Steyn finally got a chance to meet his censors face to face:
Well, we did the TVO show and I doubt it was Must-See TV, even by the standards of Canadian public broadcasting. I succeeded in bouncing the Sock Puppets into agreeing to a face-to-face discussion, though it wasn’t my finest hour or theirs. I believe the final words of the show were me saying, “Do you wanna go to dinner?”, and Khurrum Awan yelling back, “No.”
We didn’t go for dinner, but we did have a relatively pleasant conversation after the broadcast that I thought was much more productive than the show. Khurrum was a bit chippy but the two ladies, Muneeza Sheikh and Naseem Mithoowani, are rather cute, even when they’re damning me as a racist and hater. (Years ago, the BBC used to keep putting me up against humourless Marxist feminists only to find that on air I’d go all sweet on them and just make goo-goo eyes.) One confessed to finding me “mildly funny”, which I took as a tremendous compliment until she remarked that she found “Little Mosque On The Prairie” funnier. Evidently by “mildly funny”, she sets the bar down at world-champion limbo level. Heigh-ho. Still, even with dear old Khurrum, if I’d met him in an airport lounge on the other side of the world and we were stuck waiting for a flight, I think the conversation would go okayish. The post-show chit-chat was a useful reminder that everybody’s media image is a reductio.
The video is in 7 parts - the first part is below, the rest are here. Pay close attention to the exasperation of the host and the pettiness of the complainants (they actually equate Ernst Zundel and Oriana Fallacci, and they flip out when they don’t get the last 20 seconds of airtime.):
Isn’t it disturbing that we’re having our rights attacked by a group of people with such a flimsy connection to Canada? The only one of them born here, refused to call herself a Canadian - but instead called herself Pakistani.
Finally - for comparison, here’s how Americans deal with hate.
Related: The Halifax Chronicle Herald Being sued by Muslims for ‘this’ editorial cartoon
Wonderful!
The situation was finally made clear:
The ‘3′ admitted that the only damage they sustained was that some people made hatefull comments against Muslims in general on the Western Standard website.
Mark Steyn has received death threats directed at him personally.
Gee, I wonder which of these has a greater impact: vague (and clearly inapropriate) venting on a website, or specific death threats?
It also became clear that these ‘3′ did not care about facts. They were not interested in the veracity of what was being said. Not even a little bit. They were simply interested in muzzling the publication of facts they did not like.
I just hope they don’t get involved in the Econazi movement!
These three make me fear Islamists more now!