We Love It When Our Friends Become Controversial

Morrissey has now condemned all of Canada for the seal hunt. In a letter addressed to "This Sorrowful Canada" he condemns the hunt, Fisheries and Oceans minister Gail Shea, and declares Canada "regrettably fashionably dead."  I wonder if he always writes in the form of discarded song lyrics.

I'm not a fan of the seal hunt, but I am getting tired of Britons collectively condemning us for this one event. For one thing collective punishment never works. And on a national level, it usually backfires by promoting the target's national togetherness. It certainly has with the seal hunt; fur has really disappeared from the national culture, despite its being such a part of our early economy. But by attacking us as a country, it encourages people who normally have no love for fur to come to its defence.

But aside from the obvious futility of the attacks, they are also hypocritical. Britain's animal-rights hands aren't clean either, yet British activists fighting to ban British fox hunting didn't target their entire country in their protests.  And look, they successfully managed to get that hunt banned.

Having said all that, I do have some sympathy. Yeah, I'm an omnivore, so I can't claim so great a dedication to animal rights; but it always strikes me as unconvincing that people defending practices such as the seal hunt are always quick to resort to feeble excuses of tradition and economic hardship. And it really disappoints me that Canadians have gone along with defending the seal hunt out of nationalistic zeal rather than a rational discussion of the issue.

I noted that he claimed that the seal hunt has corroded our national reputation, saying "Canada’s sorry image is due entirely to its seal slaughter." That's ridiculous; the tar sands have done way more damage.  Of course, that's another issue where celebrities have lined up against us, and we've reflexively defended ourselves, thus aligning the country with something most of us wouldn't normally support.

So it occurs to me that Morrissey is anti-Canadian. I don't mean, "against Canada" (although he is that, apparently.) I mean that he is essentially the opposite of a Canadian. You can rely on him to be relentlessly combative and us to be politely pliant.