/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46299108/joebeef.0.0.jpg)
Conservative firebrand Ezra Levant, a pundit some refer to as Canada's Rush Limbaugh, took to social media yesterday to denounce Joe Beef's David McMillan for an extempore tweet about Omar Khadr. Khadr is the Toronto-born, former Guantanamo Bay detainee whose conviction of killing a U.S. medic in Afghanistan in 2002 as a 15-year-old was widely denounced by civil rights groups. The now repatriated 28-year-old Khadr was released on bail by an Alberta judge yesterday—to the apparent dismay of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government.
In a tweet that has since been deleted, McMillan wrote: "Omar Khadr come eat on us anytime, @pmharper boy did you look like a dumbass again!" Media personality Levant, author of such books as Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands and Groundswell: The Case for Fracking, got wind of the tweet and went on the offensive.
Montreal's @JoeBeef offers a free meal to an anti-Semitic murderer. What self-respecting Jew would eat there? https://t.co/QYpDnpWQAI
— Ezra Levant (@ezralevant) May 8, 2015
Attn US tourists in #Montreal: this restaurant offers a free meal to Al Qaida who killed an American #BoycottJoeBeef https://t.co/jWYXbiHEMg
— Ezra Levant (@ezralevant) May 8, 2015
McMillan apologized for his tweet today and told the CBC that it was prompted by "anger at Stephen Harper I have from multiple subjects. In retrospect, I should not have done it from the restaurant Twitter account."
Last night I made a dumb tweet about a subject I did not fully comprehend . It was based on a feeling of empathy
— David McMillan (@joebeef) May 8, 2015
In a 2012 profile of Levant, National Post journalist Jonathan Kay wrote that "his rottweiler style demands that he reduce his enemies to detested caricatures: priggish censors, brain-dead bureaucrats, naïve tree-huggers. He does this better than anyone. Even Limbaugh himself could learn a thing or two from Levant." Ironically, Levant's boycott call provoked a deluge of tweets in support of McMillan and Joe Beef today, most notably from the likes of Montreal restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman and La Presse journalist Patrick Lagacé.
Must be a pretty slow news day if @joebeef inviting Omar Khadr to dinner causes such a hoopla. #Cmon
— Lesley Chesterman (@lesleychestrman) May 8, 2015
Vous aimez @joebeef ? Dites-lui donc pourquoi. Aujourd'hui, mon ami David a besoin d'amour #ILoveJoeBeef http://t.co/FABJwYw6Kr
— Patrick Lagacé (@kick1972) May 8, 2015
Loading comments...