By Mark Farrell
Editor, the Gauntlet,
In the piece called “This Hour has 22 Stereotypes” [Labiba Majeed, Nov. 20, Gauntlet] the author writes something to the effect that the show This Hour has 22 Minutes makes fun of visible minorities and maybe should be banned. Of course, one could argue that banning things, in particular satires, is not the best way to promote tolerance, but let’s leave that for another time.
As someone involved with 22 minutes I was wondering if instead of making a blanket statement about the show the author could supply actual examples? All the stuff we have done this year is on the website, cbc.ca/22minutes. Maybe someone could look there and tell me what is offensive and to whom. It seems to me, and I am by no means an essay writer, that an opinion piece that has as its central argument that generalizations hurt, shouldn’t, well, generalize.
So maybe the author has just noticed that other shows do this and assumes our show does it as well. In that case, I think then that we’ve been the victims of political satire show profiling. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you: Political Satire Show Profiling hurts everyone.