There are a number of lessons to take from Rebel News' David Menzies acting like a dangerous asshole in the proximity of the Prime Minister of Canada and getting stomped by the RCMP for it:
but the obvious question is -- is Menzies satisfied with his assigned role as Rebel News' fundraiser-related punching bag, given the inevitability that this is going to extremely badly for him one day? Here, let me explain.
Menzies' job at Ezra Levant's Rebel News is no secret -- go out, act abusive and confrontational to event organizers, security personnel and law enforcement, all for the sake of provoking a response, then screaming "harassment!" and launching another fundraiser. But here's the flaw in that strategy.
As everyone knows, if your entire business model is based on generating outrage, you can't just keep generating the same level of outrage; if you do, your audience will eventually get bored of the same ol', same ol' and wander off to be outraged elsewhere. This is not rocket surgery; it's a simple fact of human nature, which means that for Menzies' shtick to keep working, he needs to up the assholishness on a regular basis, and here's why that is probably not good for his health.
Until now, Menzies' standard move was to show up at some event, insult everyone in the vicinity and yell stupid questions from the other side of the security perimeter. All well and good but, after a while, everyone figured out his pattern and simply took to ignoring him, which really killed the dramatic effect of his douchebaggery. So what to do? Easy -- take it to the next level.
Which explains Menzies' most recent stunningly stupid attempt at notoriety which, according to numerous sources, involved bullying his way through a security perimeter and rushing the Prime Minister's motorcade, whereupon he was quite justifiably tackled by the RCMP and dragged away, where he was (again, justifiably) slapped around just a bit for his stupidity.
All this inspires the obvious question for Menzies: Is he happy being Ezra's punching bag for the sake of fundraisers that collect tens of thousands of dollars, and end up who knows where? More importantly, does Menzies even remotely understand the potential for this ending way, way worse for him?
For this recent event, David should be grateful that all he ended up with was a few scrapes and a slight headache, because it's not hard to imagine a much uglier result. It's easy to imagine another such rally where, on a dark, snowy night with poor visibility, the Prime Minister arrives by car whereupon, out of nowhere, a man crashes the security tape and runs toward the procession, yelling something indistinguishable and holding an unidentifiable object in his hand that no one can tell is a microphone, at which point -- fearing for the well-being of the PM -- the RCMP simply draw down and blow David Menzies' stupid fucking head off.
Because that day is assuredly coming, as long as David agrees to play the out-of-control buffoon for Ezra's benefit and, some day, Dave is going to go one step too far for the sake of a Rebel News fundraiser, and he will not be walking away with just a few scraped knuckles and a broken microphone.
It's only a matter of time until this happens, so David might want to take a step back and ask himself if this is really what he signed up for.
10 comments:
Well ... the Rebel folks have been trying to diversify into "strategic litigation" ...
TBH, the increasingly desperate tactics that The Rebel are using are part of the reason I suspect that Ezra is getting ready to step aside. His schtick only goes so far before people get bored of it, and right now he's about as funny as watching "All In The Family" ... in the 1990s.
MgS: Numerous people have suggested to me that the signs are unmistakable that Ezra is preparing to dump the Rebel and move on, to what no one knows, but when that happens, it's safe to say that Menzies will be utterly unemployable anywhere.
His only value to the Rebel was (as some anonymous commenter explained) to play the part of the Geek -- the pathetic sub-human at the circus who attracted the paying rubes by living in his own excrement and biting the heads off live chickens. But when Ezra hightails it out of town with his Rebel-enhanced bank account and leaves it in the hands of the current crop of 12-year-olds, there will be very little value to keeping Menzies on.
In short, whatever Menzies has managed to bank while acting the buffoon for his master, it better be enough for retirement.
P.S. It's not hard to imagine David having sacrificed his body for the cause and inspiring these lawsuits, only for Ezra to scamper off into the sunset with all that dosh, leaving David to scramble around for the funds to pursue those cases.
Whatever happens, I think Menzies is not going to come out of this financially secure.
Something makes me think that Menzies is too stupid to even know where he is at any given moment.
There's something truly mind-boggling about Ezra Levant openly saying, "It's clear that Justin Trudeau's RCMP personal bodyguards are violent, savage, out-of-control thugs who have no problem brutally assaulting journalists. So, Dave, get out there and provoke them."
And Dave just doesn't have a fucking clue what that implies.
Personally, I like my idea that the RCMP should -- based on Menzies' well-established history of verbal abuse, confrontation and assault -- simply get a restraining order against him. And if that restraining order would apply regardless of who Menzies is working for, that would basically finish him as a journalist. After all, who would hire a reporter who is legally restricted from covering almost all high-level politicians?
Is there any reason why someone who knows someone can't suggest this?
Cops, be they RCMP, SQ, OPP or Toronto City, are part of the same uniform culture, and divide the world into four kinds of people.
In the police universe, there are Cops, who understand How the World Really Work, and whose job it is to serve and protect.
Then there are "Citizens", the vast majority of naive non cops who don't realize they owe their relatively peaceful existence to the cops.
There are the Bad Guys, who prey on the Citizens. While they're the Cops' natural enemy, they share we the cops the knowledge of How the World Really Works, leading to a strange kinship.
And finally, there are the Assholes. Those are the politicians, lawyers and media folks who get in the way of Cops trying to protect the Citizens.
Most Cops acknowledge that many of the Assholes are simply doing their job, and not necessarily or inherently committed to getting in the Cops' way. But there are some Assholes who they perceive as deliberately, consistently and maliciously going out of their way to mess with and discredit Cops. This can include certain defense attorneys, politicians bent on too much "reform", and journalists who seem constantly to have the Cops in their sights. Some absolutely terribly journalists (e.g., Joe Warmington) consistently support the Cops' perspective, and thus escape the stigma of Assholedom.
But the real Assholes are known to cops right across the country. The Rebel "team" is right at the top of the list, and Menzies is Number One.
It is greatly to the credit of Canadian police training that they normally manage to remain as civil and professional as they do when Rebel provocateurs insult them, shove them, lunge past them and ignore them. If Menzies were pulling this stunt in Detroit or LA he'd be dead, quite literally.
But as CC points out, Ezra keeps heating up the rhetorical fire, piling on the provocation and insults, and Dave the Geek keeps heading out into the fray time after time to further aggravate armed peace officers who watch him skating ever closer to the edge.
As for Ezra and the Rebel's future; he's invested quite a bit of energy in this closed revenue generation loop, with the Rebel acting essentially as the fundraising intake and promotions department for a loose affiliation of hard-right political action groups. Ezra has strong and long-standing connections with the "Democracy Fund" and its "Director", and that seems to be the new banker for this squalid band of activists. The DF is currently advertising on its website for a couple of positions that sound very Ezra-esque. Maybe his intent is to shift his primary corporate allegiance closer to the real money, selling some shareholder equity to the newbies at the Rebel and leaving its shell intact as a loudspeaker for the DF, the JCCF and all these other sketchy entities.
@Anonymous - 12:58PM:
I suspect that you aren't far off the mark. The pattern of things we're seeing right now is strongly reminiscent of when he folded up operations at The Western Standard, and wandered off only to pop up like a bad smell when Sun News Network popped up as a thing.
Western Standard had walked itself into a corner and couldn't get out of it (at least not with Ezra at the helm), and it was sold off to someone who "held" it for a while until Fildebrandt bought it up and restarted it as an alt-right news outlet.
@CC: I agree that anyone working at The Rebel when Ezra steps aside is hooped, and I don't feel any sympathy for them. If they haven't figured out who and what Ezra is by this point, they deserve what's coming.
I do feel a little sympathy for the absolute newbies. One of the standard pieces of advice you get from media professionals on how to break into the industry is "take ANY job you can get. Script assistant, data entry, gaffer's assistant, whatever and wherever - just get your foot in the door." And that may still be good advice in 99.9% of the cases. But the Rebel is viewed with such embarrassment and contempt by real journalists and broadcasters of every political stripe - including conservatives - that no-one with that stain on their CV will ever be taken seriously again. Coren and Lilley got out in time, but these kids have shackled their future to a rapidly sinking ship, and don't have a clue what that means.
Ah, the Christmas fundraiser goes into high gear.
I absolutely have no doubt if he tried this stunt with a high level US politician, he would have gotten far worse than he received here. Quite possibly even shot.
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