Political correctness gone too far?

“Common sense ain’t that common.” Will Rogers.

The recent decision by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to ban Dire Straits’s 25 year old song “Money for Nothing” on the grounds that the word “faggot” may be offensive to some listeners has made Canada an international laughingstock. Most people were unaware the word was even in the song, barely getting past the words “and chicks for free” when they sang along to the radio. The band must be raking in the royalties now, as they laugh all the way to the bank.

But seriously, this little bit of endemic homosexual hysteria on the part of one listener on the East Coast means the other 33 million Canadians are having their airwaves ruled by some ultrasensitive, über politically correct lobby group. After all, doesn’t this denigrate half of the population? Plus they missed banning “chicks”.

On the bright side, it seems cooler heads are prevailing in La Belle Province. There, four Sikh representatives (all men) were denied entry into the Quebec Legislature because their kirpans (knives) set off metal detectors. They were on their way to give a presentation promoting the right of Muslim women while completely veiled to get government services. This is all part of the discussion of what constitutes “reasonable accommodation” to minorities deciding that in Canada, we should respect old practices, traditions and beliefs that the newcomers explicitly rejected by leaving whatever inferior land for the better world of the Great White North, rather than trying to adapt.

We in B.C. aren’t missing out on the fun. A hospice group in Vancouver was going to build a modern dedicated facility near an upscale condo tower occupied mostly by Chinese-Canadians who very publicly denounced its presence, deeming it unlucky to be so close to those at the end of the trail. They said it was an affront to their cultural values and promptly played the “insensitive” card.

It didn’t seem to go over well. Evidently, one of the tonier parts of Hong Kong is near a cemetery and now the Canadian-Chinese Congress is telling the whiners to back off because their property values wouldn’t be going down after all. Whew, thank goodness somebody is keeping their eye on the ball!

On top of that cultural kerfuffle we also get to watch our almost perpetual opposition, a.k.a. The NDP, squirm as they try to reconcile their reality show of picking a new competent leader, which their constitution requires at this time to be one who sits down to pee with the actual problem of getting someone with the cojones of earning votes on Election Day.

“There’s the rub” as Shakespeare would say. All the candidates to date are men. A quick rewrite of the rules and other than the ire of a few hard core femi-Nazis (whose vote they have anyway), the party will carry merrily on their way to losing the next provincial election. Why they decided to form their wagons into a circle and shoot inwards while the Liberals were committing political hara-kiri outside the perimeter is a textbook example of ideological brain death.