What's up, "Doc"?

Maybe that's the question the media should start asking, now that the Senate has announced its' plan to trim the fundamentalist fat from Bill C-10 and deprive Mullah McVety of the opportunity to censor films he finds offensive. For someone who purports to be a religious leader and not just a garden-variety con artist and attention whore, this McVety character seems to have an awful lot of influence on our strictly secular government. Why isn't the media asking who this guy is and what he's doing hanging around the corridors of Canadian power? This is not the kind of repressive nutbar I want having any influence on public policy:



I'm always astonished at how the traditional media ingenuously accepts credentials without question. Charles McVety, described on the Hour as "one of the most powerful leaders of the Christian Right in this country", hangs a "Dr." before his name, which no doubt gives him a perceived credibility he might not have otherwise. "Dr." McVety has been around for awhile; I'd think that when someone of his ilk starts bragging about his influence and gets dangerously close to turning some of his twisted censorious notions into public policy, the media needs to snap out of its stupor and take a closer look at the guy's backstory. Starting with his doctorate, which may be as fake as his claim that he speaks for all Christians.

Bene D got the ball rolling, Yaya Canada, Toujoursdan and especially Bill Kinnon at Achievable Ends did some more heavy lifting last week, and now it's time for the rest of the rabble (that's us, guys!) to make noise. We dodged the C-10 bullet, but McVety and his ilk won't stop firing. He likes the spotlight? Great, let's give him some. The traditional media needs to shine a hot light on this fundamentalist freak and get him worming and squirming.

Are you listening, traditional media?

C-10 Smackdown

Today, Chuck McVety's rotten and twisted censorship dreams were dashed upon the rocks of reason, sanity and freedom by two Liberal Senators:

"Senators Francis Fox and Wilfred Moore today made public the amendments that Liberal Senators intend to introduce when the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce proceeds to the Clause by Clause examination of Bill C-10." [...]

"The changes proposed by Senators Fox and Moore would:
1. Remove the power for the Minister of Heritage to refuse tax credits based on "public policy" or to issue guidelines about film content, while at the same time safeguarding the right to deny funds when the production itself is contrary to the Criminal Code;
2. Give producers an efficient judicial appeal mechanism if the Minister blocks or delays funding;
3. Continue to prevent government funding of pornography, child pornography, and hate propaganda."

My favourite part is #3 -- "continue to prevent government funding of pornography..." See? Unlike the lies that Mr. McVety and his fellow social conservative nanny-statist travellers would have us believe, there was never a need to deny tax credits or dictate "content guidelines" in order to stop (SHRIEEEK!) the funding of porn: it was already being prevented. However, the funding of movies deemed "OFFENSIVE!" by Mr. McVety is not being prevented, and boo friggin hoo, tough shit. Apparently, Mr. McVety badly miscalculated -- "Canadian values" don't include censorship of the arts after all.

PSA has more.

Bill C-10: dead meat?

W00t!!

Just Another Willy Loman has a post up about how things might be looking up on the Bill C-10 (the "C" in this case standing for "Christianist censorship") situation. Looks like the Cons might have heard that the people of Canada don't much like the idea of fundamentalist religious whackjobs deciding which movies are too offensive for them to view. Sorry, Mullah McVety, this bullshit about "protecting us" from what you think is offensive won't cut it here, no matter what your Focus On The Family advisors tell you. This is Canada, not Kansas, dude -- deal with it.

To top it off, JAWL has also posted up a video of the odious toad McVety being grilled by CBC cutiepie George Stromboulopoulos on The Hour, and it's worth it just to see the stunned look on McVety's face when Strombo says "A lot of people are offended by churches getting tax breaks, what about that, huh? Eh? Eh? Whaddaya say to that, Fatso? Huh? Huh?" (Okay, bit of an exaggerated quote there... please forgive me!!!)

Go read & watch.

Start your engines

The odious, excremental, censorious, religious fundamentalist-influenced Bill C-10 is a confidence bill -- well let's go, suckaahhhs!:

"Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is declaring film tax-credit legislation a matter of confidence in the Conservative government, meaning MPs could land on Canadian doorsteps this spring to debate the line between art and pornography.

Mr. Flaherty said the legislation, known as Bill C-10, contains a range of important tax measures and changes will not be tolerated.

"The bill should not be amended," he told reporters yesterday. "A tax bill is a confidence bill. We all know that.""

Election time!!!

And another point of interest -- what happens to all those sneaky and stupid Private Members' bills that are still creeping their way through the legislative process if an election is called?

Let's roll!

Not him again!

Welcome to my new series: McVetywatch! I was right -- I've been derelict in my duty of keeping a close eye on this nitwit and now he's breaking out everywhere, like herpes. Here he is yet again, shrieking, swooning and squirting all over the crusty pages of the Calgary Herald that "We don't want to subsidize porn!"

"Opponents of subsidies for pornography face the same arguments given generations ago by defenders of government assistance for tobacco production. If you opposed tobacco subsidies, you were against farmers, against agriculture and probably against any government assistance to weak sectors of the economy."

What is it with these oh-so-tiresome religious crackpots and their idiotic analogies? First fetuses were like slaves, now we've got the puritanical, authoritarian dingbats who oppose free artistic expression being compared to anti-tobacco activists. Are these people completely and totally incapable of making their point on its own merit? Do they have a point and does it even have any merit!? (Okay, easy now hippie, don't get away from yourself here.) *ahem* Let's read on:

"As in the case of tobacco, defenders of porn subsidies use a kind of attempted character assassination in saying that only the religiously minded are against it. One doesn't have to be religious to recognize inanity.

A Compas poll released this past week shows that three-quarters of Canadians oppose subsidies for porn films..."

Hold the phone! "Compas poll"? He can't mean the poll that got a 75% opposed response by asking the impossibly absurd question "Should the government fund child pornography?" He should know better than to cite a poll that only a few days ago got him spanked and ridiculed:

In closing, ridiculous asshole McVety sobs:

"Instead, the free speech of 75 per cent of Canadians is oppressed as we are vilified, accusations of censorship are levelled, and yet no one can give a good reason to allow tax dollars to fund pornography, or to fund films focusing on sex with corpses, or others with memorable names like Young People F---ing and The Masturbators."

Oh, here we go, flavour of the week, the Free fucking Speech canard. You know their argument is weak-to-nonexistent when they trot this one out. Yet you have to be in awe of the kind of psychological gymnastics it must have taken McVety to arrive at the conclusion that his free speech is being oppressed... because he isn't being allowed to oppress the free speech of someone else! Oh well, I'll concede that he showed remarkable restraint in getting almost the entire article barfed out before he finally broke down and said his favourite phrase, "Young People F--ing", but I bet he had to smack his hands a few times to do it.

Movie Critic McVety gives film Two Cloven Hooves Down

Clearly I've been too wrapped up in Bill C-484, fetal photoshops and the ongoing battle to conflate libel with free speech --I haven't been keeping enough of an eye on this guy. Now suddenly his porcine visage is becoming an alarmingly routine sight all over everywhere, admonishing, scolding and wagging his porky little finger at us, sinners and fornicators one and all.

The Reverend's been pushing this Bill C-10 pretty hard -- even taking credit for it at one point. An idea he quickly backed off from when he realized how much Canadians really don't like him, and especially don't like the thought of him hanging around the corridors of power trying to influence our laws with his brand of shrieking, pearl-clutching, nanny-statist social conservativism. Will it never end? Not until the fat reverend sings!

In spite of being spanked and roundly ridiculed yesterday at the Senate Banking Committee hearing on C-10, McVety's not ready to sing yet -- but apparently he's still got a lot of squealing to do. Thursday's Daily Squeal dealt with McVety's objections to an all-Canadian film called "Breakfast With Scot". It's a family comedy about a gay hockey player and his partner, who are raising an 11-year-old boy. It's kind of a family movie with a gay perspective, the family just happens to have two dads. Whoop-di-do. No, thunders Mullah McVety, "Whoop-di-don't!!":

"Ottawa–A comedy about a gay couple raising a child should not have received any government help, an evangelical activist says.

"We are objecting to films that proselytize young people into homosexuality," Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, told reporters yesterday."

Ohmigod, it's Gayagenda Propaganda! "Proselytize young people into homosexuality"? Did he really say that!? Yes, but he says mindblowingly stupid things with such depressing regularity that I'm well past the point where he could surprise me. I haven't seen "Breakfast With Scott", but from what I've read about it, sounds like it has little if anything to do with sex. Only a vicious, half-bright fuckwit like McVety could read any ominous, evil sexual ulterior motive into it. But to McVety, apparently it doesn't even have to be about sex to be dirrrrrrty. Any movie with a gay character, in what passes for McVety's "mind", promotes (yeah, "promotes", like a Bacon Double Cheeseburger) homosexuality, playing an evil pied piper's tune that will Lead Your Children to Teh Ghey. SHRIEEEEEK!

Okay, so let's tally up the Mullah McVety Hall of Shame: porn, dirrrrrrty movies like "Crash", and now, even movies with gay characters. So he's not only a puritan and a prude, but a bigot as well. Just the kind of person Canadians want influencing their laws, especially the 63% of us who didn't vote Conservative last time out. Ahhhahahahaha! With every spittle-flecked word he utters, McVety slowly but surely destroys the credibility of any bill he supports. But that's why we want him to keep on jabbering his demented, paranoid gibberish. When Bill C-10 gets nuked, McVety will have done all the heavy lifting.

The Ecstasy of Charles McVety

On Wednesday, Canada's favourite pearl-clutching, tut-tutting religious right mullah, Charles McVety, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee to reiterate his support for the censorious Bill C-10, which would deny tax credits to productions deemed (by McVety and Friends, presumably) to be "offensive":

"Supporters of Bill C-10 were on Parliament Hill on Wednesday continuing their push for the Senate to pass the legislation that could allow the government to deny tax credits to films that are deemed offensive.

The omnibus bill includes an amendment to the Income Tax Act that would allow Heritage Minister Josee Verner, or a government committee, to deny credits to productions considered "contrary to public policy."

The proposed amendment has prompted a debate that pits advocates for the arts against groups such as the Canada Family Action Coalition."

McVety, who constantly voices his outrage by naming a movie called "Young People Fucking" (something he repeats with Tourettes-like regularity) (Edit - except he says "effing", but you already knew that, didn't you?), is one of Bill C-10's most excited and vocal proponents. Here's the chubby little blowhard himself:

"We do not believe this is censorship," McVety said of the bill. "Producers can make films on their own dime, if they wish to, but they should not expect families to deduct taxes from their budget and then to use those taxes for anti-family activities such as the films that we have mentioned."

McVety knows that invoking the word "family" is always good to get the brain-damaged grassroots up in arms and running around in circles jabbering, weeping and gnashing. Why is it that these dimwits always assume they're the only ones who have families and pay taxes? The producers of the films that so offend McVety also have families and pay taxes. But who cares, when there's a poll that shows a majority of Canadians are onside with the reverend:

"The group recently commissioned a poll by Compas Inc., that it says proves there is a consensus among Canadians that subsidies should not be provided to offensive films.

As painfully and embarassingly forced out of McVety as a stubborn kidney stone was the fact that in order to get that majority number, the poll had to ask something like "Should the government fund child pornography?". Well, duh!

McVety's group would lower the bar even further than pornography, to include what he calls "dirrrrrrty movies" (presumably like "Young People Fucking" -- hey, I wonder how many times McVety had to watch that movie, in a darkened room, with a warm bottle of cinnamon massage oil, to figure out that he was "offended"). But McVety denied any puritanical impulse to censor the arts:

McVety said his group is "not puritanical" and that it's simply arguing that the government should be responsible for setting and enforcing standards on what is offensive and what is not, which Bill C-10 allows it to do.

Oh dear, and whatever would we do without Charles McVety and the Ministry of We-Know-What's-Good-For-You to protect us from ourselves?

This Week in Serendipity

Heh. Hahahahaha! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

There's some major synchronicity happening this week in terms of Problematic Optics for the Conservative government:

1. Bill C-484, the "Kicking Abortion's Ass" bill, (also known as the bill that has nothing to do with abortion except that it really does, but it doesn't, but it does): This nefarious stealth attack on womens' rights was blogswarmed this week heading into its debate on Monday. The bill is promoted and supported by religious fundies and anti-abortion whackjobs... the kind of people the Harper government secretly relies on but publicly likes to keep at arm's length, in such contempt does the majority of Canadians hold them and their twisted views. With C-484 the Harper government's anti-choice agenda boogies out of the closet and does a little dance for horrified middle-of-the-road Canadians who overwhelmingly support womens' reproductive freedom.

2. The Cadman Scandal: This thing's got it all -- Conservative party corruption, crime (influence peddling), shady backroom political manoeuvers, and the execrable ethics of manipulating a terminally-ill man who's widely viewed as "the last honest politician" to get his vote. With more legs than a centipede, the Cadman scandal blows the lid right off the canned fable of "clean government" that the Harper conservatives try to propagate, revealing the teeming, slithering worms within.

3. Bill C-10 amendment: This one is juicy! Passed on the sneak as part of an omnibus bill, this ugly little piece of Orwellian legislation gives the government the power to censor the arts through financial hardship by denying tax credits. And guess who's calling the tune -- religious nutjobs like Charles McVety, the same whacked-out wingnuts that the Harper government has tried so hard to distance itself from for the last 2 years. But the gap is closing and the noose is tightening -- McVety was so proud to be a driving force behind this censorship bill (Hello? Hello? Anyone home?) that he couldn't resist beaking off about it, and dig what came out when he opened that sludge trap he calls a mouth:

"We're thankful that someone's finally listening," he said yesterday. "It's fitting with conservative values, and I think that's why Canadians voted for a Conservative government."

"Conservative values" -- oops. The last thing Harper wants is a nutter like McVety identifying himself with the "Conservative Values" brand. And since when did Canadians vote for a conservative government? More than 64% of us voted for something -- anything -- other than a conservative government, and by my kind of math, that's a landslide defeat for "Conservative Values". Which is precisely why Harper's been telling the McVetys to Shut The Fuck Up for the last two years. But never mind that, here's what McVety wants to censor:

"Mr. McVety said films promoting homosexuality, graphic sex or violence should not receive tax dollars, and backbench Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers support his campaign."

Because as we all know, homosexuality, graphic sex and violence are all the same. What, I wonder, would McVety deem as "promoting homosexuality"? The probable answer is "anything that includes a gay character" -- for sure he would have torpedoed Will & Grace given the opportunity.

***********

It's serendipitous that these three events should all occur in such close proximity to each other. Not only is it a Blogger's Trifecta, it's a synchronistic combination of circumstances that shouts screams shrieeeeeeks! loud and clear that the Harper conservatives are everything Canada was afraid they were when they lost the election in 2004. And that's a nice way to go into an election in 2008.

UPDATE: Related -- Dave at The Galloping Beaver responds to Josh Marshall at TPM on the Cadman scandal.

Fundies are all for free expression...

...as long as they can control it.

Oh yeah. For the last few months, authoritarian social conservative types have had an uncharacteristically wild (and maddeningly arousing) little ride on Ezra's Free Speech Train, but it was just a matter of time until their furious free speech masturbation shook the masks loose and their real nature was again revealed. When it comes to "free expression", I always felt that the rubber would meet the road for these people when it came to defending the arts -- all arts. And behold the vile hypocrisy:

"A new bill that would give the federal Heritage Department the power to deny funding for films and TV shows it considers offensive is creating shock waves in the industry." [...]

"The amendment to Bill C-10 would allow the Heritage Minister to deny tax credits for Canadian productions, even if federal agencies such as Telefilm and the Canadian Television Fund have invested in the production.

Representatives from the Heritage and Justice departments would determine which productions are unsuitable and therefore ineligible for tax cuts." [...]

"Stephen Waddell, national executive director of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the actors union, said it seems the government wants to set up a form of "morality police." [...]

"Waddell said he wonders whether the standards to be applied would be representative of a modern Canadian society or what he calls a "fundamentalist perspective" borrowed from the United States."

The snarling cretins who support this amendment (and indeed, homophobifascist Charles McVety claims responsibility for this hit on indie art) will insist that it's not censorship -- it's just the denial of government support in the form of tax credits. The twisted, family-hating, western culture-destroying, islamohomofeminazi perverts who produce "offensive" movies are free to continue making them.

But when a tax credit is offered to artists, it shouldn't be up to the state to police their art. Some art is made for mass consumption, some caters to a limited audience. The denial of a tax credit imposes financial difficulty that might make it impossible for smaller productions to happen... which is exactly what the proponents of this amendment want. And by the way, who decides what's offensive -- Charles McVety?? (Excuse my projectile vomiting.)

With respect to state support of the arts, I depart from my usual instinct to say let the market decide. The nature of innovative art is that the market doesn't seek it out -- the market, in its overwhelming artistic ignorance, doesn't even know it exists until it comes to them. Without a little support, that wouldn't happen: artistic innovation wouldn't see the light of day, and our arts culture would end up a moldy gray mish-mash of inoffensive, unexciting, derivative pablum, as dull and dreary as Charles McVety's worldview.

But that's exactly what this amendment does -- it allows the government to define what is "artistically acceptable" (boring pap) and reject what it deems "offensive" (innovative, exciting). That is policing of the arts. That is censorship. The fact that Christalibangelists like McVety are in any way involved is, in my view, doubly offensive.

UPDATE: Reading this over, I have to conclude that it would be dishonest of me not to admit that I think that in a perfect world, the optimum situation for the arts would be self-reliance. (Whether that's possible is another post.) There's always a downside to accepting the state's largesse -- in the case of the arts, eventually there are bound to be demands made that put a chill on the creative process. But as long as the government is involved in any way (taxation), and tax credits are being handed out, everyone should get them -- there should be no Ministry of Virtue and Vice deciding what constitutes "acceptable art".