HEINRICHS: Another celebrity dumps on her home province

Singer k.d. Lang grew up in Consort, Alberta. In 1990 she disappointed many of her Alberta fans. Lang teamed up with PETA in a campaign called Meat Stinks. The campaign commercial talks about "ending cruelty" and Lang tells her audience "If you knew how meat was made you'd lose your lunch." She invites viewers to read "How to Become a Vegetarian."No one cared if Lang was a vegetarian. It was her in-your-face preachment that riled many. And not surprisingly some of Alberta's 60,000 farmers took offence. In recent years, celebrity moralizing has become more common. Ricky Gervais picked up on that when he was the host of the 2020 Golden Globe Awards. The British comedian sensed that the public was fed up with movie-star sermons about climate change and Donald Trump. So he unloaded, stating, "You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg, so if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, your god, and f--- off.” Meryl Streep did not laugh. Within hours the Los Angeles Times published Hollywood's rebuke. They wrote, "The last thing anyone needed was for the smirking master of ceremonies to reprimand them . . for trying to use their influence to change things for the better." Although, some would translate this as: The little people need our help and humility be damned.Meanwhile in June 2024, Saskatchewan residents got their own celebrity slap in the face.In 2023 the Saskatchewan government passed Bill 137, known as the Parents' Bill of Rights. In writing the law, the government did not follow the trans activists. Instead the government listened to parents who had read Helen Joyce, Abigail Schrier and the Cass Report. They also listened to the tragic stories of de-transitioners and families torn apart by gender radicals. Bill 137 requires students under 16 to obtain parental or guardian consent “before the pupil’s teachers and other employees of the school use the pupil’s new gender-related preferred name or gender identity at school.” A perfectly good law to many — terrible, apparently, to others. This law though became the target for actress Tatiana Maslany. The Regina-born celebrity visited her home town to celebrate her recent plaque on Canada's Walk of Fame. But the star of Orphan Black and She-Hulk had criticism rather than praise for her home province. She called the Parents Bill of Rights "absurd" and "overreach." She had contempt for concerned parents, saying, "It should not be in the control of parents how a child identifies," and "It's their right. It's not the parent's right." Rather than discussing the unsettling fad of sexualizing children, she instead turned to name-calling with "homophobia and transphobia." The media followed right along. "Actress Criticizes School Pronoun Law" wrote CBC. And CTV said, "It's an Overreach". No mention, of course, about the other side of the story. Like her Hollywood friends, Maslany rode the myth that popularity makes you an authority on everything. Some people might even buy in on that.But many do not equate pop-culture fame with wisdom, let alone entitlement. Or as a famous heckler said to a lecturing country-music group, "Shut up and sing."Gerald Heinrichs is a lawyer in Regina.

HEINRICHS: Another celebrity dumps on her home province

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