Video: Sun News Network troll David Menzies goes on bizarre anti-CFL rant, urges boycott

TORONTO—It didn't seem possible, but we may have found something that tops thesaga of Marty the Horse as the most bizarre story of Grey Cup week. That would be a Sun News Network appearance by professional troll David Menzies, who you may remember from such moments as the Huffington Postarticle "You Can't Hide Behind the Gay Flag, Brian Burke" (where he suggested that Burke's involvement in a You Can Play ad was merely a PR stunt to distract from his failures with the leafs) and the radio appearance where he called Daniel Dale the Toronto Star's "most effeminate reporter" and made hypothetical comments about asking mayoral candidate George Smitherman offensive questions. Menzies has really outdone himself this time, though, as you can see from this video where he calls the CFL an "illegal sports league" and urges a boycott. What's his rationale? The league dares to use yards, not metres. (If the video isn't showing up for you, you can find it here.)

Regardless of exactly how facetious this is, it's stupid. If Menzies is merely sarcastically criticizing the CFL's yards in order to reversibly complain about the metric system, that's dumb (and not particularly funny or important), but if he's actually serious in saying the league should switch to metres, that might be the most idiotic comment a media member has ever made about the CFL. Given the strong history of examples there, that's saying a lot.

The particularly sad thing here isn't that Menzies is demonstrating his substantial ignorance and his desire for baiting people, though, but rather that he has a prominent platform to do so. Menzies is welcome to his views, but a five-minute rant about the CFL using yards instead of metres would be more appropriate on a shaky YouTube video shot in a basement with a cellphone than on a TV network which sees itself as so important that it's applying for mandatory distribution despite only grabbing 0.1 per cent of the Canadian viewing audience so far. (However, perhaps it's very appropriate for a network that prides itself on insulting viewers' intelligence and features such scenes as off-the-wall hosts attacking potted plants with chainsaws in an anti-celebration of Earth Day.)

Menzies has eked out a solid existence as a professional troll, so while the depth of stupidity displayed in his comments is notable, it's not particularly surprisingly that he's saying things to tick people off. What is surprising is that Canada has a television channel that considers this drivel worthy of airtime. Send Menzies back to his basement; there, he can wrap himself in metric flags to his heart's content and dramatically improve the level of discourse on Canadian television by his absence.