by arthur Weinreb,
November 3, 2004
In this column two weeks ago, I wrote an article calling for the banning of the Toronto Marathon. During this year’s run, a 42-year-old man from Guelph Ontario died, becoming the second fatality during the marathon’s 10-year history. Since Ontario Minister of Health, George Smitherman, wants to ban all sushi that has not been previously frozen, I thought it only right that the Toronto Marathon be banned as well. after all, the two deaths were two more than those that have died from eating sushi.
I was trying to be funny and poke fun at Smitherman for his stated desire to protect the unwashed masses, that is, the residents of Ontario from death by sushi. Judging from the emails that I received a lot of readers actually thought that I was in favour of banning running.
Only one letter writer mentioned my article as being humourous. When I listed smoking as one of the many bans that have been enacted or proposed, she took me to task for including smoking in bars as restricting people’s choices because employees who work in that environment don’t have a choice about conditions in their workplaces--point taken.
all the rest of the letter writers thought that I was being completely serious and wanted the Toronto Marathon, and presumably all running banned. One letter writer, Randy, was a conservative and told me that people should be allowed to exercise free will. Besides revealing his political philosophy I could tell he was conservative because his letter was polite. Most of the letters including name-calling, a favourite tactic of the left and such comments is that I probably have never run in my life and can’t walk up the stairs without being out of breath. actually, I did run once when I was 14, but only then because a cop was chasing me--the rest was pretty well true. But I wasn’t calling on the ban because I was personally against running; I merely thought that if non pre-frozen sushi that caused no deaths should be banned, then the marathon that resulted in two deaths should be banned as well.
What was truly scary about the emails that I was received was that the nanny state has been so effective in exercising control over the lives of people that so many would take my advocating the ban of running as being serious. What was more amazing is that none of the letters (except the letters that I have specifically mentioned) seemed to find anything wrong with the sushi ban. This may be the result of people being brought up in the “me generation” where they only become outraged when activities or things that affect them personally are banned. We seemingly live in a society where governments can take the easy way out, ban goods or activities, and the people follow like sheep unless they have a personal interest in them. If people don’t eat sushi or don’t care whether or not it is pre-frozen, they have nothing to say when Smitherman wants to control what people can or cannot eat. Randy and I are in a minority that thinks that adults should be allowed to exercise free will.
There were of course, people who understood the humour in the article. Two members of a forum on a running website had an argument over my column. When the first member referred to me as an imbecile, the second charged that he was the imbecile; that I was simply making fun of what the Minister of Health was doing. at least the column wasn’t a complete loss.
When I received the letter from Randy with his lecture on free will, I wrote back to him, told him that I was being sarcastic and that I agreed with him on the fact that people should be allowed to make choices. He wrote back, apologized and said that these days, it’s hard to tell.
It sure is.