bob tarantino

"charged, convicted and sentenced"

The months since July 2007 have been among the busiest of my career, so I've been unfortunately unable to devote the kind of time I'd like to addressing various matters (legal, political and otherwise) on this blog.  In particular, the recent brouhahas over human rights commission complaints being filed against Maclean's and against Ezra Levant and the Western Standard engage free expression issues in which I have a particular interest, so it's been frustrating for me to be silent on the matters, but others have been doing a much better job of covering them then I'd be able to.  I have been, let us say, derelict in my duties as a member of the vast rightwing conspiracy.  Happily, others have been addressing the issues with much more eloquence and attention than I'd have been able to muster, so my voice has hardly been missed.  A couple of weeks ago I did find the time to pen an op-ed piece which the good folks at the National Post were generous enough to publish today.  It can be found online here, and on page A16 of the print edition.

The piece doesn't begin to contain much of what I'd like to say about the matters, but I thought it might provide some useful context for at least part of the discussion.  I don't love the title ("The Free-Speech Myth") which was appended to the op-ed, but I wasn't really able to offer any better suggestions.  Of more concern, there was one paragraph which lost a sentence in the editing process, which I'd like to add back in because the nuance is important - the underlined portion was in the original but missing from the final version:

Canadians have long sought to define the proper limits of speech and expression: The government once banned the tracts of Jehovah's Witnesses, and pulled Witness children who refused to salute the flag not just out of school, but out of the home of their parents. When the Doukhobor religious sect staged events of public nudity to give expression to their rejection of secular authority, the government responded by amending the Criminal Code to add a specific crime carrying an increased jail term.  These days, and for many years now, various mayors of Toronto have happily participated in Pride parades which feature enthusiastic displays of public nudity.

I was trying to highlight the juxtaposition in how we respond to public nudity: it was once considered a threat dire enough to warrant parliamentary attention, but our concerns have sufficiently morphed over the years that leading public figures will happily associate themselves with it.  The point, and hopefully the theme which came through in the column, isn't the normative aspect of the behaviour, but that our responses to the behaviour are in a constant state of reassessment and revision.  Much the same with free expression: what is considered acceptable expression has rather radically changed over the decades, and will likely continue to do so.  This is all a political project, and should be treated as such.  As I wrote, "In short, the objects of our piety may have changed, but the inclination to government oversight of speech and expression isn't terribly different".

"regrettably certain"

I'm pro-cop.

Make of that (or of me, in light of that) what you will, but my instinct is always to give the police the benefit of the doubt.  I like to think I give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but when two benefits of the doubt conflict, and one runs in favour of the police, I'll err on their side, until evidence is tendered to the contrary.  I've had a few different preconceived notions challenged in the last few days.

Hvaing watched the long version of the Robert Dziekanski video (that's a six-minute version - there's also an approximately nine-minute version here), I'm not sure how anyone can come to a conclusion other than that the police conduct on there is utterly ... appalling.  That's the most docile "violent" person I think I've ever seen - how it is that what he was doing warranted two Taser shots is beyond me.  What you see on that video is homicide - and now it'll be up to the courts to decide what type of homicide, and the punishment (if any) to be handed down for it.

Those four officers aren't solely to blame, of course.  That the staff at an international airport in Canada were apparently befuddled by a traveller who didn't speak English shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who has travelled extensively, but it is no less absurd for that.  That the security personnel evidently weren't quite up to handling a non-violent, frustrated man who was acting erratically is unlikely to qualify as breaking news either.  Finally, that the bureaucrats have conducted their own review of their own conduct and found ... wait for it ... nothing culpable about it whatsoever, is also about par for the course (my favourite quote is that "airport staff are not responsible for that area" - meaning, as near as I can tell, that there is a no-man's land inside the airport where the writ of the airport does not run - or something).

But I have to admit that, for me, coming a close second to the infuriating manner in which Robert Dziekanski died, is this meme:

Somehow, despite his total lack of knowledge of English, Mr. Dziekanski was cleared to enter Canada at a Border Services inspection point before straying into baggage claim, within the secure area of the airport, and remaining in various places, unable to communicate with anyone, for 10 hours or more.

Catch that?  Let's try it again.

Somehow, despite his total lack of knowledge of English, Mr. Dziekanski was cleared to enter Canada at a Border Services inspection point before straying into baggage claim, within the secure area of the airport, and remaining in various places, unable to communicate with anyone, for 10 hours or more.

People who don't speak English!  In our country!  Crossing the border!

I'm beggared by the sentiment.

That sentence is taken from a National Post editorial.  And that's not even the bad part.  This is:

The attitude that an immigrant to Canada is under no obligation to learn the rudiments of either official language before arriving may even have played a role (a fact that will no doubt feature prominently on overheated talk-radio commentary).

Forgive the lapse, but are you fucking kidding me?  I almost want to let that sentence fester on its own, wilting in its utter repugnance.  That the editors evidently felt the need to attempt to ameliorate its fetidness by sotto voce opining that only the lower kind of "talk radio" rhetoricians would even raise the matter, despite the fact that they just did so themselves, says most of what you need to know about it.  It's like a warped inversion of the Seinfeld "not that there's anything wrong with that" joke, except that this is neither intended to nor actually results in humour.  Presumably the writers realize that even if Dziekanski had been just, say, a tourist, he would likely have ended up in the same position (i.e., dying while staring at the floor, with four RCMP officers pinning him to the ground, presumably trying to figure out why he had just had 50,000 volts of electricity channeled through his body), since tourists also go through the baggage claim area?  Or are we just planning on keeping out everybody who doesn't pass a TOEFL test?  You want to see Niagara Falls/the CN Tower/the Rockies, you gotta tell me a story in English or else you can go the f*** back where you came from!  Is there some new movement afoot that argues for making even temporary visitors to the country pass some sort of fluency test, else they run the risk of being killed and, in an off-hand, kinda-sorta, we're-just-asking-questions, just-a-few-percentage-points-of-responsibility manner partly blamed for it in the pages of one of the country's national newspapers?  If so, is there some kind of membership I can take out to voice my disgust at said movement?

In what conceivable moral order is not speaking the language a justifiable building block in making the case that someone deserves to be killed or at least measurably contributed to their own death?  At least two of the Post writers who contributed to that editorial have taken the opportunity to publicy opine that it constituted an excellent example of editorial writing at its best.  That they failed to notice the gaping fault line that runs through it and which hinges on, I don't know, bizarre adolescent xenophobia, is, at best, distressing.

I hope and trust that Robert Dziekanski's mother will use the mechanisms available to her to obtain compensation from the incompetent government and its agents who contributed to this man's death.  In short, I hope she sues the pants off of everybody and wins.  Regardless of the cold comfort that will provide to her.  And the rest of us.