that whirling noise you hear

[the_siobhan]

For some reason I always find it really interesting when the media latches onto a story about the media itself. A little bit of meta-journalism, if you will. So when I saw the headline about a big stink going on right now over an article published in the Globe, I went right on over and read all about it.

Apparently a journalist who wrote an article about the recent shootings in Montréal made the statement that Quebecois culture has to take some of the responsability for actions of Gill at Dawson College, and also for the the Lépine shootings at l'École Polytechnique sixteen years earlier.

Because francaphones are "unwelcoming".

I shit you not.

Now the editor is saying the remarks should have deleted before the article went to print and lots of people are demanding apologies all over the place. And I think the whole thing is hilarious.

To be perfectly clear where I'm coming from, I don't think it's funny that Wong printed something inflammatory and stupid. I sure as hell don't think it's the slightest bit entertaining that a bunch of people died because some douchebag was Fucked In Head With Gun and decided to take his bad day out on a bunch of innocent people.

No, what makes me smirk is just how seriously everybody is taking Wong's comments.

I mean, come on people. She actually suggested that some guy shot up a school cafeteria because Quebecois are unfriendly. Roll your eyes, give the girl one of those pointed hats with the big "D" on it, and get on with your day.

This is all fed by my complete inability to understand why we give people microphones when we already know that something stupid is going to come out of their face. Why is Ann Coulter ever able to even get people to interview her? Why does anybody give a man airtime to talk about international politics when his day job is to play a fucking guitar? Why does anybody really care what the head of some religion thinks about our same-sex marriage laws, or in fact, anything to do with anything except maybe, you know, his religion?

And more importantly, having found somebody to give them a platform - what the hell inspires anybody else to actually listen?

On the other hand, if the world wasn't full of Really Stupid Ideas, we wouldn't have the opportunity to make fun of them. That would pretty much eliminate the Daily Show, and things like the The Racist Survivor Theme Song. And that makes a lot of this stuff totally worth it.

Comments

[caspervonb.livejournal.com]

>"The data base has a higher than 30% error rate.
>Is that even remotely useful?"

I don't know? I've never heard that there was
such a significant error rate. And what does
error rate mean? What sort of errors?

>"You're not paying so it's not your bailiwick.
>But there's already been a security breach of
>the computer system from what I've heard."

Right. But I live in the same society so it is
my problem just as much as the guy who collects
WW2 guns or the hunter or the gangbanger.

As far as breaches, that should be alleged
security breach. A gun collector got robbed
and speculation ran rampant that it could have
been criminals breaking into the database and
using it as a list of places to rob. Like most
politicized issues, that quickly turned from
"people could do this" into "people are doing
this" among the politicians and newspapers.

That resulted in a serious review of the
system and its security.

The RCMP did come forward later and, after
proper investigation, admited to a few
thousand security breaches. That got the
alarmists going for about 5 minutes until
someone read the statements instead of
jumping the gun (no pun intended).

The RCMP found that there have been no
breaches of the system from the outside.
The idea that criminals were breaking into
the database to get a shopping list of gun
owners was bullshit. What they did find is
that, at times, police forces would access
the database when they didn't really have
any business doing so. Generally to check
if house x they were going into had an
arsenal hiding in the basement.

So, yes, security breaches but not of the
kind put forward by people with agendas.
And, afaik, that is now heavily monitored.

>"And that has what effect upon crime? Can
>you show an impact on crime as due to the
>registry/licensing scheme? Siobhan clearly
>saw people that didn't look like cops to her
>running around at an incident in Toronto.
>Gang Activity the way she described it.
>_Clearly_ the criminal gangs are taking the
>time to abide by the registry."

Well, as I said earlier, it *does* seem to
have an impact on gun crimes and homicide.
With time, we'll see if that's some sort
of cultural fluke.

Saying that criminals will do crime is kind
of a meaningless point. Much like using one
person's experience as demonstrative of the
entire crime situation in canada.

Honestly, I grew up in some pretty poor
neighbourhoods. Gangs and bikers were pretty
common. Very few guns, however. I can probably
count on my fingers the times were guns came
into it.

Certainly, criminals don't care about
registration. But getting guns was a relatively
difficult endeavour. And, even then, they
weren't necessary most of the time because they
knew the other guy didn't have one so why risk
getting caught with it or something going wrong?

May be hard to relate to but, in my experience,
most street criminals don't have guns or access
to them. Doesn't mean they're not out there,
of course, but regulation of guns does seem to
keep it down some.

You should maybe take a look at statscan
to see what the crimes and rates are like
in Canada. You'll quickly see that violent
crimes have not gone up for quite a few years.
I'll grant you that the overall crime rate has
gone up in the last 4 years but you'll see that
this is mostly driven by an increase in
counterfeiting and crimes like disturbing
the peace and mischief.

>"Again, if you miss a week renewing your
>license to drive, the police aren't going
>to show up at your home and take all your
>cars are they?"

Not the same thing. Cars have become
necessary for a lot of people in the
western world. The urban sprawl and need
to commute have seen to that.

When you take someone's car away, you
could very well be taking away their ability
to earn a living. And that does good to no one.
If anything, it would be easy to argue that
this would raise poverty and crime.

>"Confiscation of property for failure to
>comply with administrative paperwork is bullshit. "

I agree, there should probably be another
way of dealing with it. But, currently,
all we have is the bureaucracy's
discretionary powers.

But it certainly does not invalidate
the firearms registration act.

[caspervonb.livejournal.com]

Me is long winded. Apologies. I never really got the hang of concise.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Not the same thing. Cars have become
necessary for a lot of people in the
western world. The urban sprawl and need
to commute have seen to that.

We can fix that.

[caspervonb.livejournal.com]

Right.

And, realistically, we probably *should*
fix that.