To Whom It May Concern,
My Auto-Response:
Reference number: 563691
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I am writing in complaint of a recent Menzie’s Monologue segment titled: “White straight male? No thanks”. In this segment David Menzie is featured in drag wearing an aboriginal headdress. He proceeds to satirize that he’s not mocking transgendered people or aboriginals, but employment equity has forced him those to feign those identities. I am not being critical of his freedom speech or action; I am a staunch civil libertarian. I do however see a problem with the way Mr. Menzies conducted himself on SUNTV News Channel’s The Source with Ezra Levant. The questions that are relevant to the CRTC are: was there racist, homophobic, and transphobic content aired? And was journalistic integrity upheld?
First, I will illustrate that Mr. Menzies’ actions do in fact constitute racism, homophobia and transphobia. To qualify this assertion, the intent behind the actions much be interrogated. Clearly Mr. Menzies was not using costume for the creation of art or culture. Nor was his dress indicative of pride in his own experiences. David Menzies used token costume items to generalize the characteristics and struggles of marginalized peoples. The act invoked tokenized identity politics to degrade Menzies for the delivery of a comedic performance and visual juxtaposition to his spoken assertion that employment equity groups receive unfair advantages in hiring processes. The content aired by SUNTV insidiously invoked discourses of race, sexuality, sex, and gender for the purposes of reasserting white and male privileges.
Menzie’s segment also misrepresented facts about employment equity. EE legislation has no provisions regarding sexuality. The fact that “Straight” was included in the title and sexuality in the analysis of this ‘story’ is indicative of a journalistic bias in favor of heterosexual privilege. The misinformation in Menzie’s Monologue is a populist attempt to illustrate the queer population as privileged and problematic.
With racist, heterosexist, and sexist underpinnings, the segment defiles any concept of journalistic integrity. This performance was neither art nor news; it’s offensive and oppressive, and the CRTC should reprimand SUNTV for its production.
** For the blog copy of this letter, I’d also to address a huge flaw in Menzie’s actual argument against EE. I would like to state that I 100% agree that meritocracy is the best way to organize a society; however, I would never be so naïve as to believe that we live in one. Wealth organizes our world. Until education and the means to develop human capital are accessible to all potential students, based solely on merit, EE programs will be argued as means of reconciling historical inequality. If one is to advocate for the abolition of identity politics within hiring processes, they must equally be dedicated to eliminating the barriers that structurally recreate oppressed groups. As an advocate for higher education, I encourage anyone who’s reading this to join the Canadian Federation of Students on February 1st in their call for increased access to post-secondary education across the country.
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My Auto-Response:
Reference number: 563691
Thank you for contacting the CRTC. This is an automatic confirmation that we have received your message. If a further response is required, we should contact you within 10 working days. We apologize in advance for any delay that may be caused by the high volume of correspondence received in the Commission.
If your request is urgent, for example, if it involves the disconnection of your telephone service, please contact Client Services toll-free at 1-877-249-2782 and provide the above-mentioned Reference Number. If you use a TDD, you can reach us toll-free at 1-877-909-2782.