As if to underscore the ha-ha of it, the purported satire, James Sears had himself several chuckles and snorts while Jew-slagging stuff was being examined.That would be the James Sears who lost his medical licence in the ’90s for sexual misconduct with three women and is editor-in-chief of the odious giveaway rag, Your Ward News.Co-accused LeRoy St. Germaine chortled alongside, apparently highly amused by evidence from a scholar who holds the title of William Lee Frost Professor of Modern Jewish History at Harvard University, formerly with U of T.If I were to draw word pictures, akin to caricatures frequently published in Your Ward News, Sears would be a reptilian creature, lizard-like, with straggly rat-tail hair. Actually, he looks kind of like the anti-Semitic exaggerated stereotypes featured in the quarter-annual gazette delivered — unsolicited — to upwards of 320,000 people in southwestern Ontario.St. Germaine, no-neck and bullet-headed, put me instantly in mind of Mussolini.But of course I wouldn’t stoop to such tropes.Sears and St. Germaine are on trial, judge-only, each charged with two counts of wilfully promoting hatred against two identifiable groups — Jews and women. Thus far, the evidentiary focus in a Toronto courtroom has been largely on the former.“Anti-Semitism and anti-feminism can go together,” Dr. Derek Penslar testified Thursday. “They certainly went together in Nazi Germany. There’s common elements and common causes.”In cross-examination by St. Germaine’s lawyer, Ian McCuaig, Penslar agreed that satire can be unpleasant, even ridiculous, and not necessarily hateful, which is what the defence is claiming of Your Ward News content. But Penslar also countered: “I don’t think we come away from Your Ward News thinking kindly of that person.”Can parody not arise, McCuaig continued, from “a kernel of truth”?Penslar: “Anti-Semitic speech, like any ...
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