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The anti-American Canuck celeb club


by Judi McLeod
October 7, 2002

There are more marked differences other than just military between Canada and the neighbour it loves to hate south of the border.

Even the contrast between American and Canuck celebs underlines our incompatible differences. In the U.S., they have Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin. We all know Babs, not because of The Way We Were, but because certain American news outlets have been out on a field day since discovering she couldn’t spell "Irak."

Unless you are a housewife dreaming about Alec in the back of some darkened theatre, or a Republican showing up to picket him, Baldwin isn’t so well known. A popular speaker for Democrat fundraisers, Baldwin is also a stalwart supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In Minnesota recently, protesters stood out in the rain carrying signs that read, "Baldwin and PETA udderly ridiculous".

Homespun U.S. anti-government celebs are bold as Hollywood’s tarnished brass. …"I find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening," says the breathless Babs. She probably finds it frightening when her butler, fed up with the latest political parade through her parlour, threatens to throw in the towel.

Canadian celebs and their funky brand of activism are markedly different in that they’re so, well insipid.

Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, David Suzuki, Anton Kuerti, Naomi Klein and Bruce Cockburn, bless their carrot juice, are all in the anti-American Canuck celeb club. If you’re reading this in the U.S., you’ve probably never heard of them, right? Neither have many Canadians who do not tune in to dreary CBC. The government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television network is a sort of scaled down CNN.

But what do these Canadian celebs actually do you’re asking. The majority of them are writers, entertainers and media elites.

They send out a barrage of letters and petitions to their equally insipid Canadian Prime Minister. Their latest missive to the PM is, as they would say in Canadian street language, a beaut.

War on Iraq would be "immoral" and would endanger the whole world, they muse.

We’re not sure that media elite and performers should hold a monopoly on morality.

Killing thousands of Iraqi civilians was also compared with the killing of Americans on Sept. 11. In Canada we rarely if ever hear about the Canadians killed in the terrorist attacks, not just from the crusading celebs but not even from the Prime Minister either.

And the moral celebs number more than a mere handful. Some 120 more moral Canadians, including the aforementioned prominent writers, artists, musicians, are backed by labour leaders, politicians, clergy, academics and environmentalists who all lent their signatures to this latest effort.

Between writing books, entertaining us and frightening us about the critical state of the natural environment, they must have found time to become experts in how to deal with despots.

"The way to deal with Saddam Hussein is not by killing thousands of Iraqi civilians, any more than the way to deal with American foreign policy was by killing thousands of American civilians on Sept. 11," said Michael Mandel, an Osgoode law professor.

This is nothing new for prolific Canadian celeb activists. Writing letters seems to be their forte. They have written many missives on a variety of topics covering peace and security, economic equity, global governance, environmental quality etc., etc., etc.

The last time this funky group burst into the news was when their members signed petitions demanding to have a host of Canadian towns and cities declared as "nuclear weapons- free zones".

Oh Canada, they’re standing on guard for thee.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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