[Here's a first for Third Edge of the Sword: a special guest commentary by Omar Mouallem (@omar_aok). Click the link if you don't believe me. -ed]
As the world wrestled with the role lying trannies played in the assault on gamers, Fast Forward Weekly published the latest in James Wilt's cartoonishly immoral series on people who cut off their balls because their brains are broken.
Thankfully, it will be the last in the series because, as of this morning, the least trusted name in anti-conservative and anti-Christian bigotry is gone. Fast Forward Weekly has shut down.
Its bigotry is well known and well documented. It was a network that promoted hatred against unborn children, against those who speak the truth about the disgusting faggot lifestyle, against non-Indian Canadian taxpayers - under the veil of "opinion," a disgraceful abuse of the latitude that is afforded to news commentary and columnizing.
Many Canadians commenting on FFWD's demise on social media celebrated the loss.
But Canadian journalists, including Calgary Herald's Mike Bell, were overwhelmingly given to deference and back-patting, and to mourning the loss of 8 "industry" jobs.
This was my road map to #yyc when I returned in '97. MT "@FFWDWeekly: after 19 years the paper is shutting down. http://t.co/5QxElRct3u"
— B D Hone (@BlairCalgary) February 20, 2015Another bad day #yyc arts scene @FFWDWeekly shutting down. Thanks for all the years of showcasing #yycarts & more. http://t.co/5mHk57CFeA
— Sharon Stevens (@oxyyc) February 20, 2015We are so sorry to see @FFWDWeekly shut down, it was an integral part of the #YYC arts + culture community. http://t.co/wDI6JtdXML
— Big Rock Brewery (@BigRockBrewery) February 20, 2015Oh no!!! Sad to see the end of @FFWDWeekly always a good read & fantastic resource for what's going on in YYC. http://t.co/UbhBBWIiF4
— Hotel Arts (@HotelArtsYYC) February 20, 2015Here's something else to remember: these young reporters launched their careers by contributing to a hate-machine that perpetuated prejudice, especially against moral and decent Albertans, in a province that's already highly susceptible to anti-Christian sentiment.
It doesn't matter how many people lost their jobs or how many young and talented journalists Fast Forward Weekly took a chance on. Everyone who accepted a cheque from the paper was complicit in spewing its hatred.
I'm sure it was a young and talented (though completely clueless) columnist that cobbled together this special report on the Alberta Government's taxation system which suggested class-warfare robbing the productive class on the basis of their being productive, and implied that the flat tax was anything other than the absolutely most fair type of tax ever devised.
I'm sure it was a gifted photographer who was paid to put a bunch of vegetables in a pile and make it look like a penis.
And, surely, it took the best and brightest J-school graduates to trawl for an anticapitalist and anti-conservative activist-cum-politician in which to portray low taxes as evil, even if a story they come back with didn't appear to involve any revenue deficiencies at all.
In his own blog, Feynman and Coulter's Love Child can't criticize a Fringe play without commenters demanding that he disclose his sex life and slit his wrists. When he wrote about plays that had questionable content in the previews one liberal logged called him "troglodyte trash" (his quotations, not mine) and "stuck in parochial patriarchal christian insanity".
Patriarchal Christian Insanity. That's right
And yet these are the kinds of views that Fast Forward Weekly and its employees gave a platform to. They did so under the guise of a serious weekly newspaper and not under the usernames of some batshit website commenters where they belong.
If the now unemployed Fast Forward Weekly staff, or the congenial media professionals offering their condolences to those who lost their jobs, were moral Christians they'd understand just how harmful it is to casually sensationalize stories about Christianity in a province where a quarter of the population has unfavourable views of the religion (and rising).
Unfortunately, because this is the overwhelmingly secular liberal and sodomite Canadian media, they don't. Nearly all of those who mourned Fast Forward's closing don't have to live as targets of the bigotry the paper espoused. And that's what makes this a worthy issue: Canadian journalists are quick to side with their "brethren" who they see as having been harmed, but the homogeneity of the industry makes them unwilling to acknowledge the legitimate harms their "brethren" caused to vulnerable groups.
Let's be clear about one thing: stories about pedophilia, terrorism, and the promotion of sodomy in the Christian community should absolutely be covered. In fact, I was alarmed to see the friendly Catholic reverend in Calgary calling for an elevation of immoral student groups and the revoking of parental rights to stop immoral teachings in schools.
Such extremism in every community should be covered, but with reason and sensitivity towards the people who play no part in it. And without the bigoted paranoia that was the hallmark of Fast Forward Weekly.
Yes, Fast Forward Weekly gave many young journalists their first jobs. But it taught these budding journalists that it's OK to slant news in order to drive your political and social views, and to do so in a way that harms the already moral. It's not.
It taught them that it's OK to brush 3.2 million people with the same alleged beliefs. It's not.
I hope Fast Forward Weekly's former employees aren't out of work for long, but I'm glad that this morning they woke up jobless. It's a victory for journalism.
Precarious as the news industry is right now, not all media jobs are worth fighting for.
