Right, everyone as seen it by now, but it’s always nice to have a refresher.

Anyway, what has me so perplexed is the fact that, unlike seemingly everyone else north of the 49^th, I really wasn’t all that outraged. BlogWorld was on fire. It was all anyone on Twitter could talk about. Even after watching the video a few times, I couldn’t get my finely-tuned sense of indignation to fire. I was Outrage Impotent – a serious and embarrassing condition.

I simply couldn’t bring myself to care too much. Disturbing, because I’m usually the first one out there with the pitchfork when I pick up on a slight, real or perceived. But here…not so much.

Sure, it was ignorant. Sure, it was cheap. Sure, it was extraordinarily insensitive.

But, it’s just that it comes as absolutely no surprise. Red Eye plays on Fox News, after all. I don’t have a great opinion of most news organizations, especially in the US. But Fox is at the bottom of the barrel. Not only that, but Greg Gutfeld’s little comedy show plays at 3am. Three o’clock in the morning. How good can the guy be? They put him up against Law & Order re-runs and extended Snuggie infomercials.

So no, I wasn’t all that outraged. Gutfeld isn’t funny, he isn’t original. He’s got a show that plays like a fratboy trying to impress his friends – he has to try and be edgy. (What’s sad is that he thinks making fun of the Canadian military is ‘edgy.’ It’s not. We do it here all the time. It’s low-hanging fruit.)

Just like you can’t be outraged when an poorly-trained dog takes a shit on your front step, you can’t get mad when a second-rate funnyman tells hack-eyed jokes to get attention. It’s just his nature. We should all be proud of Greg Gutfeld for having the restraint not to have a diaper on his head when he said his little Gregalogue. (Case in point – he actually calls it that. It’s not even a pun, it’s just….hard to say.)

No. I wasn’t mad at Greg Gutfeld before. But then this happened.

“The March 17th episode of Red Eye included a segment discussing Canada’s plan for a ’synchronized break,’ which was in no way an attempt to make light of troop efforts,” host Greg Gutfeld said in a statement issued Monday.

“However, I realize that my words may have been misunderstood. It was not my intent to disrespect the brave men, women and families of the Canadian military, and for that I apologize. (emphasis mine)

Fuck you, Greg Gutfeld.

Comedy is about taking down sacred cows, by making people think by poking and prodding at convention and common sense. Comedy does it better than any other form of art.

That’s the one thing you had going for you – you weren’t funny, but at least you gave it a shot. But now you come back with this non-apology. Your “words may have been misunderstood”? Bullshit. You meant every single on of those words. When you did, maybe you thought that clips from your waste of airtime wouldn’t get back to us up here. Or maybe you didn’t think that the backlash would be as strong as it was. (Either way, you were dead wrong.) But you meant to say what you did, and now you’re too much of a coward to stand behind your own words.

That’s what outrages me – public figures that think an insincere statement is enough to fix any situation. “I’m sorry if some were offended…”, “If anyone took my words to mean…”, “I was misunderstood…” We hear it all the time from politicians, from the media, and from washed-up comedians. Those are not apologies, they are conditional statements. A real apology admits error.

A real apology comes with actual regret. A real apology doesn’t just happen to quell outrage.

A real apology isn’t followed by this:

So, Greg Gutfeld, I wasn’t outraged when you poked fun at Canada. Sometimes, I think we’re a bit to sensitive about criticism from the States, so I would welcome more of it. (Although if you could try and make your comedy monologue funny next time, extra points!)

But I’m insulted by your insincere attempts to wiggle out of things, to try and be the provocateur one night and the misunderstood everyman the next. I was okay with you when you were the loud, obnoxious, perfectly-ignorable late-night host. I’m much less down with the cowardly insult to satire.

Of course, guess there is a reason you’re on at 3am, isn’t there?

A lot of ink has been spilled as of late about the Victims Restitution and Compensation Payment Act

thatcame in to effect in January. Long/short of it: The government can seize property used in a crime, and sell it off. The money is to go into a fund that will be used to compensate victims. The rub: the government can sell things off without having to get one of them fancy convictions.

I’ll repeat that: Alberta can arrest you, accuse you of, say, selling dope out of your car, sell said car…all without having to prove that you were, in fact, breaking the law.

Of course, I expect something like this from the Tories – actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if this idea was brought forward by any of the political parties. It’s just the kind of ill-thought out “let’s look tough on crime” idea that most politicians love. It looks nice in the headlines, and any time someone sane objects to it, you can fire back with the specter of gang violence and complain about the difficulties of getting a drug conviction.

Not to sound like an Angry Internet Libertarian (I proudly fall in with the nanny-state liberals, thank you), but it’s really shameful that this got through without at least some citizen outrage.

No, sorry. That’s not the shameful thing. The shameful thing is, while the Journal and the Sun have at least mentioned the controversy surrounding the idea, Metro is gushing over the Act like a grandma over a grade-schooler’s macaroni art:

“Alberta Justice says it will continue to rip a page from Robin Hood by taking money from gangs in order to compensate victims of crime.“

Thanks, Metro. Good job on the lack of restraint there. Also, the thing about Robin Hood: wasn’t real. Because in the real world, we have a name for a guy with an weapon holding up travellers: armed robbers.

If they redistribute the wealth? Socialist armed robbers.

There’s more:

“But the province’s new Victims Restitution and Compensation Payment Act allows for the seizure of cash and property used in crime and then compensates victims and communities affected by criminal activity. “

Not exactly – the Act allows for more than just seizure of property used in a crime because you don’t have a crime without a conviction. Legally, it can’t exist. Like an family reunion without the drunk uncle showing up: it’s a necessary condition. You can be accused of a crime without being convicted, but that’s it.

But Metro doesn’t have time to worry about using words correctly. They barely have the time to point out the fact that the Act can sell off stuff without a conviction. In fact, the only mention of it is half a line in a quote from the dude that’s in charge of selling off the seized goods.

Congratulations, Metro News. While others were are still stuck in the “accurate and balanced reporting” rut, you were forging a new path through the wilds of journalism. A lazy, shameful and ill thought-out path.

Fitting, given the subject matter.

miracle |ˈmirikəl|

(noun) a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural orscientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency : the miracle of rising from the grave

I wasn’t going to talk about this, mostly because it happened a few days ago and I assumed it would be old news by now. But the story still has legs (or wings, as it were). News channels are still going wild over the “Miracle on the Hudson.”

Here’s the deal, though. It isn’t a miracle. Miracle is a word. It has a meaning. That meaning is not “when something works out well.” Things work out well all the time, but they aren’t miracles.

The pilot was calm, experienced and well-trained. He made a difficult choice to land in the Hudson River – a water landing isn’t the safest option around. But, it was still worlds better than landing on top of an apartment building or crashing into a school. To call it a miracle, as if some divine hand is what averted a catastrophe is absolutely insulting to the pilot, who fought with an airplane still taking off, and who reports say walked up and down the length of the plane twice to make sure everyone is off.

It is insulting to the rest of the flightcrew who helped get the passengers off the plane. Despite being treated like the waitresses (and waiters) of the skies, flight attendants are safety personnel, first and foremost. They are trained to make sure people get off the the plane safely. Their other duties are extras – bringing drinks and pillows to people is a bonus for fliers. Attendants are not treated as they should be, however.

Calling it a miracle is also an insult to the ferry operators who went to go pick up the passengers. And the ferry management/unions who fought for that kind of training and equipment. It is insulting to the rescuer workers that spent time on the cold Hudson river that morning, treating people for exposure.

To the air traffic controllers who helped the pilot deal with the crisis and contacted the authorities. The aircraft producers that spent thousands of hours designing, researching and building engines that could take a bird strike at incredible speeds and still have enough function to get the plane down.

And it is an insult to those who regulate the airline industry – the ones who design the safety procedures, make sure that training is adequate, and ensure that the plane is properly built and maintained.

Sure, there was luck involved – the waterway was not packed with ferries at the time, but they were close enough to help rescue passengers. The plane could have suffered more damage. All kinds of things went right. But if it wasn’t for the people involved knowing what had to be done, a disaster still would have happened.
Miracle is a big, shiny word. It looks great on a headline. It’s a lot more elegant than saying that things worked the way they were supposed to, and people went above and beyond what was expected of them. But it also cheapens it.

–Words Have Meanings is a semi-regular feature to highlight the fact that words have actual definitions. They mean something. You can’t just throw them around willy-nilly.–