I’m afraid I can’t tolerate this guy’s hat

If you like Twitter fights, then you might enjoy the one that broke out between Antonia Zerbisias and a fellow named Werner Patels. It was basically your typical doomed web fight: a conservative columnist called a liberal columnist names, she called him a few right back, and there you go. It didn’t amount to much, and if not for my suggestion that Antonia take the “nice Clockwork Orange hat” approach, it probably would have fizzled out even sooner.

I mean, look at that thing. How do you expect people to take you seriously when the image you present to the world is defined by a know-it-all grin and a jaunty bowler? I’m no PR man, but come on. Patels is “Canada’s leading common-sense pundit,” according to his own blog, and good for him. But I can only assume he had to work extra hard to earn that title, and the credibility that comes with it, if he insisted on wearing that hat the whole time.

Obviously, I’m deliberately being a jerk. I saw two people try to settle a disagreement with name-calling instead of an actual discussion of the issues at hand – a first for the web, as I’m sure you’ll agree – and under normal circumstances, I would have been happy to shake my head at the sorry state of political discourse in our society and get on with my day. Instead, I’m jumping on the low-brow bandwagon by singling out an irrelevant aspect of someone I disagree with and running it into the ground like there’s no tomorrow.

What can I say? That hat’s got a hold on me.

And frankly, as a gutless liberal, I’m not even sure I’m allowed to make fun of the hat. After all, Patels did explain to Antonia that it’s actually a kind of “ethnic headgear, much better than running around in jammies with a towel on [his] head.” Granted, he might have been joking; experience has taught me that the people who proudly call themselves “politically incorrect and irreverent” don’t often tell the best jokes. But as a lefty, I can’t take that chance. If “racist loudmouth” is suddenly an ethnicity, then it’s our duty as Canadians to respect it.

I’m not saying that Patels doesn’t have a right to his opinions, or that we’ve all got to stand on separate sides of every social issue. Hell, I’ve read his most recent blog post, and I’ll admit that even as a card-carrying member, I’ve rolled my eyes at the thought of the NDP dropping the “new” from its name. I’d take issue with a lot of the specifics in this post – particularly the supposedly widespread anti-Semitism and pro-terrorist ideologies of unions and the NDP respectively – but the man’s got as much of a right to his opinions as I’ve got to disagree with them.

But really, from one jerk on the web to another, take off the hat. It isn’t doing anybody any favours.

On this particularly sad day, which happened to mark the passing of John Hughes, I’m reminded of the cautionary tale of Ben Stein. Even though Stein worked for Nixon and Ford and has a wealth of political experience, anything he says about politics is forever doomed to be followed by a giggling chorus of “Bueller? Bueller?”

Don’t let it happen to you, Patels. Don’t be the guy with the wild ideas that nobody paid much attention to because they were too busy wondering what your hat was all about. That’s the sort of thing that anonymous jerks from Toronto would gladly mock until long after it stops being funny.

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