I thought at first of calling this post "Leave Bernie aloooone!" and in some ways I'm still sorry I didn't.
But there is something going on at the Toronto Star that is not funny. Yesterday morning, under the misleading and less than fully comprehensible hed "'Gay' blog post was just not fair" (insert animation of small person stamping little feet), the paper's public editor rapped the knuckles of one of the Star's leading columnists and bloggers in a strange column that opened with a one-and-a-half feat of pretzel logic and then continued thus:
First, this column is intended to address publicly the valid concerns of the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose chief executive officer, Bernie Farber, was the subject of a Zerbisias blog post that was tasteless and fell short of the Star's standards of fairness, accuracy and civility. That's a view shared by publisher John Cruickshank.
Now, if you'd missed the hed and read nothing but that set-up paragraph, what would you think the column and complaint were going to be about? You'd think, quite reasonably, that Antonia Z. had blogged to a topic of predictable concern to the CJC and to Bernie Farber in his official capacity. You'd probably think she'd blogged something about Israel-Palestine, or Canada-Israel relations, and people at the CJC felt that her criticism of Israel had crossed a line, a judgement then lowered also by the publisher and public editor of the Star.
And you would be wrong on every one of those counts except the last.
Then again, on another plane of reality, you wouldn't be so very wrong after all.
On the surface of things, at the literal level, what got the CJC's/Farber's/publisher's/public editor's knickers all in a knot was not a blogpost of Antonia's but a comment that she wrote in response to a comment from one of her readers, in the context of a discussion revived five days after the original post (about Canada Day) that segued to an exchange about the Toronto Pride parade.
At that point, the Star had already published two letters, one from Farber and one from the CJC, critical of one passage in Antonia's original newspaper column about Canada Day. As you can see a little further on, Antonia began to wonder about the belated revival of discussion on her blogpost about the newspaper column and started to check IPs. (FYI, Ms English and Mr Cruickshank, that's one of our internet tradishuns.) Y'all know what she found, eh?
It gets better. Andrew Brett at rabble.ca:
On [her blog, Zerbisias] expanded on examples of ... censorship attempts, pointing to Farber's opposition to a pro-Palestinian group marching in this year's Toronto Pride. Multiple media outlets quoted Farber saying that political groups do not belong in gay pride, and that he was encouraging people to lobby Pride Toronto against the inclusion of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the parade.
When a commenter on her blog pointed out that Farber had himself marched in the Pride parade with a political group, Zerbisias responded with tongue firmly in cheek, "Imagine my surprise when I saw Bernie Farber identifying himself as queer by joining a pro-Israel gay rights group in the parade."Although he isn't gay, Farber marched in the parade wearing a t-shirt that read, "Nobody knows I'm gay." It was part of a concerted effort on the part of Zionists to bolster their numbers in Pride with straight supporters. An e-mail circulated by a pro-Israel group in advance of the parade explicitly encouraged its straight members to join the contingent.
Despite being the one to falsely claim he was gay in the first place, Farber discussed the issue with the CJC executive committee this week and issued a letter to the Toronto Star, objecting to Zerbisias' comments. He insisted he wasn't gay - not that there's anything wrong with that. He even questioned the right of columnists to identify any public figure who attended the parade, even though his presence had been publicized by the Canadian Jewish News and Farber himself before Zerbisias responded to it.
Do click through to the T-shirt. Alison has a nice shot of it too.
At least half of English's column yesterday consisted of publisher John Cruickshank's and her own endearingly innocent opinions about the blogosphere. This, for instance, from English:
... the power of the Internet to make messages "go viral" means that numerous people from across Canada alerted Farber to this posting.
Oh, yes. That's us. We've got teh magic here on the innertubes. No one understands it (certainly not English and Cruickshank), but the internet just has that, y'know, power.
And here she is again:
I commend Zerbisias's gusto in embracing the tools of new media such as blogs and Twitter.
Y'know, I honestly shudder to think of what pogge and mahigan and Tim would do to me if I ever patted them on the head for their "gusto in embracing the tools of new media." The person who wrote that feather-brained sentence is stuck in some alternate universe in which bloggers are still teenagers in their jammies typing away in their mothers' basements. She sure isn't reading TPM or emptywheel or digby or Atrios, or the Beavers or Alison or Impolitical or Stageleft or ... ok, I'll stop, because I don't want to leave anyone brilliant out.
I kind of have the feeling, though, that maybe Mr Cruickshank has a vague inkling of what is in store for corporate hacks like him. I mean, you don't bloviate the way he does in English's column unless you are starting to feel defensive, unless you've recognized that the very people you're trying so hard to condescend to are in fact smarter about the future than you are.
The scary thing about this comic-opera episode is that we have seen the corporate media and the lobbyists they answer to bare their fangs when they are called out on their patent illogicality, hypocrisy, and ignorance, and then there are the deficits in the humour and narrative-grace departments. A lot of us have seen this happen before: even when hacks with power are proved wrong, they continue to believe that they are wrong for the right reasons (see Michael Ignatieff), and they will destroy anyone who challenges their version of the proper way to think, the respectable way to think, at any given time.
They believe in manners over morals. They have forgotten what morals even are, if they ever knew. They don't try to write or even to think clearly because that kind of work is for suckers, and their mission is to trick or intimidate people into agreeing with them, so they can get on with whatever it is the powerful are doing today.
And that is the juggernaut that Antonia ran into this past couple of weeks. Our beautiful Antonia, who writes from the pulse, who follows truth and beauty and pain and the whole damn thing wherever it leads her. This is not a story about homophobia or anti-semitism (although that implied charge is the second level down). It is a story about brute power, the future Orwell warned us about:
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever.
And its coming is always facilitated by amoral little note-takers like the public editor of the Toronto Star.
"Amoral little note-takers" :D
luv it when you get mad...
Could it be that here we are seeing a gasp of a power elite losing power: a shift in the method of disseminating information and opinion? Mr Cruickshank, the holder of control so far as the Star print/paper 'division' goes, does not, as you point out, really understand either the immediacy or the variety of the electronic blogs/websites.
Lately in Canada, as indeed the whole world, a great homogenization has taken place. Canoe.ca and Canada.com stand astride the media sector, making papers in BC/Alberta indistinguishable from those of the Maritimes and all in between, even as Rupert Murdock tries to do it Internationally. That the Star is not a member of either of these groups does not negate the point, they have adopted the methods.
So we have a conflict between Cruickshank and by extension John Hondrich, supporters of a tightly controlled and edited print media and a new, varied, sometimes bright - sometimes dull but always vivacious blogisphere. Caught in the middle is Antonia Z. forced to operate in two disciplines, obey two gods: that of the structured world of a huge city news organization, and that of the electronic sphere where disorganization, dispute and individual assertions are more then demanded, they are necessary for survival.
Perhaps a new word is being invented here .... Antonia is being "Froomkin'ed". The old media wants to contain and control Broadsides, the Blog, as they do the various columnists, without an understanding of the rising power of the new media. It is thinking like that that is seeing papers all over N. America declining into a caricature of what they were, or just fading away
Almost secondary to this is the Gay Pride organizers in Toronto - I can see them saying: "Hey fellahs - we are just trying to have an inclusive CELEBRATION here, not an opportunity for divisiveness." They have made it abundantly clear that political statements are acceptable only so far as they emphasize the 'gayness' of the organization.
Then there is the CJC - and Bernie Farber. He seems to think that any sentence that does not begin: "I love Israel ..." is somehow antisemitic and a personal insult. It is very tempting to believe that all these letters to the Star are because he feels he has not been noticed enough and wants to see his name in print more frequently. What else would he wear a shirt saying he is gay and then being surprised when someone says: "Oh, you're gay."
Whatever - AZ is on the side of the angels in this one - she has united a fractious group of bloggers, with many different political, social agentda behind her. That IS amazing.
WAY-TO-GO 'A'. :)
Disturbing.....Truly.
The Chill that happens whenever someone says something the powerful do not like.
The Torstar public editor and Cruikshank are cowards, and in fact only contribute to their own demise. The Dead tree corporate media seems clueless as to why they are going down so fast. They blame the economy etc...But in reality it is because we all know someone paid for what goes in there.
Even some blogs which have a definite ideological slant are more responsible and truthful. Antonia is more like us. And they no like that...Nuh uh.
Bah.
Totally share your outrage skdadl.
You know, I think Antonia Zerbisias's criticism of the CJC would have been fine if she had not actually been rather unprofessional. I say this as a non-Jewish progressive who has read her blogs and columns for many years.
You can make the point about Bernie Farber being in the parade in a political capacity without noting that he's "identifying himself as queer". Her delight in pointing that out seems homophobic, which is disappointing coming from a progressive columnist; it's the kind of comment you typically see from someone on the social conservative side of politics. I think Farber responded quite well by saying he's not offended to be labeled gay for appearing in the Pride parade, but it's inaccurate.
She's a newspaper columnist, not an anonymous commenter. There's a higher standard for her, and I think unwarranted personal attacks don't meet it. It's not necessary if you have relevant commentary on an individual or group's actions, and it is stupid when you are dealing with an individual who is fairly high-profile and TWO communities (both queer people and Jewish people) who are sensitive and activist about their portrayal in the media. AZ came across as spiteful and intolerant on two fronts.
It also seems like many progressive blogs and Twitters have people taking AZ's side because her criticism was of a Jewish person, not even considering whether the complaint is legitimate. That's disappointing to me.
Jaya - you mean if someone wears a shirt that says they are 'gay', even in irony, another person cannot respond, equally in irony, that they did not know that person was 'gay'?
Indeed, Antonia is a columnist - and yes, there are different standards for professionals than there are for amateurs - but Mr. Farber in no shrinking violet himself - he is a very public person (and tries to be more public all the time) - he too should be held to a 'higher standard'. As in, he should know better - because of who he is, who he choses to be.
If ya plays the game,ya gotta expect da game to be played back atcha.
It seems that Ms. Zerbisias doth complain too much and her hypocrisy is showing. She would have pro-Palestinian groups march in the Toronto Pride Parade, but deny that same right to Bernie Farber, who wore a "Nobody Knows That I'm Gay" t-shirt! Whether Mr. Farber is indeed gay or not is not the centre of the controversy, unless Ms. Zerbisias seeks to impose a litmus test on all Pride Parade marchers and only allow those who are indeed actually gay participate! However, there seems to be no evidence that such a test was applied to the pro-Palestinian marchers. Perhaps the solution to the controversy is to let the organizers of the Pride Parade to limit participation to those who are actually gay, or otherwise support only gay issues and exclude all others! No hypocrites need apply!
Jaya, Zerbisias' comment was pure snark - she was saying Bernie Farber's gay, yea RIGHT! if you don't mind me translating. I was part of the conversation, in comments, FIVE DAYS after the original post. The only people there at that point were the freeping trolls and one of them was the person who pointed out Farber's participation in Pride - as two or three others like me who have noticed how a few people who are very "pro-Israel" continue to harass her - we like to stand with her every now and again. There wasn't anything remotely homophobic about Zerbisias' comment but I'm not at all sure I can say the same thing about some of the conversations people have had since then, including in English's column. As skdadl pointed out for instance, what the hell's a "gay" blog post? Also inaccurate because it wasn't a post where the "offending" comment was made.
But, even if you still think Z's comment was out of place and even though I have no problem with it myself, I'd have thought you'd still notice the incredible overreaction on the part of The Star and wonder what the freak is behind it. Do you really think they're all that concerned about hurting the feelings of gay people?
It also seems like many progressive blogs and Twitters have people taking AZ's side because her criticism was of a Jewish person, not even considering whether the complaint is legitimate. That's disappointing to me.
Really? That's what you get out of it all, Jaya, when everything I've seen, from presumably the same bloggers and folks on Twitter, seems to say that neither gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity nor religious affiliation was ever the issue being discussed. I don't think you've even understood this particular post here by skdadl.
"It also seems like many progressive blogs and Twitters have people taking AZ's side because her criticism was of a Jewish person, not even considering whether the complaint is legitimate."
Jaya, I very much agree with you. If AZ didn't have a history of Israel bashing and an obvious love affair with Palestinians and other enemies of the Israeli state, she would probably have gotten away with her little boo-boo. But was it a boo boo? We all know how she writes about a topic but inserts her antisemitism into her discussions in sneaky little ways. Yups. That's Antonia. Sneaky. Sneaky.
Jaya : Farber and Zerbisias are both strongly gay-positive. This is not even remotely at issue.
Anson : Queers Against Israeli Apartheid are gay.
Kulanu Toronto is a Jewish social group, some of whom are gay. No one has suggested Farber not march with them.
The hypocrisy resides in Farber attempting to lobby against the inclusion of an actual gay group in the parade and then marching in it himself.
Campbell:
So let me get this straight. Farber trying to block a Palestinian group from doing exactly what he did himsself is *not* hypocritical. But calling him on it *is*.
It's amazing the way certain people manage to turn things completely upside down. Zerbisias didn't try to stop anyone from participating in anything. She made a snarky comment about someone (yes, I know, that's only free speech when right wingers do it, otherwise it's oppression). Farber on the other hand actively lobbied to ban someone from doing something. Zerbisias did not try to apply a litmus test; she called attention to the litmus test Farber was trying to apply--and to the fact that he himself very actively violated the same test he advocated for others.
It takes a pretty active ability to redefine black as white to let you claim Zerbisias to be the oppressor or hypocrite here.
Personally I'm looking forward to the next public apology from Ms English - the one in which she apologizes to the gay community for her inference that referring to someone as gay, even ironically, is "distasteful".
Dorybel writes:
We all know how she writes about a topic but inserts her antisemitism into her discussions in sneaky little ways. Yups. That's Antonia. Sneaky. Sneaky.
"We all," Dorybel? Who is "we all"? Are you a group of some kind? Because I certainly don't belong.
We won't be seeing Dorybel again. Vicious slander is not allowed here, and calling someone an antisemite, a very serious legal charge in Canada, with no supporting evidence is a dangerous and wicked thing to do -- we simply can't allow it.
I'll be back to comment further when the caffeine has kicked in, but I figured I should clean up Dorybel's little mess before any of her "we all" friends got the idea that they could use this thread as their litterbox.
"calling someone an antisemite, a very serious legal charge in Canada, with no supporting evidence is a dangerous and wicked thing to do -- we simply can't allow it."
Antisemitism is no more illegal in Canada than is homophobia.
And if she wrote that you, or I, was antisemitic, it would take a lot before I believed her claim that it was "irony".
I like Zerbezias in general, but I don't think outing people is good journalism. Especially when you know the outing is untrue.
Really, Jeffry?
I realize that that single comment of Dorybel's wouldn't be enough for a serious charge on its own, but it's my understanding that that label is one step on the way to a genuine hate-speech case. I'm thinking, eg, of what happened to David Ahenakew.
I don't like our hate-speech laws. I also don't like what Ahenakew said, and persisted in saying. But I like state investigations of citizens' psyches even less, and I have some experience of how much it can cost anyone (quite a lot, really) just to face a loose charge of having committed a thought-crime.
So taking all those things into account, I would much prefer not to see people playing any of those games on any side in a thread of mine, if you take my point.
And to your second point: I could not be more opposed to outing anybody on any score except in those cases where people with power have been working actively to deny others a freedom they choose for themselves. I've been stalked by a few people who want to out me, so I'm in no doubt about what a scummy practice it is.
But honestly, Jeffry -- you'd have to be totally tone-deaf and ignorant of the history to think that Antonia was outing anyone with her sharp response to a troll in her comments. Do I think that Bernie Farber believed for one second that she was outing him? No. Do I think that any of the very few people who would still have been reading that thread (by that point, all trolls) srsly believed that Bernie Farber had just been outed as gay? No.
I do think that Bernie thought he saw an opportunity to attack Antonia, though. And so he did. And so now he looks exactly as he deserves to look -- very very silly.
One qweschun I've never been able to get anyone to answer: WTF does the executive committee of the CJC have to do with Bernie Farber's sexual orientation? Why was Kathy English responding to the CJC on behalf of the Toronto Star when all that was at issue was Farber's sexual orientation (and we all knew that not even that was at issue)?
Last para = art. :)
Thank you, Jen. I read and admired your own dissection of the Star's clumsy (or maybe even more suspect) response to Farber's complaint about Antonia. They still owe us a further column, don't they.
And so another column was delivered.
Dorybel, you are so right. I have always said that AZ may have you believe she's discussing something unrelated to Jews or Israel, then inserts an subtle anti Semitic slur between her words. She thinks she's clever but we can see through her.
Yes indeed, she is sneaky in the most dangerous sort of way. Don't ever trust her.
It's a little late to be trolling this party, Arlyss, since your comments won't turn up on the front page, but I'll ban you anyway.
I would like to comment on the treatment of our people,yes our comunity sick and well. On a much to high number of ocassions I have witnessed abuse of our citizens obviously not well and in need to get from one place to another. Some of our TTC drivers are down right abusive to these individuals who cannot for various reasons stand up for themselves and really cannot basically deal. I do not know who is to blaim but surely there must be some santicy for these individuals just to feel like part of our community just like anyone else; because they are us. I am mortified by the lack of compassion and as a great city we should treat our people with alot more respect. I think alot of people feel as I do and have witnessed the same as I.Please have compassion for those of us who are in and out of hospital or living on the streets because they may not be able to work or even trust anyone; they really need our support. And PLEASE TTC let these citizens just get on the bus with some dignity.
Good job, i am seeing here different commands also thanks for sharing. I should just give up and take lessons from you
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