Light is Right Joe Campbell Disloyalty spoils everything. Look what it’s done to professional sports. I’m not talking about things like fixing games or using performance-enhancing chemicals. I’m talking about shredding bonds between players and fans. I don’t know about you, but when I get interested in a sport, I commit seriously to particular teams and players. Because of roster [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell We were talking about the Ontario Human Rights Commission and how it appears to have betrayed its politically correct roots. We suspected that in warning about female dress in the workplace, the Commission violated a basic precept of feminism. “Oh, the shame of it!” my friend Dingwall said. “Not of the immodesty, let alone the [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell I used to think that obscenity and pornography were much the same. Apparently, they’re not. In Canada, adult pornography is legal unless it’s obscene, whereas child pornography is illegal even if it’s not obscene. Although it defines and prohibits obscenity and child pornography, the Criminal Code doesn’t even mention the adult variety. Maybe our lawmakers don’t [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell I grew up under the protection of the Hicklin rule. That’s the test for obscenity that England’s Lord Chief Justice Sir Alexander Cockburn formulated in 1868. I don’t mean that I grew up in 1868. I mean, rather, that I safely completed my formative years before Canada abandoned the rule. Chief Justice Cockburn defined published [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell He told me that we shouldn’t discuss politics because I’m on the right and he’s on the left. “I don’t enjoy talking with someone who’s on the wrong side of history,” he explained. “The wrong side?” I declared, taken aback. “You just acknowledged that I’m on the right.” “I’m on the right,” he replied, “because [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Yes, I’ve heard the arguments against re-defining marriage to include same-sex couples. I know that, legally, it eliminates the only civil institution that unites children with their biological parents. I’m aware that it reduces marriage to the level of liaisons that lack procreative potential. I recognize that it views families as socially constructed units based [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Church attendance of Britons has been falling for decades. The news is not all negative, however. Church attendance of bats is rising. Bats, it seems, are more committed to Christian churches than Britons are faithful to Christianity. Bats go to church because modernization has reduced their natural habitats. Britons don’t go because modernism has undermined [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell I get the impression that the phrase “doctor-assisted dying” is becoming a media favourite. Don’t journalists know that we’ve been dying unassisted since time immemorial? We don’t need help dying. It comes natural to us. If anything, we need help living. I thought that’s what doctors were for. Doctor-assisted living, I understand. Doctors routinely help us [...]
I didn’t really mean it. Honest I didn’t. I was only fooling when I suggested that Canada make aboriginal languages official. I never dreamt that anyone would take seriously what I wrote in The Great Canadian Comedy, a 2008 collection of essays. If not the book, I thought that at least the title betrayed a humorous intent. Nevertheless, seven years later, Perry Bellegarde, Chief [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell The pill – you know the one – may be better at preventing conception in fish than in people. What’s more, the fish don’t need a prescription. They get the pill’s synthetic estrogen from sewage that municipalities discharge into rivers and lakes. By feminizing males, the synthetic hormone can limit fish reproduction to the point [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell My latest laptop, the snooty MacBook Pro that distains communicating with its elders, had a nervous breakdown recently. “Well,” I said, when I took it to the Apple store for repairs, “it serves you right. You treated my beloved Macintosh SE despicably. Now it’s your turn to suffer.” I haven’t yet got over the shock [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Military medals fascinate me. Not just their metallic luster and multi-coloured ribbons, but their number and variety. When I see a chest full of overlapping medals, I can’t resist counting them. So far, I’ve counted seventeen in a row, although I suspect I may have missed some. What fascinates me most is how the bearers [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell When a Harvard University study found that left-handers are economically worse off than right-handers, I was dismayed. Not because I’m a left-hander. Because I’m a right-hander. If history is any guide, the media-academic complex and the judicial magisterium will blame me for the disparity. That’s what happened when feminists and champions of racial and sexual minorities pleaded [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell He told me that when Rome fell in June 1944, his father cried Veni, vidi, vici in a crowd of revelers. “Your father had a speech impediment?” I asked. “Veni, vidi, vici is Latin for I came, I saw, I conquered,” he replied. “My father helped liberate Rome in World War II.” He noted that after winning the [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Because it evolves, I keep a close eye on language. I know that dainty used to mean substantial and pretty once meant sly. I also know that brave can be a synonym for showy. So I wasn’t surprised that progressives called male athlete Bruce Jenner a hero for identifying as female and white activist Rachel Dolezal [...]