HYPERBOLE of the ZILLENIUM!!!!!!
Here’s the moment you’ve been waiting for - your opportunity to vote for the most hilariously overblown, hysterically exaggerated description of the BC Human Rights/MacLeans Tribunal.
The sharp-eyed bunker readership combed the blogs and culled the following samples of commentary, ranging from the dim to the delusional. The ballot is at the bottom. Enjoy, and invite as many folks as you can to join the voting - and the hilarity.
Loony 1: From the comments section of Pajamas Media:
A group of rag-tag militiamen gathered on Lexington common facing a line of British regulars. The year was 1775. A British officer stepped forward and ordered the rabble to disperse. Someone yelled back, “get the hell off our land.” Somebody else pulled the trigger on his musket and ignited a revolution based on a belief in liberty. We don’t know their names, but these patriots were priveleged to stand on the fulcrum of history.
Today in Canada a handful of patriots stand also on the fulcrum. Liberty is under assault yet again. As before the answer must be defiance. The face of tyranny arrives as a mild-mannered clerk. Orwell warned us this would be the case. Yet the stakes are the same as they were at Lexington. Mark Steyn, Kathy Shaidle and a handful of others have the privlege of standing athwart the bridge facing tyranny.
So fight, damn you! Think not of exile. There is nothing so dear as liberty. I shall contribute with a hundred U.S. dollars. But you are the ones who must take the fight to the enemy. And you must be victorious. History warns us that acommodation to tyranny always leads to more bloodshed in the end. Stand tall and proud. And fight!
Looney 2, courtesy of Melanie Phillips
It is no accident that it is uber-‘liberal’ Canada, which worships at the shrine of human rights law, where this medieval inquisition is taking place. The fact that the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission are to conduct this kangaroo hearing is grotesque but not in the least surprising. The belief fundamental to human wrongs law, that minorities are sacrosanct and that to criticise them is proof of rampant prejudice, is part of the mindset which has turned truth, morality and freedom inside out. If a writer who tells the truth about Islamists spreading hatred and contempt for the west is himself hauled before a court charged with spreading hatred and contempt by telling such a truth, then the Orwellian nightmare has well and truly arrived. –Melanie Phillips
Loony 3, one Wes Vernon (nice picture, Wes)
CHRC is an ersatz judicial body that resembles nothing so much as a kangaroo court whose tolerance for freedom of expression is on a par with the tribunals that handed out assembly-line death sentences during Moscow’s “purge” trials in the thirties. Steyn notes that there is “no presumption of innocence” in CHRC’s “hate” cases, other than for the so-called “Canadian Nazi party,” which “got off scot-free on the quaint grounds that it did not exist.” CHRC has not sent anyone to the gallows — yet — preferring fines and the equivalent of cease and desist orders. –Wes Vernon
Loony 4, the ever reliable David Warren:
Most of the victims of these neo-Maoist tribunals have been “little people,” with nothing like the resources Maclean’s magazine has put in play to defend itself and Steyn, and no media reporting whatever. They have been persecuted, stripped of their livelihoods and savings, demonized among their neighbours, made to endure humiliating “re-education” programs - without lawyers, without assistance of any kind — all for exercising rights that any Canadian would have taken for granted a mere generation ago. I want justice for Mark Steyn. But I also want justice for all these little people, who have been crushed under the jackboot of “political correction.”
Loony 5, American Thinker:
Canada’s greatest gift to the contemporary world of letters — Mark Steyn — is being persecuted for free speech in his home country. Columnist Steyn is being hauled before something called the “Canada Human Rights Tribunal,” a parallel legal system to the normal Canadian courts, without all the bother of due process, the presumption of innocence, a defined and limited legal venue, and protection for free speech.
…..
Forget the Spanish Inquisition. They’re so five centuries ago. Today Canada’s Stalinoids can simply punish people for speaking their minds. The Left rediscovered its Stalinist roots in the 1970s when the Boomer brigade conquered the culture. That’s when Canada’s farcical “Human Rights Tribunals” were created. Today, eighty percent of American college campuses have speech codes prohibiting politically incorrect speech. The ghost of Stalin stalks the earth, looking remarkably healthy.
Loony 6: Standing in for all those who referred to this procedure as the…
Show Trial of the Century.
Loony 7, Free Mark Steyn, is always a reliable source of hilarity.
That the Hitlerian-Stalinite showcourt of the BCHRCT was taking place in (sic) the same time as we remember the costly victories of D-Day and beyond only highights the evil and injustice and traitorous nature of those who are trying to tear down and throw away that very civilization which was only preserved against one form of Leftist totalitarian evil by battles on sea, land, and air by hundreds of thousands of Canadian, American, and British troops, planes, and ships.
Loony 8 from the equally hysterical Free Dominion:
“Mark Steyn is a god in Canada right now. I had the pleasure of his wit and drollity for 30 minutes outside the Kangaroom in Ottawa at the Warman v. Lemire Hearing on March 25.
30 minutes with Mark Steyn! Better yet, why not a whole evening? “A Dinner with Mark Steyn. Can I start the bid at $2000?”
What would that kind of thing go for at a Freespeecher fundraising auction, do you think? Presumably a hell of a lot more than you would pay for dinner with Rob Nicholson, no doubt, or even Stephanie, himself.
I’d rather have dinner with Mark Steyn and his wobbling fromage than I would Rob Nicholson and his peanut butter crackers any day of the week. I’m sure 95% of the members of the Conservative Party would too.”
Loony 9, from a moist Right Girl:
But put me in the vicinity of an Alpha Male, and my ovaries stand up and salute! They sing the Star Spangled Banner. Five minutes with an Alpha, and I’m picking out names. Hawaii was a nightmare for a child-phobe like me - surrounded by the very best America has to offer in the form of Army, Navy, Marines and yes, even the Air Force. Not to say that every one of them is an Alpha - far from it. But the available percentage was much, much higher than under normal circumstances. So there I was, in Paradise, surrounded by Alphas, with Mark Steyn screaming from my nether regions. When it comes to my biological makeup, I’m no better than a cat. Gross.
Loony 10, Everyone’s Favourite Fool, Canadian Sentinel:
“Many people are indeed genuinely afraid of fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Muslims with great, undeniable justification, just as we also fear, say, Neo-Nazis, who actually, in my view, look like a miniscule number of insignificant, stupid-as-stupid-does, wimps and pussies compared to radical Islam, which we know is extraordinarily powerful, well-organized, well-funded and has its hands on the puppetstrings of Free World Liberal Fascist State Apparatchiks, such as those who have been appointed by radically extreme Leftist politicians like Ed Stelmach to Canada’s “Human Rights” Commissions. Ok, I guess now I’ll be next up in the KKKangaroo KKKourts… Bring it on, eh? Make a political martyr of me if you wish. Me and many others who need to be protected from fascism, who yearn for equal rights, for freedom and to be free of persecution! Sic semper tyrannis! Stop the latter-day Hitlers and Stalins!”
Loony 11: Yet another contribution from David Warren, making him a doubloony:
I had better tread carefully today, for I am going to write disparagingly about an entire class of sentient beings — and we should all know what has happened to Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn, Kathy Shaidle, Kate McMillan, Jonathan Kay, Fr Alphonse de Valk, Mark and Connie Fournier, Marc Lemire, and a bewildering, quickly growing list of other Canadian writers hauled before the so-called “human rights” commissions (or more precisely, humanoid rites commissars), and shaken down with frivolous but financially ruinous sue-and-stall court litigation, on the suspicion that they may have entertained “hateful,” politically-incorrect thoughts.
The group I intend to slur today are the Extraterrestrials. I’m not sure how the courts will interpret “hate-speech” and “hate-thought” towards this group, which is not yet specifically protected under any of Canada’s awkwardly-worded “rights” codes. Arguably, any attack on Extraterrestrials could be taken as personal attacks on members, former members, outriders and hangers-on of the HRCs themselves, and therefore provoke the next round of vexatious lawsuits.
And finally, Loony the 12th, the usually sensible Ghost of a Flea”
“Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Jackson and Kathy Shaidle are right.”
| So vote now! The keen eyed blogger who spotted the winning entry will receive a free copy of my favourite fool-killer, the classic “Extraordinary Delusion and the Madness of Crowds.” Polls close at midnight Friday. The nominees, once again:
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“Not since one lone man stood in Tienamen square, holding a line of tanks at bay in defiance of centuries of Communist misrule have we witnessed a spectacle as moving, as heroic, as the defence by Mark Steyn of his right to speak the simple truth about the evil Muslim hordes in the star-chamber of infamy before the jackbooted minions of oppression riding roughshod over the blood-soaked octopus of tyranny that…”
Oh, okay. I wrote that. I admit it. But the others are real. Go vote.
Meanwhile, at a trial in Gitmo, a person captured near a death in battle of an American soldier, is facing charges based on manufactured evidence from questionable sources without the benefit of habeas corpus or the rules of evidence carefully put in place since 1215, all in secret, hidden not just from public scrutiny, but from examination by his own lawyers.
And he was 15 at the time of the alleged crime.
And now the US Government wants to rewrite the evidence, without oversight.
Right.
But Mark Steyn is a patriot, fighting for freedom, because he has to show up before some idiotic tribunal in something that most everyone - right and left - say he is going to win.
i voted for number 5. stalinoids unite!
Whoa. That was a tough call.
Really tough call. They’re all winners. I had to start culling rather arbitrarily. I eliminated the Americans because they really don’t know what they’re talking about…they don’t even know their own history and legal order anymore, so you can’t expect them to know anything much about furriners. I discounted poor Scenty and RightGirl. There’s a lot more going on there than just plain old loopiness. The rest of them just gave me migraines.
I finally settled on David Warren because he takes himself seriously.
Came down to a toss up between…
“Canada’s greatest gift to the contemporary world of letters — Mark Steyn”
and
“Mark Steyn is a god in Canada right now” (bonus point for working in ‘his wobbling fromage’)
Both completely delusional, of course, but that’s besides the point.
No, wait. That WAS the point.
Tough call, I know. Quel embarras de richesses.
Wow. Tough is right.
Today in Canada a handful of patriots stand also on the fulcrum.
How can you not love the grave, grave concern of this patriot, coupled with the proud announcement that he places the value of his precious liberty right around $100 US?
Woot!!
There can be only one.
Canada’s greatest gift to the contemporary world of letters — Mark Steyn
Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!!!
I’m not sure those patriots should be standing ON the fulcrum, myself. Seems kind of silly. First of all, they’re not exerting any force in any direction except downward. Second, they might get their patriotic toesies caught. One would think they’d want to be at one or the other end of the lever.
But hey, who am I to instruct patriots in basic physics?
I dunno, comparing Steynand the others to people who stood and got actually shot is pretty big in thehyperbole deparment. Besides, the whole wabbling fromage thing is just creepy…
That was tough, really tough. I ultimately chose “Free Mark Steyn” for the use of the expression “Hitlerian-Stalinite”, the over-excited run-on sentence, and just for the website being called something as ridiculously hyperbolic as “Free Mark Steyn”. Free Mark Steyn? As opposed to what — Two-for-one Mark Steyn? Half-price Mark Steyn?
This could herald the beginning of a new “literary” prize. Just as the Bulwer-Lytton* recognizes the most wretchedly wrought opening line, an annual award could highlight the astonishingly fuckwitted dumbass verbiage of rightwingnutter blogs.
*here: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Some really good ones, but, most are, sadly, predictable. Except for this:
“But put me in the vicinity of an Alpha Male, and my ovaries stand up and salute! ”
I’ve long loved that entire Horny Ode to Wingnut Males
Where were these crazy chicks when I was a libertarian?
I’m a big fan of that exact phrase myself, Mark (although it didn’t get my personal vote). I think it deserves its own pedestal in the Museum Of Metaphors So Horrifically Mangled That You Can Spend A Month (so far) Trying To Disentangle Them From Your Synapses. Ovaries standing up and saluting…where is Max Fleischer when we need him…
Whooee! Yer pissin’ me off, Balbu. I steer clear o’ them pajamas pundits and boogin’ tories on purpose. Now, yer pushin’ ‘em in front of my eyeballs and not only that, yer expectin’ me to read ‘em all so’s I can vote for my favourite numbnuts. I read the first 3 or 4 but my blood pressure’s movin’ into the danger zone and I’m blamin’ you, Balbu.
I’m votin’ fer #1 on accounta I didn’t read all them idjits and #1 was pretty Merka-centric with them Revolutionary War references. I reckon there’s some irony vis-a-vis standin’ up to the British and standin’ up to the British Columbia HRC. I’m picturing Steyn as Wooden-teeth Washington and Shaidle as Betsy Ross sewin’ up the stars’n’stripes. Revolutionaries.
JB
I got to vote for my old buddy Scenty - not necessarily because it’s the craziest, but simply because his first sentence might win the longest run-on award.
“So there I was, in Paradise, surrounded by Alphas, with Mark Steyn screaming from my nether regions.”…
That cinched it for me.
Hey now! While I’m all for winning a prize, at least pick something I wrote regarding the trial. I wrote this over a year ago, about the original awakenings I felt regarding my bio clock (now sadly a moot point). It had to do with Styen’s article “It’s the Demography, Stupid” and not with Steyn, who cannot ever be classified as an Alpha.
Pick something else, and maybe I’ll win! Even booby prizes are fun!
RG
I understand your reservation about this nomination, but sadly, as a democratically constituted anarcho-syndicalist charter blog community, we are powerless. The nomination was submitted in accordance with all the requisite policies and procedures governing this contest, and we were compelled to accept it for reader review. You COULD file for a review of decision with the adjudication and nominations working group of the competitions and promotions subcommittee, but they don’t meet until next Tuesday.
The good news is, you’re winning anyway. Jeez, waddya WANT for free??
I think if you run things like a benevolent-dictatorship it makes life much easier. You don’t have to worry about the rules committees and procedures. I understand that America works this way. Go Crazy Right Girl! Bring on the Freepers!
I’m winning? Well… that’s ok then. ;)
RG
Don’t get complacent. I’m waiting for the Sentinel Surge. But his folks only come out after the sun goes down.
Yeah, you can’t ignore the all-important “swamp creature” vote that could be turned out by Sentinel.
[...] Stooge Left checks in … Hysteria. [...]
Other than its insanity, I rather enjoy the wobbling fromage one for its, um… literary merits.
And I cannot vote for any woman who allows her ovaries to salute (OW!).
So I’m going to have to go with “scare” “quote” “WES VERNON” who “is” being “purged” like “Moscow’s” “Nazis”. Everyone’s tromping on both Godwin and history, but not quite so “scare-ifically”. —
Oh, wait a second. Some of those are actually meant to be “quotes”. Bwahhaha!
Also, when did the Human Rights Tribunal end up with gulags? Dragging off the dissidents to send them to work camps in Thunder Frikkin’ Bay… Working Nekkid With Black Flies, The Mark Steyn Story.
And I cannot vote for any woman who allows her ovaries to salute (OW!).
Ahh, but it was precisely that which drew my finger closer to the button. The description of them actually singing further held my thrall. I could only imagine those musical ovaries strolling past Fort DeRussy sharply cutting one off for every duped individual in a class 2 rig - Up… two, three… Down! Thankfully she didn’t go into a description of the Smurf (with his faux BPS accent) sticking his head out later in the evening and handing her a glass of Brut while her abdomen sang, “Tiny Bubbles”. I was already in gales of laughter - that would have had me on the floor.
[...] Congratulations! This thread has been nominated for a “Silliest, most hysterical hyperbole used to describe the HRC proceedings” award. You can vote for this thread at http://www.stageleft.info/2008/06/25/hyperbole-of-the-zillenium/ [...]
[...] written about the Steyn/Macleans/BC Human Rights Tribunal. It’s a poll, you get to vote - Hyperbole of the Zillenium!!!!!! Published 4 hours, 26 minutes ago // Used for showing and hiding user information in the [...]
[...] careful consideration of the Stage Left competition I have decided that I am glad that my writing has been nominated. If you’re getting flak [...]
Looks like a runaway for Wendy’s ovaries.
We can only speculate how they’ll be celebrating this terrific victory.
I voted for scenty - because Radical Islam “which we know is extraordinarily powerful, well-organized, well-funded and has its hands on the puppetstrings of Free World Liberal Fascist State Apparatchiks, such as those who have been appointed by radically extreme Leftist politicians like Ed Stelmach to Canada’s “Human Rights” Commissions.”
I literally LOL’ed when I heard Ed Stelmach described as a radically extreme Leftist politician…and it was even funnier because I’m in a library as I write this.
Feh! That might not go nearly as far as that wingnut thinks. According to XE’s Universal Currency Converter, US$100 is only worth C$101.03.
At which point Steyn and Shaidle would form their own “Canadian Nazi” party just to prove to those “librul” so-and-sos that it “does too exist!!!11!1!!”
On reflection, RightGirl makes a good point.
She does, but she’s willing to let the nomination stand, the audience loves her, and of course, there’s that little matter of the adjudication and nominations working group of the competitions and promotions subcommittee. I suppose we COULD form an Ad Hoc Working Group per charter section V.22.115-b, but their power, as you know, would be purely advisory, and any decision would still have to be ratified by either the Executive Committee pending a full Board Review, or a quorum of any three mandated governance teams with quasi executive authority.
Tell you what. IF Right Girl wins (and it’s looking pretty good), we’ll award a first AND second prize, assuming that decision is agreeable to the Awards and Promotions Subcommittee. Fair?
Geez, for a bunker founded by an Anarchist, you guys sure have alot of committees.
It may have been founded by an anarchist…but one of the tenants is a consultant.
Touché.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court of Canada came out in favour of fair comment today, so we won’t need Mark Steyn to stand in front of any of our poorly equipped and outdated tanks, at least for a while.
What is your position, by the way, on HRC jurisdiction over media content? I don’t want to make any assumptions based on this post, as I know how fond you are of gunfights with knife-wielding opponents.
Thank God you’re here. Now you can explain to me how on earth GOAF managed to shoehorn Eleanor Roosevelt and Kathy Shaidle into the same sentence. Hang on, I just did it too. Never mind.
[...] winner of the Stageleft “Hyperbole of the Zillenium” prize goes by an enormous margin to Right Girl, who scooped 32% of the vote with her paen to [...]
[...] REMEMBER TO VOTE for Loony #7! …. [...]
Yay! I won!
I kinda feel like Halle Berry when she showed up to accept her Raspberry (but without the really hot cleavage).
Who came in second?
RG
Some anonymous commenter at pajamas media, and (ahem) me.