http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Hockey+night+Canada/2623660/story.html
Monday, March 1, 2010
Hockey night in Canada ~ or how to make a case for equal rights and ruin Canada even more
This is one of the more important substantive articles on the
state of so called human rights in Canada and the couch potato laissez
faire state of men. Note the authors last observation. Men in Canada
have no idea how their rights are being removed right under their noses.
Not until the wife hands him his divorce papers will he know how second
class he is compared to the other gender and all those who are hybrids.
Seventy five percent of divorces are initiated by the wife and 90% of
them get sole physical custody, child support, spousal support if the
judge is so inclined and 50% of everything else. She may have been
cheating on him, stealing from him, gone to jail for theft, fraud and
forgery, beat the children and emotionally abused them, and even on the
rare occasion the dad may have even been raising the children from home
while she worked. It doesn't matter because she's got boobs or the other
hybrids have more rights because the judiciary and Human Rights
Commissions say so. The subtlety embedded in what Mr. Warren states is
profound.MJM
I have sometimes
thought it would be diverting to put a hockey team together. This idea
is not, in itself, very original, but there are a couple of twists in my
proposal that might make it uniquely entertaining. For I should like to
have a "politically correct" hockey team.
Not sure, just yet,
what league it would play in, but by the time it was assembled, I'm not
sure what league would dare to turn it down.
The team I have in
mind would consist of a couple of goalies, two defensive lines, three
forward lines, for a total of 15 players; plus a coach, an assistant
coach, a couple of trainers, a general manager and 43 lawyers. While the
ethnicities and sexual orientations of the "invisible majority" off-ice
staff wouldn't really matter, I'd go to tireless lengths to be sure the
players themselves represented as much "diversity" as it was
mathematically possible to pack into just 15 persons.
We'd try to
represent every possible skin colour and shading, all major non-European
language groups, the least probable national origins, some interesting
religious affiliations, the widest possible range of body weights and
ages, a selection of common physical disabilities, and as many sexual
orientations as we were able to identify through diligent research --
all to be included through combinations of faculties, or absence of
faculties, to the exclusion only of white heterosexual males.
And
yet for all the extremes, the team would be carefully balanced. For
instance, I have in mind six nominal male-type persons, six apparent
females, and three unimpeachable transvestites. Though I admit that is a
fairly arbitrary balance, and I'd be open to juggling the numbers in
other ways.
Now, down to
business. I'd certainly want my team to
practise, and that's where the trainers would come in: teaching players
who might never have put on a pair of skates before -- or might refuse
to wear them now -- how to stand up on the ice; how to put on
safety-regulation shin pads and visor helmets and so forth. We might
call in some publicity and fashion consultants to make sure they all
looked very spiffy for the group photographs.
Before we'd ever
played a game, I would expect rave affirmative coverage from, say, the
Toronto Star, and CBC television. In fact, I would suggest some sort of
"countdown" feature to the media, as the team made heroic preparations
for its first game. Indeed, I would make cocky declarations about how
good we were -- sports journalists seem magnetically attracted to such
rhetoric -- and angle for an exhibition match against, say, the NHL
All-Stars.
Then the big
night. After some initial, cursory
protests about who was singing the national anthem, and why, we would
take to the ice. All 15 at the same time, including both goalies -- who
would be instructed to lean a 4-by-8 sheet of plywood over the goal
mouth for additional defensive protection. As well, our cheerleaders --
an amateur chorus from a local feminist support group -- would take up
positions around the opposing team's bench, and begin shrieking our team
slogans: "Racist! Sexist! Fascist! Homophobe!"
It's at this point
I would expect the referees to raise some sort of objection. Not to our
cheerleaders, I wouldn't think, they'd be untouchable. Maybe the refs
would object to the plywood, maybe to some other unusual equipment, such
as the high-powered waterguns slung over the shoulders of our
defencepersons, or the fact that our centre was swinging a scythe. But
if they whistled us down for "too many 'men' on the ice," we'd have them
cold.
Immediately our team of Osgoode
Hall's finest -- the
complement of lawyers mentioned above -- would swing into action, with
human rights complaints against the linesman who blew the first whistle,
and our first Charter challenge ready to go to court. For who says the
rules of hockey -- which reflect a dark history of cultural and sexual
oppression -- should take priority over Canada's most sensitively
re-formative constitutional document?
But supposing the game got
any further than that, we'd have process servers sweeping down from the
end blues with arrears notices for alleged "deadbeat dads"; cops primed
with assault charges after the first body-check; hate-crime citations
against anyone who laughs; and various other devices to keep our
opponents a little off their game.
We'd also be willing to
negotiate some arrangements out of court. For instance: we remove the
plywood sheet from our goal mouth, if the other side agrees to remove
their goalie.
The long and short of it is,
that after several
years of taxpayer-funded litigation, proceeding remorselessly towards
the Supreme Court of Canada -- and no game that lasted more than five
minutes -- we would proudly accept the Stanley Cup. And this as our
reward for "breaking down the barriers that hold Canadians apart."
Alternatively,
and more hopefully, we would find the one issue on which the complacent
reclining couch potatoes of our nation would be willing to rise up.
David
Warren's column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.a
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Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Hockey+night+Canada/2623660/story.html
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Hockey+night+Canada/2623660/story.html
Labels:
discrimination,
fathers rights,
hrc,
human rights,
human rights tribunal
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