What Americans Know About Canada

Last night, I couldn’t help miss­ing all of the swipes that the Republican’s took at Canada’s Health Care sys­tem dur­ing their tele­vised debate. I remem­ber either John McCain or Rudolph Giu­liani mak­ing a stu­pid joke that if the US decided to adopt Social­ized Med­i­cine, Cana­di­ans wouldn’t have any­where to go for health care. Yeah, right; Believe what you want to believe, Mr. McCain and Giu­liani. It was amaz­ing how many times that all of the Repub­li­can can­di­dates all repeated the phrase: ‘The US Health Care Sys­tem is the best in the world.”, as if say­ing so would make it true.

When I men­tioned to my par­ents, back in Bal­ti­more, the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­ity of a Pres­i­dent Huck­abee, my mother said “If that hap­pens, then we’ll be join­ing you.” Really? If I were them, I’d be more seri­ous about that, con­sid­er­ing this clas­sic clip from the CBC’s This Hour has 22 Min­utes in 2001, where Rick Mer­cer shows just how gullible they (includ­ing Gov­er­nor Huck­abee) can be in Arkansas:

I’ve writ­ten before about the stag­ger­ing lack of knowl­edge about the rest of the world on the part of Amer­i­cans, but I would hope that any poten­tial future Pres­i­dent would know more about Canada than this. Per­haps I should be wor­ried if there will there be enough room for the Amer­i­cans flee­ing north to join us if Mike Huck­abee, a man who might be just as unin­formed as George W. WPIUSH, becomes President.

A follow-up on this, thanks to West End Bound: An Arti­cle in today’s Van­cou­ver Sun:
Cana­dian health care bet­ter and cheaper than U.S., says research If you think that this source might be not entirely neu­tral, bear in mind that they are report­ing on a British study, not a Cana­dian one.

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By David Drucker | Filed in Canada, Humour, Politics, Television, US | January 6, 2008 7:21 pm

5 Comments to “What Americans Know About Canada”

  1. AvatarWest End Bound
    Posted: Jan 6th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
    1

    Yes, when I heard Giu­liani say that it made me cringe. The sad part is most US cit­i­zens will prob­a­bly believe him .…
  2. Avatarnancy
    Posted: Jan 7th, 2008 at 12:38 am
    2

    No way! I remem­ber this episode but my jaw is on the floor now that I real­ize he’s actu­ally a con­tender for the US Pres­i­dency. God help us all!

    I always fig­ured these clips of Mercer’s, hilar­i­ous though they are, seg­mented out the worst of the offend­ers, whereas the vast major­ity of peo­ple in the states know damn well our par­lia­ment is not an igloo! Do you think I’m overly optimistic?

    And, I just saw “sicko” last week. Any idea how many peo­ple in the States saw it?

    ps — wait­ing for your next Musi­col­ogy post :)

  3. Avatarddrucker
    Posted: Jan 8th, 2008 at 11:08 am
    3
    Author Comment

    I get more and more upset over how lit­tle most Amer­i­cans know about so many sub­jects. A recent clip from ‘Are you Smarter Than a Fifth Grader’ was also on YouTube, and the con­tes­tant, a woman from the Deep South by the sound of her accent, didn’t know that:

    1. Europe is not a Country
    2. France is a Country
    3. There is a Coun­try called Hungary
    4. The cap­i­tal of this Coun­try Called Hun­gary is called ‘Budapest’.

    Was this woman the worst of the lot, or is she typ­i­cal? Based on more and more of what I see and hear, the film ‘Idioc­racy’ comes to mind (a future dreamed up by Mike Judge, of Beavis and Butthead fame, where ‘nat­ural selec­tion’ has resulted in steadily drop­ping intel­li­gence over time, lead­ing to a coun­try entirely pop­u­lated by slack-jawed imbeciles).
  4. AvatarMikeFitz
    Posted: Jan 11th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
    4

    Scary video with Gov­er­nor Huckabee…

    Is it pos­si­ble to elect a worse pres­i­dent than George W Bush? Oh yes. You could put a cre­ation­ist in the White House!
  5. Avatarddrucker
    Posted: Jan 14th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
    5
    Author Comment

    G’day, Mike! Long time, no see.

    I sus­pect that we already have a cre­ation­ist in the White House.

    As for Mr. Huck­abee, all I can imag­ine is that if he did actu­ally make it into the Oval Office, it would sig­nal (to me, at least) that the US is now beyond hope, and will con­tinue its decline into a Theoc­racy. Then again, decline is my term. For some, I guess they would call it an ascent.
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