American iggnorance

I had a couple of thoughts on this:

1.) Canadians wouldn’t worry about what we did/did not think of them if they knew how little we did.

2.) To paraphrase a bit from the old Dr. Katz show, “So Canadians ask us what we think of them, and I said, 'Well, we really don’t. I mean you guys are pretty safe up there, unless we run out of stuff or something…Hey Canada, we’re out of wood…um…get out.”

3.) Canada is like America’s little brother. Sure we rip on you, we pick on you, we don’t really admit to liking you, but deep down inside we know that if someone was messing with you we’d be there to kick some ass for you.

As far as knowing Candian history, well we don’t learn it because it doesn’t affect us a whole lot. Why not learn about Canada? Same reason as we don’t learn Mexico’s, Brazil’s, Japan’s, Algeria’s, or any other country’s history. I mean, we’ve got trouble getting students today to know American history (just see one episode of Jay Walking or Street Smarts) yet alone trying to remember everyone’s elses history. Nothing against you northern friends of ours, but quit asking us why we aren’t all hip with you. It simply isn’t that all important to us.

Well Holy Shit! I didn’t know everyone around here was so offended by bad grammar. You people are more critical than the Quebec language police on English signs. Perhaps Jerome though that his audience was merely ignorant, and was just writing at their level of comprehension.

As far as the point of this post? I think it was to pick out Canadian stereotypes that are obviously misconstrued, or to point out peculiar attitudes that some Americans hold about us Canadians. In all consideration though I believe that it was meant to be a tongue and cheek post that people could laugh at, and in no way was it talking about HISTORY TO BEGIN WITH YOU DUMBASSES! For those of you who do not know what it was referring to, I?ll tell you. It was referring to the more general stuff that a neighboring country should already know, like who our prime minister is, the capital of Canada, a little geography, and other stuff like that.

Anyway let us go back to that comical show called Talking to Americans hosted by Rick Mercer again. The primary objective of this show is to basically display to the audience the unbelievable ignorance that most Americans exhibit towards their Canadian neighbours. (Yes I did spell that right incase you didn?t know that we use a ?U? here in Canada for such words as labour and neighbour). Back to the point though?Rick Mercer does an outstanding job at showing this ignorance by approaching the subject, prosing the question in a serious tone, and then by closing the deal with a look of smugness that only us Canadians looking on could understand. An example of this is when he ingeniously builds up the credentials of the governor of Arkansas by asking passer-bys about his intelligence, and then ruthlessly makes a complete fool out of the governor by convincing him that Canada’s parliament building is actually an igloo that is in danger of melting from global warming, and that Canada has recently implemented a program to save the igloo by surrounding it with a giant glass dome. The reply? “…congratulations Canada on preserving your national igloo.” Another example involves asking some Americans if they believe that Canada has a major crisis, as national testing shows that the majority of grade seven students cannot even find their own state on an unmarked map. The reply of one particular gentleman on this issue? “Yeah I think that’s disgraceful, that people are that unaware of the world that they live in.” How about the government’s recent actions towards the province of Saskatchewan where they are trying to ban the traditional Rhinoceros hunt performed by the local Native peoples inhabiting the area for fear that it will soon become extinct. Sorry America but that one just isn’t true either, but somehow, somewhere, someway, some profusely ignorant American somehow thought that it was in fact true.

If Canada is anyone’s little brother, it’s Britain’s. It’s a British colony after all. (a division of the Hudson’s Bay Company)

Yes, all Americans are idiots, especially our governors from Arkansas. And our children are getting less intelligent with every generation. We tried to let foreigners into our country to help out with the gene pool on the IQ end, but apparently that backfired, in more ways than one.

I can’t believe that we, as Americans, don’t wake up every morning thankful that a Higher Power placed our insignificant country full of drooling idiots next to the utopia otherwise known as Canada. I can’t see how we have ever done anything on our own without Canada.

It’s high time we have a Canadian History Month to explore the richness that the land of Canada has to offer.

Uni: It’s “eh”, not “ay”. We are Canucks, not the Fonze. Furthermore, if “eh” is at the end of a sentence, it becomes “eh?” regardless of whether or not said sentence is a question.

Monkey: The Mountie may have been a flash-in-the-pan success, but Brett “The Hitman” Hart, from Calgary Alberta, is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.

Say: Sssshhhhhh. Be vewy vewy quiet.
Youwr distuwrbing the Amewicans. They mwight win the Stanwey Cup again.

To all: Give me a case of Labatt 50 and within 15 minutes I will gladly embody any and every Canadian stereotype known to man. Except that I suck at hockey.

Oh, and the Rick Mercer shit is funny.

Can you imagine what the response would be if ABC…no probably FOX, put a similar show on where we interviewed Mexicans or Canadians? Actually I applaud Canada because I’m sure that down here the PC police would be up in arms over such a show.

Curt Harnett. Thunder Bay, Ontario. Sprint cyclist about 10 years ago. Physique that most anybody hear would kill for. Won the Goodwill Games in 1990 over American Ken Carpenter. Sure, I’m American. But that guy kicked SERIOUS ass.

I watched a similar German program where this Johnny Carson-wannabe was in New York showing people a picture of Gerhard Schroder and asking who it was. It would have been funny if the people on the street thought it was Stone Cold or J.Lo or something, but the audience was laughing just because the Americans didn’t know what the German Chancellor looked like. And why the fuck should we? That’s not funny.

That Canadian program does sound pretty funny though… I’m sure there are some Americans who would believe Canadians vote with pine cones (after all, they DO brush their teeth with them, right? I saw it on National Geographic. just kiddin). But those are the same Americans who don’t know how AMERICANS vote! Why the orinigator of this post would interpret that as representative of American culture is beyond me though…

By the way, your name is JEROME!? I didn’t think Canada had any black people… (Rick Mercer should have had me on his show…)

The answer to American iggnorance is plain to see by the posts here.
I don’t know any Canadian that looks up to or want’s to be like an American.
Why do Americans have a need to separate themselves by an imaginary boarder from Canadians and call themselves different? When I stand next to my American friends we look exactly the f’n same.
I’m sure you all don’t follow Bushs’ tactics of secluding yourselves from having any friends in the world. Especially the ones to the north who are always nice to you and support you even in your ignorance.
Kindness isn’t a sign of weakness anymore than hate and fear are a sign of strength.
Get over the imaginary differences.
Doesn’t eveyone on this forum have the same goals?

I see the game. Find some American, and tell him something ridiculous about your country. If he doesn’t immediately believe it, browbeat him and make him feel like an idiot until he accepts it as fact. After all, it would be your country, you should know, right?

Then air it on public television, either leave in or edit out the browbeating, and laugh at the stupid Americans.

Funny stuff.

To simplify my stance, this post goes along with any other post that is intended to make one nation or the other look bad. They’re stupid. I think Rick Mercer is great, but he would get a kick out of morons truly believing that americans are that stupid, based solely on his show. [He had a great skit on “This Hour has 22 Minutes”(Bush was running for Pres. at the time,just leaving a press confrence), in which he asked George Bush questions about canadian politics and the Prime Minister(stating the wrong name). Bush was way off, and had no clue about Canada. This is one of the ONLY people that NEEDS to know about our country. So that was funny.] Like a “poster” said before,this could be done to canadians by an american, and have the same result. You’d also have idiots thinking all canadians were that dumb. All in all, I think the dumb ones are the ones that can’t think for themselves.

Doesn’t “ignorance” have just one “g”?

Sorry…with all this talk lately about proper grammar, it was something I noticed.

Yes, it does, Patricia. That was the irony of the original post and what kicked off the whole thread.

Or it was just the usual suspects stirring up shit. Not me, of course…

DocT: thought so.

I didn’t even take the time to really, really read all these posts, too. I guess not only am I a stoopid American citizen, I’m lazeeee, too. hehehehe

Hey, Jerome, how’s that for the ugly American?

Yeah…I try not to be a grammar nazi but when George W says the word “nucular” I can’t help laughing and thinking of SNL bits. It makes me nervous that the guy who has his finger on the button can’t even pronounce the damn word. What a hoser. Take off, eh?
I bartended a Canadian wedding and I learned many new things. For example, when someone asks for a Canadian, they are referring to Molson. Blues are Labatts and rye and ginger means whiskey and ginger ale. Just thought I’d pass on my cultural experience to my fellow Americans.

PS - Does anyone remember the show You Can’t Do That On Television?

“You can’t do that on television”, was terrible kids show that many of us 30- something Canadians grew up with. But then most Canadian television is terrible. We have this moronic policy in Canada that a certain percentage of programs on Canadian networks has to be Canadian made and produced. It’s also the same for our radion stations. The result is some truly awful television programs and songs on the radio. Rick Mercer’s program is funny and he does’nt go after the average slob on the street. What makes his show funny is the fact that he asks questions of Harvard professers and political figures and other people who should be well educated and gets hilarious answers from them. It is a set up however, and anyone from any country would fall for it. Canadians would do better as we know more about American history than americans do about ours. Why? simply because we learn so much of it from american t.v. In fact most Canadians know more about American history than Canadian history. A true but sad fact. Make no mistake about it, while very few Canadians have any desire to be Americans, we do have an inferiority complex. That’s why we love Rick Mercer, it gives us an opportunity to feel temporarily superior.We love to find little things that we do or have better than the U.S. We can’t be richer, militarily more powerful or have as much world influence, but it makes us feel good to beleive we’re smarter. It’s a nice little illusion us Canadians have, don’t burst our bubble. There is know doubt that we are The U.S.'s little brother and not Britain’s. We rely on the U.S for protection, they are our biggest trading partner and while we still retain much of our British culture, the U.S has far more influence on us culturally than Britain ever did. One thing I will always be proud of though, is that Canada consistantly gets rated as the top country in the world to live in. It’s always top three and often number 1. It’s pretty tough to beat the standard of living the average Canadian enjoys here. Oh and one more thing, our beer kicks ass.

Magnus - Your beer does kick ass. The Canadian brands we have here taste totally different and better up there. Blue and Carlsburg Light are my favs when I’m up there. You try them here though and they don’t even taste similar. Another thing you have that kicks ass is your strip joints. I mean we do have good ones here in certain cities, but I’ve never seen a girl take a shower in a US strip joint. There’s nothing wrong with some good natured joking about each others nation. I went to school with a bunch of Canucks and we used to give each other crap all the time about nationality.

Magnus, I’m 23 and I spent part of my childhood watching “You Can’t Do That on Television”. How long has it been around?

And thanks for being candid. It’s nice to hear a non-bitchy Canadian on this thread. And I would strongly agree with Canada being one of the best places to live, as it shares a very similar culture and economy with the US, but without the world hating it. :slight_smile:

I’m glad Paticia has never made a spellng mistake in her life. She must be smart.