What's he on about now?

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   Thursday, August 17, 2006

   SORRY, NO -- MARGARET'S STILL HERE

Oddly, the Globe and Mail expects people to pay to read Margaret Wente (winner of the prestigious Golden Clam award), but it takes all kinds, I guess. There are people who pay to be whipped and walked on with stiletto heels, too.

Here's the opener of today's column in which Margaret weighs in -- again -- on the International AIDS Conference here in Toronto:

The trouble with Africa

The big AIDS circus is winding up tomorrow, and not a moment too soon. If I have to hear Saint Stephen Lewis hectoring us with his apocalyptic rhetoric one more time, I think I'll choke. Please, sir, can't you take an Ativan? Nor will I miss the ritual denunciations of Stephen Harper. Is it really his duty to show up so that 20,000 people can boo and hiss him? Funnily enough, Jean Chrétien didn't show up at the AIDS-fest in Vancouver a decade ago, either.

And here's me clenching my teeth and writing the editor:

Margaret Wente’s second ill-informed dismissal of the International AIDS
conference (The Trouble With Africa - Aug. 17) attacks “Saint” Stephen
Lewis for “hectoring us with his apocalyptic rhetoric…” Mr. Lewis has
worked on a continent with nearly 25 million people infected with AIDS –
is that number not apocalyptic enough? Ms. Wente’s only contribution to
the discussion involves sealing Canada’s borders and offering women
“education and a reliable microbicide” (what “the big AIDS circus” already
suggested earlier this week).

From her comfortable chair, Wente mocks the “madcap protesters”
criticizing the “evil” Catholic Church who, she counters, “runs something
like a quarter of the AIDS clinics in Africa” where “there is widespread
ignorance about the disease and very little public education about it.”
Given the Church’s refusal to discuss condom usage, Ms. Wente’s clear
inability to put two and two together means that, with relief, I can go
back to ignoring her. She’s tired of Stephen Lewis’ saintliness; I’m
tired of her hatefulness.

Tomorrow: Margaret writes another love letter to her SUV!

Labels: Canada, Stephen Harper, Trawna