Le Devoir: French CBC suggests to hosts and journalists to offer their apologies live in the event of unexpected mention of the “n-word” while programs’ reruns will be purged from offensive language that has no “editorial rationale”

Bambi just learned from a Le Devoir article thar Radio-Canada [the French CBC] has suggested to its hosts and journalists offer their apologies live in the event of an unexpected mention of the n-word. Not only that; it has also announced that reruns of its programs will henceforth be purged of all offensive language that has no “editorial rationale“.

Here is Le Devoir article, by Mr. Boris Proulx, with French content: https://bit.ly/3AYImow

Here is a video by Le Devoir with French content: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/kXfibmga

And here is are the guidelines of the French CBC: https://bit.ly/3OOHTLD

Please pause for a few seconds and think of the following, with Bambi:

Does this mean that our great Canadian author and pride, Mr. Danny Lafferière, cannot mention the name of his OWN book, “Comment faire l’amour avec un Nègre?” without apologies followed by censorship?! As a reminder, or for those who do not know it, Mr. Laferrière is of Haitian origins (no, this is not a self-identification of a so-called “blackness“. For those not familiar with the French language, the term used above is different from the English connotation.

Does this also mean that a host who happens to be a historian, for instance, can no longer mention the title of Vallières’ book, “Nègres blancs d’Amérique” chosen on purpose to score the whole historic point of his book about French-Canadians (https://bit.ly/3VKQEIz)?

Does this mean that an expert, whether academic or from the general public, educating an audience about the harm of mockery, insult, and racism cannot use an example of a bad word in French anymore? What if it is someone sharing a personal experience?

Since when the French language and culture is as vulnerable to this modern form of neo-colonialism of an exported and extremely authoritarian wokeism, like in the rest of Canada?

Why is the French CBC increasingly diving into the business of censorship and cancellation now?

When will we take a break from our collectively insane times to reflect on such guidelines and their impact on our society? Do we want to live in fear-based society where we are all walking on egg shells? Is this socially healthy and wise? And what’s next?

Are we resorting to such guidelines out of conviction? Or out of fear of extremists of the left (similar to fear of the right or of religious extremists of all kinds)? Or are some of our decision-makers or elites of our society extreme themselves to that extent?

It is one thing to have private media taking such decisions. We understand and they are free. It is another thing to have our public media engaging in such authoritarian practices that the majority of tax-payers do not endorse; whether they talk about it publicly like Mr. Proux, Dr. Mathieu Bock-Côté in le Journal de Montréal (ttps://bit.ly/3FggdvY) or all the non-expert citizens and deer like Bambi.

Think of it, even the organizers of the Stanford Academic Freedom Conference (November 4-5, 2022), that resulted in MANY signatures of courageous scholars openly supporting academic freedom-freedom of expression, got scared of an aggressive mob. Dr. Frances Widdowson, one of the speakers, was precisely defending the right of journalist Wendy Mesley to reference Vallière’s book cited above at the time. What did the conference organizers do? They censored “this part for fear that it would be used to delegitimize the conference“. These were the words of Dr. Widdowson herself in an update about her legal case. Bambi is proud to have supported the latter and is eager to read her writing about what she perceives to be the problems of all this in the January issue of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship Newsletter.