BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

A non story, overplayed, eh?

20 comments on A non story, overplayed, eh?

A non story, overplayed, eh?
: Page 1 of the New York Times today reports that Canada and the U.S. are different.

Well, let’s put that above the fold!

The story is essentially insulting to Canadians; it acts as if they used to be just like us, and we know how much they like hearing that.

The story is more insulting to Americans, for it portrays us as a bunch of right-wing religious conservatives. Hey, I’ve been kicked out of more churches than most people have attended.

The story is insulting to its readers, assuming we can’t get a joke:

“Being attached to America these days is like being in a pen with a wounded bull,” Rick Mercer, Canada’s leading political satirist, said at a recent show in Toronto. “Between the pot smoking and the gay marriage, quite frankly it’s a wonder there is not a giant deck of cards out there with all our faces on it.”

Mr. Mercer acknowledged in an interview that he was overstating the case for laughs…

Oh, thanks for telling us that. We were all too frigging dim to figure out that he was engaging in exaggeration. Oh, those deceitful Canadians!

The story is old news: Robertson Davies, the essential Canadian author, always said that Canada had less in common with American than with Scandinavia and I agreed with him.

The story is thus way overplayed.

But what’s most disturbing is that it continues this media meme: Europe v. America, Europe as a touchpoint for social sensibility: “A more distinctive Canadian identity

20 responses to “A non story, overplayed, eh?”

  1. Steven I. Weiss Avatar
    Steven I. Weiss

    “Hey, I’ve been kicked out of more churches than most people have attended.”
    But doesn’t that further confirm their point — that you become a sort of lone warrior battling against the religioius masses?

  2. ....a moment with Easycure Avatar
    ….a moment with Easycure

    The main theme here is what the NYT thinks is “news”. This would have been more appropriate for their new blog. It is not news. Especially for the front page. (Yawn!)
    Don’t they have anything to report above the fold on J-Lo and what’s his name?

  3. tom mangan Avatar
    tom mangan

    America-bashing makes us tougher; I hate to think what the place’ll be like if people stop complaining about the mess.

  4. Chris Taylor Avatar
    Chris Taylor

    Canada has taken a lot of backward steps lately, and as a Canadian I’d be a whole lot happier if we were in fact more like the United States. Who wouldn’t want a straightforward Constitution, firm separation of powers, checks and balances, and a real shot at electing a conservative.
    It’s becoming apparent to a lot of us up here that we’ll have to move south soon, because today’s Canada is a bureaucrat-heavy Eurotrash social re-engineering camp.

  5. AK Avatar
    AK

    >>Being attached to America these days is like being in a pen with a wounded bull

  6. AK Avatar
    AK

    >Being attached to America these days is like being in a pen with a wounded bull

  7. Mithras Avatar
    Mithras

    Rachel Brickner, 29, a political science graduate student at McGill originally from Detroit, said that despite her own liberal views, she sometimes tired of the anti-Americanism she encountered among Canadian students.
    After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she said, an old roommate told her that “the U.S. deserved 9/11 because we’re bullies.”
    That’s America-bashing? Doesn’t sound like it to me. And for what it’s worth, the people in the U.S. who have bashed Canada for being against U.S. policies have been right-wingers. Kind of contradicts the thesis that big media is a liberal institution.

  8. rick mcginnis Avatar
    rick mcginnis

    The Robertson Davies line about Canada and Scandinavia is an old one (Davies has been dead for years) and, to my mind, utterly inaccurate. But it has a lot of supporters among our liberal elite, such as our Governor General, a former journalist married to a “public philosopher”, who recently bilked the treasury out of a million tax dollars for an “intellectual tour” of Scandinavia for herself and a bunch of her buddies.
    It’s as tired as the old Glenn Gould “Idea of North” version of Canada, whose soul resides above the tree line, in the unpopulated, wintry northern expanses. Load of crap – the vast majority of the country lives in cities within an hour’s driving distance of the U.S. We have more in common with the U.S. than any other country – geography, language and economics make that an inevitable conclusion, and no amount of fantasy will change that.

  9. finlay Avatar
    finlay

    Mithras,
    To put the statement another way, Jews deserved the Holocaust because they are greedy. Would that not qualify as Jew bashing?
    How is finding America culpable for 9/11 any different?

  10. capt joe Avatar
    capt joe

    I agree with the similiarity between the US and Canada.
    I grew up in Canada, joined the military, went to RMC (a canadian sort of west point), did my compulsory service time. I then went back to university and spent several decades travelling and working around the globe. I have spent the last 5 living in both the US and Canada and working in the US.
    I engaged in the sort of automatic yank bashing that most Canadians indulge in. I never thought much about it.
    When 9/11 happened, I was distraught and angry against those who did this. When I came back to Canada afterwards, I encountered a number of canadians who espoused the sort of chomskian viewpoint (the US deserved it) and I was appalled. I argued with them and then wrote them off as friends or acquaintances. I never america bash again and I take others to task for it when I hear it. In that day, a blinder of arrogance and stupidity about the world around me was lifted.
    I look with some degree of sadness at the attitudes of my fellow Canadians and have stopped identifying myself as Canadian (which I did constantly) when I meet people. This is because I don’t like the back stabbing I hear coming the Liberal government.
    Now I am on my way to becoming a US citizen and look forward to the day I become one.

  11. Bud Norton Avatar
    Bud Norton

    David Bernstein in NRO today has a take on the differences between Canadians and us that is less flattering of Canada than the Times’:
    http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bernstein200312020910.asp

  12. hey Avatar
    hey

    Canada used to be like the US: it believed in the British (aka Scottish) Elightenment, capitalism, freedom, etc and was inspired by WASP ideals
    but thanks to an idiotic governor who enshrined french law, the seeds of its destruction as a free country were laid: retaining french law (“code civil” aka Napoleonic jurisprudence) lead to the flowering of nationalism and socialism in quebec that lead us down our lovely socialist and aggressively multi-culturalist low (as in not wanting to committ to any one set of ideas, but sharing and hugging, losing any ambition to have a purpose)
    were that canada were more like the us (only more so)

  13. Mithras Avatar
    Mithras

    Finley-
    Obviously, the sentiment that America had 9/11 coming is America-bashing. Jarvis’ point is that the article is America-bashing. Reporting on America-bashing is not itself America-bashing. It’s reporting.

  14. Sandy P. Avatar
    Sandy P.

    Didn’t LGF post an article that Canada’s going to try muslims under shari’a?

  15. rick mcginnis Avatar
    rick mcginnis

    No – we’re apparently going to allow muslims to judge disputes between muslims under shari’a, with the provision that legal jurisprudence can overturn any judgement made in shari’a courts. And that non-muslims are not subject to any ruling in a shari’a court.
    Which sounds fine, if you believe in a sort of spineless multicultural interpretation of legal practice, but it’s still absurd and would probably be unconstitutional in a country with a more concrete, written constitution. Damien Penny (www.damianpenny.com), a lawyer abd blogger from Newfoundland, has a more informed take on the matter. (Sorry – don’t have the link at hand.)

  16. Mithras Avatar
    Mithras

    Which sounds fine, if you believe in a sort of spineless multicultural interpretation of legal practice, but it’s still absurd and would probably be unconstitutional in a country with a more concrete, written constitution.
    Are you a lawyer? Arbitration hearings in the U.S., which has a “concrete, written constitution”, adopt foreign law all the time. It’s not “spinless multicultural interpretation,” it’s standard choice-of-law decisionmaking.

  17. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    The Damian Penny blog entry on Canadian shari’a is here:
    http://www.damianpenny.com/archives/001957.html
    And Mithras, I’m not a lawyer. I just assumed that the U.S. assumed an exclusive jurisdiction over legal practice. Obviously I’m wrong.
    In Canada, British and Napoleonic legal systems co-exist, and the room for interpretation is broad. I didn’t know that was also the case in the States.
    So shari’a has a chance to exploit this leeway, is that what you’re saying? If so, I’m worried.

  18. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Rick Mercer Canada’s leading political satirist? Now *that’s* funny! What’s next, Air Farce, Canada’s most popular comedy show?

  19. rick mcginnis Avatar
    rick mcginnis

    The Beachcombers: Canada’s I Love Lucy.
    Sorry, if you’re not Canadian, you won’t get that.

  20. Mithras Avatar
    Mithras

    Rick-
    It’s nothing to “exploit” – unless you want to say people should not be allowed to decide for themselves under what rules they should live. (Please note that nothing permits you to opt out of your nation’s criminal statutes, or the civil ones with regards to anyone who doesn’t accept the foreign or religious law you choose.)
    M