The CBC

We were watching Rick Mercer last night. If you do not receive Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) on your cable or dish or intravenous entertainment drip, that’s too bad. Over the years, there have been great Canadian satires and comedy. There’s SCTV, CODCO, The Royal Canadian Air Farce… They have a history of good satire on governments. In the USA, we have to pretty much toe the line of the people who actually own the country: the Organized Religion-Corporate-Big Government-Big Union combine. And that’s fine. But when someone steps out of line, such as Bill Maher did during the beginning of the "Glorious Fatherland War to Secure Oil and Depose a Really Bad Guy and Spread! Democracy" ... ( a cheap shot, I agree. When I hear of spreading democracy across the world uttered by the present power group, I think of some large authoritarian figure looming over a frightened figure captioned Dame Democracy and growling, “ Against the wall!…Assume the position!…Spread ‘em!”) …the Media responds as it should and gave him his walking papers, jeering at him that if he did not like it here, maybe he should go live in Kofi Annan’s hometown! We have people that do satire here. We do not showcase them nearly as much in prime time, however. Laughter is subversive. HOWEVER, laughter is also accompanied by feelings of well being, assuming one is not wearing the top hat that is the target of young rascals’ snowballs. (I never wear the topper after a good snow, even if it is Mozart that is being pummeled at the local Opera.) For some extremely odd and mysterious reason, our primary form of Comedy is the juxtaposition of incongruous images, such as Waging War + 14 Million Dollar Inaugural while people are dying at home with no medical coverage and people are dying in the wars. This kind of Comedy is not accompanied by a feeling of well being.