Friday, November 21, 2008

Real Free Speech Heroes

No not Ezra Levant and his puerile bigoted cartoons, not Maclean's Magazine for publishing the neurotic race terror of Mark Steyn and certainly not the various racist webmasters and homophobes the conservative blogosphere rushes to defend.

No, I speak of course, of Maclean and Maclean.

They were brought to mind by yesterday's Globe and Mail featured obituary of Blair Maclean, the older brother who died at the end of October.

As half of the entertainment team MacLean and MacLean, he played the 12-string guitar. Gary played the banjo. The two were famous for their raunchy and often scatological language, and entertained millions around the world with their ribald comic parody of popular songs.

Their language also made them famous in legal circles. They were arrested twice but persevered in defending their right to free speech, a cause that took them all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. Their fight - reminiscent of the struggles of American comics Lenny Bruce and George Carlin - helped open the door for today's comedians to use off-colour language freely on stage and on late-night television, said Mr. MacLean's wife, Marcia.

I think fighting for the right to exuberantly sing 'Fuck Ya!' at the top of your lungs beats fighting for the right to say hateful things about Muslims or Gays.

Here's some classics, do I even need to say that these are NSFW? That you shouldn't listen to them if you're humorless, easily offended or believe you'll damn your soul to hell if you hear the 'f' word?

I've seen pubic hair

The entire album Toilet Rock

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