Muppetry

I know this story is kind of old news by now, but I can 't help wondering whether Dick Cheney - who sees this in the mirror:

ever actually had any intention at all of coming to Toronto. His last public appearance in Canada saw him get "trapped" in his hotel by protestors for seven hours. And by trapped I mean "decided not to leave the hotel because the crowd outside threatened to hurt his feelings" by calling him a war criminal to his face, something that doubtless would have been captured on camera and replayed endlessly in campaign commercials. The notion that Cheney's various assembled bodyguard and the sizeable police presence couldn't have protected him from the crowd outside is as ridiculous as the notion that Ann Coulter's speech was shut down due to actual threats rather than as a publicity stunt. 

Notice that none of the stories about the supposed cancellation of the speech actually quote Cheney or his Princess of Darkeness in training daughter Liz, who was also supposedly booked to speak. Notice too, that there is no mention of tickets having been sold, or refunds being offered. There is also some evidence to suggest that he was never actually booked to begin with.

Spectre Live's Ryan Ruppert, president of the company promoting Cheney's appearance, has apparently claimed the Cheneys, through their agent, said they felt the chance of violent demonstrations was too high in Toronto. There are also suggestions that death threats were received and that Cheney feared arrest by the ICC for war crimes.

This is all bullshit. If the Toronto Police can arrest 1,000 people and beat up hundreds more for little or no reason during the G20, I think they can manage to keep "anarchists" from burning down the city if Cheney comes to speak.  As far as death threats are concerned, I would think that Cheney probably gets death threats whenever he leaves his lair and he is probably at more risk visiting New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or even Dallas than he would be in Toronto. And given the way our present government venerates him, I hardly think he needs to worry about the mounties clapping him in irons.

No, I suspect what really happened is that there just weren't enough rich assholes willing to pay $60 to $250 a seat to see the oil industry's meat puppet dance around the fact that he is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and the United States embracing torture. Without lots of advance ticket sales, the very new promotion company would never have the money to pay Cheney's sizeable speaking fee, and you know Dick doesn't do any of this out of the goodness of his cyborg central blood pump. So what to do?

What do conservatives ever do? Play the martyr! "Big mean commie protesters have prevented Dick Cheney from speaking! Won't you please help fight the dirty hippies and defend freedom of speech by buying a ticket to see our brave free speech warriors speak?"

No, not Ezra Levant, he was busy. No, those dumb enough to get fleeced by this bait-and-switch will be getting the SUN-TV B team.

Now that Cheney has cancelled his speech in Toronto due to "safety concerns" he has been replaced by former theatre critic and current drama queen Mark Steyn and SUN-TV's resident overage racist skinhead Michael Coren.

In other words, instead of seeing this:

Blogging tories and other idiots will be forking over their money to see this:

Bonus added awfulness: Steyn deigns to speak to the socialist rabble at CBC Radio about how the mean, mean marxist thugs are violating Dick Cheney's right to brag about torturing and killing children.

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