Digitus Impudicus

Canada-Bashing 101

Class is in session.

First, just to be clear and fair: I like the vast majority of Canadians I know an e-know. I love going to Canada because I think it's a splendid place with lots of nice people. That said, I do (obviously) have some problems with Canada's foreign and defense policies.

However, my intent here is not to take the hammer personally to Canada, but I happened to run across a very interesting (and entertaining) smash-job done by a well-known political writer. And I thought you might be interested in reading it.

Some quotes:

If we have bothered forming opinions at all about Canadians, they've tended toward easy-pickings: that they are a docile, Zamboni-driving people who subsist on seal casserole and Molson. Their hobbies include wearing flannel, obsessing over American hegemony, exporting deadly Mad Cow disease and even deadlier Gordon Lightfoot and Nickelback albums. You can tell a lot about a nation's mediocrity index by learning that they invented synchronized swimming. Even more, by the fact that they're proud of it.

There's more:

Dejected Americans, most of whom already live in progressive enclaves, began sounding off to reporters, vowing to check out of the Red-American wasteland before true misfortune befell them. In footage of a Kischer seminar in San Francisco that I obtained from a Canadian documentary film crew (working title of the piece: "Escaping America"), one attendee who looked like a lost Gabor sister but with more plastic surgery said, "I really can't stand George Bush. I can't stand this culture, which is very selfish, aggressive, and mean, violent I think." After going to Canada for just a half an hour from Buffalo, she concluded, "It was like a completely different country. . . . The people seemed more internationally aware, not so isolated and unilateral. There was less evidence of commercialism and corporations. People were friendly."

And still more:

Canadians are traditionally so insecure about the lack of attention we pay them that their government has even paid American universities $300,000 to study them. One of the foremost Canadian Studies programs in the country is at Duke. A professor in the program has said, "We're the most important university to make a serious effort to study Canada. That's like being the best hockey team in Zimbabwe."

I suggest you read the whole thing. If you can get through it without guffawing openly at least three times then you need to cut your valium intake.