Triumph The Wonder Racist
Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2004 12:18 am
I thought this was cute and, frankly, I'm glad to hear it. I was beginning to wonder myself whether Canadians had become completely humoUrless. From the Wall Street Journal Op-Eds...
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Arial" size="3">
Severe Winter Storm
Conan O'Brien finds Anglophone Canadians can't take a joke about Francophone ones.
BY MARK STEYN
Friday, February 20, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
W.C. Fields said never work with children or animals. That goes double if the animal's a hand puppet. So when Conan O'Brien's sidekick, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, visits Quebec and characterizes the natives as obnoxious, dull and mostly homosexual, and rent-a-quote Canadian Members of Parliament are asked for their reaction, the best response is: "Sorry, I'm a little tied up today. Why not try Miss Piggy or Lamb Chop?"
Instead, Alexa McDonough, former leader of the New Democratic Party, denounced Triumph's conduct as "utterly vile" "racist filth" and "vicious hatemongering." Stephen Harper, currently running for the leadership of the Conservative Party, agreed that such behavior was "completely unacceptable." The Quebec nationalists at the Société St-Jean-Baptiste piled on and so did the Toronto Star (which is like the New York Times but without the jokes).
So a dozen people objected to the "vicious hatemongering" and as a result the rest of us 30 million Canadians are now damned as humorless prigs. Frankly, I'd rather be an obnoxious, dull homosexual living on the "rue des Pussies" (one of Triumph's visual gags). I've had a gazillion e-mails from Americans on the lines of "Boy, I can understand why Leslie Nielsen/John Candy/Jim Carrey ad infinitum headed south," as if there's some great refugee tide of members of the beleaguered Funny-Canadian minority pushing out on leaky rafts across the Niagara River like the South Vietnamese in flight from the re-education camps and hoping they won't be given away by tell-tale signs like wry chuckles.
Just for the record, Canadians are not humorless. We're humourless, OK? And in case you're planning a trip, jokes in Canada are not illegal. They're just federally regulated. And a good rule of thumb is this: We're not humorless about Anglophone Canada. Want to make a cheap crack about curling, or the queen, or redneck Albertans? Feel free. But we are humorless about Francophone Canada.
It's not so much that Francophones themselves can't take a joke, but that the bien-pensant Anglos who police English Canadian culture don't want to risk letting them be put in the position of having to take a joke, lest it tear the country apart. There's a lesson here, both for the European Union and an increasingly Hispanicized U.S.: Gags are one of the great pillars of a common culture, but they're one of the first things to get lost in translation--and if you can't share a joke, it's hard to have a shared culture. That's why multilingual societies tend toward the humorless: see Switzerland and Belgium. (For the purposes of the preceding racist generalization, I should point out that I'm half-Belgian.)
Let's go back to Triumph the dog's contention that Quebec men are mostly homosexual. In 1991, Edith Cresson made the same allegation against the British. At the time, she was the prime minister of France. In other words, she wasn't just Conan O'Brien's hand puppet; she was President Mitterrand's hand puppet. And she was flesh and blood, which was indeed the main basis of her assertion: She claimed that as a vibrant sensual woman she found more men came on to her in the streets of Paris than London and concluded from this that Englishmen were obviously gay.
Instead of falling into po-faced whining like the Toronto Star, Britain's Sun ran a picture of two Frenchmen carrying those dinky little male purses they're partial to over there, under the headline: "They Don't Call It Gay Paree For Nothing." Instead of huffing and puffing about "racist filth" like Canadian Members of Parliament, one British MP attempted to introduce the following motion: "This House does not fancy elderly French women." That's the way a mature, confident society deals with such provocations--with cheap jokes and extensive lists of "Famous French Poofs"--not the reflexive cringe that cries "racism" and calls for "hate crimes" investigations.
As for Triumph's other assertion--"So you're French and Canadian?" he asked a passing Quebecker. "You're obnoxious and dull?"--well, he's half-right. Canadians are not so much dull as smug, and the Quebecois affinity with their cousins in France is strictly limited. When France was occupied by the Germans in two world wars, it was English Canadians who wanted to liberate it, while Quebeckers objected to the notion of fighting for their English king. This isn't to say that thousands of Francophones haven't served with distinction. (Le Royal 22e Régiment, the province's famous "Van Doos," is currently in Afghanistan.) But to do so they've had to go against the prevailing culture of their society, whose attitude is nicely encapsulated by the young Pierre Trudeau's magnificent shrug of indifference on the great conflict of the century: "So there was a war. Tough."
Today modern Trudeaupian Canada, being semi-French, is a semi-detached member of the Anglosphere. A year ago public opinion in English Canada was more or less as pro-war as Britain and Australia. Over 60% of Canadians outside Quebec supported American action against Saddam. But French Canada was overwhelmingly antiwar. The only difference between the "conscription crisis" of World War II and the antiwar sentiment re Iraq is that this time around Quebec's position decided Canada's. The "Francization" of the political culture has ensured that the entire country has been relocated to the rue des Pussies.
Come to that, if the situation is so "delicate," why hasn't Quebec separated? Every Tomovia, Dickania and Harristan is independent these days: Slovenia, Slovakia . . . Slavonia wasn't independent the last time I was there, but it's surely only a matter of time. Quebec "separatism" is either the world's most inept nationalist movement or it's one almighty bluff.
I go with the latter. As things stand, the permanent phony threat of secession allows Quebec the lion's share of the federal spoils. Four prime ministers from Quebec have run Canada for 34 of the past 36 years. You can rationalize this--just as you can explain why, for roughly the same period, the Sunni minority controlled all the levers of power in Iraq over the Shiite majority. But in neither case does it seem particularly healthy, and at least Iraq's Shiites had the excuse that they were living in a dictatorship. If Triumph were a French poodle, what insult could he possibly make to get the Anglos to rise up in defense of their own "cultural identity"?
As for Francophones, nothing the dog puppet did is as devastating an indictment of their (and my) ramshackle backwater as the first half-hour of Denys Arcand's current film, "The Barbarian Invasions," partly financed by Telefilm Canada, Telefilm Quebec and all the rest. For Americans, the scenes set in a Montreal hospital are a fascinating preview of what U.S. health care would be like if the Democrats ever get to "reform" it. For Quebeckers and Canadians, they strongly suggest that the problem with the moral high ground of the rue des Pussies is that it's a cul de sac.
Mr. Steyn is a columnist for National Review and Britain's Telegraph Group.
</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Arial" size="3">
Severe Winter Storm
Conan O'Brien finds Anglophone Canadians can't take a joke about Francophone ones.
BY MARK STEYN
Friday, February 20, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
W.C. Fields said never work with children or animals. That goes double if the animal's a hand puppet. So when Conan O'Brien's sidekick, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, visits Quebec and characterizes the natives as obnoxious, dull and mostly homosexual, and rent-a-quote Canadian Members of Parliament are asked for their reaction, the best response is: "Sorry, I'm a little tied up today. Why not try Miss Piggy or Lamb Chop?"
Instead, Alexa McDonough, former leader of the New Democratic Party, denounced Triumph's conduct as "utterly vile" "racist filth" and "vicious hatemongering." Stephen Harper, currently running for the leadership of the Conservative Party, agreed that such behavior was "completely unacceptable." The Quebec nationalists at the Société St-Jean-Baptiste piled on and so did the Toronto Star (which is like the New York Times but without the jokes).
So a dozen people objected to the "vicious hatemongering" and as a result the rest of us 30 million Canadians are now damned as humorless prigs. Frankly, I'd rather be an obnoxious, dull homosexual living on the "rue des Pussies" (one of Triumph's visual gags). I've had a gazillion e-mails from Americans on the lines of "Boy, I can understand why Leslie Nielsen/John Candy/Jim Carrey ad infinitum headed south," as if there's some great refugee tide of members of the beleaguered Funny-Canadian minority pushing out on leaky rafts across the Niagara River like the South Vietnamese in flight from the re-education camps and hoping they won't be given away by tell-tale signs like wry chuckles.
Just for the record, Canadians are not humorless. We're humourless, OK? And in case you're planning a trip, jokes in Canada are not illegal. They're just federally regulated. And a good rule of thumb is this: We're not humorless about Anglophone Canada. Want to make a cheap crack about curling, or the queen, or redneck Albertans? Feel free. But we are humorless about Francophone Canada.
It's not so much that Francophones themselves can't take a joke, but that the bien-pensant Anglos who police English Canadian culture don't want to risk letting them be put in the position of having to take a joke, lest it tear the country apart. There's a lesson here, both for the European Union and an increasingly Hispanicized U.S.: Gags are one of the great pillars of a common culture, but they're one of the first things to get lost in translation--and if you can't share a joke, it's hard to have a shared culture. That's why multilingual societies tend toward the humorless: see Switzerland and Belgium. (For the purposes of the preceding racist generalization, I should point out that I'm half-Belgian.)
Let's go back to Triumph the dog's contention that Quebec men are mostly homosexual. In 1991, Edith Cresson made the same allegation against the British. At the time, she was the prime minister of France. In other words, she wasn't just Conan O'Brien's hand puppet; she was President Mitterrand's hand puppet. And she was flesh and blood, which was indeed the main basis of her assertion: She claimed that as a vibrant sensual woman she found more men came on to her in the streets of Paris than London and concluded from this that Englishmen were obviously gay.
Instead of falling into po-faced whining like the Toronto Star, Britain's Sun ran a picture of two Frenchmen carrying those dinky little male purses they're partial to over there, under the headline: "They Don't Call It Gay Paree For Nothing." Instead of huffing and puffing about "racist filth" like Canadian Members of Parliament, one British MP attempted to introduce the following motion: "This House does not fancy elderly French women." That's the way a mature, confident society deals with such provocations--with cheap jokes and extensive lists of "Famous French Poofs"--not the reflexive cringe that cries "racism" and calls for "hate crimes" investigations.
As for Triumph's other assertion--"So you're French and Canadian?" he asked a passing Quebecker. "You're obnoxious and dull?"--well, he's half-right. Canadians are not so much dull as smug, and the Quebecois affinity with their cousins in France is strictly limited. When France was occupied by the Germans in two world wars, it was English Canadians who wanted to liberate it, while Quebeckers objected to the notion of fighting for their English king. This isn't to say that thousands of Francophones haven't served with distinction. (Le Royal 22e Régiment, the province's famous "Van Doos," is currently in Afghanistan.) But to do so they've had to go against the prevailing culture of their society, whose attitude is nicely encapsulated by the young Pierre Trudeau's magnificent shrug of indifference on the great conflict of the century: "So there was a war. Tough."
Today modern Trudeaupian Canada, being semi-French, is a semi-detached member of the Anglosphere. A year ago public opinion in English Canada was more or less as pro-war as Britain and Australia. Over 60% of Canadians outside Quebec supported American action against Saddam. But French Canada was overwhelmingly antiwar. The only difference between the "conscription crisis" of World War II and the antiwar sentiment re Iraq is that this time around Quebec's position decided Canada's. The "Francization" of the political culture has ensured that the entire country has been relocated to the rue des Pussies.
Come to that, if the situation is so "delicate," why hasn't Quebec separated? Every Tomovia, Dickania and Harristan is independent these days: Slovenia, Slovakia . . . Slavonia wasn't independent the last time I was there, but it's surely only a matter of time. Quebec "separatism" is either the world's most inept nationalist movement or it's one almighty bluff.
I go with the latter. As things stand, the permanent phony threat of secession allows Quebec the lion's share of the federal spoils. Four prime ministers from Quebec have run Canada for 34 of the past 36 years. You can rationalize this--just as you can explain why, for roughly the same period, the Sunni minority controlled all the levers of power in Iraq over the Shiite majority. But in neither case does it seem particularly healthy, and at least Iraq's Shiites had the excuse that they were living in a dictatorship. If Triumph were a French poodle, what insult could he possibly make to get the Anglos to rise up in defense of their own "cultural identity"?
As for Francophones, nothing the dog puppet did is as devastating an indictment of their (and my) ramshackle backwater as the first half-hour of Denys Arcand's current film, "The Barbarian Invasions," partly financed by Telefilm Canada, Telefilm Quebec and all the rest. For Americans, the scenes set in a Montreal hospital are a fascinating preview of what U.S. health care would be like if the Democrats ever get to "reform" it. For Quebeckers and Canadians, they strongly suggest that the problem with the moral high ground of the rue des Pussies is that it's a cul de sac.
Mr. Steyn is a columnist for National Review and Britain's Telegraph Group.
</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
