Hot Babes, Hypocrisy & Humour
How a boring awards show suddenly became interesting
Look at this woman for five seconds:
After appraising her tender complexion, the Pacific azure of her eyes, her blonde hair cascading down to her elegant neck and brushing like gentle morning against the ebb of her confident chin — what adjectives would YOU use to describe this person? One might say she is pretty, attractive — or in common parlance: “hot.”
But try telling her that.
Meet Melanie Joly, the Canadian heritage minister. On Sunday, April 2 she was presenting an award at the Junos — Canada’s obscure, boring and less prestigious version of the American Grammys. Introducing her, host and comedian Russell Peters questioned why she was there before jokingly adding “she’s hot, so who cares.”
This provoked a firestorm. Joly, along with a number of other killjoys, took umbrage with this and one of Peters’ other comments. During his opening remarks, he said, “[There are] a lot of young girls here. This is a felony waiting to happen.” In the comedian’s defence, there were a number of young women surrounding the stage in front of the cameras. Was that just a coincidence or a deliberate attempt on the part of the organizers to make the tedious show seem hipper? In any case, it was a joke and the audience laughed.
But Joly wasn’t laughing. She stated in a subsequent interview that Peter’s remarks were clearly inappropriate and added that his type of humour does not have a place at the Juno Awards and that we “need to make sure that all our role models are supporting the importance of gender parity.”
Never mind that a slighted government bureaucrat thinks she can dictate to Canadian musicians and fans what type of humour is and isn’t allowed at their ceremony. Instead, it’s important to examine the ‘honorable’ minister’s complete hypocrisy on this issue. Let’s start with the basics.
Joly’s boss, Justin Trudeau, has been called “hot” by the fawning media.
This has been considered flattering and complementary. Is she really saying that there should be two different standards for men and women? Isn’t that…(throat clear)…sexist? Why yes it is.
Next, when Joly was appointed to her cabinet position, the focus wasn’t on her credentials. Nope. All the attention was on Trudeau’s touted gender quotas — where an equal number of men and women would serve in the top positions of his government. So Joly’s breasts and vagina could have had more to do with her becoming the Minister of Heritage than her actual resume. Being called hot is sexist, but being trotted out in front of cameras simply because you and fourteen other people have a certain type of genitalia…that’s sexist as well.
Finally we arrive at the insipid summit of hypocrisy. Joly thinks sexist humour has no place at the Junos. Fine. But what about awarding musicians who sexualize women like Drake — who has already won gaggles of these things including the 2017 Album of the Year? Here’s an excerpt of what he says on 2 Chainz’s “No Lie”:
“Chances are, if she was acting up/ Then I f*cked her once and never f*cked again/ She could have a Grammy, I still treat her ass like a nominee/ Just need to know what that pussy like so one time it’s fine with me.” (notice he used the word “Grammy”. Even in the throes of misogynistic ignorance Drake has the good sense to recognize the low worth of the Juno). On this same song, Drake’s fellow rapper, 2 Chainz, describes forcible abduction and rape: “I take your girl and kidnap her, feed her to my mattress.”
Sexist humour must be banned but we should keep awarding Canadian artists whose songs celebrate misogyny and rape. Gotchya. With this contemptable hypocrisy in mind, next year if Joly has a problem with the jokes, she should stay home and cry about her lack of self- awareness.
As for Russell Peters, his humour certainly has a rightful place at a ceremony that allegedly celebrates the risk-taking dynamism of artists who break creative ground by occasionally pushing the envelope in controversial directions. While the Juno organizers are tripping over themselves with their bland vanilla apologies, they forget that Peters’ controversy made the typically boring show all the more interesting (think Ricky Gervais’ hosting of the Golden Globes).
Ultimately, this hullaballoo demonstrates that humourless bureaucrats and media types are hard at work pretending to be offended in order to kill humour. This should give us pause and remind us that the transcendent value of laughter makes this issue far more important than the phony politicians and crybabies who would like nothing better than to police it. An additional takeaway is that while Melanie Joly may look hot, this ugly episode proves why personality matters a whole lot more.
