Actual News is Better than Satire

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Mar 2018

Several weeks ago, Spectator editorial cartoonist Graeme MacKay satarized a new policy in which Services Canada will address people by their preferred pronoun.  This new policy is in deference to delicate transgendered sensibilities and the draconian progressivism of Justin Trudeau.  Well, the Spectator must have been inundated with criticism, and so the editorial page had an opinion piece critical of Mr. MacKay (assuming that he does, in fact, go my 'Mr.') and several letters were published also condemning him.

In the same edition was a news article reporting on Justin Trudeau's latest apology to Aboriginals, or Indigenous, or Indians, or whatever noun they go by at the moment.  Together, it seemed, that the Spectator was republishing articles from The Onion.

The line between news and satire can get pretty thin at times.

On Tuesday alone, the Spectator ran a couple of stories that could pass for satire.  The first was headlined, “Cartoon mocked LGBTQI2S+ struggles,” while the other was “PM apologizes for Tsilhqot’in chiefs hanged in 1864 ‘Chilcotin War’”

Certainly there is struggle merely in articulating LGBTQI2S+, whatever that is.  I get LGBT, but when the inclusiveness of the day got so bad Mark Steyn invented LGBTQWERTY as a term of satire.  Steyn’s satire is not materially different from the seriously offered concatenation of random keyboard characters of the headline.

Delving deeper into the story, we read of “transgender, genderqueer, gender nonconforming, or non-binary,” which surely must be a mockery of something.  And that being “outed as your former gender or name can be very dangerous…” as “’Dead Naming’ someone who has transitioned invalidates their current identity and can put them at risk.”  I don’t know what ‘dead naming’ is, but being transitioned must be a pretty unstable state of affairs since it can be dangerously invalidated upon the word of a second party.

Then we get to another stop on the Justin Trudeau apology tour.  Mr. Trudeau has made a habit of apologizing for the misdeeds of other people.  By now, you would think people would be on to this virtue signaling.  On the cheap, Trudeau gains the accolades of doing ‘the moral thing’ while contrasting himself favorably with the alleged misdeeds of others long dead.  Surely, this story originated in The Onion.

But no.  Back in 1993, the British Columbia government apologized to the Tsilhqot’in for its predecessor, the government of British Columbia colony’s hanging of six of their chiefs in 1864 and 1865 that concluded the ‘Chilcotin War.’  Once was not enough.  Either Trudeau went looking for another thing to apologize for, or the Tsilhqot’in decided they wanted another and found their mark in Trudeau.  I hope everyone feels better after this one-sided treatment of the dead, and it keeps Trudeau from mismanaging the affairs of the living.

Poor Graeme MacKay.  Hard as he tries to draw satire, real life always seems to do him one better.

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