Canada's war on Red Eye

When Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, "Canadian Forces chief of land staff", testified to Parliament that the entire Canadian Forces "would need a year-long break from operations after the mission in Afghanistan winds down in 2011," Greg Gutfeld's reaction on Fox News' comedy Red Eye was, "The Canadian military wants to take a breather, to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white capri pants."

That's funny stuff. And it's not hard to see the humor in a national military "taking a year off" -- or at least it's not hard if you have any conception of a vigorous national defense. And anyway, it was a one-liner in a one-off cable show at 3 AM Eastern; a secure, confident nation wouldn't take any notice of it.

But in the great Canadian tradition, a silly comedy segment at 3 in the morning on American cable TV became the subject of national outrage, condemnations and demands of apology from the Minister of Defence, front-page newswire stories, editorial cartoons, demands of retaliation, calls for censorship, and general smug, contemptuous America-bashing ("ignorant Americans", etc., etc.) -- the "we are all Canadians in the Age of Obama" having apparently worn off just two months in.

Gutfeld's first question, "Isn't this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country? They have no army," ought to have been a clue to outraged Canadians that the whole thing was a laugh. But then, Canadian newspaper editorialists actually write earnest editorials accepting as fact that the United States is planning to annex Canadian water supplies, so maybe such an obvious joke was lost on them.

For the record, Red Eye is completely silly -- not serious news or commentary -- and Greg Gutfeld's Red Eye persona on political matters is a caricature of the "Ugly American". IT'S ALL A JOKE.

Gutfeld and most Americans, it is true, do not take Canada seriously as a power in the world or as a country with any national martial vigor. So if that is the Canadian complaint with this 3 AM Eastern cable show, at least it wouldn't be a mischaracterization of Red Eye and American opinion. And when the overwhelming majority of Canadians want to withdraw their couple thousand troops from Afghanistan before the war is won and blithely conclude "we can't win," and when Canada's opinion leaders deliver daily homilies on how Canada must reject such militarism and return to "peacekeeping", and when the Canadian Forces brass says the military needs a year off, and when the national armed forces excises the word "armed" from its very name -- then good luck defending Canada against the charge it's lost any vigorous martial impulse.

But if the issue is the troops themselves, neither Greg Gutfeld nor any American that I've ever heard would think to disparage the great courage and sacrifice of any soldiers fighting alongside their own. The individual Canadian soldiers who have served in Afghanistan are heroes all. They deserve all the honor of the American heroes fighting in the same valorous cause.

Those Canadian soldiers carry their weight and then some, but they are only a handful, and they are in the service of an elite and population that have absolutely no stomach for a fight, so when the chief of land staff of the Canadian Forces is actually reporting to the Canadian Parliament that the military needs a year off, that is a separate issue entirely from the honor of Afghanistan veterans, and eminently worthy of a joke.

To react to a segment on a show like Red Eye with such a national furor is humorless, petty, thin-skinned in the extreme, diminishing of the nation, not to mention clueless about the cause of the offense. It's all a joke, Canadians. Actual, original, politically-incorrect humor; not shrill Democrat Party talking points couched as comedy, like The Daily Show, and not strained-peas comedy for the arthritic set who take up the prime column space for a hero's wage in Canadian newspapers, like The Royal Canadian Air Farce.

The irony is that the reaction has actually affirmed the premise of the joke.

The unbecoming, pathetic, self-defeating Obama cult of personality

I always was an admirer of President Bush, but it never occurred to me to utter a sentiment like, "I pledge to be a servant to our president," as Demi Moore vowed to President Obama; or to glorify the man in idealized portrait posters, like the Soviet-style iconography of Barack Obama; or to appropriate Christ, like the mother of Denzel Washington on the occasion of Obama's inauguration: "He came to lead us to the original design of what we are supposed to do on this earth"; or to chant the leader's name in unison with masses of fellow-travellers, like the crowd on Parliament Hill for Obama's Ottawa visit chanted "O-ba-ma."

A hysterical cult of personality -- formerly a feature of totalitarian societies -- has attended the ascent of Obama. It is unbecoming of a democratic society, it is certainly pathetic, and it may even prove to be self-defeating.

Time was, corporations subscribed to the business sense neatly summed up by basketball player-turned-sportswear mogul, Michael Jordan: "Republicans buy sneakers too." But that was before the "Age of Obama."

Pepsi launched a campaign asking, "What would you say to the man who is about to refresh America?" sponsored one of the inaugural balls, and was on hand for the pre-inaugural festivites with Pepsi paraphenalia reading "Hope" and "Change." Not traditionally what folks have been looking for in a pop company.

CBS amended its famous eye logo to look like the logo of the Obama campaign, in promos for its "Yes We Can Monday" lineup. ShopNBC hawked a "CHANGE HOPE BELIEVE OBAMA" throw blanket, with jumbo jacquard portrait of the dear leader himself, for $47 -- MSRP $49.99.

And BeaverTails Canada Inc. made a household name of itself by adding a Nutella "O" to its signature Beaver Tail and calling it the "Obama Tail."

But the most disgusting specimens of Obama personality cultism have to be the performances in praise of Obama by children. There's the "Obama Kids" with "We're Gonna Change the World": "Obama's gonna change it. Obama's gonna lead 'em." Etc, etc.

And the "Obama Youth - Junior Fraternity Regiment," who performed a martial drill, in fatigues. They marched and chanted, "Alpha, Omega. Alpha, Omega," which typically refers to God. They then recited "Because of Obama" personal statements, and punctuated some choreography and Obama campaign sloganeering with shouts of "Yes We Can!" Finally they recited features of the Obama health-care plan, and closed with a shout of "O!"

Then there's the news. 2008 marked the very fag-end of the long process by which the post-Second World War professionally-impartial press finally became unabashed agents of the Democrat Party.

And nowhere moreso than in this country. The Canadian Press -- with only the most saccharine praise for Obama and only the shrillest scorn for Bush -- became indistinguishable from a wide-eyed Obama volunteer:

"The star who shone the brightest was the man who sang nary a note — Barack Obama, who enthralled a crowd of 500,000 with a brief message of hope."


"A stern and steady Barack Obama addressed the nation" -- "a nation still basking in the glow of his victory." "His professorial remarks about the economy were in striking contrast to the string of malapropisms and nervous chuckles that often characterized many of his predecessor's appearances." "Roosevelt ruled with calm assurance" and "a presidential Obama sounded a similar tone."

After "the dying days of George W. Bush’s wildly unpopular presidency" -- those "eight years of blunders by George W. Bush" and "eight years of unpopular Republican rule" (no explanation as to how a president supposed to be "blundering" and "unpopular" for eight full years managed to get himself re-elected after the first four) -- "the new president took on the formidable task of undoing the damage of his predecessor’s administration." And so on, ad nauseum, in every dispatch of the Obama news service of the Canadian Press.


There are a few Obama supporters who recognize that things have gotten a little out of hand, but they invariably hasten to add that Barack Obama himself has done his gosh-darndest to disabuse his followers of this notion he's a latter-day messiah. If so, he's done an entirely ineffectual job.

And where did all this begin if not with Obama himself? Adopting "Hope" as a campaign slogan. Or thundering down at the rapturous masses, on the subject of his own ascendancy, "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when ... the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Or claiming a "righteous wind" for his campaign, which surely would never have been received quite so gleefully had it been claimed by a certain other president of the United States.

So, a president has become a celebrity and a fad, and those things have a way of looking very old once they're not quite so new. The press have become the boy who cried wolf, and no-one will believe they're just reporting the facts the next time. And impossible expectations have been raised, and it won't be so easy to plead for patience or ask forgiveness for failings when you've promised the moon and the stars.

Andrew W. Smith, Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia