Victimized!!!

Turnabout is fair play. Unless, of course, your name is Heather Mallick. Keep on kicking the tiger, and eventually, the tiger bites you. After sinking to new lows - Sarah Palin looks like a porn star, Alaskans are stupid, small towns are for backwards people sort of lows - Americans noticed that somebody was being infantile, and they struck back. Fox news journalist Greta van Susteren kicked back. She called Heather Mallick a pig.

And she meant it. No, Ms. van Susteren was not playing at the same level. The move was deliberate; she was feeding Heather Mallick a little bit of her own medicine to prove a point. And she was right. Like a four-year old bully who loves to hit other children but cries when they hit back, Mallick is now crying foul. She feels victimized. Her words were educated opinion, the backlash is a personal attack.

Now the story is spreading across the nation that Republicans have launched some sort of an anti-Canadian attack. Newsflash, Ms. Mallick: most Americans don't spend their days thinking about Canadians the way you spend your days hating them.

Good grief.

Why People Leave Canada

Heather Mallick has done it again. Another marvelous column spewing copious amounts of irrational anti-American (most particularly of the anti-Republican variety) sewage into the streets Canada.

As she smugly describes anybody with a conservative bent using terms like "unread" or "stupid", I can't help but wonder if she's not suffering from a case neanderphobia. Perhaps her irrational fear of simpletons might stem from the deep seated fear that she herself is a neanderthal. So much time is spent trying to assert her own intelligence at the expense of those who disagree with her that it would seem she's more than a little afraid that her own mental inadequacies might be exposed.

Just look at the way she belittles Governor Sarah Palin in a recent column: "The Republicans are going to parade a tiny old hateful man named McCain who has to be told how many homes he owns (it's now up to 10) and who just named the political equivalent of his local school crossing guard as his vice-presidential candidate. There's Sarah Palin in a rain slicker with her little stop sign."

Honestly: what the heck was that even supposed to mean? And how much more wrongly could Heather Mallick have called it? For those who saw the convention (thanks for offering to take a bullet for us, Heather, but after listening to your drivel now for some time, we'd rather see what actually happens than just take your word for it), Sarah Palin was brilliant! So much so that her opponents (those who had just spent five days trying to destroy a woman they all at once said "they didn't know anything about" but somehow had enough evidence at hand to attempt to discuss things like how she was an unfit mother if she dared to hold public office) were scrambling to respond when she was finished.

She showed courage, clear vision, intellect, style and - sorry, Heather, this one will be difficult for you to see, 'cause you've got to have it to know it - class.

Let's face it, Heather, here's what you hate: you hate a man who has spent the bulk of his life serving others, even when that might mean losing his own life. You hate a woman who has character and courage, achieves at a level beyond the norm, and has made something of herself without sacrificing femininity. Successful women aren't supposed to look like that, right? Not with a husband and children. Not with a conservative point of view. Not with children she refused to abort in spite of the challenges it would bring to her life.

No, that doesn't look like your sort of strong woman. She shaves her legs and plucks her facial hair! So she must be a crossing guard in a rain slicker. If that's all a self-made governor is.

Wow, Heather. We're very impressed with all that "edu-ma-cation" you've managed to secure for yourself. Quite clearly, you've spent more time in esoteric sociology textbooks than in anything resembling the real human world.

Here's a thought: why don't you consider running for office? Why, I'm sure the public will clamor for your sort of outdated thinking. Most of us can't wait to turn back the clock forty years, burn our bras, drop out and tune in.

Or maybe not. Maybe it's just this sort of "poor Canada suffers because America is so evil" kind of drivel you love to exude that so many of the brightest and best minds are simply leaving the country. What's that called again? Oh, yeah: the "brain drain." Perhaps it's not all stupid south of the border after all.

Heather Malice

I'm trying to summon up some human compassion for "journalist" Heather Mallick, in the sense that I acknowledge her as a sentient being.  A bit harsh?  Perhaps, but that's exactly my point. Say such things about Ms. Mallick, and it seems almost abusive.  But should she say such thing about conservative Canadians, as she did in her August 22 diatribe (http://www.heathermallick.ca/cbc.ca-columns/the-road-to-neo-con-ruin.html), that's supposed to be witty journalism.  

When is Ms. Mallick going to wake up and understand that her holier-than-thou ivory-tower ranting doesn't represent real flesh-and-blood Canadians?  I suppose she might feel that her comments are perceived by readers as highly intelligent (her columns are dripping with love for her own "intellect"), but for real flesh-and-blood Canadians, she's simply embarrassing.  

I have yet to see a single intelligent idea posited in one of her articles, for all her insistence that she is simply smarter than other people.  How hard is it to make fun of a Prime Minister's hair or throw stones at an American presidential hopeful (a man, incidentally, who has done more for his nation than Ms. Mallick could ever hope to achieve for hers) because he doesn't read blogs?  

Well thought out, Ms. Mallick!  Well thought out!  As is your assertion that deregulation of telecommunications in Canada is going to drive up cell phone costs.  As you have already pointed out, Canada suffers from some of the highest usage rates in the world.  How, exactly, is deregulating the industry going to make that worse?  Oh, right: you didn't mention a single reason.  You simply asserted your point.  

And as for your American hate-on, I for one am tired and embarrassed by your so-called Canadian patriotism, which consists of little else besides knocking a good people who have been good neighbors for a very long time. And for all your insistence that they are backward rubes (with "stupid" presidents), it might do well to do a little homework.  Americans happen to have more graduate degrees per capita than just about any nation on earth, and have more access to arts and culture per capita than you do sitting in your make-believe ivory tower.  Your bigoted characterization of Americans as simple, unsophisticated warmongers is not merely unfortunate; it is a vivid display of your own ignorance.

Opinion pieces used to be thought-provoking.  This stuff is embarrassing vitriol.   

Yng