Canada Doesn't Deserve Elizabeth II

I just sent this to the Ottawa Citizen. Let's see if they publish this one. I haven't had much success writing about the Queen, but like I said earlier, I have to do it every fucking year. (At the bottom you will find another letter I wrote whcih prompted the Editor of the Citizen to esentially challenge me to a fight. Took me a while to find, but there it is.)

Original story: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=6bf06735-7f2c-4de2-a471-9c58197cc821&k=79047

Response:

RE: “Officer wages war against allegiance to Queen”, October 24, 2006

Once a year we are forced to sit through a tirade against the Monarchy and its station in Canada. Generally the moves against the Queen are made by spent Liberal MP’s, insert John Manley here, but this time it comes from the officers club at RMC. Without exception these complaints are comical in their stupidity especially when they are tempered with the real issues of the day. I wait in vain for someone to say, “shut up and concentrate on more important things like unemployment or crime”, but it never happens. I hope that someone raised under our system will say, “it is not perfect, but the UN does not call us one of the top 3 countries in the world for nothing”, but that never happens either. I have dreams where someone says “all the Queen has ever done to you or for you, is support your interests through charity, arts and education and her position ensures that your elected officials never cross the boundaries of what is and what is not acceptable”. I still hold to those unfulfilled dreams.

Instead of supporting what is at its base Canada we talk about the costs of her visits and how our cultural makeup has changed so we no longer need her. We talk about how respecting and honouring our traditions, the very foundation of this Confederation, is unfair.

Well I am sick of it. If a Member of Parliament has a problem with respecting the traditions of Parliament and the very structure of the Canadian political system, do not run for office. If a new citizen does not want to swear an oath to the Queen, move somewhere else and if a soldier cannot force himself to toast the Queen over a pint in the Officers club send him to Afghanistan where he may find he has more pressing things to occupy his thoughts.

God Save the Queen

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RE: “Ditching royals is easy, expert says” February 17, 2005

Why does the Ottawa Citizen deem it necessary to publish an article about getting rid of the Monarchy? Basically every two years another joker brings up this issue and we have to read about it in the paper. This time the source material is not coming from the mouth of John Manley the usual suspect, but from another passed over Liberal MP, Ed McWhinney, a politician that has long faded from view after a not so illustrious public career. McWhinney, perfectly fitting name in my opinion, is passing himself off as some kind of expert and this paper is basically helping him advertise the fact that he has a new book coming out. Are the Citizen and McWhinney working for the same publisher? Now there is a story, CanWest Global Commercial Corporation and former Liberal MP join forces to rid Canada of its Monarchy, news at eleven.

Personally, I feel good knowing that this country’s head has no political agenda and is totally unaffiliated with big business. The Queen truly has nothing but our best interests at heart. Just listen to the Queen’s Christmas message; she talks about national successes, over coming personal tragedy through triumph and building communities. When is the last time a two bit, low rent, glory hog, pension seeking politician like McWhinney had such a noble message? Politicians are too busy pointing out what is wrong with the country and only ever congratulate themselves for national successes in the hopes of getting re-elected.

Prince Charles, our future King, has spent the better part of 25 years helping to rebuild and reshape the United Kingdom. How does this relate to Canada? Well one of Prince Charles’ main vices is working with children and young people through organizations that help them find success through learning and initiative. When he visits Canada it is not for the skiing and the free maple syrup, it is to congratulate successful Canadian youths who participate in his organizations. Yet after work like this we continue to criticize him because we think his new fiancé is not as attractive as his long dead ex-wife.

Instead of asking burned out politicians what they think of the Monarchy why not ask the thousands of charities and organizations that benefit from Royal involvement or the hundreds of thousands of citizens that benefit from those charities. Instead of pointless man on the street opinion polls which search for the most controversial answers and statements for publication or broadcast why not present the alternatives. You can have a monarch who visits every two years, is heavily involved in Charities and trusts that his or her elected representatives are working with your best interests at heart or you can try saying something like President Jean Chrétien five times and see how you feel afterwards. I personally feel sick just writing it.

God Save the Queen.

From the file of "WHO GIVES A FUCK!"

Here is a little story from CNN that has ruined my fucking day. I hate the press, plain and simple. I hate when they report on their own reporting. The American media is notorious for making themselves the story. There was an old joke that the Canadian media's first question during a disaster was "were any Canadians killed? No. Push the story back." The sad thing is that isn't a joke. That is actually the way they report the news here, as if it were somehow more tragic that a guy who lives 3000km from my house in a different province, who I have never met, but happens to carry the same passport died. Boo hoo.

Worse is that American journalists are they very antithesis of that joke. "Stop the fucking presses" is reserved exclusively for the premature death of journalists. We get two days of crying and tributes when one (in the way, shouldn't have been there) god dammed journalist gets killed. The best part of the tribute to the dead glory hog is that they follow the tears and sorrow with, "...and ten soldiers and 200 civilians were killed in the same exchange." You want to talk about the value of life, after meter maids, cockroaches and Born Again Christians you have journalists, then Hitler.

So to sum up my feelings about journalists who get killed in war zones I will quote Moe of Simpson’s fame. "Ah, they shouldn't have been there in the first place."

I don't need a first hand account of a war in the Middle East. I don't need you to describe the fighting. I get it, people die. Here's an idea, let me know when you have a war where no one dies. So now that is settled, journalists, you can come home. Get the fuck out of the way and you won't get killed in Iraq.

What a world that would be, no "journalist on journalist" deaths to report, so what do we do with those 45 minutes of the evening news? Probably run an old episode of Friends. This is the one time in my life I can think of an occasion where if I had two channels, one Friends and one Journalist death news, I would rather watch an episode of Friends. That is the only instance, final, fuck off.

Journalists aren't alone in their belief that their deaths are the most important. The same holds true when a woman gets killed in a war zone. It's like a man is an old coffee cup and a woman is a Faberge egg, you can break a hundred coffee cups in a week and not give a shit, but drop that expensive egg and tell me what happens.

"A WOMAN WAS KILLED IN IRAQ TODAY, OH THE FUCKING HORROR, THAT IS THE TENTH WOMAN KILLED IN ARMED CONFLICT SINCE WOMAN WERE ALLOWED IN COMBAT ZONES....and 12 male soldiers were killed in the same fighting, they are probably the 251,987, 88, 89, 90 etc. American soldiers killed in the last 50 years.

The point is, yeah it's too bad, but aren't we all the same? Why does one death out weigh so many others? "It’s all fresh and new, a guy dying isn't really news, but a woman, that is a pretty new thing." LIKE FUCK.

So here is what set me off, a story from CNN, and no I won't be buying the book.


OPPPS....Last thing, isn't buying a book about war reports just like getting a "Coach" or "Trainer" card when you collect hockey cards? I mean, sure they are in the set, but who fucking cares, just put a blank card in for all I care.

Book tribute to Iraq war reporters
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/11/10/war.reporters/index.html

Journalists and support staff who were killed or went missing during this year's war in Iraq have been honoured in a book that also sheds light on how the media works in conflict zones. "Dying To Tell The Story" includes personal tributes by leading broadcast and print correspondents including BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson, NBC's Tom Brokaw, Head of ITV News in the UK, David Mannion, John Tulloh of Australia's ABC, Cullen Murphy from Atlantic Monthly, and Jim Smith from the Boston Globe.
The book is published by the International News Safety Institute (INSI) and on sale via www.newssafety.com, with all proceeds going to journalism charities.

People from Minnesota deserve better

NHL Cnetre ICE is free for a week to start the new NHL season. Great news right. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Now I get games, but I also get 15 differnet teams of announcers fucking up my watching experience.

Now to be fair, Greg Millen is a fucking idiot and Pierre McGuire is the dumbest man on the planet. Both of these guys make watching an NHL game in Canada as close to unbearable as you can get, BUT, big BUT they are head and shoulders above the idiots that clog the local coverage of American teams.

The sad and surpirsing revalation of my night last night was the coverage in Minnesota. Minnesota is basically Canada, people aren't rude, it's cold as fuck and they love hockey, oh yeah and the NHL screwed them out of a team and moved it to the Fucking south TWICE robbing a deserving market of a team so San Jose and TEXAS could get a team. Basically, Minnesota is Canada in a horribly sad yet good way.

Before I get into Minnesota's crack team I can give you a shameful example from San Jose where the announcer said that Joe Thornton was a"surprisingly good passer, something his NHL opponents had yet to realize". Thornton is a 20 to 30 goal scorer who happens to get 100 points a season. I wonder where he gets those other points? Anyway thankfully the San Jose announcers cleared it up for the league, Thornton can pass the puck. Maybe I'll take him in my pool, now I have this extra fucking information. I wonder if any wingers have benefitted from his secret ability? FUCK!

Anyway that was nothing, the big one came from a guy, a big fat stupid guy whose association with hockey extended as far as the season before the lock out. To prove how fucking stupid he was he said the following.

"I never understood the redline in hockey, I mean in football we want that long pass, like in Minnesota when we had Culpepper to Moss, the long bomb. That's what I didn't understand, that's what we want and I am glad it is in the NHL now."

I fucking hate people.

Minnesota deserves better than a guy who uses dated football analogies to describe why he likes the new rules. We are changing the game that we love to suit the wants and desires of assholes. If we are changing rules to broaden the audience shouldn't we go back and check if these are the types of fuckers we want watching our game? Is it really just about selling more tickets, is that why we did it? The game wasn't broken, Atlanta, Carolina, New Jersey, Nashville and the Florida's couldn't sell tickets so we changed the fucking game and made it arena football (which is a more popular sport in the US than hockey by the way).

This "I never watched, it was too violent, I didn't like the rules" bullshit spectator who is suddenly a fan is helping a fucking cocksucking asshole basketball president ruin the game I loved. Fuck Bettman, Fuck Thornton and fuck commentators.

FUCK HOCKEY (go Bruins)