Rachel, Rachel

The notorious right-wing pundit Rachel Marsden emailed me this afternoon (edited because it was introducing some weird coding into this post):

I severed my relationship with the Post today. Very bad fit from day 1.

Can't say I am surprised. It was was to be expected when National Post publisher Les Pyette departed rather suddenly late last Friday afternoon, on a summer weekend, if you get my drift.

As I blogged when Marsden was hired in May to pen two weekly columns, she just hadn't earned the job. It was apparent that she would not be welcomed by the established con-commentariat at the Post. She was columnista non grata on the editorial page, relegated to the Toronto page on Saturdays. And others, who had felt that she had exploited her looks (reg. req'd) to get the job, never let up on her.

Of course, the lefties were decidedly not welcoming either.

Maybe I'm just a soft touch but I feel kind of sorry for her. It's true that her political columns were lightweight and derivative, not to mention gratuitously nasty. I despise her politics and how she misrepresents Canada on Fox News. But I found a couple of her Toronto columns rather amusing. Refreshing even.

I am sure that other bloggers will come up with the snark that I seem to be lacking today. I guess I am just not in the mood.

Take it away guys.

UP YOURS DATE: That's it. No more comments on this one. I have other things to do.

Comments

[Jay Currie]

There goes that $150.00 a column...And a slot for someone like Damain or, dare I suggest it, our mutual friend Kevin Grace.

[Zog]

Hey AZ,

Watch out -- she'll be knocking at the doors of 1 Yonge Street any day now. She is a fellow journalist afterall.

Zog.

[Antonia Z]

I would love to see Kevin Michael Grace get a slot. The bonus is, it would give set off Kathy Shaidle for weeks.

[MWW]

Antonia,

Did you catch the action on Canadian Cynic and Matthew Good, where it would appear Rachel was caught claiming one of her web columns had been printed by the Post... it hadn't.

http://tinyurl.com/a7vms

Awoops

[Maz]

For those of us who know Kevin Michael Grace from his columns in
the days when Alberta Report was around, it would a shame not to
employ a journalist with his talent. Anyone who managed to tick off folks on the Right and the Left, sometimes simultaneously, I
figure, ought to be promoted, given greater exposure.

BTW, Kevin Michael Grace is such a fabulous name. Is it really his or a nom de plume? Let me quickly add, Antonia Zerbisias is also a lovely name... her very own, I gather.

[20/20]

" It's true that her political columns were lightweight and derivative, not to mention gratuitously nasty"---AZ

So, do not be a soft touch.

[Haley]

Maybe Kevin Grace would fit in at the Post. Or maybe, if this article is any indication, al Jazeera.

http://www.ukar.org/grace02.html

[Antonia Z.]

Regarding MWW's comment above ...

If you follow his links, you'll see that Canadian Cynic implies that Marsden claims a column that never appeared in the Post did appear in the Post.

That's not my reading of her web page.

The column in question, according to a search of Factiva, never made it into the Post, true. But her columns have also appeared on Canada Free Press and elsewhere. In the past, she has posted columns on her web page that have also gone nowhere.

So Cynic, I think you're pushing it too far here.

NOTE: This has been cross-posted to Canadian Cynic's comments at http://www.blogger.com/publish-comment.do?blogID=6708375&postID=112234063866337942&r=ok

[Jay Currie]

LOL re Kathy...

I note the KMG will answer to Kevin if the words, "Would you like another beer" proceed that proper noun. (One of the delights of living in Victoria is having such beers.)

KMG would add tone to the Post and keep left, right and just plain strange wondering, "What will he say next." He is a sort of literate David Warren.

[Antonia Z.]

I want you all to know that I thought long and hard before posting Haley's comment linking to an old Kevin Michael Grace column in The Report about Kosher food labelling and its cost to consumers.

My hesititaion was not because of the article, which raises legitimate questions for fiscal conservatives --although I personally find their obsession with taxes irritating at best and repugnant at worst.

It is the context I find disturbing. By posting the Grace column on a website alongside what strikes me as some anti-Semitic content, it acquires a whole new meaning that I suspect was not intended by its author.

I don't think Grace's column in and of itself is anti-Semitic, which is one reason why I am allowing this comment by Haley to go through.

Furthermore, the Report did publish a rebuttal at the time by one Joseph Ben-Ami. Trouble is, the only online version of it I can find is heavily footnoted by the man who manages the offending website on which the Grace column is posted in the first place.

It's here:

http://www.ukar.org/benami01.html

I would like to be very clear that I am not endorsing the site at all. But it would be wrong to censor Haley's comment about Kevin Michael Grace.

That said, note that he links to the site, not I.

Caveat lector.

[Maz]

Antonia writes:

"My hesititaion was not because of the article [re kosher tax], which raises legitimate questions for fiscal conservatives --although I personally find their obsession with taxes irritating at best and repugnant at worst."

Surely, not all cost-conscious consumers fall into the category
of "fiscal conservatives." For example, I'm sure you'd be able
to round up a few liberals who'd be pleased to see less tax on fuel now or gladly deposit a timely tax-rebate cheque.

As for kosher tax, why should those with no opinions about God
be made to absorb the cost of ensuring those with very definite
ideas about God and His expectations get the kind of products
He would approve of? I don't want to be involved in the faith-
based consumerist life of others, whether it's an add-on cost at the check-out counter or a man on my doorstep offering to sell me a salvific pamphlet for a loonie.

-Maz

[Big G]

I like Antonia felt bad for Marsden, but after some somber second thought, I've come to the conclusion that there is some kind of journalistic Darwinism at work, so many kids graduate from journalism schools and are working in low paying jobs, they would cut off an apendage to serve coffee at the Post let alone write there.

What I find more interesting is, who at the Post felt she was a journalist and worthy of a coloumn?

If I was management at the Post I'd fire the person responsible for hiring her in the first place and put Marsden in their place.

Bottom line, Marsden wasn't a journalist, she was a hack.

[Warren K]

Listen, guys, Grace can write, and I personally felt badly for him during his battles with the former Western Report, his bathetic requests for financial help on his web site, etc.

But - and this is a big but - his views on Jews, and Israel, are alarming. The "kosher tax" has long been a canard promulgated by anti-Semites and the racist right, and Grace used his position at the Report to promote it. When questioned/challenged about it, Grace far from backed down - he amplified his views. See here: http://www.ukar.org/grace02.html

Elsewhere, Grace's views were easy to ascertain. He was, for example, a supporter of deceased Jew-hater Doug Collins. Collins, you might recall, wrote that the Holocaust - the systematic killing of millions of Jews and gypsies and gays and dissidents and disabled people - was "impossible," and that it made no "difference" whether millions were slaughtered or not. Collins also wrote that gays are "homos," and "filth" and "dirt" and "a health menace" and that they deserve to die of AIDS. He also wrote that "immigrants" should be kept out of Canada, because they carry AIDS. Grace, meanwhile, called Collins a "defender of liberty." Grace wrote news stories endorsing Collins' view that Jews "control Hollywood," too.

See here, where Grace enjoys the enthusiastic support of Canada's far right: http://www.freedomsite.org/pipermail/fs_announce/2001/000682.html And, here, where he is championed by David Irving: http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/99/02/Alberta.html

There is more, if you have the stomach for it. Grace defending war criminals. Grace attacking groups like the SPLC, who courageously oppose the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and violent neo-Nazi skinheads. Grace deriding gays and lesbians. Grace defaming Jews and Israel.

Kevin Michael Grace can write, but that doesn't mean he belongs in the Post, or any other mainstream media outlet.

Even Western Report figured that out.

[Mark Stewart]

Getting back to the original story...is the summer heat making you soft AZ...Rachel Marsden is a women, who makes much of her living by bashing a country that gave her so much...including a good education that never did her much good...and she is a woman, who hurt the women's movement by lying about sexual harrassment..thereby playing into the hands of every antifeminst..of which she is one...and destroying a couple of men's lives...as for her future prospects...I saying cleaning outhouses is too good for her

[Toronto Tory]

In order to exploit one's looks, doesn't one first need to have looks worthy of exploitation?

[Brampton Pete]

Slightly off topic, but I was always amused to find that Snapple of all things is Kosher - the little circled 'K' on the bottles giving rise to the silly urban legend that Snapple is owned by the Klan.

[Adam in Whitby]

Allow me to add my vote for a column by Kevin Michael Grace -- at The TO Star. He's one of the country's best writers just in terms of style and craft alone -- and I speak as one who agrees with him about 3% of the time.

He'd surely flummox all partisans, and that can only be a good thing in this day and age of entirely predictable arguments coming from much of the chattering class. A conservative anti-war aesthete -- that's a perspective you don't see often. He's also painfully funny, which the Star's column page (excellent as it is) could do with a bit more of.

And yes, he's a West Coaster, but considering the Star's the biggest paper in the biggest city in the country, it needs more of a national perspective anyways.

I have no idea if he even wants such a gig, I don't know him at all. But I read his blog regularly, and would love to see a regular column from him. Antonia, put in a good word for him.

And congrats on your blog. Since I agree with you about the same 3% I do with Grace (usually from the opposite perspective), it must mean something that I come by every day. All the best.

[Mark Bourrie]

Rachel needed some mentoring, but I think she has the eye that it takes to, eventually, be a good columnist. She actually, especially in the Toronto columns, delivered better material than I expected. Seems kind of shabby to me to bring her out East, have her do exactly what was expected of her (writing the same kind of column she always wrote), then say she's not a good fit. People will see it as Rachel's failure, but it's really a sign of very bad management on the Post's part.

[Steve]

Boy, you sure did go soft on her. What's with that?

As you originally pointed out, Marsden is a vicious, deceitful stalker who ruined a man's career by stalking him, then lying to police and to the broadcast news that she was the one who was sexually assaulted. She then stalked and harassed other men, including Vancouver radio personality Michael Morgoa, ending up with a conviction and restraining order. Any name she has made has been solely on the fact that she is a camera-friendly woman espousing a far-right ideology, which makes for good TV. No credibity, no true journalistic credentials, a convicted liar, harrasser, stalker and creep.

How on earth did she get the Post gig? You were right to blast her in the first place, so don't feel sorry for her after the firing.

[Jay Currie]

Purely as a piece of reporting the column Haley cites is pretty unexceptional. KMG interviews a guy who says some rather odd things about kosher labelling. Reporters interview people all the time without being considered their interviewee's supporters.

And, to return to the point, this bit of dated writing is rather more professional than anything I have seen from la belle Marsden's pen.

The reason why so many people piled on to Marsden's being hired in the first place is that we are aware of a wealth of talent on the right and the left and were sickened to see a spot in a national newspaper given to such an unrelenting and unoriginal hack.

[Mo'dove]

Wow, a lot of petty jealousies here. Sad, but true. Ok, most hacks can't hack a columnist's gig. Most of you here, well, all of you here, would have crapped out long ago, likely after your first column in your local news/adinsert/weekly.

Not everyone was born to write, some were born merely to complain.

[Jay Currie]

Well Warren, we agree Grace can write, and the consensus here seems to be that Marsden can't.

Your first link goes to the same article as the Zerb by Grace which is an interview with what seems to me to be a full on nutbar. But we do not condemn journalists for the views of the people they interview.

Your other two links are no more damning: the first is a defense of Doug Collins who was, gasp, opinionated. He said politically incorrect things and KMG opines re the Sun's editorial anti-eulogy of the man, "Collins, you see, was a bad man because he didn't understand that those who impose tyranny are actually defenders of liberty. Worst of all, he didn't, sniff, "raise the level of debate." If this is what the Sun's editors really think is the purpose of popular journalism, it's no wonder their newspaper is so bloody boring." (Which, by the way, is the sort of writing which confirms our mutual opinion as to KMG's talent.)

Your second cite, which you claim has David Irving "championing" KMG is, in fact, nothing more than Irving putting a snip of something KMG wrote in 1999 up on his website.

Now I realize Warren that this sort of smear works well on TV where people can't check your facts....but we're on the internet now. Spin can be unspun.

[MWW]

"He was, for example, a supporter of deceased Jew-hater Doug Collins. "

Query Warren:

Was he a supporter of the actual Doug Collins holocaust denial? Was there any comment Kevin made which promoted holocaust denial itself?

I'd be curious if you could come up with a quote on that.

(Antonia edits here)

By your own logical reasoning.. Ezra Levant publishes a bigot who suggests that Angolans in Africa deserve genocide, Aboriginal Activists and Apologists and their kids need to be locked up, and makes interesting remarks about "Jap Bastards"

Now since Ezra Levant is promoting a woman who promotes genocide against Aboriginals and Angolans... what does that make Ezra?

Interestingly Ezra's editorial policy on the issue of the woman who writes for his ShotGun Blog is that she is allowed to be as insulting, nasty and racist as she wants... and people who are insulting back at her, specifically about her "Canada needs institutions to lock up the indians" comments are banned for being able to comment further.

I would suggest that making the decision to ban the only person in a discussion opposed to the proposed genocide for Aboriginals is a heck of a lot more damning, than the charges you have levelled at Grace.

I have read KMGs stuff for quite some time. I've spoken with him on the phone. I have seen KMG be critical of some of Israel's policies... but I haven't seen anything that I would classify as anti-semite.

Again Warren if you had cites, that would be helpful.
I've got a pretty good nose for spotting holocaust-deniers, Arayan Supremacists and "anti-race mixers"...

I've not seen anything KMG has explicated specifically that falls into those categories.

If you have any actual quotes and articles that point to this kind of thinking on his part.. please provide them.

Put it this way Warren. If KMG is a racist for the reasons you have claimed above.. then.. well.. So is Ezra Levant by the same logic.

[MWW]

"Elsewhere, Grace's views were easy to ascertain. He was, for example, a supporter of deceased Jew-hater Doug Collins. Collins, you might recall, wrote that the Holocaust - the systematic killing of millions of Jews and gypsies and gays and dissidents and disabled people - was "impossible," and that it made no "difference" whether millions were slaughtered or not. Collins also wrote that gays are "homos," and "filth" and "dirt" and "a health menace" and that they deserve to die of AIDS. He also wrote that "immigrants" should be kept out of Canada, because they carry AIDS. Grace, meanwhile, called Collins a "defender of liberty." Grace wrote news stories endorsing Collins' view that Jews "control Hollywood," too."

Warren... All of these statements are indeed very interesting. I have not seen KMG say any of these comments. And... call me a silly woman... but unless you can provide specific examples of him making these remarks... I remain pretty unconvinced.

Give me a money quote Warren.
I have not seen what you are alleging about KMG and I would be very shocked and disapointed if there are articles out there that are saying these kinds of things.

In the interest of fairness and accuracy, please provide the quotes and cites.

[Warren K]

Two things:

Jay, the guy's your friend. You socialize together. That's your choice, but you should admit to it here, doncha think? And condemn him for his views? C'mon, man: you do that on your web site every day, about other people, and so do I. Welcome to the frigging blogosphere, etc.

Anonymous person: I don't debate folks who lack the guts to use their real names. And you want some research? Go do it yourself, sweetheart, if you actually are open to permitting facts to seep through your cranium. Which I rather f----g doubt.

Ta.