April 5, 2010: Ann Coulter played Ottawa like a violin

By Michael Regenstreif

It could have – should have – been an insignificant event.

Ann Coulter, the American far right-wing demagogue, blew through Ottawa as we were working on this issue of the Bulletin and managed to grab a whole lot of international attention for a speech she didn’t make at the University of Ottawa.

A chain of events, that began with an email sent by uOttawa Provost François Houle to Coulter warning her that freedom of expression in Canada is not seen as quite the same as freedom of speech in the United States, and inviting her to “educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here,” eventually led to Coulter’s organizers cancelling her Ottawa appearance at the last minute because, they said, they feared for her safety in the wake of an anti-Coulter demonstration outside the uOttawa theatre at which she was to speak.

Here we go again, I thought, it’s just like last year’s George Galloway case, but from the other end of the winged spectrum.

Galloway is the fringe British MP and far left-wing demagogue – and commentator for Press TV, the Iranian government’s English-language propaganda network – who has delivered highly publicized cash gifts to Hamas and was denied entry into Canada for a four-speech tour. So, instead of playing to, perhaps, a couple of thousand people in total, Galloway got a platform to spout his views on every newscast and interview program in the country and was seen and heard by millions.

So it was with Coulter.

Houle’s email, and, then, the cancelled speech, became huge stories that allowed Coulter to paint herself as a victim of repression being denied the right to speak.

Without the email, and the fuss that almost anyone could have predicted Coulter would have made about it, she might have generated a little bit of local coverage at her three stops. Instead, all the national TV networks were there for Coulter’s London and Calgary speeches – and for the Ottawa speech that never was – and she generated coverage in literally thousands of publications around the world, on talk radio and TV, and on countless websites and blogs.

Coulter, like Galloway before her, was handed a violin. And she played it for so much more than it was worth.

The email to Coulter from the uOttawa provost seems to have been unprecedented. And, while Coulter has a habit of saying hateful things – Muslims should ride camels instead of airplanes, Jews should convert to Christianity to become perfected – seemingly for the sole purpose of being offensive, there is no evidence the university has ever sent a similar warning to other speakers, like some of the Israel Apartheid Week firebrands, who also have records of saying things that are hateful and offensive.