Kathy Shaidle, the voice behind Five Feet of Fury, recently blogged about not leaving her abode in the last week of February. Maybe longer, because she wasn’t keeping track: “I have finally achieved a goal I’ve had since age 12.”

But there she was, out in public last Thursday, giving a “lunch and learn” talk on Free Speech and the Internet to 15 loyal readers at the University of Toronto Faculty Club. And, the same evening, Shaidle went to a talk by Michael Geist at the MaRS Centre on a topic she has to worry about: E-publishing and the Law.

Since starting her first blog, Relapsed Catholic, on the prehistoric Blogger software in October 2000, 43-year-old Shaidle has been hammering away through several eras of the internet.  While some of her most compelling posts amount to a first-person memoir, composed a hundred or two words at a time, her perspective has only gotten more incendiary ever since this era of political rhetoric began on 9/11, as she continues to throw herself in the thick of a never-ending battle royale where the only weapon is a computer keyboard.

Another day means another round of insults, occasionally hurled back at Shaidle herself — and since she doesn’t enable comments on her site, diabolical rebuttals are frequently hosted elsewhere, forums completely out of her control.

There’s a new chill hanging over her daily drill, though — human rights commissions across the country have heeded complaints over critical commentary about Muslims, first from the infamous Danish cartoons published in the now-defunct Western Standard magazine, then Maclean’s for publishing a chapter from Mark Steyn’s book America Alone — a polemic ridiculing messages transmitted by the Muslim world. Will blogs expressing the same sentiments be next?

(Martin Amis, currently catching the same sort of flack in the U.K. — while debating the difference between “Islamophobic” and “Islamismophobic” — had his controversy covered in The New York Times Book Review. Lots of vitriol all around, to be sure, but nowhere was it suggested the government get involved.)

Shaidle was less concerned about pie-in-the-face threats than whether her talk was being stealthily monitored on behalf of the the anti-racism activist who won a $30,000 libel judgment as a result of defamatory postings. She won’t even say his name — it’s a fray she can’t afford to enter. Why bother even risking it in the first place, then, by fanning the flames through over a dozen daily posts all winter long?

For one thing, she’s been between jobs as a copywriter, wondering aloud if $12.95 downloads of her e-book Acoustic Ladyland — reprinting a series of freelance columns for the Toronto Star — could allow her to blog full-time for a year if only her 3,000 regular readers bought one. Shaidle’s reputation is heartily endorsed by Steyn: “In the course of the last year, I’ve sat in a restaurant on the beach in Malibu and at the Savoy Grill in London and listened to various long-distance admirers regale me with favourite examples of her prose.”

So, even if Shaidle won’t leave her condo most days, it seems her typing will.

“In the same way that the US Embassy over on University Avenue is actually American soil,” Shaidle begins, “when I make my rare forays on to U of T property, I always feel like I’m trespassing on foreign territory.” Growing up in hardscrabble Hamilton, she fell asleep during The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, while her idea of a horror was law-school flick The Paper Chase.

“It gave me a rash, watching Timothy Bottoms trying to get from one class to another on time — and, of course, there was John Houseman, who might as well have been Leatherface. For that, and other reasons, I didn’t go to university. The other big reason being that Ronald Reagan was going to blow us all up.”

But she still interfaced with academic types: “I was a leftist,” she explains. “And I was a drunk. The two usually go together.” When not drinking, Shaidle’s idea of a good time was listening to Australian physicist Helen Caldicott at Convocation Hall, offering a hushed description of how a nuclear war would shake down, sharing in the hysteria along with “3,000 other stoned punk rockers”.

Just like her frequent sparring partner Warren Kinsella, punk rock lurks large as an influence in Shaidle’s attraction to the weblog medium: “Punk had a do-it-yourself ethos of hand-painted shirts and photocopied fanzines, thrown together with no regard for boring stuff like copyright. Blogger software is the computer equivalent of the three chords we used to say was all you needed to know to start a band.” Not to mention all of the angst wrapped up in that expression.  

“Deliberate provocations have been transforming the culture forward for centuries,” she offers. “From the Boston Tea Party to the Montgomery bus boycott — these things didn’t just happen, they were planned.”

And, if you’re going to give it out, then you’re going to get it back. To this end, Shaidle recommends a piece by Dan Gardner in the Ottawa Citizen: “The value of hate speech.” Human Rights Commissions, established in the 1970s to address housing and employment discrimination on the order of “No Irish Need Apply" signs have no business chasing goblins on the internet, she asserts.

“Because of my blog, I get death threats all the time. And, more amusingly, rape threats from men who’ve just telling me how ugly I am. There’s one particular left-wing site that has been obsessing over my talk here, hinting that they planned to show up and disrupt the speech. Luckily, since they are left-wing, that means they can’t afford the $20 entrance fee.”

More creative than fat jokes and other profane threats was a recent series of “Kathy” parodies — a clip-art take-off on Cathy Guisewite’s neurotic comic strip alter ego — by cartooning blogger Brett Lamb.

“I’ve been libeled frequently, and I’ve never sued anyone, let alone called the cops," Shaidle says. "On principle, if I want to be free to say what I want, I have to extend that right to others. It’s like that classic headline in The Onion: "Fun Toy Banned Because of Three Stupid Dead Kids." In a world of frivolous lawsuits and ‘hurt feelings,’ some of us have to man up, or we’ll lose everything.”

For that reason, Shaidle encourages visits to FreeMarkSteyn.com, where even the most passive supporter can rally against the human rights commissions: “I hope you do something. And, if you don’t, at least send us money.”

Western Standard editor Ezra Levant got what he desired out of the deal: some 100,000 viewers on YouTube and worldwide media attention for testimony regarding cartoons published in a print magazine that, for all the notoriety, couldn’t figure out how to stay in business — even with a boat cruise as part of the business model.

An attempt to turn right-wing blogging into an American industry, Pajamas Media was lavished with several millions from Los Angeles software mogul Aubrey Chernick — who grew up in the farm town of Deloraine, Manitoba — but the collective echo-chamber efforts haven’t made waves in the broader blogosphere. Doesn’t seem like posting, linking and trackbacking will be a ticket to fame and fortune for websites consumed with doom and gloom.

Shaidle doesn’t seem under any such delusion. “Let’s face it, the average Canadian’s big concerns are hockey pools, the price of gas, buying lottery tickets and whether or not it’s Roll Up the Rim to Win time.

“A recent survey revealed that, when asked to name their dream job, Canadians said they’d rather be bureaucrats than rock stars. So, I’m not waiting for them to bother themselves with the preservation of their God-given rights.”

Five Feet of Fury — the blog re-christened from Relapsed Catholic last spring after the Roman Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor refused to print a column Shaidle wrote railing against Earth Day — has served as a platform for other appearances, though: she’s a recurring panelist on the low-key CTS media panel discussion show, Behind the Story, has become a favourite on-air guest of Michael Coren, and is now filling pixel and print space for the National Post.

Certainly a different realm than Shaidle’s previous incarnation as a poet — her book, Lobotomy Magnificat, was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award a decade ago. The fact that she received Canada Council money for the effort is frequently cited by other bloggers questioning her boasts of self-reliance.

Claims of self-doubt aside, Shaidle’s speaking style is assured enough to merit her being lured out of the house more often — whether or not the audience is inclined to agree with her. But a subsequent post from Shaidle’s friend, Girl on the Right blogger Wendy Sullivan — who was at the talk, too — served as a reminder that, for some, blogs serve as a bully pulpit where anyone whose worldview can’t be verifiably revered by the blogger must be some kind of snitch.

“I was pleased to note that there was a reporter there from EYE WEEKLY,” writes Sullivan. “At first I was annoyed — they tend to be over-the-top liberal and rather unfriendly. But then I realized that with the kind of content they promote — homosexuality, virulent anti-establishment and anti-Americanism, anarchy, atheism and more — that they have a vested interest in not allowing publications and individuals to be silenced for their views and beliefs. And while they no more want to throw their lot in with conservatives than we want to throw our lot in with Stormfront, this is an issue that transcends political beliefs. Or at least it should.”

Good golly, thanks!  However, the only things “promoted” per se around here seem to be cigarettes, prostitutes and indie bands that are over-hyped via blogs.
 
Plus, an editorial published in EYE WEEKLY on January 16 of this year had no problem ranking out the human rights commissions for meddling in the freedom of the press. For that came a condescending pat on the head from Ezra Levant, busy with fulfilling every political pundit’s fantasy of becoming his own protagonist.

Shaidle would rather feel free to stick to antagonism than court that scrutiny.

“Hurt feelings weren’t a crime until somewhere around the 1970s,” she says when wrapping up the talk. “Think of all the things from the '70s that you hate and ask yourself if it’s a good idea to use things from the '70s as a touchstone.

“Not everyone wants to be an agent provocateur, though. Look at the people who wanted to throw a pie in my face. They didn’t even bother trying to get in.”

 
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