Talking To Themselves

Boing Boing has a post about Rick Mercer’s “Talking To Americans” joke.

Living in Canada, I often have the opportunity to see Rick Mercer's comedy. And I often pass it up.

Mercer can be funny and insightful, but the "Talking To Americans" bit, once just a segment on a half-hour program, then a series of one-hour specials, is nothing but the same joke over and over again. Americans are ignorant of Canada, but unhesitant to express opinions --- that's the joke. Ha ha.

Well, I get it. I get the joke. Ha ha. When can we stop hearing the joke?

I guess Canadians find the "Talking To Americans" joke funny because Canadians can't actually express an opinion, informed or not, without either prefacing the opinion with "Sorry" or adding "Sorry" to the end. It's that sort of passive-aggressive, snarky, stealth-opinion-expressing practice that makes Canadians seem unremittingly self-righteous, and at the same time timid, to Americans who must live among them. It takes some getting used to.