American philanthropist George Soros has threatened to sue Canada's Sun Media for slandering him in an article written by 'gadfly' Ezra Levant.
Americans visiting Canada must be in shock when they peruse news sources up here. Unlike the USA, Canada's media is one big conservative machine. All our national outlets are run by conservatives. Even the one holdout - the publicly-run CBC - has succumbed to right-wing pressure a la CNN and has become a hotbed of conservative voices.
Things have gotten so out of hand that a former Conservative party flack has attempted to hoodwink Canada's media regulatory board into giving a proposed conservative news network, Sun TV News (dubbed 'Fox News North'), privileged status. That didn't work. But this move has emboldened the right wing to become a little careless in the spreading of its hate in the national media.
Take the case of Ezra Levant. He is the resident Canadian Glenn Beck talking head and a prime beneficiary of Canada's generous wingnut welfare. In the past, he has been sued for defamatory articles and statements. Nowadays, Levant's main outlet for this venom is the farthest right of all Canadian media - Sun Media (yes, the same Sun as in the aforementioned TV news) chain of newspapers.
Levant took it a little too far recently, penning an inflammatory article about George Soros. In the article, Levant described Soros as a Nazi collaborator, echoing claims made by others in the American media. To make matters worse, Levant attributed Soros to be a funder of the petition site, Avaaz, which Soros is merely a minor contributer through secondary sources.
Soros threatened to sue Sun Media. Attempts were made to arrive at a mutual agreement over the wording of an apology. Instead, Sun published a retraction and apology of sorts but I doubt that will be sufficient for Soros, nor should it be.
This will be interesting to see how this unfolds. Michelle Malkin has already parroted Levant's claims and has become the bruntof Jon Stewart's mockery. From a Canadian's perspective, Levant has always been comedy gold; now's he's about to get very serious at the mercy of George Soros.