THE CANADIAN INVASIONS: I was not going to bring up the Oscars again; after all, when everything’s been said 157 times in as many languages what's left to say? But Mark Steyn’s column in the Telegraph today compels me to do so. Mr. Steyn points out that the provincial government of Nova Scotia is now officially discouraging, through the use of fines and other measures, people in the local media from referring to the mentally ill as nuts, fruitcakes, loonies, or any of the other labels the allegedly sane pin on those whose connection to reality might be more than a little bit tenuous.

I bring this up because Canada’s entry for Best Foreign Film, The Barbarian Invasions, actually won the Oscar in this category. I must confess that this title causes some small degree of cognitive dissonance, since I do not understand why a government so squeamish about referring to crazy people as loonies would categorize an entire group of people as barbarians. It is not at all the multicultural thing to do and one cannot imagine a good Canadian doing this sort of thing without apologizing profusely to everyone involved beforehand. One imagines Canadian Vikings, Vandals, and Visigoths as being very nice people on the whole, the sort of people who would go to an old lady’s house, knock on the door, and politely ask the owner, “I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but do you mind if me and my mates loot, rape, and pillage here for a little bit, eh? We’ll clean up once we’re done, and I promise we won’t make too much noise.”