Category Archives: Liberal

Is Jagmeet Singh a traitor? Two weeks ago, the federal New Democratic Party leader was visiting the campaign headquarters of a Peterborough NDP candidate running in the current Ontario provincial election. As he emerged from this building he was accosted by a group of very angry and very aggressive men and women who sought to block him from getting into his car.

They hurled verbal, racist abuse at him, screaming profanities in his face. CBC film of this altercation picked up protestors yelling Youre a fking piece of st, youre a traitor, I hope you die.

This counts as political discourse now in Canada, at least from some of those on the extreme right. Singh eventually made it to his car unhurt but local police warned that the behavior exhibited by these protestors bordered on the criminal.

And why was he called a traitor? Because these protestors were enraged at the Liberal-NDP supply and confidence agreement signed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Singh in March.

I wrote about this development in federal politics in a recent Political Insights column. As I noted then, these parties now will work together to improve federal policies in seven key areas including health care, climate change, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and election reform.

Both parties have also consented to maintain this arrangement until the summer of 2025, providing this Liberal minority government with political stability for the next three years.

Conservatives from Candice Bergen, interim leader of the Conservative Party, to Conservative Party leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre, to the protestors confronting Singh, have slammed the deal as an NDP-Liberal attempt at government by blackmail. This deal is said to be undemocratic, unconstitutional, and the establishment of a socialist-liberal coalition of power.

None of this is true.

I dealt with the coalition issue in my earlier article. Here, its important for people to understand how and why minority parliaments, those when no single party has a majority of seats in the House of Commons, can arrive at such agreements between two or more parties to create the conditions whereby a minority government can survive for a set period of time, while developing policies and programs desired by these parties.

When people elect a minority parliament, as we did for the second time in a row last fall, its a sign that we voters, collectively, are unwilling to give one party a majority government. But its also a sign that many expect like-minded parties to make a minority government work for the interests of Canadians.

Hence such confidence and supply agreements. And this recent federal example is not unique in Canadian political history.

While such agreements are rare because minority governments are rare, they have been witnessed in various provinces. In 1985, in Ontario, a provincial election saw the governing Progressive Conservatives reduced to a minority government. Within weeks of this vote a Liberal-NDP Accord was struck whereby these parties would vote non-confidence in the Conservative government, leading to the creation of a new Liberal government committed to progressive social and economic policies. This agreement lasted for 24 months and was widely popular with Ontarians.

In 2017, in British Columbia, a similar development transpired after a provincial election resulted in a minority Liberal government. But here, the NDP and the Greens came together to establish an accord that would see the establishment of a New Democratic Party minority government rooted to support from the Greens. Again, this agreement, designed to last four years, witnessed the promotion of a host of progressive policies supported by a majority of British Columbians.

In all these cases, such political agreements are legal, constitutional, democratic, and fully in keeping with parliamentary government. Its very sad today when we see some ordinary Canadians, and certain political leaders who should know better, use misinformation and deliberate ignorance as political weapons in their quest for influence and power.

Dr. David Johnson, Ph.D., teaches political science at Cape Breton University. He can be reached at [emailprotected]

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DAVID JOHNSON: Treason and the Liberal-NDP agreement - Saltwire

While Labor's election victory has been celebrated in parts of the country, regional Queensland remains Coalition heartland.

Labor does not hold a single seat north of Blair, just south of Noosa, with the LNP retaining 70 per cent of federal seats in Queensland, leaving many in the agriculture and mining sectors worried the inner-city electorates' embrace of the Greens could deepen the regional divide between city and country.

George Scott is grazier on Thylungra Station in south-west Queensland and said support forthe Greens in the south-east was a surprise.

"It's certainly something that gives me concern in terms of where agriculture aligns itself and where we sit and the bigger picture," Mr Scott said.

"We certainly feel that at times we're taking an unfair level of responsibility for emissions in Australia, particularly cattle, but a lot of agriculture seems to be an easy whipping boy for climate change.

"A lot of that is undeserved and uneducated to an extent."

He said agricultural voters were mostly loyal to the LNP, but Labor's election win and changing attitudes in the south-east were reasons for him to self-reflect on his own beliefs and where they align.

"We're generally a very, very loyal voting bloc, therefore, one side takes us for granted, and the other side takes no interest because nothing much is going to change how we vote.

"So I think our rural seats and agriculture, in general, suffers from that.

"It's a time for us, and me personally to consider whether or not where we are becoming too disconnected.

"The majority of public opinion seems to be moving further away from us as participants in society we have to consider where we're sitting and why we're there and whether or not we actually do need to adapt."

Queensland Labor Senator Murray Watt said the partymade a real effort after the 2019 election to reconnect with regional Queensland, and believed swings away from the LNP this time were the result of that.

"We spent a lot of time out there listening to people, meeting with different groups to understand why people reacted so badly against us in 2019," he said.

"We put forward a lot of really strong policies about new industries, how we could create jobs, how we could maintain our traditional industries and importantly how we could continue to improve health serviceswhich is such a big issue in regional Queensland.

"I think it's a matter of continuing to engage really strongly, spending lots of time in our regions, making those connections, continuing to understand the issues that people confront."

Mr Watt said the election resultsshowedthecity-country divide was closing.

"We're coming more to the centre in Queensland than where we were three years ago.

"I think after the last election there was a really massive divide between the city and the bush in Queensland...but as I say this time those margins have come in a lot more.

He said although the Greens have been elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in Queensland at this election, "overall I think that the results are much more coming towards the middle".

"Even in Albo's victory speech on Saturday night he made a real point that he wanted to be a prime minster that brings people together.

"He's someone who will try and bridge any divides between the regions and the cities."

For Clermont pharmacist Grant Oswald, Labor's win made him nervous for the future of the mining town he serves.

He said he believedthe regional divide would deepen unless the new government made a conscious effort to work with regional communities.

"As much as I agree that we need to do something about climate change and everything like that, we also still need to protect our industries and our jobs, and our regional towns," Mr Oswald said.

He said people in cities needed to understand the needs oftowns like Clermont.

"Talking to a few people in the shop yesterday we wish we could get those people up here to the bush and actually see what we do up here, what the agriculture industry means to us and of course, what the mining industry does too and what they do for our little towns up this way.

"We really need to see them, get up here, get out in the bush and don't just forget that, that we're here."

Central Queensland farmer Richard Fairley was also concerned aboutthe new government's transition to renewables, which will include a 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, will be too fast and hurt regional Queensland.

"Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with caring for the environment, but drastic movement and getting away with it is going to hurt a lot of people," Mr Fairley said.

"I think I'll be one of them."

Mr Fairley's property near Biloela lies in the electorate of Flynn, which was narrowly won by the LNP's Colin Boyce after incumbent Ken O'Dowd retired from the party after 12 years.

Flynn is rich in agriculture and mining and is home to the coal-fired Callide Power Station, a major employer in Biloela.

"I'm glad we can still have our voice heard in parliament [through the local LNP member] and they will look after mining jobs, power station jobs as much as they can but I think unfortunately the green movement is going to do a lot of harm in the economy and general businesses."

Mr Fairley said Labor needed to do more to address industry needs like dam infrastructure, labour shortages as well as improving energy security.

CQ University political commentator Jacob Deem said there was the potential for the increase in progressive votes in the south-east to widen the city-country divide.

"In terms of these regional seats being held by Coalition members, I think that there will need to be greater engagement with the regions and in particular, as we transition to renewables," Dr Deem said.

"There isa lot of opportunity for these areas in central Queensland to take a leading role in that, but it's important that [Mr] Albanese takes a consultative approach moving forward."

Greenscandidate Penny Allman-Payne is likely to win a seat in Queensland's senate.

The Gladstone-based teacher said she will keep her office in the industrial port city.

"I travelled around Queensland, including north Queensland and central Queensland talking to people about our plan for the transition," Ms Allman-Payne said.

"I spoke to workers on pre-poll in Townsville and Gladstone and when they actually heard what our plan was to look after coal workers for the next decade, to make sure we are investing in green metals, manufacturing and other renewable energy industries and they actually really liked what they heard."

Posted9h ago9 hours agoTue 24 May 2022 at 10:37pm, updated7h ago7 hours agoWed 25 May 2022 at 12:30am

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Regional Queensland voted for the Liberal National Party. What do they make of the Labor government and 'greenslide'? - ABC News

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To the extent that Poilievre threatens some change to the comfortable Liberal status quo built on durable advantages in Quebec and urban Ontario, Poilievre renders the political establishment uneasy

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There is naturally increasing pressure on Pierre Poilievre as the apparent front-runner in the federal Conservative leadership race, and as has been mentioned here before, the drearily predictable method of attempting to derail the leading candidate is the malicious insinuation of a harsh and Darwinian character, embellished by innuendos of racial biases. Some of the discussion about Poilievres declared intent to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada has essentially been cited as evidence of Poilievres supposedly callous disregard for normal human civility.

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Allegations of racism, however subtle, against almost any current prominent federal politician in any party are nonsense. Last week I received a form letter from an unverifiable sender, likely sent to a wide range of addressees, claiming that Poilievres alleged non-renunciation of the white replacement theory constituted evidence that he is a white supremacist. This is standard in these campaigns, but it is accentuated by the fact that Poilievre is approximately as conservative in policy terms as Stephen Harper and to the right of all other federal Conservative leaders since George Drew, who retired as party leader in 1956.

The frenzied hostility of much of the media to Poilievre has nothing to do with any humanitarian shortcomings they may profess to perceive; it reflects the fact that he is, if elected party leader, quite likely to move both his party and the country appreciably towards the centre of the political spectrum, or even slightly to the right of centre. The political establishment of Canada has been thoroughly addicted to a gelatinous soft-leftishness that permeates the political media, most public policy discussion, the entire public service and most conventional political wisdom in the country, to the point where it is, to say the least, monotonous. Poilievres professed respect for, and pursuit of, liberty frustrates them, as no one can attack liberty as a concept, and Poilievre is both sincere and agile in his defence of it.

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To the extent that Poilievre threatens some change to the comfortable Liberal status quo built on durable advantages in Quebec and urban Ontario, Poilievre renders the political establishment uneasy. And they respond in the only way they know by slinging muck at him, attempting to paint him as an extremist and an uncaring person. This is very tiresome and it is also somewhat imitative of the extraordinary decline in the quality of public discourse in the United States, where a horrifyingly incompetent administration is watching helplessly and with mounting terror over the likelihood, which is increasing every week, of a return to office by Donald Trump and his scores of millions of angry followers. We have reached no such extremity in this country, but we have swallowed wokeness whole, to the extent that almost anything short of white ethnic self-hatred is decried as racial intolerance.

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Because Poilievre could sell sensible conservatism and could win, he presents a plausible alternative to the Liberals and is thus anathema to those addicted to the present national political diet of soft left pablum. The changes in monetary policy that Poilievre seeks could be implemented without replacing the governor of the central bank. The desire to dismiss him does sound somewhat vindictive, as Canada has had a central bank for over 87 years and only one previous governor was forced out: James E. Coyne, who publicly criticized the Diefenbaker governments fiscal policy, and was falsely accused by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker of helping himself to an excessive pension ($25,000 annually). In this case, the problem is exclusively policy questions, and Poilievre is absolutely right that the money supply should not have been expanded as recklessly as it has been to facilitate the Trudeau governments profligate extravagance, but what he is really claiming is that he will fire Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem for failing to resign in protest at the Liberals fiscal and monetary policies. He could achieve just as much simply by ordering a change in policy, which, if elected, he will do anyway.

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Poilievre is right on policy Canadas economic performance is a disgrace. Former Conservative leader Erin OToole lost a great opportunity and failed in an important duty when he passively agreed with the entire catastrophic COVID shutdown program; it was a grievous self-inflicted economic wound and a prolonged and damaging interruption of the education of most of the countrys schoolchildren. During Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus time in office, average per capita GDP growth has been less than half the average of the Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrtien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper years; and in the Justin Trudeau years, Canadian investment in foreign countries has exceeded foreign investment in Canada by about $400 billion. We are propelling ourselves over a cliff to second-rate status among the worlds nations.

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I want to use this opportunity to get off my chest a long-held fiscal bugbear. As we have embarked on yet another cycle of rising interest rates to fight inflation, we should only slightly raise interest rates and temporarily increase goods and services taxes on non-essential spending and abolish taxation on income and capital gains from savings and investments that are not short-term speculation. This would spare the vulnerable, especially those living in homes financed by floating-rate mortgages, from the ravages of high interest rates, but would incentivize a parallel reduction in demand and resulting relief of inflationary pressure. Almost all of the worlds important central bankers are afflicted by conformist group-think and an absence of imagination in addressing inflation-reduction and recession-avoidance.

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The Conservatives have quite a good group of leadership candidates and the exchanges between them have been reasonably dignified. Poilievres attack on Jean Charest as a liberal is fair comment, as Charest, over his long career (he was appointed interim leader of the Progressive Conservative party 27 years ago), has been at the radical centre between moderate conservatives and moderate liberals. It is unjust to hold against Jean Charest that he was the Liberal premier of Quebec for three terms, however. The Quebec Liberal Party, like the British Columbia Liberals, has effectively been a coalition between Liberals and Conservatives since the separatist Parti Qubecois surpassed the nationalist but anti-separatist Union Nationale in 1973. Federalism itself is in the midst of a trial: if the federal governments horrendous environmental assessment legislation, Bill C-69, is upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, it will devalue the constitutional standing of the provinces within the federation and fully match the Government of Quebecs outrageous attempt, with federal compliance, in Bill 96, virtually to exterminate the English language in the province. If these two measures go fully into effect, Confederation will, in large measure, be a sham. The candidates should be focusing a good deal more upon this, and not side-shows about the central bank governor and red herrings about falsely imputed lapses of racially egalitarian zeal.

National Post

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Conrad Black: Poilievre has a real chance to break the Liberal status quo and that has his enemies trembling - National Post

Outgoing minister Angus Taylor has called on the Liberal Party to return to its core valuesafter its heavy defeat in the federal election.

The election loss has cost Mr Taylor the energy and emissions reduction portfolio, which he has held since 2018.

But hewill remain in parliament after retaining the NSW seat of Hume, according to the latest ABC projections.

"It is critical now for the Liberal party to regroup and refocus on our core values,"Mr Taylor said.

"We must recognise who we represent and that in a time of great economic challenge, core liberal values have much to offer."

"More than ever, we need to focus on careful management of the economy and taxpayer money [and]leave behind heavy-handed interventions that hamper our hardworking businesses and workers and our economic recovery."

Mr Taylor won the seat of Hume for the fourth time despite a challenge from Labor and independent candidates.

Before the election Hume was considered one of the safest Liberal seats in the country, held with a margin of 13 per cent.

With 78 per cent of the vote counted, that margin is estimated to have slipped to 7.6 per cent.

The former frontbencher suffered a 10 per cent first-preference swing against him in his expansive electorate, which covers an area from the suburbs of south-west Sydney to the NSW Southern Tablelands.

Mr Taylor said there wouldbe a lot of focus on the shift to "left-wing independents" but said parts of the country had shifted to conservative parties.

"We also need to recognise the fragmentation of the primary votes of the major parties across the nation," he said.

"Labor has gained government legitimately with a 32 per centprimary vote which is unprecedented, while we saw strong support for smaller conservative parties in the suburbs and the bush."

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Among his challengers was first-time independent Penny Ackery, a Goulburn resident campaigning for a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption and increasing emissions reduction targets.

"I am really not sure exactly what he means by this, we saw this in a rural area where he lost his margin which was very large," Ms Ackery said.

"Iknow there are places where the Liberals have completely lost out."

The man behind funding for the successfulTeal independents, Simon Holmes aCourt, was at Ms Ackery's campaign launch in Goulburn last year.

The retired schoolteacher declined his offer to back her campaign through the Climate 200 fund.

"Accepting funding when it was a matter of integrity that I was really campaigning on, we felt that was not going to go down well, we decided against that," she said.

"We have no regrets about that."

Ms Ackery said ultimately it was difficult to compare the success of the inner-city independents with those challenging for rural seats.

"The actual demographics are different," she said.

"We have very rural areas down here as well as the outer suburbs of Sydney, so it is a very different electorate in regards to the issues we are dealing with.

"But they are all Australians, they are all having difficulties and they have concerns about things like integrityand about making sure we have a renewable economy into the future, it doesn't matter where you live, these things matter."

Mr Taylor said despite his role change he wouldremain focused on delivering the local projects included in the federal budget.

"It is now my job to make sure the government delivers on what we need the new airport and local jobs, the Picton bypass, a Goulburn Medicare-funded MRI and a host of other road and communications projects, in addition to delivering on cost of living commitments."

"These are all budgeted, and I will make sure you all know if the new government decides to change direction."

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Posted23 May 202223 May 2022Mon 23 May 2022 at 9:23am, updated23 May 202223 May 2022Mon 23 May 2022 at 10:50pm

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Angus Taylor says Liberal Party must focus on core values after federal election loss - ABC News

I just think its really, really close. It could go either way, she said. Im ecstatic to see the change in government. I know Gilmore is still in doubt, but an Albanese Labor government will bring in many of the policies that we need, particularly around affordable and social housing.

Local issues, including housing and healthcare, dominated the battle for Gilmore, and both candidates acknowledged that disaster mitigation was front of mind as the region recovered from the Black Summer bushfires and more recent floods.

Labor MP Fiona Phillips and party leader Anthony Albanese on the campaign trail in April.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

More than 80 per cent of the vote had been counted by 6pm on Tuesday, with Constance leading by about a hundred votes.

More than 1000 postal votes were being counted in Port Kembla on Tuesday, though both Constance and Phillips said they were not expecting a clear result until next Friday.

Constance led Phillips 51,060 to 50,780 on Tuesday afternoon in figures from the Australian Electoral Commission.

Constance said a viable future for the Liberal Party depended on its members and elected officials better reflecting the Australian community.

Were a progressive country and people want change, thats what the vote was about for everybody, he said.

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The partys future depends on its ability to uphold community values, and you cant lose sight of that. It would be very easy to pour petrol on an internal argument, but theres no point, because thats not why we exist.

Phillips won Gilmore in 2019 with 52.6 per cent of the vote after the sitting Liberal member, Ann Sudmalis, retired.

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Liberals are too focused on themselves, says Constance, as Gilmore hangs in balance - Sydney Morning Herald

Liberalism, then, has been spectacularly hypocritical though Fukuyama, for one, is unimpressed with the charge, arguing that this leftist critique fails to show how the doctrine is wrong in its essence. The historian Caroline Elkins might beg to disagree. In Legacy of Violence, her recent book about the British Empire, she argues that ideological elasticity was in fact what made liberal imperialism so resilient. She shows how Britains vast apparatus of laws was used to legitimize the violence of its civilizing mission. What Fukuyama repeatedly refers to as liberalisms essence has also, Elkins suggests, amounted to a paradox: emancipation and oppression, all rolled in one.

But such tensions are less interesting to liberalisms conservative critics, who think that its rotten all the way down. As Matthew Rose puts it in A World After Liberalism, the radical right has long deemed it evil in principle because it destroys the foundations of social order. The 20th-century extremist thinkers he discusses in his book among them a fascist savant and a right-wing Marxist derided Christianity, too, for an egalitarianism and compassion that they just couldnt abide. Still, their critiques have found echoes in contemporary arguments by right-wing Christians like Sohrab Ahmari and Patrick Deneen, who blame liberalism for making people comfort-seeking and spiritually lazy.

Liberal decadence doesnt amount just to temptation but to tyranny or so you might believe when reading liberalisms most vociferous detractors on the right, whose sweeping denunciations can make it sound as if theres a liberal regime coercing women into pursuing careers and forcing them to get abortions. Its notable how little liberalisms book-length defenders have to say about sexual and reproductive rights, while conservative critics have long been fixated on them. Gopnik did warn that if the anti-abortion movement truly meant business, it would have to create some sort of invasive pregnancy police force. He didnt foresee that Texas would soon figure out a way to do something even more extreme by putting that power in the hands of civilians a vigilante-enforced ban on abortion, on the cheap.

Theres an old essay by the feminist cultural critic Ellen Willis in which she said that sophisticated liberals seemed so emotionally intimidated by the anti-abortion movement that they didnt quite know how to talk about it: Nearly everyone I know supports legal abortion in principle, but hardly anyone takes the issue seriously. Willis wrote this in 1980, calling the anti-abortion movement the most dangerous political force in the country, one that posed a threat not only to sexual freedom and privacy but also to physical autonomy and civil liberties in general.

Willis pointed to liberalisms weaknesses while also identifying the room it had opened up for liberation. She had gotten her start as a rock critic, a woman in a male-dominated field, ever aware of the possibilities and limitations afforded by the mainstream culture. The late philosopher Charles Mills was similarly attuned to such discrepancies. In books like The Racial Contract and Black Rights/White Wrongs, he offered scathing critiques of a racialized liberalism that kept trying to pretend it was colorblind; Mills argued that liberalisms exclusions were historically so vast that they werent mere anomalies but clearly fundamental to it.

Still, as he told The Nation in early 2021, liberalism is attractive on both principled and strategic grounds. Mills envisioned a liberalism that was tougher and more radical, yet imbued with some necessary humility a sense of how contingent it was. It was precisely the experience of subordination and exclusion that made him alert to what many liberals didnt want to see. He ended an essay for Artforum in 2018 with a warning: As the anti-Enlightenment bears down on us, threatening a new Dark Age, just remember: We told you so (and long ago, too).

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Where Have All the Liberals Gone? - The New York Times

Bill Maher cant understand what has happened to the world he once knew, as he lamented during Fridays Real Time on HBO.

Several times during the show, an exasperated Maher threw up his hands and questioned the craziness of life in these United States. Cases in point: It used to be a liberal thing to be suspicious of defense contractors, he said during a discussion of the decision to send $40 billion to Ukraine. Later, during a discussion about the kvetching over Elon Musks Twitter bid, Free speech was important to liberals in this country at one time.

In his closing rant, he complained about The audacity of it all, noting it appears there are no lines that cant be crossed, like running on stage during a live show (a la Dave Chappelles recent brush with a nut), or messing with Mike Tyson. Who needs the metaverse when you can do whatever you want in real life? Maher asked.

He noted that 11 Walgreens and six CVS stores have closed in San Francisco in the last year as that city descends into virtual anarchy.

When did they legalize shoplifting? There used to be shame, or at least a skill to it. Now, CVS isnt a store. Its a zoo for teeth whitening strips.

Maher allowed that while there are issues with policing, We cant allow them to be hunted and targeted. He added that the public cant get so wrapped up in what the police shouldnt do that we become El Salvador. He pointed out that Democrats like to point out that crime has been worse before. And who gives a f***, Maher said. Im living now.

Democrats can tell voters that its not so bad, but their opposition knows the truth. He then cut to a Donald Trump speech where the former president promised that crime chaos stops right here, and right now.

Thats a powerful campaign theme when things feel like everything is descending into every man for himself, Maher warned.

During the panel portion of the show, Maher talked with Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and author of the new book The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats And Our Response Will Change The World, and Jane Harman, who served for six terms in the House of Representatives and is now a Distinguished Fellow and president emerita of The Wilson Center.

After the obligatory Roe v. Wade discussion that produced little dissent, the talk turned to Twitter and Musks bid for the social media service.

Bremmer said hes taking the under on whether Musk can restore civility if he buys Twitter. He pointed out that he loves to stir things up in his own tweets.

Maher noted that accusing Musk on that basis is similar to people attacking him for making fun of the left. Its where the comedy is.

Harman acknowledged that Elon is brilliant, but cautioned he should be careful what he wishes for. If Musks promise to restore Trump and others banned from the service happens all the crazy stuff comes back there, as Harman characterized it his shareholders will sell their stock.

Maher called such fears Straw man arguments. He cited Musks recent joke tweet that he was going to buy Coca-Cola and put the cocaine back in. When I read that, I felt, okay, Daddys home, Maher said. Thats what Twitter should be.

Earlier, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Rod Stewart stopped by on his way to a Las Vegas residency at Caesars. Maher is a longtime fan, and brought out a cherished single of Maggie May to prove his fanboy bonifides.

The chat was mostly surface level pleasantries, although Maher tried to steer the talk to Stewarts legendary love life, talking about an incident in Stewarts memoir where he made use of the bathroom at Le Dome for a between-courses quickie. Looking back, its nothing to be proud of, Stewart said. It was just an era.

However, he did allow that he enjoys being a rock star.

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Bill Maher Laments About A Liberal World That Seems To Be Going Mad In Real Time Takes - Deadline

For the past three years, Matt Sienkiewicz, an associate professor of communication and international studies at Boston College, and Nick Marx, an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, have immersed themselves in the world of conservative comedy. The findings of their inquiry, which they detail in their new book, Thats Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them, might come as a surprise to devotees of the Daily Show: Conservative humorists arent merely catching up to their liberal counterparts in terms of reach and popularity. Theyve already caught them and, in some cases, surpassed them, even as the liberal mainstream has continued to write conservative comedy off as a contradiction in terms.

[Liberals] are ceding ideological territory in the culture wars to the right via comedy, Marx told me, noting that once-beloved liberal comedians like Stewart are struggling to find their footing in the treacherous landscape of post-Trump humor. This thing that we thought we have owned for the last 20 years has been leaking, and the borders are slowly getting shifted.

The growth of the conservative comedy industry isnt just important in the context of the culture war. According to Sienkiewicz and Marx, conservatives are also using comedy to bring new voters into the conservative coalition and build ideological cohesion among existing right-leaning constituencies. In other words, the lefts unwavering belief in its comedic monopoly isnt just wrong its also bad political strategy.

Our project was to kind of shake fellow liberals and academics by the shirt collar and say, Youre missing this, youre misdefining [comedy] on purpose, or youre burying your head in the sand, Marx said. This is a politically powerful, economically profitable thing that we might [want to] pay attention to.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Ian Ward: I suspect that some readers will share my first reaction to a book about conservative comedy, which is, There is conservative comedy? Could you sketch the landscape of conservative comedy and identify some of its major figures?

Matt Sienkiewicz: It took quite a while for the conservative comedy world to find that what we call the big box store, the tentpole, the thing that announced that conservative comedy was part of the American landscape and [Foxs] Greg Gutfeld was ultimately the answer to that. Then [there are] older-school, right-wing comedians, people like Dennis Miller, or Tim Allen. Theyre less overtly political, and theyre more conservative in cultural feel people like Bill Burr, for example, who want to play off a kind of grumpy old man conservativism as part of their comedy.

And then there are newer and sometimes very popular and very powerful offshoots [in] the world of podcasting, which has a very large libertarian zone to it. We compare it to the kind of drunken bar district of the conservative comedy complex: Youve got a character like Joe Rogan, whose own ideology is a little bit murky, but who certainly gives space and voice to very right-leaning and very libertarian-oriented comedians. And [theres] the world of religious or religious-inflected comedy so the Babylon Bee, which started off entirely as a conservative Christian outlet, and we talk about the ways in which Ben Shapiro tries to pull comedy into his politics to differentiate his brand from the old school National Review kind of conservativism. And then we talk about the really ugly stuff [on] the far right. Were talking about people who sort of think Nazi is a good term for themselves.

Ward: When liberals do come across instances of conservative political humor, the most common response is, Thats not funny. That kind of humor isnt eliciting a lot of laughs from liberal audiences. But what are those liberal audiences missing about conservative comedy when they dismiss it offhand?

Nick Marx: This has a couple of aspects to it. Because were scholars, we first noticed a tendency among our brethren over the last 20 years or so to celebrate Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert or Samantha Bee the sort of progressive wing of political satire. [Academics] are getting advancement through their careers by saying, This stuff is good comedy. The other stuff that doesnt align with my political affiliations isnt comedy its something else, its outrage programming. And this is being echoed in popular discourse through articles in major daily newspapers and magazine articles with headlines like, Why dont conservatives like to laugh? or Searching for the conservative Jon Stewart. It was almost a self-fulling [prophecy]: Because there was no proof of a successful right-wing Daily Show, that must mean that 40 percent of the country must not like comedy and must not like to laugh.

The most glaring example of this is the failure of the 2007 Fox News show, The Hour News Hour, which briefly ran toward the end of the [George] W. Bush administration. It was a very clumsy rip-off of The Daily Show. It failed for a whole host of reasons, but scholars as recently as 2020 and 2021 were still citing it as evidence that conservatives cant do comedy. So our project was to kind of shake fellow liberals and academics by the shirt collar and say, Youre missing this, youre misdefining [comedy] on purpose, or youre burying your head in the sand. This is a politically powerful, economically profitable thing that we might [want to] pay attention to.

Ward: Could you give a sense of the scale of the reach of these programs? You mentioned, Greg Gutfeld how big is his audience?

Marx: He landed with his week-nightly show with quite a splash just about a year ago. And as soon as he did, he was routinely beating competitors in the late-night talk show space not only the ones on Comedy Central that youd expect like The Daily Show, but also and sometimes often [Stephen] Colbert, James Corden, Jimmy Fallon. Im looking at the most recent numbers from the fourth quarter of 2021, and at end of the year, he was routinely averaging more than 2 million viewers per day on his show. This is on par and indeed surpassing the broadcast network late-night shows.

Ward: What are liberals signaling about their worldview when they call this sort of established conservative humor not funny?

Sienkiewicz: When you dont like something, and maybe you dont find it personally funny or maybe you do, but you feel bad about that there are different ways to respond. One is to simply say, Thats not funny as a way to dismiss it or a way to castigate yourself for laughing at something that you think is immoral. But more often, [liberals] are saying, You shouldnt find it funny that there is a moral problem or maybe a political problem with finding it funny.

And on the one hand, we can sort of understand that impulse. On the other hand, is that really what funny means? And if theres this whole suite of people who have a different political and moral compass, thats not going to apply at all.

Ward: What impact did Trump have on right-wing comedy?

Marx: It is undeniable that [Trumps] presence as a TV star and as the host of the hit reality TV show conditioned audiences to view him favorably and contributed to name recognition. And perhaps just as obviously, he had stage timing. He was a performer who knew how to work a live crowd. Sometimes that could veer overly into stand-up schtick: He would do crowd work. He would pinpoint journalists in the back and turn the crowd on them. He would joke, he could go off the cuff and go off the teleprompter quite often in his comedic speeches.

But liberals being unwilling to acknowledge conservative comedy because it tends to punch down is something Trump is the sort of exemplar of. Going after a disabled reporter, going after migrants trying to cross into the United States over and over again, he took as his targets and often as his punchline folks who are in positions of social, cultural and economic marginalization. And so we see a lot of that means-spiritedness across much of right-wing comedy. The casual dabbling in racism, the free license to go after folks who would maybe be a little more protected by mainstream centrist and liberal comedy institutions that I think is a tone set most prominently by Trump.

Ward: In many respects, right-wing comedy reflects the ideological diversity of the conservative coalition more broadly. You have free-market libertarians and traditional social conservatives together with paleoconservatives and right-wing, neo-fascist ultra-nationalists. How does conservative comedy help keep this coalition together?

Sienkiewicz: Youll have the podcast of the Babylon Bee, which is this conservative Christian show, and theyll bring on atheist libertarians. And you say, What on earth are they going to agree about? Their worldviews are totally opposed. And mostly it is finding a common enemy. [The target] could be just the liberals, or it could be the Democrats, [or] empowered Democrats. It could be Joe Biden. It could be AOC a very common target. As much as anything, its finding empowered people that they can both attack from their two angles.

Thats how they build their business models. They bring on guests from other parts of the right-wing comedy complex as guests on their shows or sometimes the algorithms do that for them [through] recommendations attach[ing] one to the other and through the chain of comedy, people can find their place in the coalition, regardless of where they enter.

Ward: What does the growth of the right-wing comedy complex indicate about the trajectory of the American right more broadly?

Sienkiewicz: The American right has found a means of adapting to new media environments and new cultural environments. Theyve embraced fully this Breitbartian notion of politics being downstream from culture, and whether or not it has succeeded fully, it shows that that product has been accepted. That is an approach that is going to define the American right: not just culture wars in terms of the old way of blaming rap music, but [in the sense of] making your own assertive culture that aims to flow into your politics over time. Even if its still small in comparison to the cultural influence of more liberal figures, the fact that [right-wing comedy] is growing and that it exists shows that the project can work.

Ward: One of the driving forces of the culture war on the right is the sense that liberals have a monopoly on all of the sites of cultural production: Liberals have Hollywood, liberals have comedy, liberals have the academy, liberals have publishing, liberals have art. And the ironic thing is that in the comedy space, at least, liberals seem to believe that, too even though its not true.

Marx: [Liberals] are ceding ideological territory in the culture wars to the rights via comedy. This thing that we thought we have owned for the last 20 years has been leaking and the borders are slowly getting shifted the more that you get a Gutfeld encroaching into the late-night space or a figure like Rogan who is poaching [viewers]. But theres this tendency [among liberals] to tell ourselves, Thats not comedy.

Ward: Today, youre almost as likely to hear conservatives accuse liberal comedians of being overly preoccupied with speech norms and political correctness as you are to hear liberals accusing conservative humorists of being grouchy and retrograde. Are the tables turning in the sense that liberals comedians are now the ones having to defend themselves against accusations of un-funniness?

Sienkiewicz: Certainly in the discourse and in the way that we talk about it. Whether or not its true is another issue. I think that there is a certain level of censoriousness and risk aversion in liberal spaces. Its not like a Footloose, you-cant-dance kind of banning of expression in some sort of literal religious way. But certainly we need to be aware of self-censorship and risk aversion in liberal spaces in a way that the right used to be very concerned with and seems much less so now.

Ward: Is there a lesson in the rise of conservative comedy for liberal humorists and for liberals more generally?

Marx: The right is very good at overcoming their intramural disagreements on partisan issues to unite behind a common enemy. The left coalition is a lot bigger and more diverse, so there are going to be a lot more sort of disagreements among that coalition. But I think theres a lesson to be learned from the right that comedy can still be a binding agent, that it can be unifying. It neednt be something that we use to draw boundaries among ourselves on the left.

Ward: Wasnt Trump the common enemy for left-wing comedians?

Marx: I think the short answer to that is yes that we spent the majority of our political energy just trying to get rid of Trump. At the level of the culture industries, though the people who make movies, TV shows, comedy I think theres still a good bit of disparity among, say, far-left Chapo Traphouse types as contrasted with the more mainstream Stephen Colbert types, who are willing to have Kamala Harris on as presidential nominee and not give her the business in the way that somebody further on the socialist left might do it. I think various factions of the left would say, The enemy is both Trump and these other leftists that I dont like because theyre fake leftists, theyre corporate leftists. I dont see that same impulse [in right-wing comedy], to say, The enemy is both the libs and this version of right-wing thought that I dont agree with.

The other aspect is that were urging cultural figures [on the left] to take seriously comedys transgressive and exploratory potential, and not to view it as something that is a policing mechanism not to use it to point to something that somebody did wrong, but maybe to something that somebodys doing thats new and exciting and adventurous. I think we both feel like we [on the left] have downplayed that impulse of late in favor of making sure were doing the right things culturally you know, Because the Bad Orange Man was in office, were politically impotent for those four years, so lets make sure we get culture right. So we get The Good Place, and we get all of the correct people on TV making the correct jokes because that makes us feel better. I think we lose a little bit of that edginess that were now seeing so vibrantly, for better or for worse, on the right.

Ward: Is there a political benefit to making left-leaning comedy edgier?

Sienkiewicz: I do think theres a tremendous thirst for edge and for things that are perceived as edgy. And Im not a political scientist, so Ill be a little careful, but I think thats where a lot of the independent, younger, very powerful vote is. And whether or not its true doesnt matter so much as the perception: If it is perceived that you are going to have more fun and be less subject to [scrutiny about] laughing at the correct things on the right than on the left, well, which party do you want to attend if youre not deeply ideological?

Theres a careful line there. There are still ethical implications to truly hateful comments, and Im not defending that. But yes, I think that if theres even the perception of being able to be adventurous and laugh and not get worried about what happens to you because you laugh if that is perceived to be a strength on the right, then its by definition a deficiency on the left. And do I think that could swing elections local and national? I do.

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Liberals Should Be Worried About the Conservative Comedy Scene - POLITICO

The Democratic primary in North Carolinas first congressional district had been a low-key affair, despite a new Republican-drawn map that will make the longtime stronghold for Black Democrats a key battleground in the fall.

Then the Supreme Courts draft decision that would overturn the constitutional right to an abortion was leaked, thrusting a searing issue to the forefront of the contest. Now, voters in North Carolinas northeast will choose sides on Tuesday in a proxy war between Erica Smith, a progressive champion of abortion rights with a wrenching personal story, and Donald Davis, a more conservative state senator with the backing of the establishment who has a record of votes against abortion rights.

Theres a political imperative for Democrats to have pro-choice nominees this cycle, said Ms. Smith, a pastor and former state senator who was once given a choice between ending a pregnancy or risking her own life to deliver a dangerously premature baby. She chose to give birth, only to lose the child tragically five years later, but said she would never take that choice away from a woman in her circumstances.

Around the country from South Texas to Chicago, Pittsburgh to New York the looming loss of abortion rights has re-energized the Democratic Partys left flank, which had absorbed a series of legislative and political blows and appeared to be divided and flagging. It has also dramatized the generational and ideological divide in the Democratic Party, between a nearly extinct older wing that opposes abortion rights and younger progressives who support them.

President Biden and Democrats in Congress have told voters that the demise of Roe means that they must elect more pro-choice candidates, even as the party quietly backs some Democrats who are not.

The growing intensity behind the issue has put some conservative-leaning Democrats on the defensive. Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, the only House Democrat to vote against legislation to ensure abortion rights nationwide, insisted in an ad before his May 24 runoff with Jessica Cisneros, a progressive candidate, that he opposes a ban on abortion.

Candidates on the left say the potential demise of Roe shows that its time for Democrats to fight back.

We need advocates. We need people who are going to work to change hearts and minds, said Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who, at 25 years old, is battling an established state senator 20 years his senior, Randolph Bracy, for the Orlando House seat that Representative Val Demings is leaving to run for the Senate.

Kina Collins, who is challenging longtime Representative Danny Davis of Chicago from the left, said, We came in saying generational change is needed, adding, We need fighters.

But the youthful candidates of the left will have a challenge exciting voters who feel as demoralized by the Democrats failure to protect abortion rights as they are angry at Republicans who engineered the gutting of Roe v. Wade.

Summer Lee, a candidate for an open House seat in the Pittsburgh area, pressed the point that in states like Pennsylvania the future of abortion rights will depend on governors, and the only way were going to win the governors seat in November is if, in crucial Democratic counties like this one, we put forth inspiring and reflective candidates that can expand our electorate up and down the ballot to turn out voters.

There is little doubt that the draft Supreme Court decision that would end the 50-year-old constitutional right to control a pregnancy has presented Democrats with a political opportunity in an otherwise bleak political landscape. Republicans insist that after an initial burst of concern the midterms will revert to a referendum on the Democrats handling of pocketbook issues like inflation and crime.

But the final high court ruling is expected in June or July, another jolt to the body politic, and regardless of how far it goes, it is likely to prompt a cascade of actions at the state level to roll back abortion rights.

Women would be confronted with the immediate loss of access that would ripple across the nation, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has been studying what she calls a game-changing political event.

Its not going to die down, she said.

And while Republican consultants in Washington are telling their candidates to lay low on the issue, some of the candidates have different ideas. Three contenders for attorney general in Michigan suggested at a forum that the right to contraception established by the Supreme Court in 1965 should be decided on a state-by-state basis, assertions that Dana Nessel, Michigans Democratic attorney general, latched onto in her re-election bid.

Yadira Caraveo, a pediatrician and Democratic state lawmaker in Colorado running for an open House seat, is already being attacked by a would-be Republican challenger, Lori Saine, who is proclaiming herself as strongly pro-life and seeking to confront and expose these radical pro-abortion Democrats.

Theyve already shown they cant keep away from these issues, Ms. Caraveo said, adding, I want to focus on the issues that matter to people, like access to medical care and costs that are rising for families every day.

For liberal candidates in primary contests, the timing of the leak is fortuitous. Their calls for a more confrontational Democratic Party are meshing with the inescapable news of the looming end to Roe v. Wade and the Democratic establishments futile efforts to stop it.

That is especially true for women of childbearing age. This week, five Democratic candidates squared off at a debate ahead of Tuesdays primary for the House seat in Pittsburgh. Ms. Lee, the candidate aligned with the House Progressive Caucus, was the only woman on the stage. After one of her male rivals worried aloud about a post-Roe world for his daughters, she made it personal. She was the only one in the race directly impacted.

Your daughters, your sisters, your wives can speak for themselves, she said.

Ms. Cisneros, the liberal insurgent in South Texas challenging the last Democratic abortion rights opponent in the House, Mr. Cuellar, appeared to have a steep uphill battle in March after she came in second in the initial balloting, with Mr. Cuellars seasoned machine ready to bring out its voters for what is expected to be a low-turnout runoff on May 24.

What is Roe v. Wade? Roe v. Wade is a landmark Supreme court decision that legalized abortion across the United States. The 7-2 ruling was announced on Jan. 22, 1973. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, a modest Midwestern Republican and a defender of the right to abortion, wrote the majority opinion.

What was the case about? The ruling struck down laws in many states that had barred abortion, declaring that they could not ban the procedure before the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb. That point, known as fetal viability, was around 28 weeks when Roe was decided. Today, most experts estimate it to be about 23 or 24 weeks.

What else did the case do? Roe v. Wade created a framework to govern abortion regulation based on the trimesters of pregnancy. In the first trimester, it allowed almost no regulations. In the second, it allowed regulations to protect womens health. In the third, it allowed states to ban abortions so long as exceptions were made to protect the life and health of the mother. In 1992, the court tossed that framework, while affirming Roes essential holding.

Progressive priorities such as defunding the police and providing Medicare for all have come under deep suspicion, with even Mr. Biden casting doubts on them.

Now, Ms. Cisneros has retooled her closing argument around abortion rights.

Ms. Smiths story is gut-wrenching. She had two sons, aged 10 and 12, and another on the way when her doctors informed her of severe complications with her pregnancy. She could abort, or try to hold on until the fetus was closer to viability and risk her life.

She held on, and Rhema Elias was born at 24 weeks, a pound and a half ounce. He spent six months in the neonatal intensive care unit, and went home with lingering complications that required special feeding care and a tracheostomy. He died at age five and a half.

Now campaigning, she tells voters she would make the choice again but could not imagine a world where a woman facing the same situation would have no choice.

While I made that decision, I made that decision for myself, she said, adding, No police officer or court official can make a decision about life and death for a woman.

Many voters are angry and scared at the prospect of a wave of new laws making abortion illegal in a post-Roe America. The question is whether those voters will come out for Democratic candidates espousing abortion rights or stay home, furious at Republicans but disenchanted with the ineffectual Democratic Party.

Waleed Shahid, a strategist and spokesman for Justice Democrats, an insurgent liberal organization that supports progressive primary challengers, said his own parents did not bother to vote in the Virginia governors race last year, declaring that Democratic control had changed nothing.

Were stuck, he said, A sense of powerlessness leads to apathy, and apathy is the Republicans stamping grounds.

Ms. Lake is more hopeful.

Democrats have to articulate that there is something we can do about it: Get people on record, frame out the decision in November and elect more Democrats, she said. I think thats going to energize voters.

Link:

The Looming End to Abortion Rights Gives Liberal Democrats a Spark - The New York Times

The Ontario Liberals and PCs are locked in a war of words over appointments to public roles after a Liberal campaign event called out the Conservative gravy train at Queens Park.

At an announcement Sunday morning, Ontario Liberal candidate Mitzie Hunter said that 40 per cent of 2018 PC candidates that did not win their seats were given patronage appointments by the PC government.

The Liberals said they had identified 16 of the 41 defeated candidates who were given roles in the PC government.

Doug Fords gravy train never stopped it just kept chugging along, Hunter said.

The list of candidates with appointments shared by the Liberals included a range of roles some with salaries worth more than $100,000 and others with per diem payments of less than $200.

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Cameron Montgomery, who ran for the PCs in Orlans, was on the list. He was appointed as chair of the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) Board of Directors in 2019, a controversial appointment at the time.

Three former candidates held roles within government ministries working for PC ministers, while five held board seats at places like the Ontario Trillium Foundation or the Ontario Science Centre, according to the Ontario Liberals research.

Others received per diem from the government for their roles.

Neither Doug Ford or Steven Del Duca, the two party leaders, have public events scheduled for Sunday.

Governments appoint thousands of people to positions across the province there are a lot of positions that need to be filled by governments, Tim Abray, a PhD candidate and teaching fellow at Queens University told Global News.

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Abray noted that the sixteen positions in question represent a small portion of what a government would typically hire, and while the practice of patronage hires is not desirable, its commonplace in political settings as long as its not abused.

It is extremely normal behaviour for partisan political parties to choose people they know and trust to fill public positions.

Moreover, Abray criticized all the parties for the constant mudslinging and that they should focus on the policies they can bring to the table to enhance Ontarians lives.

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There are much bigger fish to fry in this campaign, and in many ways, I think this going to trivialize the issue and disillusion people further that the people up for election arent paying election to the most salient issues, he said.

The PCs have hit back, saying the Liberals were trying to distract from their failure to recruit a full slate of candidates.

Hunter did not explain how a Liberal government if elected would ensure roles were not given to people loyal to the party. She said the Liberals believe in transparency and governance and the party appointed people from across the political spectrum while in power.

She estimated that two former Liberal candidates had been handed patronage roles.

However, a 2016 press release from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation recirculated by the PCs said that nine per cent of federal and provincial Liberal candidates who failed, retired, or subsequently won an election between 2007 and 2016 were given an appointment.

Hunter made several references to the resignation of Dean French, who served as Doug Fords chief of staff at the beginning of his term as premier. French resigned after it was reported that two appointments to work for the Ontario government as agents in New York and London, U.K., were linked to him.

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Tyler Albrecht, a friend of Frenchs son, was appointed to a posting in New York, while Taylor Shields, a cousin of Frenchs wife, was appointed to a posting in London, U.K.

Mr. French informed the Premier that he will be returning to the private sector after a successful first year of government, as he had always planned, a spokesperson said at the time.

With files from Global News Ahmar Khan

2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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Ontario Liberals accuse PCs of favouring own party in government appointments - Global News