Michael Coren - Radio And Television Talk Show Host

Michael Coren is a regular contributor to several newspapers across Canada.

Toronto Sun
Ottawa Sun
Calgary Sun
Edmonton Sun
Winnepeg Sun
London Free Press
The Interim
The Catholic Register
National Post
Catholic Insight
Women's Post

Below you will find a few sample articles that Michael has written.

Spanking

Gavin was having a bad day. A very bad day indeed. And when 5-year-old boys have bad days everybody gets to know about it. He began to kick the cat. His father told him to stop it. Gavin refused, and gave the creature another few kicks. At which point Joe Cleary did what many parents might do. He gave his son a spanking. End of story.
But no. The spanking on the bum left a very slight mark and this was noticed by a teacher at Gavin’s swimming lesson. The teacher reported it to her supervisor, who in turn reported it to the Durham Children’s Aid Society.
The first thing that happened was a telephone call from a young social worker to Joe’s wife, Perry, the mother of their six children. The social worker wanted clarification of the incident and requested an interview with little Gavin. “I’ll have to speak to my husband first”, said the heavily pregnant Perry. The social worker was incredulous, even annoyed. Why on earth did she have to speak to her husband?
“Because” replied Perry, “he is my husband, because he is Gavin’s father and because he is the head of the house.”
There is an expression concerning a bull and a red rag that comes to mind. The social worker seemed extremely angry now, almost beyond reason.
It was a month later when the police came to arrest Joe Cleary. They came to where he worked, handcuffed him in front of his workmates and employers and took him away like some rapist or murderer. He was charged with assault and was told by the police that he really should make a statement before his lawyer arrived because if he didn’t it would look bad in court. Joe had nothing at all to hide and so he made a statement.
This good, honest, hard-working man was now incarcerated for two days in a holding cell and then in Whitby Jail, where prisoners are kept for up to two years. He had to fend off sexual advances from other men, had to watch out for the men around him charged with unspeakable crimes of violence and sadism.
After a brief court appearance the Crown asked for $1000 bail. His wife managed to get the money and offered it to the court. She was turned down, because of a statement she had made to the 22-year-old social worker on the phone. She had referred to her husband as being “the head of the house” and this was to be used in court by the prosecution, the accusation being that the couple had a “slave-master” relationship.
So the money had to be found elsewhere, and this wasn’t easy for a large family who put their children first and have limited personal savings. But they managed. The bail conditions initially prevented Joe from having any contact with minors, effectively stopping him from seeing his family. Perry, now with a 10-day-old baby in her arms, protested so loudly that eventually her husband was allowed to return home.
The couple had to go to court a further seven times, with the crown demanding continuances and further investigations. “It was almost as if they were trying to punish us,” say the Clearys. The couple’s legal bills eventually totaled $10,000 but their lawyers were so outraged by what was going on that they halved the cost.
Finally the judge dismissed the charges under Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which allows parents to, well, to be parents and to spank their children with reasonable force if they see fit to do so.
The whole family was and is still in shock and Joe is hardly confident of promotion at work after he was seen being arrested and his bosses read about his court appearances. If it hadn’t been for the strength of his union Joe Cleary may well have been fired.
As for young Gavin, none of the people behind this persecution seemed to care very much about him one way or the other. It seemed to be his parents they were after. He is, by the way, an extraordinarily happy and content little boy. The only thing that worries him these days is the idea of social workers and policemen coming to take his daddy away.
His parents are more concerned about those people who want to remove the right of mothers and fathers to chastise their children and expunge Section 43 from the Criminal Code. Such zealots quote the United Nations Charter forbidding spanking, a document that also says that if little Johnny or Jenny run to their room and slams their door shut no parent has the right to enter. It would be an “infringement” on the child’s personal space and could even be “emotional abuse”.
Do look behind the gentle façade of the so-called children’s rights activists and do question their agenda. If you have any doubts, just have a talk with Joe and Perry Cleary. If you can still find them, because they are so upset and disillusioned that they are considering leaving the country.

The BBC and Israel

Canadian media coverage of Israel is sometimes achingly supportive of any critic of the Jewish state. But compared to newspapers, television and radio in Britain it is a treasure island of objectivity. Nobody expects any batter from consistently liberal publications such as The Guardian and The Independent but the bias now extends to the tabloids, some of the conservative press and, most offensively of all, the publicly funded BBC.
Speaking on one of the most important shows on BBC Radio 4, the highly influential Nick Thorpe stated that, “The Kassams mostly needle the Israelis, like pin-pricks in the ankles of a giant, taunting him to stamp back with his big, US-issue army boots. The Katyushas are like poisoned arrows. They drive him mad. ”
Those fairy tale rockets have killed dozens of innocent men, women and children. Jews, Arab Muslims and Christians. Entire communities have been ripped apart, forcing more than 500,000 people to flee south or live in shelters. Hardly pin-pricks.
The most telling phrase in the BBC reporter’s diatribe, however, is the reference to the Israeli army in “big, US-issue army boots.” Actually Israeli Defence Forces footwear is made in Israel, but the deeper point is extremely significant. The hatred evinced by so many establishment figures in Europe towards Israel is because the country is perceived as being a conduit for the United States and a Middle Eastern symbol of American values.
Indeed Nick Thorpe’s analogy is more accurate when applied to himself and to his people’s tiresome attacks on the United States. They mostly needle the Americans, like pin-pricks on the ankles of a giant. Almost every BBC or independent British television report of the Israeli advance into Lebanon refers to “American made” helicopters and F16s. Yet they seldom describe the rockets tearing into Israeli towns as being Iranian made.
Nor do they describe the Merkava tanks, the machineguns and the rest as Israeli-made, even though they undoubtedly are. If all this is implicit criticism of Israel and the United States, however, some of the attacks are direct and positively outrageous.
During the second week of the conflict the BBC showed footage of the UN emergency-relief-coordinator explaining how Israeli actions could be seen as a transgression of international human rights. They did not show the rest of the interview, in which he stressed that Israel’s actions could be explained by the fact that Hizbollah had been, “cowardly blending in among women and children.”
On Monday The Daily Mirror, a mass circulation tabloid newspaper that supports the Labour Party, led on its website with a statement that 40 people had died when Israeli jets bombed a Lebanese village. Although even the Lebanese government changed its claim within an hour and said that in fact only one person had died, the Daily Mirror insisted on running the same lead headline all day.
Before we congratulate ourselves on Canada being more equitable and fair, consider a diary entry in Britain’s The Independent on Sunday last week by the notorious Robert Fisk, an English journalist who lost any sense of balance about Israel long ago. “I do an interview with the CBC in Toronto and talk openly of Israeli war crimes, and no one in the Canadian studio feels this is impolitic or frightening or any of the other usual fears of television producers, who think they will be faced the usual slurs about ‘anti-Semitic’ reporters who dare to criticize Israel.”
So any criticism of biased reporting becomes a “slur”. Very Robert Fisk, very CBC. Also very British and, sadly, sometimes rather Canadian as well.

Gay Marriage

Oh for the gift of hindsight. One day people will look back to the early years of the 21st-century in Canada and wonder why the desires of a small number of people within, perhaps, 3% of the population should receive so much publicity and be acted upon with such alacrity by politicians and judges. I refer of course to Gay marriage.
Numerous legislatures have voted on this issue is recent years and all, including those governed by the NDP, have rejected it. Which is why activists went to the courts and compliant judges read in sexual orientation into a charter of rights that was never intended to include it. So those of us who were opposed to the idea called for a vote. But a free one.
Which is certainly not will happen when the government prepares a bill on the subject in the extraordinarily short time of two weeks. The Prime Minister has made it clear that he expects his cabinet to vote for the bill. They and their parliamentary secretaries give the proposed legislation an immediate 70 odd votes. Hardly free.
But the issue goes beyond mere politics to the deeper moral and logical issue of what should and should not be. It has to be stated immediately that if there is any hatred in your heart, you have no right to comment on this issue. But if there is love in you, you have a responsibility to do so. I also have to bemoan the fact that the government could not be so enthusiastic and prompt about issues such as, for example, child poverty, third world exploitation and the arms trade. Just a thought.
Marriage is a religious institution. It was designed and devised by faith groups, particularly of the Judeo-Christian kind, several thousand years ago. The argument that it is entirely an economic concept invented in early medieval Europe is nothing more than the tendentious fantasy of radical historians who have not done their homework.
That Gay people will live together, love together and spend productive and generous lives together is axiomatic. Only a zealot would argue otherwise. They should be, and are, protected by legislation that guarantees them employment, housing, benefit and opportunity equality. If abused, they have protection. If insulted, they have recourse. Thank goodness for that.
But when an ancient and, important this, holy, institution is labeled “unconstitutional” by a court and its meaning exploded, we have to take a stand. I have heard people argue that it is of no concern to heterosexuals and will not effect them. Please! As a white man I was not directly harmed by Apartheid, but I still realized the absolute wrong of a philosophy and thus opposed it. It lessened me as a person.
If marriage is suddenly fundamentally altered to include people of the same gender, it loses its genuine meaning to the rest of us. We may include in the cat family the earthworm. Does this make worms feline? Of course not. But it destroys the definition of cat.
Marriage was and can only be the union of a man and a woman. The state intervened some time ago but the origin, and I would argue the essence, of marriage is still rooted in faith. And do not, please, tell me about the vital separation of church and state. Our entire legal code, our entire grasp of right and wrong, is based on Judeo-Christian principles. Let us go further. The very notion that there is such a thing as right and wrong is taken and inspired by Judeo-Christianity. Why not steal or kill if we can get away with it, unless there is a deeper imperative directing our conscience.
It has also become fashionable to deride what has been termed the “slippery slope” approach. In brief, what comes next? But this is a poignant and powerful stance. If we genuinely believe that a man can marry a man and a woman a woman, how can we possibly prevent a man from having more than one wife? Especially as many Moslems believe this to be acceptable. They would have legal precedent as well as freedom of religion on their side.
Incest? Supporters of Gay marriage claim that it is illegal, so there is no argument. Won’t do. Homosexuality was illegal not that long ago. The central argument behind Gay marriage is that the only criteria is love. I have no doubt that Gay people can be in love. But then so can a brother and a sister. It may be convenient to say that this will never happen, but it neither logical nor morally consistent.
Care, compassion, respect all round on this one. But also common sense and thought. One more thing. They used to say the world was flat, and those who disagreed were even arrested. Did it make the world flat?

	Michael's latest book is now available in paperback for purchase at FreedomPress. Buy Now at
As I See It is a compilation of his columns, essays and reviews from numerous newspapers over the past three years.

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Michael Coren Show - CTS TV
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Columnist with

Toronto Sun
Ottawa Sun
Calgary Sun
Edmonton Sun
Winnipeg Sun
London Free Press
The Interim
The Catholic Register
Catholic Insight
Women's Post