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UPDATE: It's on! It looks as if the producers of The Agenda have agreed to let me go head to heads with all three of the Sock Puppet Three. We indicated we'd rather debate the real plaintiffs, but interestingly in his most recent email the producer is now describing them not as "the complainants", but as "authors of a paper enumerating examples of "Islamophobia" in the pages of Maclean's." Which in terms of media accuracy is, I suppose, a modest improvement. See you on the air at 8pm Eastern.
One final note. As I understand it, the Socks have agreed to Round One: Me first; Round Two: All of us together; Round Three: The Sock Puppet Three alone. That still's upside down: They're the accusers, I'm the accused - and in civilized societies the accuser states his accusation and the accused responds. We'll see whether TVO's producers manage to straighten up and fly right (as the Gipper would say) between now and air time. Deborah Gyapong says:
Which gets me to the behind the scene machinations on Steve Paikin's The Agenda tonight on whether Mark Steyn will get a chance to debate the so-called Sock Puppets, the law students who originally went to Maclean's Magazine to demand equal space and control over the cover art and a donation to a charity of their choice.
I am reminded of the time Paikin practically hauled Ezra Levant across the carpet for republishing the Danish cartoons. I believe Paikin has already had the Sock Puppets on, has he not? Has Mark Steyn ever been on his program? Why does he feel the need to give them a separate but equal forum on tonight's program. I think it is time for some producer to tell the Sock Puppets (and their puppet masters, the real complainants from the Canadian Islamic Congress) that they have to stop ducking behind the power of state censors and actually have a debate face to face with the man they are accusing.
When the Sock Puppets were on previously, did Paikin give them the same tough ride he gave Ezra? Or did he just give them a forum to whine and air their propaganda? I hope not.
I dunno. There are a lot of people who will tune into The Agenda tonight just to see Mark Steyn.
Those same people have heard so much of the Sock Puppets that they will turn off the set rather than listen to their array of misconstrued paraphrases and claims of victimhood again, especially if Paikin is not well-enough armed to challenge them about their ever-shifting versions of what happened in the editorial offices of Maclean's.I find it especiallyannoying that The Agenda plans to give the Sock Puppets the right of rebuttal. In other words, the way it is set up now, they get the last word, as if they are the accused and not the accusers.
And here's my original post:
As you can see from this precis, the current plan at The Agenda is to interview me and then have the Sock Puppet Three come on to do their usual schlocko summer-stock routine of pretending to be "the complainants". It's like "Little Human Rights Commission On The Prairie": terrible acting, lavishly subsidized, and running forever.
Anyway, it seemed a bit of a bore to me, so we've put in a request to let me go mano a mano with the Sock Puppets. Don't care how many there are: One, two, or all three. If Daniel Simard wants to come out of his hiding place, he's welcome to join in for a grand reunion of the original Sock Puppet Four. I'd much rather go mano a mano with the real complainant, Mohamed Elmasry, but his mano is stuck up the Sock Puppets so I guess it's unavailable.
We'll let you know whether Steve Paikin's gonna go for it. But, if they do, it'll be 8pm Eastern tomorrow night.
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