Today, he apologised for his misbehaviour on Red Eye.
Sadly, Doug Benson was unable to appear at a gig in Edmonton due to the shitstorm caused by Gutfeld's commentary.
We're talking death threats, babies. Not catcalls or simple confrontation.
In this case, on behalf of the silent, sane majority of Canadians, I apologise to Benson for this debacle.
Also, I joined Gutfeld's activity pit. If you're a damned Tory/libertarian pigdog like me, you should jump in.
In the meantime, I wrote something here...
I am one of those people who wrote to Red Eye taking exception to Greg's comments. I know that he was making light of how small is our military - Canada's population is roughly 1/10th of the US, FYI - but the timing couldn't have been worse.
The problem is... WE HAVE A SMALL MILITARY!
If we had your technology, your numbers and your budget, then we would definitely shrug it off. But as you all know, this is not the case.
A small lesson: Canada has a long military tradition dating back to colonial times when the French and English were battling it out over resources and a few acres of ice. As part of the British Empire, Canadians went to British wars, including the War of 1812, the Boer War and WW I, where thry distiguished themselves at places such as Ypres, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele. During WW II we had the 3rd largest navy, participated in the ill-fated defence of Hong Kong, trained many Commonwealth pilots and liberated Holland. During the Korean war, a Canadian regiment received a presidential citation for its heroics at the battle of Kapyong. All this in spite of a small population.
However, the short-sightedness of various politicians resulted in cutbacks in budget and eventually personnel. In 1968, the three services - the Canadian Army, the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force - became unified as the Canadian Armed Forces: one budget, one command, one uniform. For a while, everyone had to wear the same generic green uniform and carry army ranks...
You can all Google the rest. Let's just say that some of the thinking at the time was so progressive and smug it would make the French seem butch in comparison.
Greg, Bill et al should at least give us Canucks some credit - we are currently punching well above our weight in Kandahar. We're taking our lumps, shedding our blood and hitting where it can really hurt the most. If the timing were different, we all would've said "Oh fuck off, Gutfeld" and then carried on.
But as I've said before, we don't have a huge population, and our military is incapable of replaying the 1814 White House visit. So 116 dead in Afghanistan is a big freaking deal to us. Since some of us get Fox News on cable and tune in to Red Eye, we can tolerate - Hell, even appreciate - Greg's soph-moronic take on current affairs. It's just that around the time he recorded his comments, 4 of our soldiers got killed by IEDs. And since NATO/the coalition has been waffling on support for the Kandahar mission, plus the selfish agendas of the local warlords, even the lion needs a rest.
Enough bloviating from me. I know that Greg and co, will understand that he has lots of fans up here, and he'll have to make at least some amends, regardless of size.
After that, we can all carry on carrying-on.
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