New Brunswick Tory’s Comment was Sexist
December 4, 2009 · By Jonathan McLeod
I missed the story when it first came out, but New Brunswick MLA Carl Urquhart got in trouble for a mildly offensive comment he wrote on Facebook. Responding to the governing Liberals’ new budget, Mr. Urquhart wrote, “[a]nother Liberal budget … Another $1 billion on the debt by March … Girls we need more babies or we will never be able to support our future.”
At National Post’s Full Comment, Adrian McNair (who also blogs at Unambiguously Ambidextrous) comes to Mr. Urquhart’s defense.
I take the opposite stance – as does Mr. Urquahrt; he’s since apologized – and explain all the ways Mr. Urquhart’s comment was unbecoming and offensive over at my blog, Canned Goods and Ammunition.
Who cares what an MLA from NB writes on his facebook page?
I’d say people from New Brunswick, the National Post, and, well, that may be it.
OMG. Offensive? If he’d gone so far as to say, “‘men and women’ we need more babies or we will never be able to support our future.” , some feminist would have joined the fray and complained that the inclusion of men in the decision was robbing women of their sole right to self determination over their own bodies!
This is political correctness to the extreme. The man has nothing to apologise for.
Jason,
That’s a nice straw man you’ve got there. If you’d like to discuss what Mr. Urquhart actually said, let me know.
I agree that Urquhart was needlessly sexist, using a 1940’s mode of speech for a twenty-first century audience. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that he doesn’t spend a lot of time trying to argue his ideas online, where he long ago would have learned to pre-emptively censor his language to remove terms and phrases that anyone with such experience would redact from their informal language long before hitting the publish button. But some how, even experienced politicians with armies of PR staff seem to fall into these traps every day.
I agree with Jason’s sentiment, but I would use the formulation, “People, we need to…”. But then you sound like Jacques Parizeau, so maybe the whole idea should be defenestrated. Doesn’t change the fact that government spending is based on a pyramid model that is unsustainable if the pyramid becomes inverted. When the sexism tempest in a teapot subsides that real problem will still persist.
(By the way Jonathan, I was away for the last week and have finally got around to continuing our previous two discussion threads, if you’re still interested.)