The FOX network has long been rightfully derided for its umbilically intimate relationship with the Republican Party and America's broader right wing. Of those two hateful hemispheres of planetary idiocy, though, FOX has traditionally been the more thoughtful--the analytical foil to the feckless party on whose behalf it speaks. Throughout the Bush II era, the blithering cretins at FOX usually managed to be just barely close enough to the right side of sanity to seem downright moderate beside the cackling hysteria and stumblebum ineptitude of the Bush/Cheney misadministration. FOX's mere carrying of The Simpsons gave it a credibility the Bush White House could never hope to approximate.
Apparently, Team Obama considers this asymmetry to be too deeply embedded in the American psyche to be changed without massive systemic damage. Accordingly, soon after FOX releases a candid clip featuring some of its vulgarly anti-Canadian talking-heads sensibly denouncing Homeland Security for treating the Canada/U.S. border as a serious threat to American security, Obama's security doyenne Janet Napolitano repeats the odious slur--iterated across American right-wing talk-radio since literally days after 9/11--that many of the WTC terrorists had entered the U.S. through Canada and that Canada therefore needs vigilant surveillance.
In a heartwarming gesture of bi-partisan asininity, John McCain later gave his sclerotic endorsement to this preposterous urban myth. McCain, at least, has an excuse: he's clearly in the early stages of senile dementia. I suppose Napolitano's excuse is that she's an American (an excuse which, in its basic purport, is not unlike McCain's), but I do believe that her bottomless ignorance and its possible executive ramifications (she's in Obama's cabinet, remember) serve to prove that Americans' utter lack of understanding of and respect for Canada is not (as so many of us believe) a harmless eccentricity--a patronising nervous tick that we should simply ignore, laugh off, and learn to live with. It's a deeply worrying neurosis that chronically impedes the very continental security about which American official blowhards claim to be so preoccupied.
Former Mulroneyite Michael Wilson, Harper's ambassadorial appointee, appears to think that being "frustrated" by Napolitano's stark stupidity is somehow good enough. This extravagantly-paid stuffed cardigan was supposed to use his wide network of U.S. connections to change the reflexively anti-Canadian tone in Washington, made all the more urgent when the traditionally protectionist Democrats regained the White House late last year. If Ignatieff manages to kick Harper's well-marbled ass to the curb this year or next, I will enjoy watching him yank Wilson off of D.C.'s "exclusive" (i.e. all-white) golf courses and back into his rocking chair where he’s harmless. We need somebody who can bring the kind of balls Frank McKenna brought to the job before Harper's shabby partisan hackery brought his successful term to a premature end.
Until then, fellow Canucks, please enjoy your utterly unearned and quintessentially "American" reputation as the folks who helped bring down the Twin Towers--brought to you today by "Change We Can Believe In"!
Showing posts with label Fox News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fox News. Show all posts
Friday, 24 April 2009
Monday, 20 April 2009
Shut the FOX Up: You're Making It Far Too Easy For Me
There is nothing more frustrating for a professional anti-American like me than watching amateurs cutting in on my action--especially when they're American amateurs. Really, I am already painfully aware of the salient reasons to be richly sick of those petulant praetorians; I require no further data on the matter.
Nevertheless, those legendarily generous Yanks just keep on giving. A few weeks ago, we were reminded of the way Americans talk about Canada when they're being watched by millions of fellow xenophobes: with dismissive contempt. Today, we learn how Americans talk about us when they're just making chit-chat amongst themselves: with dismissive contempt.
FOX News saw fit to release a clip wherein a gaggle of anonymous FOX talking-head guests, apparently waiting for their segment to begin taping, discuss U.S. security matters. One of them complains that Homeland Security is spending too much time worrying about the Canadian border, when the Mexican border is much more porous. This aberrant and possibly treasonous outburst of rationality is soon smothered by a peal of condescending quips about Canadians "smoking snow" and threatening to attack the U.S. with maple syrup. Once the gales of laughter subside, the host feelingly, almost wistfully, recalls the time he went to the U.S./Canada border to chase a story: he remembers that there was "just a whole lot of wheat up there", in words carrying a faint trace of trauma. Heads nod in silent empathy.
At this point, a Canadian viewer is struggling to remind himself that he's not watching security-camera footage of a bunch of slow reform-school inmates serving a detention for smoking dope in the boy's room. He's watching the host and four guests on America's highest-rated cable news show display what passes for foreign affairs expertise down there. These people are among America's intellectual élite. God help us all.
Soon after, one of the guests, a writer for the right-wing National Review, recalls with fondness a story he once wrote entitled "Bomb Canada". He apparently argued that Canada needs "pin-prick assaults" to "slap" us out of our "EU-itis" (which refers, presumably, to our inadequate level of America worship). He is still clearly proud of having called us a "northern Puerto Rico with an EU sensibility". One of his colleagues jokes that his story was obviously an effective motivator, as Canada ended up co-invading Afghanistan: "They were afraid of being bombed!" she trills excitedly.
Another guest reminds the assembly that there was a U.S. plan to bomb Canada. He calls it "Plan Orange" (it was actually Plan Red, but America's élite tends to be as ignorant of American history as their proles are; it is one of the few authentically democratic features of their society). In fact, Plan Red was operative until 1939--twenty year after the end of World War I and sixteen years after the death of the “dangerous” alliance in response to which the plan was created (our own prime minister Arthur Meighen was instrumental in killing that alliance, for obvious reasons).
It thus occurs to me that the United States was still seriously meditating an invasion of Canada (and had appropriated funds through Congress for that purpose) when my mother was nine years old. I'll just add that incredible and sad fact to the vast body of evidence in support of the notion that hysterical, barking-mad paranoia is deeply inscribed in America's cultural DNA. Always has been; always will be.
I was most struck by the tone of this FOX discussion. It is classic. By "classic", I mean that it has a long and direct pedigree. While listening to their flippant talk of "assault", "slapping", and "bombing", I felt that I was hearing a group of senior British civil servants of the Raj--lounging in a late-19th-century Bombay tap room--chortle airily over the amusing pretensions of the simple wogs they rule over: their silly "dignity", their tedious insistence on being treated like equals, their slothful backwardness, and the unfortunately frequent need for their betters to slap them out of their languor--for their own good, of course--to get them to make something of themselves. Similar conversations could have been overheard near the quarters of royal governors during America's colonial era and near the tents of centurions during the Roman occupation of Albion. It's the language of the coloniser, the occupier, the slave-master, the overseer, the prefect, the procurator--the tyrant.
In other parts of the world, you don't get away with fantasizing about bombing people. You invite immediate and vituperate retaliatory rhetoric. Luckily for FOX vermin, Canada is widely, deeply ridden with self-loathing Vichyites. Here, Fox News insolence is not only tolerated but is actually granted a prime-ministerial charter; as one of Stephen Harper's networks of choice, FOX has been rewarded with exclusive interviews--of the kind Harper has consistently denied to domestic media.
Moreover, FOX News' favourite shrill viragoes are hero-worshipped by cringing Canadian right-wing autophobes, whose profound self-loathing is so corrosive as to make them joyfully genuflect before notorious Canada-haters and ask for their benediction (go to 2:00 in this video to hear a Canadian "conservative" ask Ann Coulter, "How can us[sic] Canadian Conservatives earn the love we have for you?”).
I suppose I can understand the American attitude. Why not kick people in the teeth when all you need to fear in return is a toothless, bleeding request (whispered politely--nay, reverently) for another…but harder this time?
The American formula seems to be that backwards, demoralised Third World countries get invaded; countries that behave like backwards, demoralised Third World countries just get insulted--relentlessly. In a way, it makes immaculate sense; we cannot blame an animal for behaving according to its nature.
Nevertheless, those legendarily generous Yanks just keep on giving. A few weeks ago, we were reminded of the way Americans talk about Canada when they're being watched by millions of fellow xenophobes: with dismissive contempt. Today, we learn how Americans talk about us when they're just making chit-chat amongst themselves: with dismissive contempt.
FOX News saw fit to release a clip wherein a gaggle of anonymous FOX talking-head guests, apparently waiting for their segment to begin taping, discuss U.S. security matters. One of them complains that Homeland Security is spending too much time worrying about the Canadian border, when the Mexican border is much more porous. This aberrant and possibly treasonous outburst of rationality is soon smothered by a peal of condescending quips about Canadians "smoking snow" and threatening to attack the U.S. with maple syrup. Once the gales of laughter subside, the host feelingly, almost wistfully, recalls the time he went to the U.S./Canada border to chase a story: he remembers that there was "just a whole lot of wheat up there", in words carrying a faint trace of trauma. Heads nod in silent empathy.
At this point, a Canadian viewer is struggling to remind himself that he's not watching security-camera footage of a bunch of slow reform-school inmates serving a detention for smoking dope in the boy's room. He's watching the host and four guests on America's highest-rated cable news show display what passes for foreign affairs expertise down there. These people are among America's intellectual élite. God help us all.
Soon after, one of the guests, a writer for the right-wing National Review, recalls with fondness a story he once wrote entitled "Bomb Canada". He apparently argued that Canada needs "pin-prick assaults" to "slap" us out of our "EU-itis" (which refers, presumably, to our inadequate level of America worship). He is still clearly proud of having called us a "northern Puerto Rico with an EU sensibility". One of his colleagues jokes that his story was obviously an effective motivator, as Canada ended up co-invading Afghanistan: "They were afraid of being bombed!" she trills excitedly.
Another guest reminds the assembly that there was a U.S. plan to bomb Canada. He calls it "Plan Orange" (it was actually Plan Red, but America's élite tends to be as ignorant of American history as their proles are; it is one of the few authentically democratic features of their society). In fact, Plan Red was operative until 1939--twenty year after the end of World War I and sixteen years after the death of the “dangerous” alliance in response to which the plan was created (our own prime minister Arthur Meighen was instrumental in killing that alliance, for obvious reasons).
It thus occurs to me that the United States was still seriously meditating an invasion of Canada (and had appropriated funds through Congress for that purpose) when my mother was nine years old. I'll just add that incredible and sad fact to the vast body of evidence in support of the notion that hysterical, barking-mad paranoia is deeply inscribed in America's cultural DNA. Always has been; always will be.
I was most struck by the tone of this FOX discussion. It is classic. By "classic", I mean that it has a long and direct pedigree. While listening to their flippant talk of "assault", "slapping", and "bombing", I felt that I was hearing a group of senior British civil servants of the Raj--lounging in a late-19th-century Bombay tap room--chortle airily over the amusing pretensions of the simple wogs they rule over: their silly "dignity", their tedious insistence on being treated like equals, their slothful backwardness, and the unfortunately frequent need for their betters to slap them out of their languor--for their own good, of course--to get them to make something of themselves. Similar conversations could have been overheard near the quarters of royal governors during America's colonial era and near the tents of centurions during the Roman occupation of Albion. It's the language of the coloniser, the occupier, the slave-master, the overseer, the prefect, the procurator--the tyrant.
In other parts of the world, you don't get away with fantasizing about bombing people. You invite immediate and vituperate retaliatory rhetoric. Luckily for FOX vermin, Canada is widely, deeply ridden with self-loathing Vichyites. Here, Fox News insolence is not only tolerated but is actually granted a prime-ministerial charter; as one of Stephen Harper's networks of choice, FOX has been rewarded with exclusive interviews--of the kind Harper has consistently denied to domestic media.
Moreover, FOX News' favourite shrill viragoes are hero-worshipped by cringing Canadian right-wing autophobes, whose profound self-loathing is so corrosive as to make them joyfully genuflect before notorious Canada-haters and ask for their benediction (go to 2:00 in this video to hear a Canadian "conservative" ask Ann Coulter, "How can us[sic] Canadian Conservatives earn the love we have for you?”).
I suppose I can understand the American attitude. Why not kick people in the teeth when all you need to fear in return is a toothless, bleeding request (whispered politely--nay, reverently) for another…but harder this time?
The American formula seems to be that backwards, demoralised Third World countries get invaded; countries that behave like backwards, demoralised Third World countries just get insulted--relentlessly. In a way, it makes immaculate sense; we cannot blame an animal for behaving according to its nature.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
The Accidental Tourist: Stephen Harper Abroad And At Large
Stephen Harper, debatably the first Commonwealth prime minister to head a cabinet boasting the collective legislative and executive acumen of plankton larvae, has been busy lately--and by "busy" I mean “struggling to seem relevant to foreigners after apparently giving up trying to seem relevant to Canadians”. It hasn't gone well.
It began well: on the eve of the G-20 summit, an official in the British Foreign Office was kind enough to leak an internal document proffering the extravagantly generous view that Canada had become merely a trivial global actor--a de facto U.S. protectorate whose views have all the integrity, independence and depth of Puerto Rico's. As the summit got underway, alas, Canadians discovered that we've become far less than trivial. Harper's vapid, irrelevant bragging about Canada's banking system (among the healthiest in the world despite his anti-regulatory party, not because of it) was virtually his only contribution to the proceedings.
Steve's most significant impact on the global scene has so far been his displacement of a quantity of air precisely equal to his volume whenever slowly towing his vast bulk from meaningless photo-op to meaningless photo-op. Speaking of which, I was rather disappointed to hear that G-20 leaders teased Harper for being on the toilet during the first official group photo: we Canadians have been gracefully waiting for Harper to get off his ass for three years; surely they could have been patient for a measly fifteen minutes.
The most interesting part of Steve's latest international junket was watching him provide Fox News with the kind of interview he insolently witholds from Canadian media. Presumably this gesture points to a new CPC information strategy, according to which access to the prime minister will be granted primarily to Canada-hating outlets, with domestic and friendly foreign networks left free to pick up whatever crumbs of availability are left over. With Fox News now safely pandered to, I suppose we can expect Harper to travel throughout what remains of the anti-Canadian media universe and chat with the good folks at Al-Jazeera, Al-Qaida Online, the Aryan Brotherhood Home Shopping Network, Ohio Militia Cable Access, and so on.
Yes, I know: Harper's goal is to announce to the hostile or indifferent audiences who consume those media that, contrary to the evidence daily provided by Harper's own government, Canada is not just a second-tier backwater. I just wish we had a spokesman who could say it as if he meant it.
At any rate, his Serene Hugeness is back home and spreading the pork around (fattening up the calves in preparation for the inevitable electoral feast). He's apparently planning a trip to China, where his God-fearing, evangelical Minister of Trade is already begging the godless Commie élite to send us more of their lovely money and give us more access to their beautifully cheap labour toiling under the boot heel of a ruthless dictatorial regime. Well, glory be! The crimson sins of tyrannical, Hell-bound reprobates aren't so terrible after all; in fact, our Gross Domestic Product can't seem to do without them. "Principled conservatism" has spoken. What a welcome change from those dark years of shabby, appeasing, cynical Liberal opportunism.
Now, shall we let Stockwell Day back into Canada? Things look doubtful. I wonder precisely what punitive sentence our border authorities plan to inflict upon the appeasing, thug-hugging wretch, given his flagrant vocal support for a murderous terrorist state. I think it would be only fair to confer intervenor status upon George Galloway during the deliberations, don’t you?
It began well: on the eve of the G-20 summit, an official in the British Foreign Office was kind enough to leak an internal document proffering the extravagantly generous view that Canada had become merely a trivial global actor--a de facto U.S. protectorate whose views have all the integrity, independence and depth of Puerto Rico's. As the summit got underway, alas, Canadians discovered that we've become far less than trivial. Harper's vapid, irrelevant bragging about Canada's banking system (among the healthiest in the world despite his anti-regulatory party, not because of it) was virtually his only contribution to the proceedings.
Steve's most significant impact on the global scene has so far been his displacement of a quantity of air precisely equal to his volume whenever slowly towing his vast bulk from meaningless photo-op to meaningless photo-op. Speaking of which, I was rather disappointed to hear that G-20 leaders teased Harper for being on the toilet during the first official group photo: we Canadians have been gracefully waiting for Harper to get off his ass for three years; surely they could have been patient for a measly fifteen minutes.
The most interesting part of Steve's latest international junket was watching him provide Fox News with the kind of interview he insolently witholds from Canadian media. Presumably this gesture points to a new CPC information strategy, according to which access to the prime minister will be granted primarily to Canada-hating outlets, with domestic and friendly foreign networks left free to pick up whatever crumbs of availability are left over. With Fox News now safely pandered to, I suppose we can expect Harper to travel throughout what remains of the anti-Canadian media universe and chat with the good folks at Al-Jazeera, Al-Qaida Online, the Aryan Brotherhood Home Shopping Network, Ohio Militia Cable Access, and so on.
Yes, I know: Harper's goal is to announce to the hostile or indifferent audiences who consume those media that, contrary to the evidence daily provided by Harper's own government, Canada is not just a second-tier backwater. I just wish we had a spokesman who could say it as if he meant it.
At any rate, his Serene Hugeness is back home and spreading the pork around (fattening up the calves in preparation for the inevitable electoral feast). He's apparently planning a trip to China, where his God-fearing, evangelical Minister of Trade is already begging the godless Commie élite to send us more of their lovely money and give us more access to their beautifully cheap labour toiling under the boot heel of a ruthless dictatorial regime. Well, glory be! The crimson sins of tyrannical, Hell-bound reprobates aren't so terrible after all; in fact, our Gross Domestic Product can't seem to do without them. "Principled conservatism" has spoken. What a welcome change from those dark years of shabby, appeasing, cynical Liberal opportunism.
Now, shall we let Stockwell Day back into Canada? Things look doubtful. I wonder precisely what punitive sentence our border authorities plan to inflict upon the appeasing, thug-hugging wretch, given his flagrant vocal support for a murderous terrorist state. I think it would be only fair to confer intervenor status upon George Galloway during the deliberations, don’t you?
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