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| Norman Douglas |
Here are the six obscenity prosecutions for consideration:
(1) I have nothing personal against Taylor Swift or Travis Kelce. I did get tired of watching Taylor in her private box after every play Kelce made during the Kansas City Chiefs’ games — I’m delighted they didn’t make the playoffs this year. And I wasn’t impressed with all the street closures and the scalpers getting $50,000 per ticket when she came to Toronto.
But my granddaughters tell me she is really a good person. I have only caught glimpses of her performing on a few occasions — I can’t speak for all of us who grew up liking Lawrence Welk, but entertainers nowadays don’t wear much clothing, and they don’t dance like Ginger Rogers.
I’m not saying her act is obscene, but when you consider the billion-dollar revenue from her engagement, I can tell you why that is obscene: we were reminded during the COVID-19 pandemic who were the vital workers and professionals. Nurses, teachers, first responders, delivery truck drivers, home care professionals — the list goes on, but you won’t find any entertainers or athletes on it.
My view is that it is simply obscene that so many hardworking, productive people who keep our economy moving and keep us alive struggle to pay their mortgages, education costs and groceries. But if you can hit, kick, smash or bounce a ball, or if you have sex appeal and can sing or dance in a skimpy outfit, or go to Hollywood and “act” (pretend) for a living, then we will gladly fork over billions of dollars to you. Kind of speaks volumes about our value system, doesn’t it?
(2) I like Bo Bichette. I am a die-hard Blue Jays fan. I got hooked on the Jays as I was recovering from six months of chemo, 10 radiation treatments and a stem cell transplant back in 2016. I watched a lot of TV back then too — rooting for knuckleballer R.A. Dickey. I do not blame Bo for leaving Toronto. I lived in Toronto for a year, and after fighting that traffic and stress, I left it free of charge. But really, US$42 million a year? I was never good at math, but how much is that per game (162 games)? And how much per at bat (four) or per ground ball (maybe five) each game? And the really mind-boggling fact is there are scores of basketball, soccer, tennis, football and other baseball players making more money than Bo. I’m blasting balls here, not pucks — I am Canadian, after all. Salaries (not including the endorsements and other perks) like that are, well…
(3) How did the sports-betting takeover happen so quickly? In the last three years, everything changed. Now we have commentators who’ve never played any game professionally speaking like experts in a new language about over-unders, percentages, odds, betting lines and parlays. Our young viewers are sucked into the exciting life of going broke and getting addicted by betting on every play, every strike, every ball. No more rooting for your favourite team — be a gambler and win money instead of working for and earning it. And have you not been saddened and disappointed to see some of our sports “heroes” promoting the gambling? Even hockey players. Sigh. As if they needed more money.
Many professional athletes have had great careers after retirement in broadcasting. It is so interesting to get their take on plays and players. They are always insightful, experienced and credible — because they have been there. They have been replaced by employees of FanDuel, who are frightful, inexperienced and have no credibility — because they haven’t.
And the entire industry has been hijacked by people who urge you not to cheer, but to bet.
4) When I was a kid in a wartime home in the Soo, my mom would give me and my two brothers a quarter on some Saturdays to go downtown (25-minute walk) to the movie theatre. It was 15 cents to get in, and we could buy a box of popcorn for a dime. But we had chores to do to earn that quarter. And we knew that my dad, a D-Day veteran, had to work hard as a bookkeeper at a construction company for that 75 cents.
There were no credit cards back then. If you didn’t have the money, you could not afford to buy. That math I could understand. As parents, we all taught our children the value of earning a dollar over borrowing, being given or winning one.
Now, I realize those days are long gone, and in today’s world, obviously we need credit and debit cards. But look where we are. The credit card companies’ exorbitant interest rates for overdue accounts have resulted in a milestone reached this year in the U.S.: credit card holders now owe them a trillion dollars. I don’t know what the amount is in Canada as I was switching channels a lot during my three-week education.
So, the picture is consumers working in a tunnel to pay off the interest on the debt and not even touching the debt itself. And the tunnel is on a downward slope, further each day from the light behind them. And the banks and credit card companies get richer and richer. What word comes to mind?
(5) One American news channel, CNN (some conservatives say that stands for “Certainly Not the News”), has been closely following and comparing two major events involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). I have watched the videos of the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE officers, and the uproar in the church by protesters targeting the pastor, who also happens to be a member of ICE.
Let me make full disclosure here, because it relates to the next obscenity as well: my politics lay dormant while I was judging other people before I retired. Politics were never high on my agenda. I was never all that concerned about them.
My dad always voted Conservative, and I have as well. Now that I am allowed to talk about it, I consider myself a tad right of centre.
So, in 2016, if I had been an American citizen, I likely would have voted for Trump and Pence because of their stand on tightening security on the border and investing in better law enforcement. I would not have voted for Trump in either 2020 or 2024.
Therefore, my opinion on the ICE cases does not come from any political bent.
Here is what is unfathomable to me: the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the church protesters with a view, to quote Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, to releasing “the full force of the federal law” to prosecute these protesters.
The Department of Justice believes there is no basis to investigate the actions of the ICE officers in the shooting deaths of Good and Pretti.
As a Crown attorney, and then as a judge, I believed the vast majority of our frontline officers were heroes. But I was also known for zero tolerance for the officers who breached their oaths and tarnished the credibility of their comrades. A part of my prosecuting career was with the SIU (Special Investigations Unit) ferreting out those officers who abused their authority and seeking jail terms for them. As a judge, I did not blink when it came time to sentence police officers who broke the law.
So here is my opinion:
(1) the protesters — obviously a biased investigation from the start. No injuries, no lives lost, no public interest in sending these folks to jail.
(2) the shootings — a mother of three, driving away from an aggressive officer trying to open her door, being shot to death by another officer standing in front or to the side of her car, and a nurse, simply trying to help a woman who had been violently shoved to the ground, attacked, gassed and shot to death while lying subdued on the ground, obviously need to be fully investigated. The public interest is paramount here.
(2) the shootings — a mother of three, driving away from an aggressive officer trying to open her door, being shot to death by another officer standing in front or to the side of her car, and a nurse, simply trying to help a woman who had been violently shoved to the ground, attacked, gassed and shot to death while lying subdued on the ground, obviously need to be fully investigated. The public interest is paramount here.
When you juxtapose these cases, the decision to throw the book at the protesters and sweep the shootings under the carpet is obscene.
(6) Greenland. I don’t know when you will be reading this, but as I write, everything has changed dramatically in 24 hours. Two days ago, Trump was threatening to take Greenland by force if necessary. Yesterday, when the world reacted, and more significantly for him when the stock market plummeted, he sat down with the NATO secretary general and “formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland.”
But the mere thought of the U.S. military invading a NATO ally is insanity. For so many reasons. Putin looks on and continues to kill Ukrainians with Russian drones. Xi watches and now has a precedent for Taiwan. Greenland’s children go to bed frightened that the Americans are coming to kill them.
We Canadians who tuned in to his speech at Davos shook our heads when he proclaimed that “Canada lives because of the United States.”
I jokingly told my American cousins in Monroe, Mich.: “We kicked your butt in 1812 — we can do it again.” But with Trump these days, no one is in the mood for jokes.
To use one of his favourite answers: we will see what happens. But his whole behaviour over the past month with regard to Greenland is obscene.
I love the American people. I cross the border regularly. I marvel that each state has its own identity, and I have driven my camper van over the years to most of them. But I guess I am going to have to delete this column from my phone, lest a border agent ask to see it. That’s obscene.
Norman Douglas is a retired criminal court judge with 27½ years of experience on the bench. His book, You Be the Judge, was published in December 2023.
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