Thursday, February 03, 2005

Talking to Americans

This remains one of my favorite bits by Rick Mercer...from Wikpedia comes this little treat:
"Talking To Americans was a regular feature presented by Rick Mercer on the Canadian political satire show This Hour Has 22 Minutes. It was later spun off into a one-hour special that aired on April 1, 2001 on CBC Television. View image (http://www.cbc.ca/comedyweek/images/thumb_mercer.jpg)
It consisted of interviewing
Americans on the street and convincing them to agree with ridiculous statements about Canada. The intent was to satirise American ignorance of its neighbour and the world in general. Examples included:

- persuading Americans to congratulate Canada on legalizing insulin or adopting the twenty-four-hour day,
- various political controversies involving one or more Canadian
states,
- congratulating the Canadian government on building a dome over its "national
igloo" (apparently a downsized version of the United States Capitol) to protect it from global warming,
- agreeing that the U.S. should bomb
Saskatchewan or send ground troops into Gilles Duceppe,
- proposing the absurd idea that a Canadian company actually had the mining rights to
Mount Rushmore,
- controversy around the reconstruction of the historic "
Peter Mans Bridge", named after "Prime Minister Peter Mans".
- asking if
Jean Chretien-Pinochet should be charged with crimes against humanity.
- asking
Harvard students and professors to sign a petition asking Canadians to discontinue the practice of abandoning the elderly on ice floes.
- congratulating Prime Minister
Tim Horton on getting a double-double (support on both sides of Congress)...

The most famous segment, aired in 2000, featuring Mercer asking then-presidential candidate George W. Bush – who had previously stated that "you can't stump me on world leaders" – for his reaction to an endorsement by Canadian Prime Minister "Jean Poutine"."

And they think we're slow...we just look that way because we are COLD here. Our minds are nice and toasty...(that can be taken oh so many ways)

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