Sticks and stones will break our bones, but foul-mouthed puppets really hurt

It's a miracle! The NDP has actually found an example of taxpayers' money the government should not have spent (not counting spending on defence, of course):

Ottawa and the province of Ontario paid C$1 million (400,000 pounds) to help O'Brien -- who appears on the NBC television network -- bring his show to Toronto for a week to boost the city's profile after a deadly SARS (news - web sites) outbreak last year.

But the federal government said O'Brien had gone far too far with the show broadcast on Thursday in which he went to Quebec, a province which has had separatist governments for much of the last 20 years and is a delicate political topic in Canada.
[...]
Alexa McDonough, a legislator for the left-leaning New Democrats, described the program as "racist filth" and "utterly vile" and demanded the government seek the return of the C$1 million subsidy.

"There may be those who would say, 'Isn't this interfering with freedom of expression?' It's not interfering to say we will not publicly fund this kind of vile, vicious hatemongering," McDonough told reporters.

Terrorists murder 3,000 people on 9/11, and the New Democrats ask for calm and say we have to understand the "root causes". But a puppet insulting Quebeckers? Unleash the dogs of war!

No pun intended.

Actually, I agree that the government shouldn't be using taxpayers' money for an American talk show, especially one as lucrative as Late Night With Conan O'Brien. In fact, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation was complaining about it earlier this week, when we Canadians were still swooning over the fact that a U.S. television star actually noticed us. Seems like McDonough and other outraged critics aren't against subsidizing the program in principle, but just against doing so for something they personally find offensive.

Of course, if you complain about public money going toward borderline-pornographic movies, or about the Canada Council funding a "Black Book of English Canada", you're an intolerant old fool.

If you missed the "Triumph" sketch in question, you won't get to see it tonight. The Star! channel, a Canadian version of E!, has excised it from its rebroadcast of Conan this evening, which means I'll have to wait a few weeks for it to inevitably show up on Kazaa.

Posted by damian at February 13, 2004 09:37 PM