Talking to Americans

Talking To Americans was a regular feature presented by Rick Mercer on the Canadian political satire show This Hour Has 22 Minutes. It was later spun off into a one-hour special that aired on April 1, 2001 on CBC Television. View image (http://www.canadiancelebs.com/images/rmercer.gif)

It consisted of interviewing Americans on the street and convincing them to agree with ridiculous statements about Canada. The intent was to satirise American ignorance of its neighbour and the world in general. Examples included:

• persuading Americans to congratulate Canada on legalizing insulin or adopting the twenty-four-hour day,
• various political controversies involving one or more Canadian states,
• congratulating the Canadian government on building a dome over its "national igloo" (apparently a downsized version of the United States Capitol) to protect it from global warming,
• agreeing that the U.S. should bomb Saskatchewan or send ground troops into Gilles Duceppe,
• proposing the absurd idea that a Canadian company actually had the mining rights to Mount Rushmore,
• congratulating Canada for officially joining North America,
• controversy around the reconstruction of the historic "Peter Mans Bridge", named after "Prime Minister Peter Mans" (actually a pun on the name of Canadian journalist Peter Mansbridge),
• asking if Jean Chrétien-Pinochet should be charged with crimes against humanity.
• asking Harvard students and professors to sign a petition asking Canadians to discontinue the practice of abandoning the elderly on ice floes.
• congratulating Prime Minister Tim Horton on getting a double-double (support on both sides of Congress).

In fact, some of the Americans interviewed seemed just to be playing along, although professors at distinguished American universities seemed always to be taken in by absurdities like the Saskatchewan seal hunt. The only Americans who were shown outsmarting Mercer were a university student who spends her time laughing at him, and a small child who pointed out to his mother that Canada has provinces, not states.

The most famous segment, aired in 2000, featuring Mercer asking then-presidential candidate George W. Bush – who had previously stated that "you can't stump me on world leaders" – for his reaction to an endorsement by Canadian Prime Minister "Jean Poutine".

Bush responded diplomatically and said he looked forward to working together with his future counterpart to the north. However, the prime minister's name at the time was Jean Chrétien; poutine is in fact a French-Canadian fast food dish of french fries, gravy and cheese curd. Also, Chrétien had not endorsed any candidate at the time. Bush's opponent at the time, Vice President Al Gore, also fell victim to Mercer, when he was asked about the Canadian capital Toronto (it is actually Ottawa). (To be fair to Gore, he never said whether he would go, he wasn't thinking beyond the election.)

The special was a co-production between Island Edge Inc and Salter Street Films. It made news on both sides of the border, and several U.S. television stations sent their own crews to try similar stunts in Canada (asking people, for example, about 'President Clint Eastwood') with little success.

Although the show received Gemini Award nominations, Rick Mercer thought it would be inappropriate to make fun of American-Canadian relations so close of the events of September 11, 2001 and requested that the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television pull the nominations.

External links

• CBC Television - Talking To Americans (http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/program/index.jsp?program=Talking+To+Americans)
• Rick Mercer- Talking To Americans CBC This Morning (http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/thismorning/sites/a&e/mercer_010330.html)
• IMDB: Talking to Americans (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0282195/)
• Stephenville: Talking to Americans (http://www.stephenville.org/americans/)
• Why Should Americans Care? (or Can Rick Mercer Get Any More Desperate?) (http://www.pulpanddagger.com/movies/essay_three.html) – from The Great Canadian Guide to the Movies (and TV)