Coulter In Calgary
03/26/2010
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Ann Coulter Canadian tour continues—she was able to give her talk in Calgary, Alberta, and Canadian conservative Colby Cosh was there:

The component of Ezra [Levant]’s introduction for Coulter that rang a little false was the civic self-congratulation. ”This is Calgary, not Ottawa,” he bellowed, inducing positively demented applause. ”We’re interested in a diversity of ideas, debated vigorously and freely. Places like the University of Ottawa talk about diversity, but they don’t actually mean it, do they?” The fact is, Calgary’s anti-everything left managed a pretty good turnout, perhaps fifty strong, and they did no less to try to interrupt and drown out Coulter’s talk, and perhaps more on the whole, than the U of Ottawa students. But they faced a much tougher tactical situation: a free-standing, isolated venue on a hillside, virtually a fortress; crowd-control gates and wooden barricades on the exterior; and a whole squadron of bicycle and foot police, perhaps upwards of a dozen.
Uncowed, the antis attempted to rush the main doors of the building as Ezra was winding up his intro, spiderwebbing the glass with boot damage, and they battered the exterior windows of the club throughout Coulter’s main talk. Tomorrow morning’s news story may be ”Calgary gets right what Ottawa could not”; I wonder, however, how things would have looked if Coulter had visited Calgary first and caught the Cowtown police less well-prepared.
(Incidentally, a pro-tip for the two guys who tried to dress as Klansmen: real KKK outfits have separate hoods. If you go for the one-piece look, you are not a scary symbol of race hatred: you are a scary symbol of the laziness of six-year-olds at Halloween.)[More]

Calgary, Alberta is due north of Montana, while Ottawa, where rioters were successful in shutting down Coulter's speech, is due north of New York and New Jersey. The two regions have very different political cultures—Alberta is Palin country.

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