Michael Coren

Family

Coren married his wife, Bernadette, in 1987. They have four children. He is a cousin of the late British author and journalist Alan Coren.

Life and career

Coren was born in Walthamstow, Essex, England, of Jewish heritage, and raised secular. After obtaining a degree in politics from Nottingham University, he moved from Britain to Canada in 1987. For several years, he was a columnist for Frank and then The Globe and Mail, before he began syndicated columns for the Financial Post and Sun Media in 1995. Following his departure from Frank, he became a favourite target of that publication, culminating in a spoof ad contest to "deflower" Michael Coren (a nod to Frank's notorious "Deflower Caroline Mulroney" contest, and a satirical jab at Coren's conservative leanings.) Coren had also been a favourite target of Frank back in the days before he began writing for them. Coren took exception to being labelled a "literary prostitute" during a 1994 interview.

His career as a broadcaster began in the early 1990s when he co-hosted a political debate segment with Irshad Manji on TVOntario's Studio 2. In 1995, he began an evening talk show on CFRB. In 1999, Coren briefly moved to Talk 640 for a short stint as its morning man. He returned to CFRB, where he hosted a show from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. weekday nights, and regularly filled in for other hosts until November 2005. Coren was dismissed by CFRB as a result of complaints arising from comments ridiculing the weight of an apparent guest. In fact, the guest was an actor and the segment was scripted. According to CFRB's Operations Manager, Steve Kowch, "Pat Holiday, our general manager and myself went through the tape of Monday night's show and were shocked....it was totally out of bounds." Coren argues that it was a satire comparing in his mind public attitude to third world starvation with North America's obsession with slimming and self-indulgence.

Despite this acrimonious termination, Coren made regular talk show appearances on CFRB in July 2006, at the start of the 2006 Israel–Lebanon conflict, as he happened to be in Israel at the time. After receiving 60% approval from CFRB listeners in an August 2006 poll, Coren returned to the CFRB airwaves in September 2006 with a Sunday evening show. As of 22 April 2007, the show expanded from its usual one-hour slot at 7–8pm to 7–9 pm. Coren celebrated by giving away double the prizes usually given out. In the fall of 2007 he and former Liberal Party of Canada president Stephen LeDrew launched a daily hour-long afternoon show on CFRB called Two Bald Guys With Strong Opinions in which the two argue about the issues of the day. After the departure of LeDrew, Coren was joined by Tarek Fatah after several on air auditions by potential replacement co-hosts. Coren was again let go by CFRB along with 12 other staff of the Toronto radio station on 27 August 2009.

On television, Coren hosted the Michael Coren Show on the Crossroads Television System until June 2011 when he left to join the Sun News Network where he hosted The Arena with Michael Coren weeknights beginning 30 August 2011. Coren also had a newspaper column published every Saturday in the Sun newspaper chain until February 2015. He has been a columnist for the Western Standard, Catholic Insight and The Women's Post and has contributed to National Post, Reader's Digest and several other publications. A self-professed Tottenham Hotspur fan, he has appeared as a guest host on The Score's The Footy Show.

Following the demise of Sun News Network in February 2015, Coren briefly joined The Rebel Media, an online conservative platform founded by Ezra Levant, but left the venture after a week.

Following his conversion to Anglicanism, Coren began to publicly embrace socially liberal ideas such as support for same-sex marriage. He stated that it negatively affected his career and that he became the target of personal attacks from former readers, observing that "there is none so angry as a fundamentalist scorned." In a 2015 interview Coren estimated that he lost $35,000 a year in income from lost speaking fees and his former recurring columns for Sun Media newspapers, Crossroads Christian Communications properties, The Catholic Register, and other conservative Christian publications. He also stated that contrition is a major aspect of his conversion and he regrets "so much of what [he] said, especially the tone" in his earlier career.

Coren is also a public speaker, particularly at religious gatherings.

Political controversies

In his earlier, satirical Aesthete column in Frank magazine Coren was by his own admission deliberately provocative. In response to a 1994 interview question about AIDS he responded:

Look, people are dying all over. When it was blacks in Africa dying of AIDS, no one gave a toss. Nobody gave a toss. Suddenly, it's middleclass men in California and everyone goes crazy about it. It's a double standard. I'm trying to provoke people into rethinking comfortable points of view.

On the subject of AIDS Michael Coren wrote a column in 2006 titled "Why is AIDS so special?" in which he said "At its most simple, stop fornicating." "AIDS in the West is still overwhelmingly a threat to male homosexuals and intravenous drug users."

In an article which appeared in Sun Media in 2007, Coren said "As for Jesus not condemning homosexuality, nor did He condemn bestiality and necrophilia...But you were referring to the Bible. I was showing that Christ did indeed condemn homosexuality, as does the Old Testament, St. Paul, the church fathers and all Christianity until a few liberal Protestants in the last decades of the 20th century who, frankly, are more concerned with political correctness than truth."

In September 2006, Coren published an article in the Toronto Sun supporting the use of tactical nuclear strikes against Iran. This position was later retracted.

In 2014 Coren suggested that certain anti-Israel Jews who were at a pro-Palestinian rally in Toronto appeared to be mentally handicapped.

Religious views

His articles and speeches often include stories of his own personal spiritual journey. Coren's father was Jewish as was his maternal grandfather, while his maternal grandmother came from a family of Welsh coal miners and converted to Judaism. Coren's father and uncle were cab drivers. Coren has said that his father's family left Poland in the 1890s, a few decades before the Holocaust. He said "People have called me an anti-Semite. I thought it quite rich since my father's family was massacred in the Holocaust". Michael Coren was profiled on Credo, on Vision TV, and said that his father told him he could not attend his son's wedding in a Catholic church without becoming "physically sick."

He converted to Roman Catholicism in his early twenties while still living in England, but that did not last long. He said that he "converted to an institution." He eventually left Roman Catholicism for evangelical Christianity in the 1990s, after a conversion experience, greatly influenced by Canadian televangelist Terry Winter.

In 1991, Coren said in a column for a humour magazine: "The evangelical Christians may be intolerant, small-minded, and repellent, but at least they hold a consistent set of beliefs".

In a 1993 book review he said "Can anyone imagine a detective priest? Regrettably, it is easier to conjure up the image of a priest being questioned by secular detectives over abuse charges." Also in 1993, Michael Coren had a falling out with the Catholic Church over an unflattering profile he wrote of Archbishop Aloysius Ambrozic for Toronto Life magazine. The bishop, who made Coren a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre in a ceremony in October 1992, was quoted using words including "friggin" and "bitch", and said that Francisco Franco was a "conservative Roman Catholic and not a bad fellow." Coren defended himself, saying "He's an archbishop and he was vulgar...obviously what thousands of Roman Catholics expected me to do was lie. I still get hate mail about the article."

After this incident, Coren said that he didn't consider himself a Roman Catholic anymore. He said, "My wife is Catholic and the children will be raised Catholic, but that's it. It's just not there for me." Daniel Richler observed that Coren loves scandal, but hates having it come his way. In one of his columns for the satirical humour magazine Frank, Michael Coren depicted Mother Teresa getting drunk in a bar.

In early 2004, he embraced Catholicism again. He cites Thomas More, C. S. Lewis, Ronald Knox and his godfather Lord Longford as spiritual influences, and remains connected to the ecumenical scene in Canada and beyond.

In 2014, Michael Coren once again left the Roman Catholic Church and began worshipping with the Anglican Church of Canada, being formally received into the communion the next year.

In an interview with the National Post on 1 May 2015, he cited the Catholic Church's teachings on homosexuality and contraception as some of the reasons for his conversion to Anglicanism.

In contrast to his previous conservative views, Coren now identifies as a Christian socialist.

Published books

Awards

Awards Michael Coren has won: