Canadian Comedy

I was watch­ing a lit­tle TV this evening, around 7 PM. On the Cana­di­an Com­e­dy Net­work (which often airs shows like the US Com­e­dy Cen­tral’s The Dai­ly Show, Crank Yankers and South Park), a Cana­di­an Sketch com­e­dy pro­gram called Roy­al Cana­di­an Air Farce aired. At first, there was noth­ing too con­tro­ver­sial. I caught a guy with green hair (the green paint was a prod­uct that cov­ered grey) on a date/commercial. Some oth­er silli­ness. Then, right near the end, they had three of the male cast mem­bers in cam­ou­flage uni­forms and hel­mets. After some more sil­ly talk, they announced who had won the “Roy­al Cana­di­an Air Farce Chick­en Hawk Tar­get Award”. It was Bush. Well, that was just the begin­ning. They then load up a big can­non with all kinds of nasty ‘metaphor­i­cal’ ingre­di­ents includ­ing oil, feces, some­thing from a can, and final­ly after many oth­er dis­gust­ing addi­tions, add some ‘sug­ar so that every­thing ends up seem­ing all nice’. Then they shoot the whole mess point blank at a big pho­to of a smirk­ing George W. Bush. The crowd goes wild. “Try and invade that, George W.!” says the cast mem­ber play­ing a sort of General.

Things must have real­ly got­ten bad, when even friend­ly neigh­bor­ing coun­tries lit­er­al­ly shoot shit at the US Pres­i­dent. Then I was even more shocked to learn that this was filmed in 2002! With the CBC strike, Cana­di­an Air Farce, which is a CBC pro­gram, is in reruns until the labour dis­pute is set­tled. So this is what the irrev­er­ent come­di­ans were doing to cheer­ing crowds 3 years ago. I can’t even imag­ine what they’d be air­ing today in new shows. This 2002 spot made The Dai­ly Show’s Jon Stew­art look pos­i­tive­ly deferential.

I have to admit that I had mixed feel­ings watch­ing this. Part of me was think­ing ‘Hey, this is great! They agree with me! A whole coun­try on my side!’ But then it began to sink into me (per­haps the old con­di­tion­ing that goes back to kinder­garten and first grade, where we placed our hand on our hearts and pledged alle­giance to the flag). The US Pres­i­den­cy is still some­thing that some­where in the recess­es of my mind, I hold as some­thing ele­vat­ed, to be respect­ed if not liked. To see a US Pres­i­dent, even one who I hate more than any of them in my life (even Nixon, who I remem­ber with as much loathing as a twelve year-old’s mem­o­ry can bring forth), shot with excre­ment from a can­non… That glee some­how began to melt into shame. I did­n’t vote for that smirk­ing buf­foon, and even left the coun­try due in a large part to him, but I could­n’t bring myself to hurl (or shoot) crap at his effi­gy. At least not with­out a good evening’s worth of drinking.