Censorious!

Life is unfailingly rife with little surprises and disappointments. Just when you think you've read the portents and all signs lead to an explicable conclusion, and you've reacted with the aplomb of one who knows the true picture, along comes a correction and you're left with mouth agape.

As, for example, a contentious issue respecting freedom of expression in a country that prides itself on its status as a democracy where such freedoms are guaranteed.

We do slip, from time to time, to expressing our outrage at certain personalities whose outrageous performances on the speaking circuit insult our intelligence and our values, and then we're yanked back to the reality that allowing bigoted racists and rabid ideologues is part of that freedom.

Damn.

We have the freedom to respond to their allegations, assertions, slanders and bigotry. When they reveal themselves to be viciously malignant, having unleashed their hateful bile, the intelligent among us - and we hope they are legion - then have good reason to be confirmed in their rightful bias against the miserable hate-mongering we so deplore.

And when it comes to speaking out in favour of allowing public figures to speak their incendiary invective against ethnic, religious or ideological groups whose status is protected by law in the country, we're still in the accepting phases of allowing dissent, because it is legal, even though it grates against our sensibilities.

Double-Damn!

And then it is revealed that one of the arbiters of freedoms and rights within the Constitution, one who has experienced high office in governmental hierarchical ministries - and was himself a purported candidate for the office of prime minister, now serving as president of an academic institution - relieved himself of an amazing helping of hateful bile, in the process of hoping to deny a speaking engagement to a controversial lecturer.

"Ann Counter is a mean-spirited, small-minded, foul-mouthed poltroon... 'the loud mouth that bespeaks the vacant mind'. She is an ill-informed and deeply offensive shill for a profoundly shallow and ignorant view of the world. She is a malignancy on the body politic. She is a disgrace to the broadcasting industry and a leading example of the dramatic decline in the quality of public discourse in recent times."

Now, how is that for character assassination, and righteous denunciation. Taking the initiative to advise and inform a subordinate academic within the institution where this woman was invited to speak, of one's personal, scathing opinion of that speaker's style adversarial to reason, and her intention of increasing racial-religious tension - in the name of free speech.

So read her the riot act. Her insolent and irony-laden, quasi-insulting, rather amusing take on a popularly-discussed issue within society must be restrained, for we have laws in this country, do we not?

And this March 2010 directive by University of Ottawa President Allan Rock, to his vice-president academic and provost, Francois Houle, leaves us speechless with dismay, disappointment and disbelief.