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Wednesday, November 23, 2005
But you can't get a dollar outta him
(Greetings, Shotgun readers. Having bitched and whined my piece about this place, I'm now pleased to provide some free content!)
Somewhere deep down in Paul Martin's and David Miller's idea that American weapons are a primary factor in Toronto's gun violence is a wee bit of truth. If we somehow managed to intercept every gun on its way north, and to prevent criminals from finding new sources for guns, Toronto would see fewer gun-related deaths. But we can't intercept every gun, and we'd never be able to stop criminals from finding new sources for them, so it's a ludicrously impractical angle from which to attack the problem.
Not as impractical as this, however. Pickering-Scarborough East MP Dan McTeague thinks it would be productive to ban a popular musician from Canadian soil:
"I don't think people in Toronto or any urban centre need or want to hear Mr. [Curtis '50 Cent'] Jackson's message right now," McTeague said. "I think it's time we send a message of our own to those who glorify violence that their gratuitous violence and movies are not welcome in our country."
I don't know about 50's message, whatever that might be, but people in Toronto and other urban centres certainly do want to hear his music, and really, why shouldn't they be allowed to? According to McTeague, because "We need to do a better job at protecting Canadians from people whose message runs counter to all of our efforts of trying to curb gun violence."
I have to wonder — did he get this idea from the people who are living amidst the gunfire? Because I'd have thought they'd be too preoccupied with the gunfire itself to care what 50 had to say about it. I'd also have thought that "all our efforts… to curb gun violence" would have yielded slightly better results before Papa McTeague turned his efforts towards those who sing about guns, as opposed to those who fire them into other people's necks.
Dalton McGuinty, meanwhile — the man who urged Ontarians to boycott Karla, who wondered aloud whether we couldn't outlaw offensive t-shirts — "says he doesn't think gangsta rappers like 50 Cent can be blamed for the deadly gunplay on the streets of Toronto this year." This is a welcome shift in attitude, but it's not really a very bold statement. It's sort of like saying that one doesn't think the loss of the 2004-2005 NHL season can be blamed on global warming. It's very sad that such a common sense sentiment is considered newsworthy, and sadder still that the owner of a very safe Liberal seat thinks otherwise.
(Unpleasant things have been known to happen at 50 Cent shows and their immediate environs, I should add, and that might be a legitimate reason to suggest the show be cancelled — but if McTeague wanted to pursue that route he shouldn't have started with the immigration minister. Thus far it's difficult to tell what David Miller himself thinks about it . At the time of this writing The Toronto Star says that if "Miller had his way, notorious rapper 50 Cent and his gun-glorifying values would not be allowed to influence Toronto fans next month," under the headline "Miller to 50 Cent: Music values not wanted" — but that doesn't reflect the tenor of Miller's comments at all.)
Posted by Chris Selley on November 23, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
Isnt keeping 50 Cent out of the country a little like closing down the local pub because you think someone is going to go there and get drunk.
Forget that someone might want to go for a sociable drink/or that people may actually like this guys music.
If he wants to slow the speed of guns coming across the border he may want to start clamping down on some of the reserves around Montreal. Yeah I can just see a liberal do that.
Posted by: MikeP | 2005-11-23 9:09:43 PM
Welcome to the Shotgun, Chris. It's a pleasure to have you join us.
Remember Mike P, this sort of foolishness isn't limited to the Liberal party. Five years ago, Mike Harris' attorney-general, Jim Flaherty, tried to ban Eminem from coming to Toronto for a performance, but was unsuccessful (Flaherty will be running for the federal Tories in the upcoming election, and, the Eminem incident notwithstanding, is generally a sensible conservative).
I guess the critics are right: Gangsta rap is dangerous. It turns politicians into censors.
Posted by: Kevin Libin | 2005-11-23 9:30:46 PM
This is yet another example of a useless Tronna politician linking himself to a cultural icon for self-aggrandizement. It's like when Mayor TV Salesman encouraged the Spice Girls not to split.
McTeague, like someone out of the famous Frank Norris novel of the same name, is trying to defend his dying party from its own incompetence. Ontario is having a gun violence problem (good!) that has caught the Liberals off guard. Since they need Ontario's support, they'll do what they can to keep their votes. The one thing they won't do is admit the Gun Registry has failed (which is most clearly has). If they admit that, then they'll prove themselves incompetent and unable to handle the problem, costing them votes.
By attacking 50 Cent, they're giving the appearance of action. McTeague is quite right that Curtis Jackson would not be allowed entry to the US based on his criminal past. But more importantly, it reassures minorities that the Liberals are capable of doing something about it, even though it would have happened anyway.
The irony is the Liberal party is 100% responsible for the problem in the first place. First, their close ties to Toronto's corporate elites and their profit margins convinced the Liberals to make border enforcement deliberately lax, allowing guns to cross unchecked. Second, the gun registry has been an expensive disaster of the highest order, and should be immediately scrapped. Hopefully Harper will make that a priority. Third, everyone including the Liberals must be stunned by the stupidity of Tronna people in believing their city was immune to the problems of big cities worldwide. Issues of white flight, declining inner cities, reduced tax bases prevented problems from being solved. Add extreme racism and arrogance to the problem, and you have the City of Toronto, may it burn in hell.
Posted by: Scott | 2005-11-23 9:46:37 PM
Robert, you're looking a little green.
Posted by: Kate | 2005-11-23 9:51:25 PM
Naw, he's just diversive.
Posted by: EBD | 2005-11-23 9:52:40 PM
Kevin: I would have said the same had it been a conservative trying to ban 50 Cent. My point is I guess that people have to be responsible for their own behaviour, and who are politicians to tell us whom we can and cannot see.
Posted by: MikeP | 2005-11-23 10:00:14 PM
The Shotgun blog is pleased to welcome Robert McLelland in his guest starring role as the eccentric "Major" from Fawlty Towers. Glad to have you with us Robert and my apologies for that horrible accident in the tea garden this afternoon. The tetanus shot should take care of everything.
Posted by: Plato's Stepchild | 2005-11-23 10:15:23 PM
Say Scott,
as I am new here: What exactly is it that you have against Ontario? Did they kick you out? Did they mistreat you highschool? Beat you up for you lunch money?
Posted by: Michael | 2005-11-23 10:34:50 PM
Plato: It's the Germans...don't mention the war...I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it...
Oh yeah...50 cents, whatever. If he's a criminal, don't let him in the country, but if he's just a target for bullets, hey, what's one more target in T.O. ?
Posted by: MarkAlta | 2005-11-23 10:49:34 PM
Michael: I had the misfortune to think that Ontario would be a nice place to live. After spending three years among those people, I wish them nothing but misery and destruction. They are shamelessly irresponsible about the society around them, prefering to blame others for their misfortune. For example: gun deaths are blamed on lax US laws instead of lax Cdn enforcement. The answer is obvious but no one there will state it.
If they would just keep to themselves, it wouldn't be so bad. But since they own the Feds, they contaminate everything with their stupidity. Alberta's economy is threatened whenever Ontarians think they're being short-changed? Give me a break. Ontarians are so rich they don't know what to do with all the money.
Most of all, it is their hypocrisy on racial issues. Tronna pretends it is a paradise of tolerance, but my experience says it is anything but. Racism is pandemic there, with greedy and lazy whites on top and non-whites scrambling for what's left. If an employer had 1 white in a room of 50 non-whites, he will pick the white almost every time. It is disturbing to see them get away with it time after time, but no one questions it.
Even though Ontario is rich because of US trade, they constantly compare themselves to lie to themselves about how great they are. Ontarians are a fundamentally dishonest, racist, and lazy people. Why should I like a people who need the Army to shovel snow?
It is the exact opposite of how to run a society, and its flaws must be pointed out as a lesson to non-Ontarians and particularly Albertans in how fortunate they are. I ardently support the Firewall idea to protect Alberta from Ontario's decaying effects.
Posted by: Scott | 2005-11-23 10:50:09 PM
> Plato: It's the Germans...don't mention the war...I mentioned it
> once, but I think I got away with it...
Wasn't it Basil?
Posted by: Michael | 2005-11-23 11:12:06 PM
Its simple really 50 Cents has a criminal record in the U.S. so making a big deal about his music is secondary to the fact anytime they want to ban him from entering Canada they can.
Posted by: Eugene Plawiuk | 2005-11-24 3:07:03 AM
Loyal Chretienite speaks:
November 2005
COMMENT
November 24, 2005 - Looking at the communications carnage in today's papers - and recalling last night's newscasts - I can now pass judgment. And my judgment is this: yesterday, Dithers' government broke every communications rule in the book, to twist Sheila Fraser's memorable aphorism.
In one short day, they:
1. Stepped all over their own announcements
2. Looked panicked, cynical, confused and desperate
3. Could not articulate a single compelling reason for why they were announcing what they were announcing
4. Lost control of the news agenda, utterly
Residential schools money; Air India inquiry; grain seed farmers boodle; labour market training agreement; immigration program dough; candidate rumours; judicial appointments - and, at day's end, as dessert, an income trust announcement wherein the Minister of Finance was flatly contradicted by his own Parliamentary Secretary.
It was insane. It was nuts. It was like 100 monkeys on hallucinogenic, writing cheques. (Actually, monkeys know more about communications theory. Cheque-writing, too.)
Anyway, the final indignity came when all of their hard work - all of their frenzy of announceables, to use the Ottawa idiom - came to naught. Good old Danny McTeague stomped all over every damn announcement, every billion, with his demand that rapper 50 Cent be kept out of Canada. It dominated every newscast. Blew away everything else.
I swear to God, you can't make this shit up, even if you tried. If these guys get re-elected, it's because God is mad at the remaining 30 million of us for something we did in a previous life. >>>
http://www.warrenkinsella.com/musings.htm
Posted by: maz2 | 2005-11-24 4:50:17 AM
So the Libs are anti 50 cents and pro Bono ? maybe it's a colour thing...
Posted by: duff | 2005-11-24 4:55:57 AM
The government is barking up the wrong tree with 50 Cent. Toronto had a gun problem long before Get Rich or Die Trying (the album, not the pseudo-biography) came out. I've said it before: If more time was spent checking the vehicles and the people that came across the US border, and less time collecting duty and other tax, we might be able to at least cut down on the amount of guns on our streets. They'll never disappear completely, but we might cut them by 1/3 or even 1/2. If the Libs are so convinced that the guns are because of the US, it's time to start making the border guards WORK for a living.
RG
Posted by: RightGirl | 2005-11-24 7:09:50 AM
RightGirl: since most of those "border guards" are teenagers, asking them to work for a living might violate existing child labor laws. Adults simply cost too much to employ.
Besides, they're not interested in guns. They are there as tax collectors. The one-time minister of revenue, Elinor Caplan (Rich Ontarian who hates Albertans) said that they are bank tellers, not cops. Somehow having more than $50 worth of stuff is a more serious offence than carrying guns. Serious reform is needed on this issue. If they stopped wasting money on the CBC and other useless things, they wouldn't need to collect tax at the border.
However, the corporations want it this way. Lax enforcement means quick and easy access for the US goods they will sell in Canada, and bigger profits for them. They put their own material success over the lives of innocent people. They are the ones who should be on trial, for crimes against humanity, and have their assets seized and redistributed.
Posted by: Scott | 2005-11-24 7:47:01 AM
Naturally guns come from the US. Canada is in the unique position in the world where it has only ONE border, only ONE neighbour. Except for the island territories (Australia, New Zealand)where all access is by ship, Canada's primary import/export access is by road - with ONE neighbour. The US. I haven't noticed that the frozen north brims with busy ports. Therefore, it happens to be a matter of geography that the guns come from the US. There's no evil intent as suggested by various politicians.
The intent to import the guns, the intent to use them, and the actual use, remains strictly and only Canadian.
As for the music - about which I admit I haven't a clue (I'm ancient and I prefer opera; I've never heard of any of them or their styles)- the issue, to me, refers to the right of the citizen to be an adult. The state has no right to censorship.
Scott- you are a bore. Three simplistic years in Ontario and you spend the rest of your life ranting nonsense about it? That's hardly mature behaviour. What were you ranting about when you were in Ontario? Your personality wasn't formed in a day.
No, the corporations are not the cause of gun violence. What an incredible allegation. No, the corporations are not involved in 'crimes against humanity'. You sound like a left sophist...Is this what you were ranting about when you were in Ontario?
Hey - I like the Fawlty Towers for Robert McClelland. He doesn't seem able to enter into any debate, and seems focused on only one thing - which is to sneer at everything and everyone - to show us (and himself) that he's superior. How about Harvey in...I can't remember the title of the English series...with Diana and Tom, in the Old Folks Home..and Harvey is the witless pompous manager whose primary interest is in his own self-image and superiority to all.
Posted by: ET | 2005-11-24 8:33:29 AM
Banning a rapper and blaming the US are the kind of pointless rhetoric that will see Toronto slide further into criminality.
The really necessary actions -- such as very stiff penalties for gun crime and stopping the pandemic of broken homes among black families -- will not be made for a long, long time.
At least until politically correct zombies like Miller and McGuinty are gone.
Posted by: chip | 2005-11-24 9:05:08 AM
The entire debate about guns and border control is ridiculous. The border is 5000km, encompassing everything from ocean to mountain range, and is totally uncontrollable. Searching cars as they go through gates on major highways can only be a placebo at best.
The world is full of guns. Any half-assed handyman can make one. Anybody with a little money can buy one. Get used to it, and deal with the criminals not the inanimate machinery.
We can't even make thermonuclear bombs go away (50-odd missing world-wide), thinking we can "disappear" or "control" every 9mm pistol is ludicrous, and only provides excuses for more police state.
Deal with the criminals, and the root causes of crime, as best we can and learn to live in the real world.
These liberals are either control freaks or plain stupid. Both types will cause huge damage if they can, intentionally or not.
Posted by: Mad Mike | 2005-11-24 10:09:24 AM
I have lived in Ontario for 16 years and while I don't agree with most of what Scott says about Othis province, his basic premise is sound. Ontario is full of itself. It is Ontario's history (United Empire Loyalists) that makes it believe it can define Canada by whatever is the opposite of the United States, and its monopoly over the federal government that allows it to impose those ridiculous views on the rest of Canada.
While I deplore gang violence and organized crime, censoring a musician whose music, movie, and video game will still be available and popular in Canada is no way to solve gun crimes in Toronto, Vancouver, and elsewhere.
I would argue that by punishing legally-achieved success and encouraging failure, it is Canada's social saftey net that has led to the increase in gun violence and organized crime in our cities. Look at the riots that recently occurred in Paris. To anyone with more than one neuron it is painfully clear that encouraging poverty and punishing legal success only leaves law-breaking as an option to improve one's situation.
If everybody had equal opportunity to succeed based on their own hard work as opposed to membership in or patronage from the Liberal Party, ethnic minorities would not be encouraged to rely on the state for their livelihood while the ambitious among them joing gangs.
Also, since punishments for crime are a joke in Canada, there is even more of an incentive to break the law. The ancient Roman army discovered that the most effective way of motivating people to succeed was by having harsh penalties for failure, but, more importantly, great rewards for success. The push-and-pull effect is immeasurable more effective than one or the other. The failure of socialist economic systems worldwide and throughout history are an irrefutable testament to this.
The safest major city in which to live in Canada is not Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, or some other socialist nightmare, but in fact Calgary, where ownership of firearms is celebrated, and free enterprise even more so. Police are not afraid to do their job, there is little subsidized housing, and employment is incomparably preferred to state welfare.
The only problem is that Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, Jack Layton, and other liberal stooges either fail to recognize or deliberately fail to mention this in their quest to hold their ideological monopoly over Canada, and ensure that whatever Canada does, it must be decidedly un-American (despite the fact the the United States is also suffering from big government and social activism), even if it spells social and economic disaster. That, I gather, is the price they are willing to pay to milk what is left of Pierre Trudeau's personal popularity by recalling and implementing his misguided socialist ideology.
What is even more depressing is that in the hope of winning seats in Ontario and Quebec, Stephen Harper is starting to sing by this songsheet too....
Posted by: Joe | 2005-11-24 12:10:40 PM
"I haven't noticed that the frozen north brims with busy ports."
Um, Toronto, Victoria, Montreal, Halifax, St. John & St. John's, so many others and the great big ol' one, Vancouver - Canada's chock full o' port goodness. And in the current state of overload, it would be easy as pie to run in whatever you like.
However, from what I understand, a lot of the problem is from NY state/ON border Indian reservations and trades of guns for other, um, contraband. Bit of a crime problem as well as a supply problem, but the CBC isn't running with that.
Mad Mike is quite right: Anybody with a little money can buy a gun, even if they're outlawed. Or, let's say you were an island nation, like, oh, Britain: Not as easy to buy a "cheap" (under ₤100) gun there these days, but street criminals have just moved on to . . . knives. Gee, just like the NRA predicts if guns are ever successfully outlawed in the U.S. (unlikely as that seems, I know). And, in Britain, some politicians are now making noises about outlawing "unnecessary" kitchen knives, and more . . . well, it's never about the weapon. It's about the person, and the choice to commit, or to not commit, criminal behavior.
Posted by: Meg Q | 2005-11-24 1:06:48 PM
Last time I checked, "Fiddy" wasn't the party responsible for the social problems and violence in Jamaica and elsewhere, or for the fact that those problems now flourish in Canada.
Those problems are directly due to the LPC's willingness to compromise this nation in exchange votes in key immigrant-rich ridings. Fiddy's songs, admittedly, rank a very close second.
Posted by: EBD | 2005-11-24 5:32:58 PM
Actually, gun crime in the UK is skyrocketing.
There are definite parallels between Cda and the UK. They went further by banning most guns. We ended up with the gun registry.
The end result is an armed criminal class and an unarmed civilian pop. That's a bad mix.
All should listen to the great wisdom of "The Steyn" when he describes NH, USA. Everyone has a gun, no one messes with them. Crime is little to non-existent in most parts because a criminal knows that if they break into a house, they're more likely to leave without their head than with someone's TV.
Remember the cliche: Peace through superior fire power. Ponder the meaning. In business one never negotiates from a position of weakness. Nothing is different in any other realm. He who carries the biggest stick gets their way. He who thinks themselves too enlightened to carry a stick gets beaten with someone else's.
Posted by: Warwick | 2005-11-24 8:52:41 PM
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