional perspectives while being blissfully unaware that he’s even doing so in the first place.

Since the show’s inception in 2005, the fake Colbert has dove headfirst into race.  (The Ching Chong Ding Dong schtick that got him in trouble with Ms. Park and company was one of the first gags he did.  It was resurrected in 2011 when Limbaugh foolishly attempted a fake Chinese accent during his radio show while describing the then-Chinese leader Hu Jintao.)  It’s one of many complex subjects he and his writing staff have been fearlessly mining for material four days a week for almost a decade to much acclaim and popularity.

So when Ms. Park and her followers decided to take him on for one anti-racist joke they didn’t care for (out of probably many more they could’ve chosen from), it was a clear mismatch right from the start.  When Colbert dedicated an entire show to the controversy, he effectively killed off any momentum the misguided campaign had left at that point by cleverly and humourously mixing his real thoughts on Park herself (he wisely told her jerkiest critics to stop harassing and threatening her on Twitter and to let her speak her mind) with the fake Colbert’s obliviousness on his own undetected bigotry (“white American male is neutral”).

He also slyly noted that Michelle Malkin, the frequent Fox News contributor who once wrote a book defending the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War 2 (she is Filipino, by the way), has enthusiastically supported #CancelColbert, a rather uncomfortable fact Park’s supporters haven’t seemed too eager to mention.  Park herself has been silent on the subject.

Shortly after Colbert’s rebuttal, Park was interviewed by Salon.com.  Despite what the increasingly out-of-touch Bob Somerby over at The Daily Howler would love to believe, the young activist has no one to blame but herself for her pitiful performance.  That said, even he couldn’t deny the “rambling” nature of her often contradictory, nonsensical comments.

Late last year when Park’s #NotYourAsianSidekick Twitter campaign started to catch fire she told one interviewer how surprised she was that it ever became popular at all.  I suspect she is even more surprised by all the attention #CancelColbert received this year.  As a result, because she now claims she didn’t actually want the show to be cancelled (she says she’s a fan but it doesn’t sound like she’s a regular viewer), when the media asked her what the point of it all was, she hasn’t done a very good job of fully explaining her true motives.

If she didn’t want The Colbert Report yanked off the air, what did she want exactly?  Beyond her basic I-don’t-like-it-when-white-liberals-use-racist-language-to-knock-racism talking point, she won’t say.  In fact, at least two interviewers have been scolded for even trying to get more answers out of her, most notably Huffington Post Live’s Jeff Zepps.  (She told him it was a “loaded question” when he asked her why she singled out Colbert.)

In the Salon interview, she told Prachi Gupta that she was more interested in the “reaction and conversation” she “was trying to create” rather than having her (and us, for that matter) fully “understand my context” which doesn’t make any sense.  When someone launches a public campaign to cancel a TV show it’s clear they’re more interested in censorship than actual dialogue.  The fact that she couldn’t even be bothered to watch Colbert’s full-show response is very telling, as well.

Indeed, when it comes to this business of having a conversation, Ms. Park would prefer it to be completely one-sided.  Anyone who disagrees with her is part of the problem whether it’s those unnamed, evil “white liberals” she frequently rails against or fellow Asian Americans who either thought the joke was funny (in and/or out of context) or were also offended but disagreed with her cancellation campaign.  To her, the latter are those unacceptable “good Asians” who act more like “sidekicks” to us dreaded Caucasians rather than independent thinkers like her.  So, by that rather rigid logic, the only acceptable Asian-Americans to her are those who are always in line with stunts like this?  She’d make a hell of a dictator.

There’s a troubling, fascistic narcissism heavily sautéed with growing defensiveness to her public statements and actions that make you wonder how she attracts so many willing supporters who, for now, are standing by her rampant foolishness.  It’s clear that the sheer volume of attention the #CancelColbert campaign received overwhelmed her so much she has thus far been unable to articulate to a satisfying degree why it really matters and where we go from here.  (Or maybe she just doesn’t care.)

Nor is she interested in persuasion.  Her blatant hostility to white liberals in general (yet curiously, not white conservatives) and her startling inability to accept that not all Asian-Americans think exactly like her is so unbelievably hypocritical, not to mention deeply insulting, one wonders why she doesn’t immediately recognize this bogus double standard.  Is she as clueless about her own prejudices as the fake Stephen Colbert is about his own?  The evidence isn’t comforting.

On her Twitter account, she recently acknowledged the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., one of the greatest civil rights leaders in American history.  While King’s primary goal was to be a big, strong voice for Black Americans and to help improve & secure their rights and freedoms in a country that has a long history of denying them & their humanity, he didn’t do so at the expense of White America who he viewed as allies, not enemies.  The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, one of the most important pieces of domestic legislation ever passed, would not have happened without the support of hundreds of Caucasian Representatives and Senators, both Republican and Democrat.

But when Park was asked by Salon, “What is the best way to work with white people, to get them on our side?”, regarding her own causes, she responded, “I don’t want them on our side.”

Martin Luther King gave his life to bring the races together.  The divisive Suey Park would rather piss on that proud legacy.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, April 5, 2014
3:13 a.m.

Humourless Gesture

I raised my voice at an opportune time
By countering irony with some of my own
I whipped up a frenzy with a single thought
Yet never questioned my foolish compulsion

I angered the masses with a humourless gesture
Dismissed their outrage as proof of justification
Never once considering the strong possibility
That his satirical view isn’t prejudiced at all

I hijacked a movement that others began
Swallowing their protest with one of my own
Lost in the slander of an offensive name
Was my willful ignorance of a single joke

I never watched the sketch in question
I only cared about raising a fuss
And what did I get for my outspokenness?
Eternal grief and little progression

I wasn’t interested in a conversation
I refuse to answer legitimate questions
My haphazard stunt matters more than reason
So why don’t I get any respect?

I forgot an important principle
Only fight humour with some of your own
But I put no thought into my bogus campaign
Now even allies are deeply annoyed

There’s a noble purpose in being a pest
It can rightly threaten the status quo
Organized persuasion is a noble tactic
But only when you know all of the facts

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
4:19 p.m.