generalspeaking

!WOT! Canada's Feminist Prime Minister?

"[Trudeau] remembers being in Creston for the Avalanche Foundation, but doesn't think he had any negative interactions there."
"As the PM has said before, he has always been very careful to treat everyone with respect. His first experiences with activism were on the issue of sexual assault at McGill [University in Montreal], and he knows the importance of being thoughtful and respectful."
Matt Pascuzzo, spokesman, Prime Minister's Office

"Shouldn't the son of a former prime minister be aware of the rights and wrongs that go along with public socializing?"
"Didn't he learn, through his vast experiences in public life, that groping a strange young woman isn't in the handbook of proper etiquette, regardless of who she is, what her business is or where they are?"
Editorial, Creston Valley Advance, August 2000, community newspaper, British Columbia

"It's pretty bizarre. [There are] no doubts [the described groping incident occurred]. I consider [her -- the complainant] to be of sound character and that she would not have made this up."
"It wouldn't have come to light at all, I'm sure, if the person in question hadn't gone on to become the prime minister of Canada. If he wasn't prime minister, I'm under no illusions that people would be scouring the archives of the Advance to find the great journalism that we did [back then]."
Creston Valley Advance then-editor, Brian Bell

Justin Trudeau gets inducted into the Order of Sasquatch Hunters at the Columbia Brewery’s Kokanee Summit Festival in Creston, B.C. on Sunday August 6, 2000. Postmedia file

Back then, a 28-year-old teacher of drama at a private school in Vancouver arrived in the southern interior of British Columbia for a special fund-raising event whose proceeds would help fund a memorial named for his late brother, Michel Trudeau, who had died in an avalanche accident several years previously. A female reporter in her early 20s was on scene to write a story and take photographs for her community newspaper. And that was the occasion when Justin Trudeau made inappropriate, rude and offensive physical overtures described as "groping" when the two interacted.

Trudeau had arrived in Creston for a music festival raising funds to help build a backcountry ski lodge to honour his brother's memory. The paper's publisher and then-editor verified the-then reporter's experience as she had related it to them immediately after the event had taken place. A day later that same reporter wrote the anonymous editorial chastising Trudeau for his decided lack of moral courtesy. "I know that she told me about it when I got back [from vacation] and I don't doubt she spoke to the publisher about it", affirmed Brian Bell.

That transgressor in the guise of a dedicated feminist is now the Prime Minister of Canada. Away back then he was merely a morals-challenged scion of a former Prime Minister of Canada. A political gossip/satire magazine, Frank, based in Ottawa, chose to publish that old editorial verbatim in April; perhaps to be viewed as a little jolt of reality, in a mood of mischief. Seeing in it a far greater lapse in character, however, political commentator and Trudeau critic Warren Kinsella posted the editorial on Twitter, stirring the Twitterverse to a virtual storm of condemnation/indignation/defense.

To be picked up elsewhere and everywhere on American websites such as Breitbart and The Daily Caller, and at home in the Toronto Sun, rating a post on BuzzFeed, coverage in Britain and France and even popping up in The New York Times. This, at a time when the #MeToo movement has been bringing down the high and the mighty (and suddenly defenceless) and garnering for ill-treated women a little payback for the insults, assaults and humiliations they have suffered since time immemorial. And which Justin Trudeau has personally condemned, committing to a reversal of women's place in global society.

Starting with dismissing two Liberal MPs from the Liberal caucus after being made Liberal leader, for their sexual harassment of two NDP MPs. Going on from there to condemn his former Minister of Veterans' Affairs Kent Hehr for alleged sexual harassment, consigning him to the back benches to nurse his humble regrets in isolation. Another MP from Calgary resigned from caucus for similar misdeeds as did Trudeau's deputy director of operations in the PMO. Deny the allegations they might, but repercussions were firm, administered by the feminist avenger.

And Trudeau? Well, he's awfully, awfully special. Isn't he? Who else has insisted that women's equal entitlements would rule whether or not Canada signs vital trade deals with the EU, the TPP, China, etc.?  Winning him no great applause from those incredulous sources who seem to believe, as the male chauvinist pigs they are, that women's rights have nothing to do with trade and economic ties between nations, but enabling his preening credentials to signal how very virtuous this sanctimonious child of fortune is.

But wait! He did apologize, yes he most certainly did. The day following the unfortunate incident when he must momentarily have gone stark, raving berserk soaked to the core with the brew of the unwashed masses where at the festival "thousands of people cruised the grounds", drinking, eating, taking in the music and some ungrateful women wrote inconsequential things like "It wasn't a good place to be if you're female. It was a ten-to-one ratio of men and women. I got my ass grabbed I don't know how many times. It was scary. I've never been so disgusted in my life".

A woebegone Trudeau had proffered his sincere and unreserved apology to the reporter whose sanctity of person he had transgressed by humbly informing her: "I'm sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward", having become privy to the reality that the reporter was covering festival events for the Advance, but also for the National Post and Vancouver Sun, part of the same news chain, and understanding just how vulnerable to outing as a grubby little predator he might be.

The apology was clearly contingent on the high visibility brought into focus by the realization that a national newspaper had the potential of publishing his stupid behaviour back in 2000. Some apology, that. The reporter rated an apology on the basis of who and how far her reportage reached. Not on the fact that he had violated her space and uninvited to do so, manhandled her physically. Some apology. Little could he know that it would take eighteen years for the dreaded story to be published in that same national-circulation newspaper to reveal the man's hypocrisy.

But hey, if Bill Clinton won't be held in a state of jeering condemnation for his penchant for forced sex, why should Justin Trudeau, whose admiring public will only shrug off any accusations as petty and vindictive, his actions only those of any red-blooded male? He is, of course, an embarrassment to himself, yes, but also to men who would never dream of forcing their unwanted attentions on women, much less shrugging off the incident, then going on to destroy the political lives of other men for the very same infractions he indulged in.

"The standard applies to everyone." Justin Trudeau "When women speak up it is our duty to listen to them and believe them."

Labels: Canada, Feminism, Hypocrisy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Sexual Predator

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, June 23, 2018