Me (and a real live bien pensant Canadian) on TV this Sunday
I taped another episode of "Behind the Story" yesterday. It airs this Sunday at 7PM EST. This time, I was feeling more energized and prepared; went quite well, I thought. Meaning: I lost my temper, and will generate lots of CRTC complaints.
I rarely encounter "typical Canadians" anymore, thank God. So it was startling to find myself sitting next to a living, breathing example yesterday. It was like going fishing and catching a coelacanth.
OK, the guy didn't care if Quebec (finally) separated (check) and was suspicious of Germany's laws against Holocaust denial (check) but...
If nothing else, you really need to tune in this Sunday to actually hear someone utter the following cliches in public:
"Anything that gives us cleaner air is fine with me."
"Those are just a minority of radical extremists. Every community has them."
"Why is Israel's democracy any better than Hamas?"
"As long as it saves one life..."
"We haven't been attacked yet and we need to keep it that way by not provoking people."
"Americans have always needed an enemy. With communism gone, now it's Islam."
"We should walk a mile in the shoes of dissaffected Muslim immigrants instead of criticizing them."
"Female and male circumcision are no different."
And, believe it or not:
"I love multiculturalism because I love Chinese food."
Then, there was me:
"What is it about you people and your stomachs? In the future, I'd love to be able to go out for Chinese food without having to wear a scarf on my head."
"Walk a mile in Theo Van Gogh's shoes sometime, bud."
"We need to ban immigration from countries like Somalia."
"I love the way the Indian government creates an international incident defending a Big Brother contestant but does little to protect countless women from being set on fire each year, or wiping out the caste system."
"So what was Bali's foreign policy regarding Israel? You can't answer that, can you? Huh? Didn't think so."
"People are missing the point of this story. Why is British Airways hiring women who wear hijabs to begin with? I wouldn't fly on a plane staffed like that. The hijab isn't mandated by the Koran. It is a symbol of 1970s radicalism akin to the Che Guevara t-shirt."
"Trudeau said the State had no business in the bedrooms of the nation. Apparently this doesn't apply to toboggan hills. First we need to nuke the Amazon rainforest so I don't have to hear about it anymore. Then we need to train all the endangered species to fight terrorists because clearly, our helmet wearing, peanut-allergic wimpy children won't be prepared to do so."
And more. I don't blame you for not watching if that sounds too much like last Christmas dinner with your family (believe me, I hear ya). But you won't hear such things on any other Canadian TV show, so why not tape it for posterity?