The Globe and Mail columnist Cathal Kelly is advertising Jon Stewart’s return to TV (well, Apple TV) today, instead of his more usual sports beat, because of course he is. Trump is gone, Trudeau is aces, professional sports are all but dead due to the China variant (especially women’s sports thanks to Biden and the Democrats but nevermind, sports, shmorts), and there’s nothing else going on in Canada, especially not an impending economic catastrophe and lack of vaccinations and crippling national debt and our freedoms and democracy being tossed out the window etc.
He is discussing, with some depth, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show for some reason having nothing to do with Stewart being yet another left-wing darling, and that he just can’t contain his excitement about Stewart’s return. Yet Kelly somehow managed to not mention that Stewart’s whole brand — his whole point — was literally effective left-wing attacks against conservatives, presented in a passive-aggressive, “humorous” way, to help drive a political, cultural agenda —which would be saying the quiet parts out loud. So, good work, I guess!
Instead Kelly gets right to the usual Globe and Mail point undergirding almost all Globe and Mail writing and never left unsaid: It’s that Americans are so, so stupid, and Canadians are just so, so sensible, because… reasons. Oh and Trump is evil (and yet confusingly, he is a joke), as if I had to tell you.
Kelly explains comedy to us since we don’t have a clue what’s funny in this country except that we know America and Trump (and conservative policies) are all a joke:
“…But comedy shows require comedy. Not every leader is comedic, and not every policy is worthy of mockery. Trump and his policies represented a content jackpot.
“This is why Canada couldn’t find its own Daily Show – though lord, how our broadcasters tried. Our governments are too tedious – and, for the most part, sensible. We lack the raw material for good comedy. This is why our best comedians end up in the U.S., masquerading as Americans. Everyone wants in on that gold mine…”
Am I the only Canadian tired of this anti-America, and anti-Trump show? This banal, gratuitous berating of Americans and America and Trump and conservatives, et al, complete with the implied laugh-track? This formulaic America is a joke, Trump is a joke, their policies are a joke (well, that is, just Republican or conservative and certainly, of course, obviously, duh, Trump policies) are a joke — and basically, America is literally a joke “jackpot” and “gold mine” trope?
The show could be called Canadian Bromide. Of course the grating flip side of that hackneyed garbage is that Canada is so totally right on, in every which way, and nobody in Canada could even find anything to joke about here, which is why we have failed to produce anything funny about Canada. We’re victims… um, because we’re so perfect!
This is the usual Canadian liberal’s modi operandi: anti-American, anti-conservative, anti-Christian, anti-Trump (and anti-any-past-and-every-next-Republican-president), and mostly, progressive left-appeasing and liberal, no matter how repetitive, boring, or pedantic. (Hey! Clues to our comedy failures!)
This is no joke: Apparently we’re so bereft of creative talent despite the countless billions we’ve spent on “culture” and grants and subsidies and tax breaks to the creative set, our own state-owned film outfits, a massive and expensive state-owned broadcast conglomerate, and Canadian content rules and protective regulations — that nobody in Canada can now produce a comedy series or a Daily Show about Canada and, say, Trudeau. (Personally, I laugh daily at that whole Trudeau cabal. And at the CBC. But of course that wasn’t their desired effect. Maybe that taxpayer cash is paying off!)
Nobody in Canada can possibly find the algorithm to decode and unlock anything funny about feminist snowsurfer boy and assistant drama teacher Justin Trudeau, his bouffant hair, his super amazing sock choices, his constant virtue-signaling hideosity, and the hysterically breathy pronouncements he makes on his own Daily Show starring Justin Trudeau in front of his cute li’l cottage to the nation’s peoplekind and to his adoring, face-licking lapdogs in the media, as he breathily intones that we should wash our hands and stay inside (and that’s in answer to the question about the trillion-dollar debt)?
Here’s a show idea: Maybe Mr. Kelly could ask one of the many Canadian comedians who moved to the U.S. (currently “masquerading as an American” — and hey, isn’t that “cultural appropriation?”) or any of the millions of other Canadian professionals (including actors, laborers, authors, columnists, business people…) why they went to America; and why more go south than north. I’m pretty sure he’ll find it isn’t because those expats think America is stupid, or a big “joke gold mine,” or that it’s just full of good comedy material that somehow magically places joke money into their Levi’s.
(By the way, many Canadians and other immigrants don’t “masquerade as Americans,” any more than, say, Syrian immigrants to Canada “masquerade as Canadians.” Funny how awful and woke-mob cancel-ish it sounds when you turn around an anti-American trope, eh? But anyway no, just as immigrants do here, Canadian expats to America often go right ahead and drop their Canadian citizenship and become American citizens. Kelly should ask about that too. It’s not funny, but it is educational.)
In fact since Kelly has now joined the masquerade and is writing about American culture and TV instead of Canadian, he might use his new show to ask himself why, despite the cash grants and content regulations, virtually all that we watch in Canada is American TV, supplemented only by some good U.K. and Australian stuff. This, even as the usual anti-conservative and anti-American stuff the Canadians do produce remains an expensive joke, languishing at the bottom of the ratings and deemed unwatchable — literally too stupid for Canadians to watch — and even too stupid for those ever-so stupid Americans to watch.
I think at the end of his show he might find we’re not laughing with him.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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