Ari and I will be interviewing author and columnist Michelle Malkin on Strictly Right Radio on Monday. Want to have your question read on air for Michelle, email it in to Andrew@StrictlyRight.com!
Tag Archives: Ari Fine
Didn’t see this one coming
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In the seasonal slew of municipal elections across Canada, I was expecting that Toronto would deliver the surprise of the year with the impending Mayoral victory of Rob Ford, or as my colleague Ari Fine calls him, “The only person I’ve ever been looking forward to voting for.” What I wasn’t expecting was the downfall of Calgary.
Calgary’s new Mayor is none other than Naheed Nenshi (don’t worry, no one else has heard of him either.) There are a couple of factors here to consider: 1) He’s gay; 2) He’s a Muslim; and, worst of all, 3) He’s Harvard-educated. While I wonder how the homosexual, Muslim professor was elected in Calgary, a city formerly known as Canada’s Houston (in the province of Alberta, Canada’s Texas,) I find it particularly amusing that this is a guy who needed to run a campaign ad telling people how to pronounce his name (apparently Abdullah Bin-Buttrumping wasn’t good enough.)
Despite running a campaign with a fiscally-conservative platform out of necessity, Nenshi’s campaign was lacking in what most would refer to as “a platform.” Conservative cabinet Minister Jason Kenney referred to it as a “brilliant ideas-based campaign,” but I question how this “ideas-based campaign” is anything more than a big month-long singing of Kumbaya. Seriously, Nenshi wanted to start a revolution where the city folk would spend more time “talking to the person next to you on the bus” and “taking an extra minute with the cashier at Safeway.” All that he was missing were Styrofoam Greek columns and crowds chanting “Yes we can!” And, much like Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign, with no record to stand on, people were happy swooning over a vision. The true conservative in this race was Ric McIver, and Calgarians will soon learn how bad having a leader who doesn’t represent them is.
Paging Howell Raines!
The Globe and Mail is the second most circulated newspaper in Canada. If you thought that such a paper would bother to research a hit piece before publishing it you’d be wrong. In an article entitled “The Canadians who embrace Ann Coulter” Gerald Caplan, a card carrying member of Canada’s communist party (NDP), takes aim at the organizers of the Coulter in Canada tour, including your humble correspondent. It would serve Mr. Caplan well to remember that everyone is entitled to their own opinions (although I’m not sure Caplan believes that), but they are not entitled to their own set of facts. Caplan’s article has all the hallmarks of the liberal media. He misquotes people, takes quotes out of context and invents “facts” from whole cloth, all woven together in the smuggest of fashions. While I assume the other people Caplan smeared in this piece were also wronged, I will focus on what I know for sure – the lies about me.
This paragraph literally offers a mistake a sentence:
Last week Mr. Fine called the daily Limbaugh radio show, and Mr. Limbaugh put him on to hear first-hand from someone who wasn’t there about the Coulter fiasco at University of Ottawa. Mr. Fine, who does not know Ms. Coulter personally, told the booming radio host she is “one of the most generally decent human beings you’ll ever meet.” Mr. Limbaugh could not agree more, then asked Mr. Fine how the health system in Canada was working. “Rush,” Mr. Fine told his old chum, “it’s just an unmitigated disaster.”
You got all of that? Now lets go through his claims:
Last week Mr. Fine called the daily Limbaugh radio show, and Mr. Limbaugh put him on to hear first-hand from someone who wasn’t there about the Coulter fiasco at University of Ottawa.
An interesting point, only, I was in Ottawa. I went to the reception before the event at the Rideau Club and sat in the front row, directly in front of the podium, of the auditorium where Ann Coulter was supposed to speak. In fact, I was one of the last people to leave.
Next there’s this gem:
Mr. Fine, who does not know Ms. Coulter personally, told the booming radio host she is “one of the most generally decent human beings you’ll ever meet.” Mr. Limbaugh could not agree more
The laziness in Caplan’s reporting boggles the mind. If Caplan so much as bothered to check this website he could have seen that Andrew and I have interviewed Ann Coulter 3 times. In addition, I had the privilege of spending time with Ms. Coulter when she came to Canada. You see Gerald, you look like a first-class ass when you make a factual error in a snide comment.
These are just the errors Caplan made in a three-sentence span. I imagine everyone else mentioned in this article has had a similar experience. While Gerald Caplan is in the business of writing fiction, what does this say about the journalistic integrity of the Globe and Mail? Is it standard practice there to invent “facts”? If they’ll publish a story with so many obvious lies about little ol’ me, what else do they let pass? To quote Sarah Palin’s remark to the media “how about you stop making things up?”
Ari Fine on the Rush Limbaugh Show
Strictly Right’s own Ari Fine made it onto the Rush Limbaugh show today to chat about the Ann Coulter censorship fiasco at the University of Ottawa. The transcript is posted below if you were unable to play the audio.
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RUSH: We got a call here from London, Canada, from Ari. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.
ARI: Rush, mega 24/7 Limbaugh Letter dittos here.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
ARI: Well, I was at the Ottawa event last night and I can tell you that all the stories you’re hearing about the protesters is all true. It was impossible to walk through them. They tried to silence her. They did silence her. They wouldn’t let her speak. It’s really just a travesty that this happens on a university campus because usually purported homes of free speech, and they won’t let a contrary opinion be expressed there.
RUSH: But, no. Canada — confirm this for us — is not really the home of a First Amendment-type free speech that we in America think of free speech as?
ARI: Oh, absolutely not. You look at what’s happened. I’m sure your listeners saw what happened with Mark Steyn and his human rights tribunal case here where they tried to ban his book: America Alone.
RUSH: Yeah, I remember it well.
ARI: Yeah, it’s just not accepted here, and it’s really a shame. You know, it could be coming to you with the Fairness Doctrine or whatever. You have to watch out for it.
RUSH: Oh, it’s going to come to us along before the Fairness Doctrine. That’s what all this talk about all the criticism of Obama being racist is all about. They’re going to try to criminalize this kind of criticism. I predicted that, too, by the way, prior to his immaculation. Ari, how is the health care system up there working for you?
ARI: (laughs) Rush, it’s just an unmitigated disaster here. Our big question now is: What are we going to do now that you guys have our system? Where are we going to go? I guess I have to follow you to Costa Rica.
RUSH: Well, except I cannot go to Costa Rica because the plan was to be part of an insurance policy that was going to set up operations down there, but the insurance company says they’re going to be out of business in three years because of Obamacare and they won’t be able to do it. So I’m back looking to looking at New Zealand.
ARI: (laughs) I guess we’ll have to go there. But you wanted to know what happened with Coulter here and before she even set foot in Canada you had the academic president or some other from the University of Ottawa accusing her of spewing hatred and warning her that if she says anything they’re going to come after her. And instead, what he did was he was just fomented the attitude that you had there that ended up canceling her speech. And the other shame that Ann Coulter, as you know, is one of the most generally decent human beings you’ll ever meet.
RUSH: Well, I can say that’s true. I’ve met Ann Coulter a number of times. I can say that I know her, and she is decent, and she’s funny. Dirty little secret here, Ari: She actually doesn’t mind this at all. She’s in the front page, above-the-fold in the local newspaper. Everybody around the world is talking about this, and she has successfully illustrated just what a bunch of bigots there are at this university. So this is something that she’s out there laughing about. This hasn’t even happened at the stupidest American university, as she says. Ari, I’m glad you called. Thank you very much.