Naomi Lakritz Should Stick to Writing For Supermarket Tabloids

This week, Justin Trudeau was raked over the coals for a comment he made that was taken out of context.

In critiquing Jason Kenney's new citizenship guide, which is horrendous by the way, painting Canada as a warring nation run by manly men; he suggested that he wasn't thrilled with the word 'barbaric'.

"In Canada, men and women are equal under the law," the guide says. "Canada's openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, 'honour killings,' female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other genderbased violence."

Before getting to anything "barbaric", I take offense to suggesting that "In Canada, men and women are equal under the law". Under Stephen Harper Canada has gone from 7th to 25th place in terms of gender equality.

But Trudeau made the mistake of telling a reporter that although he actually agrees that honour killings are barbaric he is "uncomfortable with the tone." It's "pejorative".

Then, as Dan Gardner says:

...the Conservative noise machine issued talking points while Kenney expressed righteous indignation to any reporter who would listen. By Tuesday morning, Trudeau was in the ridiculous position of insisting that he really does think murder is wrong, wrong, wrong.

And that was when Stephen Harper's government revealed its fundamental character. Dimitri Soudas, the prime minister's spokesman, broadcast a statement addressed to Justin Trudeau on Twitter: "@justinpjtrudeau the right thing to do is an apology to victims of honour killings and their families. Honour killings are barbaric."

What the...? Does anyone really believe that Trudeau condones honour killings or gender mutilation? Hardly. Just more of the 'Harper' government's twisted games.

The following attack ad sums it up, suggesting that Michael Ignatieff supports "human smuggling", when in fact what he opposed was that under this bill, women and children could be incarcerated for up to a year, until their situations were dealt with. But instead they painted the Liberal leader as being dangerously soft on crime.

I think the incarceration of women and children for a year is criminal and frankly, "barbaric". It reeks of concentration camps, something that would have been suggested by the Cons, if the shoe was on the other foot, and the Liberals wanted to throw the "victims" in prison for a year.




This type of thing is becoming so commonplace that few even notice now. But it goes beyond petty, to being a dangerous character assassination.

Yet this week out in Calgary, former supermarket tabloid writer, Naomi Lakritz, actually made Jason Kenney and Dimitri Soudas appear moderate. She attacked Justin Trudeau, even going so far as to invoke his father, a suggestion that he might be ashamed of his son.

If Pierre Trudeau was alive today, I can guarantee that he would not have found anything Justin said offensive, but would have had a few things to say about Kenney, Soudas and Lakritz.

But if you want to make a Calgarian mad, invoke the memory of Trudeau and the National Energy Program. They go into lynch mode, and obviously she knew that.

And she didn't stop there. She actually looked up "barbaric" in the dictionary. Was that necessary? I mean honestly. We all know what the word means. Despicable journalism.

Yes, I think Naomi should stick to the tabloids, where readers might appreciate a bit of word definition.

"a" - "one, non-specific"

"stupid" - "lacking quickness or keenness of mind"

"column" - "a regular feature or series of articles in a newspaper" (in this case lacking of quickness or keenness of mind)