After watching and reading about some of the things Ezra Levant has said and done on SUN News, I'm baffled as to what exactly he's trying to accomplish with a lot of this. I brought this up to a Conservative friend of mine, and he said that Levant was being satirical, but for most of the stuff I've seen I'm either disgusted or simply confused as to what kind of a message he was going for.

When he was hyping up the Justin Trudeau/Patrick Brazeau boxing match, he was brushing a My Little Pony and talking to it as if it was Trudeau. I have trouble understanding what he was going for here-was he trying to call Trudeau effeminate, or a homosexual? I'm not entirely sure what I, a guy who isn't affiliated with any party at the moment and didn't have much of an opinion on the issue, was supposed to take away from this. And if that is the point Levant was trying to make, what are gay Conservatives supposed to take away from that?

The same thing happened when he took a chainsaw to that house plant and then dressed up as a hippie to lament the destruction of the "forest". Again, I'm baffled as to what the point of that skit was. Was Levant simply trying to mock radical environmentalism, or was there another type of point he was trying to make? If so, I'd think that the message was undermined by his gleefully sawing up a tree-it certainly doesn't help the efforts of conservatives like Preston Manning who are trying to show that there doesn't have to be a conflict between environmental protection and economic development, and more generally that conservatives care just as much about the environment.

Finally, there was the whole "National Necrophilia Week" after Jack Layton died. Levant might have had a good point about rebutting those who criticized people on the right for not apparently showing enough grief, but seeing Levant going around in an orange wig and drinking Orange Crush undermines a point that I thought could have been made much more effectively with a blunt speech along the lines of the "Rick's Rants" done by Rick Mercer or the letters Stéphane Dion wrote to the Parti and Bloc Québécois during his early years as Unity Minister.

Is Levant trying to rally the base with skits like these, or is he trying to reach out to a broader section of Canadians? Skits like these strike me as being more divisive than anything else, and as a centrist, currently non-partisan Canadian I don't find them very convincing. If anything, I find that they simply perpetuate the same old ugly cycle that's been polarizing our politics. It's something I've written on elsewhere, and it's just as much a problem on the left as it is on the right.

Indeed, people like Levant on the right and bloggers like Canadian Cynic on the left come across to me as if they'd hate and attack me for daring to disagree with or even just question them. Hence my confusion-is Levant aiming more to rally the Conservative base, or is his goal to convince a broader group of Canadians?

Any thoughts would be helpful.

   

He's an acquired taste. Sort of like that guy Charles Adler has on all the time Menzoid. Personally I like Ezra better, like when he showed up at the CBC saying he could help them and security escorts him out the door. His stunts are more to get attention to a talking point de jour. No, he doesn't always hit the mark but I give him points for trying.

   

Ezra Levant's the Canadian/SUN "News" equivalent to Glenn Beck. If it's incredibly stupid, annoying, demented, or outright offensive he's going to do it if it means he gets attention.

   

I stopped trying to understand it and laugh at the spectacle. It beats the pseudo-intellectual circle jerk at the CBC in terms of entertainment.

   

Firstly Ezra coined the term "pretty pony" to describe Justin Trudeau, preety boy, priviledged upbringing and never had a "real" job. Basically Trudeau is were he's at now, not by his actions or words but by riding his dad's coattails. Levant is trying to inject humour in his pieces and in my opinion fails miserably. It detracts from his otherwise intelligent counterpoints to the mainstream media. Menzies/Menzoid is even worse in his failing in humour, something that doesn't mask the fact that he's no where as intelligent as Levant.

   

ezra can be witty and entertaining, even if that wasn't his intent. Chuck on his show....not so much. I met him and Larry Updike(now with CBC and also an interesting person) a couple of times in Winnieg. He's(Adler) pretty funny in person

   

Teacher is not a real job? Trudeau was one for 5 years. What "real" jobs has Levant held? Harper for that matter?

   

Notice the quotation marks around ""real"". Yes he was a teacher, a drama teacher, I believe. Also did a bit of acting as I recall. Basically he's Canada's equivilent to Paris Hilton albeit with a BA. Ezra Levant is a lawyer, publisher, shit disturber and as far as I'm concerned a failed stand up comedian.

   

he also wrote for The National Post. Most importantly he was a stick in the eye to the assholes at the CHRC

   

And by kicking Brazeau's ass.




Those on the political fringes, like Ezra on the rabid-right , don't really "get" humour. They try to use humour to mask the bittnerss of their intrinsic anger and the whole thing comes off like some kind of hysteria.

   

I can find no evidence that Levant is a lawyer. Seems to have moved back and forth between being a media hack and working for the Reform party. Oh and a stint at the Fraser Institute. Also spent some time in the US on the Koch brother's dime.

   

gee, your favourite source of information, Wikipedia, says he holds a degree in law from the U of A, and practised law in Calgary in 2001 and 2002