“What time is it, Alice?” one woman used to ask.
“Three o’clock.” “Thanks,” she would say, and add, “What time is it?” I couldn’t help but think about this last week, when President Obama took his first trip to Ottawa, and the American press, once again, discovered Canada for the first time.
The standard of sophistication was, sadly, as high as usual. CNN is supposed to be our highest functioning news source. Kyra Phillips, an afternoon news anchor, pulled no punches. “We love those Canadians. They are good people,” she told the world.
However, fellow CNN anchor Frederika Whitfield was baffled by a bunch of guys in red coats and what looked like cowboy hats who showed up to welcome the President. “I guess they are some form of troops,” she said. Well, I don’t want to reveal any state secrets, Freddie, but the rest of the world refers to them as Mounties, as in Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
But this was positively enlightened compared to Fox where they constantly flashed the revelations that, “Canada is our largest trading partner,“ and “Canada is our largest supplier of oil.“
The best moment was when one of the innumerable young women anchors Fox employs attempted unsuccessfully to pronounce “charge d’ affaires.” Eventually, she explained that it was “French.“ Lord knows what will happen if Fox ever realizes there are boatloads of French speakers in Canada, especially in Quebec.
I suppose I shouldn’t be so cranky, but I am irritated by arrogant ignorance. Canada is, for us, the most important foreign country in the world. But since they don’t threaten to blow up our monuments, we dismiss them as a pleasant little people.
They are scarcely quaint. They are a vast multi-ethnic society long on mineral rights and raw materials and short on total population. Politically, they tend to be more liberal than we are, and Obamamania is, if anything, stronger in Canada than here.
However, they now have a conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, one of the few foreign leaders to be close to President Bush.
Now, there’s a new team. Apparently, most of what the President and the Prime Minister talked about were trade issues.
We don’t know if specifics came up, like the tangled mess over the rival structures to replace the Ambassador Bridge.
They didn’t seem to talk about the heightened security rules that have impeded travel and tourism. Nor did they solve Canada’s request to have U.S. environmental regulations waived for the oil sands in Canada’s western provinces.
None of these problems will be solved overnight. What they did do was start to build a relationship, which is essential.
There will be plenty of time to tackle these specific issues, and for CNN to discover once again, that yes, it snows in Ottawa in the winter, and people skate on the frozen Rideau Canal.
It’s an old French custom, don’t you know.
No one cares about Canada it is a US doormat..
Canadians need to confront it's ugly racist internal policies against it's native people..
Posted by: Thrasher | February 21, 2009 at 11:36 AM
It's actually spelled "chargé d'affaires".
Posted by: David Conrad | February 24, 2009 at 11:44 AM