Did you know that eagles don't have tear ducts? For more information on the bald eagle, contact Hinterland Who's Who's in Ottawa.

September 11th was this past weekend, and unless you sell commemorative airbrushed XXL t-shirts with balds eagle crying American-flag-patterned tears or are Glenn Beck planning another one of your stupid shouty circlejerks for fat old idiots, 9/11 is kind of a shitty, awkward day. I just wish they would skip it and go straight from September 10th to the 12th, like they do with the 13th floor in buildings.

How did our politicians spend the week of 9/11? By accusing each other of secretly being evil Americans! Hey, remember on September 11th – like, the one in 2001, not the date that happens every year – when Americans initially blamed Canada for letting all those terrorists into their country, which we didn’t? In order to show the world that the mistakes of 9/11 will not be commited again, instead of Americans accusing evildoers of having Canadian ties, here are a bunch of stories about Canadians who are accused of having ties to evildoing Americans:

• >> CBC: “The Americans are coming!” CBC opened up a can of worms – a perfectly good can, which in a free world could be lined up and shot with unregistered rifles – with a report on how the NRA, a loose collection of rednecks, weirdos and the late ape-lover Charlton Heston that somehow became a hugely powerful multi-million-dollar lobbying empire, has been meddling in Canadian politics for years. The Tories later responded that the CBC was full of shit. Which leads to:

• >> Liberals to Harper: “Stop being American.” Grit House leader David McGuinty gets into the act, calling out the Conservatives for trying to pound away at divisive wedge issues like the long gun registry just to polarize voters. You know who ELSE used polarizing wedge issues? That’s right, HITL-… I mean, REPUBLICANS. McGuinty, having successfully made his point that Stephen Harper- a politician – used basic political tactics, then ended by slamming down his fists and shouting: “Your honour, given this evidence, I present to the jury that Stephen Harper IS IN FACT the lost bastard son of George Bush and Sarah Palin, I REST MY CASE.”

• >> Conservatives to Ignatieff: “Am not, you are!” Pierre Poilievre, stand-up comedian to the Prime Minister, responded to these charges of his party’s Americanness: “Well like, it takes one to know one, and like, Michael Ignatieff’s the only one hear acting all American, maybe because he like, LIVED IN AMERICA.” At this point Poilievre made an “L” sign with his fingers while mouthing  the word “Loserrrrr.”

• >> MOSQUETARD SIGHTING! This one doesn’t involve a politician, but a Canadian journalist getting involved in the newest incarnation of American failure-groups such as Truthers, Birthers and Teabaggers - a real-life Mosquetard! Except this article isn’t even in the Sun, or in the confused ramblings of an old racist drunk writing on his McDonald’s wrapper – it’s in the somewhat readable Ottawa Citizen! Resident sweaty idiot David Warren farted out a bunch of words about how Herp-Dee-Derp, Dem Muzlins Are Buildin’ A Mosk On The 9/11 Hole STOPTEHMOSK!!1! New twist: this wordy Warren jackass dances around the fact that he thinks building a harmless cultural community centre among hundreds of other religious centres in a massive, multicultural city, is WORSE THAN this moron in Florida who keeps threatening to burn korans. It’s one thing to have ties to the NRA, but David Warren, your ties to the Mosquetard movement are inexcusable.

Parliament’s on summer vacation and all of the MPs are away at politician summer camp, roasting marshmallows, having inter-party water-balloon fights and telling spooky ghost stories about the Reform Party coming back from the dead. That means no real national political news is happening these days (unless you’re Australian, what in the name of vegemite’s going on down there?) So today we’ll be focusing on dumb articles (and one non-dumb article with an embarrassing addendum!) that have appeared over the past couple of days in Canada’s most distinguished birdcage-lining newspapers.

• > EMBARRASSMENT #1: Did you know that racism existed a hundred years ago? A hundred Pulitzers to the Ottawa Citizen’s Don Butler, who spent the weekend holed up in the National Archives, smoking a pipe and flipping through dusty stacks of historical documents to bring you this earth-shattering revelation: many great Canadian historical figures would be deemed racially intolerant based on modern standards! The context of the story is whether or not Charlotte Whitton, Ottawa’s first female mayor, should be recognized as an important historical Canadian in light of her being a class-A Jew-hater. That controversy aside, I just love the way the Citizen eagerly “reports” that, indeed, historical Canadians from a hundred years ago would be deemed downright intolerant today. Of course the entire Earth back then would probably also be deemed racially intolerant by today’s standards, not to mention sexist, homophobic and xenophobic, because it was a hundred fucking years ago. These old-timey historical people also believed that drilling a hole in your skull was a valid medical procedure and that diseases were caused by an imbalance of yellow bile. Did you know that moral standards change over time, and historical people lived a LONG TIME AGO, when people believed a whole bunch of wacky wrong-headed shit about each other, and “people” includes “people who appeared in your Grade 8 Canadian History textbook”? Thanks a heap for the history lesson, Don!

• > EMBARRASSMENT #2: Durrrr, dem muslins gon’ build da mosque at da 9/11, HURF DURF RAGE: Can you remember the last time a story so minor, so petty, so downright weapons-grade retarded, managed to fill so many endless days of braindead cable-news coverage and self-righteous editorial columns? (Probably some other bullshit about a month ago, right?) A mosque is being built in New York City, alongside hundreds of other mosques in a massive, multicultural city, including one existing mosque a block away from the proposed one. Even though pretty much nobody in New York gives a shit, this has become a ridiculous cause celebre among the type of angry idiots in Cousinfuck, Arkansas who hear the numbers “9″ and “11″ and get a rage-boner. Somehow the memo has been passed from metropolitan Cousinfuck to the dusty typewriter of Sun Media moron Peter Worthington, so he could shit out a horrible, horrible column about this Tea Party-invented, bullshit, fake-controversy. Apparently there’s some Muslim in Canada who has the BRAVERY to stand up and say that this mosque is an affront to American liberty, and, ugh, Worthington has such a crush on this Muslim chick who’s clearly aiming to be the next Fox News Special Islam Correspondent. If you’re bulimic and looking to drop some of that poundage from your big lunch, save the toothbrush-gag and repeatedly read the part of this column where Worthington claims that all Muslims in Canada secretly stand behind terrorism. Ugggh God, I-, I’m gonn-BLLEERRGGGCCHHHH.

This is Woody's face upon hearing more Rob Ford crap on this blog.

• > EMBARRASSMENT#3: National D’oh!st: Chris Selley – who, despite looking like a Geico caveman, isn’t dumb, and is actually pretty good in his smart-ass headline-combing gig at the Post – got stung by the horrible bite of Rob Ford over the weekend, a bite all too familiar to anything edible in Rob Ford’s fridge. Selley was talking about how dirt-ass bankrupt the City of Toronto was (no arguments here) and then half-defending Rob Ford’s frontrunner status in the mayoralty race, arguing that as much of a greasy clown Rob Ford “F-150″ is, at least he’d be willing to cut the pork – if not from his diet, then from the budget. As an example, Selley points out the $600,000 the city is willing to spend to keep the humps of lightly-slush-coated compressed garbage it calls ski hills open. That’s right, BC readers, Toronto’s got ski hills – eat your heart out at those majestic slopes and weep in envy! You see, at least Rob Ford would never vote to fund some – I’m sorry, what? Fiscal boy-scout Rob Ford voted to fund the ski hills? Hah! Check the meek withdrawal at the bottom of the story, and then the complete turnaround, as Selley goes from cautiously optimistic about Ford in the story itself to downright vengeful in the addendum. I’m pretty sure this goes to show that Rob Ford is not only undefendable, he goes out of his way to make his optimists look foolish, like the ominous clap of thunder that sounds after a forelorn cartoon character says “Well, we’re trapped out here, but at least it’s not raining…”?

Our contestants: The Toronto Sun editorial team, Ezra Levant, and the smalldeadanimals comment section. Everyone loses.

For the past week, we’ve been hearing about a boat full of Tamil refugees slowly inching towards our shores, reported in the same dire tone you’d expect from Tokyo TV on news that Godzilla had once again risen from the Sea of Japan. As this rusty barge full of impoverished, hungry third-world refugees slowly made its way towards British Columbia, there was a general consensus: we’re doomed. The battle lines were drawn, and this boat full of sick, begging Sri Lankans would crush our military, destroy our society as we know it, and take control of our nation. Enjoy Canada as you know it, folks, if I’m to believe what I’m reading in the papers, the second we let these guys off the boat a Tamil Tigers flag will be flapping in the breeze over Parliament.

With all of this hullabaloo, we’re starting a contest: which media source can inject the most fear-mongering, over-the-top, end-of-the-world sensationalist vitriol into an article about 40-dozen-odd brown people landing a boat? Points will be awarded for doom-predicting, logical fallacies, breathless fury at Canadian society in general, irrelevant political talking points and overall retardedness of presentation.

Who’s ready to dish out a Sri Spankin’?

Contestant #1

Contestant Number One is from Toronto, he enjoys sports and bikini girls, and his pet peeves are kids these days and Liberals, say hello to The Sun!

First of all, let’s drop the “migrant” bunkum. It’s meaningless left-wing political claptrap.

Whoa, “bunkum”! “Claptrap”! Fantastic usage of words which are only used by 72-year-olds, and we’re only in the first sentence of this unsigned editorial! Plus, we’ve got kneejerk political reaction expertly woven in, with the claim that the very word “migrant”, meaning “one who migrates”, is left-wing in nature. Take that, left-wing claptrap bunkum!

Like queue-jumpers, scam artists, back-door home invaders, plus a terrorist or two.

Like scallywags, trollops, ne’er-do-wells and common rapscallions, says I! Got a boat full o’ people you know literally nothing about, who haven’t even been identified or spoken to the media? Are they brown? The Sun can tell you exactly how many terrorists are on the boat: either one, or two.

Alright Contestant Number One, here’s your final chance to impress our judges, put all of your retardedness on the line!

If the MV Sun Sea were carrying 500 “migrants” from Afghanistan, home base for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, would we be allowing it to enter Canadian waters, or would we put firing [sic] a shot over the bow with a message that the next would be midships? [sic]

Outstanding answer, Toronto Sun! You’ve combined a false premise, an appeal to emotion, an outright falsehood (Pakistan’s the home base of al-Qaeda), ridiculous chest-thumping bravado, and – best of all! – the writer has become so heart-poundingly outraged at the end of this sentence that he can’t even put words together, drifting off into a stream of furious, spittle-flecked nonsense. Or would be put firing, indeed! Thank you, Contestant Number One!

Contestant #2

Contestant Number Two is the failed abortion of a sewer rat fucking a Reform Party yard sign. His interests include suing blogs for libel, which he can’t do in this case, because the preceding sentence was factual. Meet perpetual clown Ezra Levant!

Ezra pooped out a column about this Tamil stuff, and it was run by a variety of newspapers which couldn’t fill the page space with something more meaningful, like ads for escort services. I’ll direct you to the version at the Belleville Intelligencer.

Great news for health care! The Victoria General Hospital is reopening a whole ward that had been shut down. They’re even contemplating dusting off an extra emergency department. No more waiting lists in that B.C. city! Just joking.

Oh, ha ha, hah haha, ho-ho, ha-ha, funny joke Ezra Levant!

Reports from the ship say there was an outbreak of tuberculosis. It’s a safe bet the B.C. department of health didn’t set aside millions of dollars in their budget for that Third World disease. No problem — just take it away from MRIs or cataract surgeries. No one will notice, and if they do, let’s just call them racist.

Alright, look, this is an open contest and all, but we didn’t expect any professional retards to enter. This isn’t even fair. This is a swimsuit competition, and you just showed up topless. Your level of retardedness is making a mockery of this retardedness pageant’s standards of fair competition. In that four-sentence bucket of brain-vomit alone, it’s worth noting the passengers didn’t have TB, no money is being diverted from regular provincial healthcare funding, and, oh WHAT THE FUCK with your racism-baiting bullshit Ezra.

We’re an awfully long journey from Sri Lanka, an island country just off the tip of India.

Good Lord.

Let’s do what Australia does. They have a small island 2,600 km off the coast of Perth.

What? No. Jesus, Ezra. No.

Let’s build a Christmas Island. We can do it on one of our remote islands off the West Coast, maybe in the Queen Charlottes.

Oh come on Ezra, this was supposed to be a fair, clean pageant, and then you had to come in here seriously proposing that we turn the national-park-protected, Native-administered Haidi Gwaii (formerly known as Queen Charlotte Islands) into some sort of Gitmo. Ezra, you’ve tarnished this wholesome beauty pageant with your swollen boobjobs of illegal idiocy, and you’re hereby DISQUALIFIED.

Contestant #3

Small Dead Animals founder Kate McMillan. Hint: the dead animal in question is a Cougar.

Our third contestant in our Parade of Irrational Tamil Fearmongering Sweepstakes says that she enjoys fast motorcycles, tight leather pants, and blog posts involving no more than 15 keystrokes. Say hello to Kate McMillan’s Small Dead Animals comments section!

They and the Taliban now know what cowards our authorities are when it comes to enforcing laws against non-European “citizens”.

And the judges are giving a 8.0 for grammar abuse and barely-veiled racism, fantastic start Small Dead Animals!

Immigration is like a credit card with a high limit; Instant gratification, then pain and misery for decades. If you are a leftist, you have no idea what I mean.

After reading this comment, our judges gave ace commenter “Friend of USA” a slow, deliberate golf clap. You see, the judges were trying to make sense of his metaphor – wait, who gets the gratification and who gets the misery? Why does this commenter have decades worth of painful credit card debt? When white people immigrate, is it more like a tax-free savings account? Then the judges realized – of course we can’t understand what he means. We’re leftists.

Kindof surprised Barry Soetoro didn’t offer them asylum just to p-off the Arizonians.

HOLY SHIT A REAL LIFE BIRTHER! Invoking Barack Obama’s top-secret Kenyan-Muslim name! And, “Arizonians”! The judges here are RISING TO THEIR FEET in applause for the sheer awfulness of this comment!

Since there are women on board and the ship has been on sea for three months, my guess is that quite a few are pregnant by now (either willingly or unwillingly through rape).

Just, wow. Alright Small Dead Animals, finish us off with one classic, awful comment!

Foreign ships up to no good should not be allowed into Canadian waters. Foreign ships engaged in human smuggling operations should not gain admittance to Canadian waters on principle: human smuggling is illegal. Other grounds include what is in the best interest of Canadians – what is in the best interest of human cargo destined to be utilized as sweated labour, or more chillingly, as operatives – and what is in the best interest of an ethnic community that has long endured Tiger fundraising shakedowns without recourse to Canada’s legal remedies

Hey, wait a minute, this comment’s actually free of spelling mistakes and uses legal logic instead of baseless vitriol, and even seems to defend the rights of Tamils, while – oh wait, nevermind, this wasn’t a Small Dead Animals comment, it was posted on a Neo-Nazi forum by white supremacist Paul Fromm. Sorry folks, I get all mixed up when I’ve got multiple tabs going in my browser.

Final Results

Although the SDA comment section was impressively retarded, I’ve got to give the edge to the Toronto Sun for being even more embarrassing and incoherent, while actually being published in a newspaper people pay money to read.

Congrashrilankans!

He traded a Miranda for a Charlotte?!

In our earlier days, we complained that covering Canadian politics had none of the glitz and glam of covering American politics. Americans have got no less than three 24-hour news networks covering quasi-celebrities fighting for the future of the Earth, while we’ve got a few sleepy hosers banging on their desks on CPAC2. The other reason, though, was that American politics is fuelled by a bacchanalian party of drugs, sex scandals and things so horrifying they can’t even be mentioned on network television, which is where the sixth estate of bloggers enter the fray.

After years of waiting with dire anticipation for some no-name backbencher to get a quickie from a Byward Market hooker in his Parliament office, we’ve finally reached closure. A real Canadian sex scandal! Better yet, it’s someone we’d heard of! BREAK OUT THE CONFETTI!

Read it. Read it slowly. Savour it.

Five-hundred Pulitzers to the Star, for actually sharing all the sordid details! The Globe, for their part, is just calling this “an affair with a young lady” – nothing about doin’ it on a City Hall couch! (Gross!) The Toronto Sun, meanwhile, has stayed incredibly classy and has given Giambrone a new nickname – Giamboner. Jesus Christ, Sun! What are you, 13?  I didn’t know newspapers could publish the word “boner”, let alone turn it into the nickname of a major mayoral candidate.

Well, it looks like Giambrone’s mayoral bid may be screeching to a halt, much like a subway in rush-hour of the TTC he controls. Let’s see how it happened!

#1: Giambrone needed arm-candy that wasn’t as moody and scary-looking as Kristen Lucas. There was a mini-scandal earlier in the year when Eye Weekly falsely reported that Adam was gay, to which he responded “Am not”, followed by a rush to put a female near his side to prove it. Instead of the female he was boning, they needed someone kinda mousey and nerdy looking. Glasses, perfect! That leaves Kristen heartbroken and this Sarah chick probably feeling like a used sham, especially if she didn’t know she was being used as a prop. Still, what a classic dick move! Sliminess: 7/10. Comedy value: 5/10.

#2: He did all of this with text messages! Didn’t you learn anything from Tiger Woods?! Next time use smoke signals or carrier pigeons, anything that can’t be leaked to the media. Sliminess: 2/10. Comedy value: 8/10.

#3: Instant classic quotes: In another text message, Giambrone tells her: “I still think of you when I need … um … stimulation.” [...] “You’re also good-looking naked.” Sliminess: 9/10. Comedy value: 9/10.

#4: He was 32, she was 19. Ah, 19, only two years removed from the true creep zone… but still, gross. Sliminess: 10/10, Comedy value: 4/10.

#4: Adam’s campaign may have made up a fake threat from Kristen:

In the email she threatens to track down”ur `girlfriend’ and let her know about the affair we’re having. It doesn’t have to be true … ha! I hope U become mayor so that I could become TTC chair!”

Here’s the thing: this e-mail allegedly from Kristen, provided by Giambrone’s camp, spells Kristen’s own name wrong in the From line, and also has classic tween grammar that looks like something an adult pretending to be a 19-year-old would write. Doesn’t it have that fake vibe to it? I mean, what kind of death threat wishes the person succeeds in becoming mayor? What kind of weird threat is it for a young girl to dream of becoming TTC chair? The fuck is going on here? Consider this: if you read Kristen’s earlier text messages, she writes with perfect grammar. Now in an e-mail we’re supposed to believe she’s all about the “U” and “UR”? If Kristen actually wrote this while drunk, then it’s not as bad. (We’re totally absolving Kristen if that’s the case, too – how is there a threat in this e-mail? “I’m going to talk to the girl you’re pretending is your girlfriend, but good luck in becoming mayor.” That’s not threatening!) But if some old staffer in the Giambrone camp cooked this up, well… Sliminess: 8/10. Comedy value: 10/10.

Godspeed, Giamboner!

What's the deal with this "internet", am I right folks?

Hey, remember this Angelo Persichilli fellow? He’s done roughly one notable thing in his journalism career, and that was writing a column where he made up a bunch of lies, slander and unverifiable claims. Now he’s complaining that bloggers are making up a bunch of lies, slander and unverifiable claims using this crazy new “internet” gadget! Honestly, sometimes this stuff just writes itself.

Writing in his blog (!!) for the Hill Times, otherwise known as the rag that party staffers occasionally browse to see if their boss’s name was mentioned, Angelo offers a bewildered look at this thing called “inter-net”, which allows computing-machines to speak to each other through tele-phone lines. What an age we live in! What’s next, the microwaveable pizza? Anyways, Angelo has found out that occasionally people speak of Canadian politics on this inter-net, but that whenever bloggers try the delicate craft of political commentary, they inevitably devolve into petty gossip, scuttlebutt and lies – something that he wouldn’t know about, a man a mere 2 weeks away from an entire political party condemning his fraudulently-sourced attack piece published in an actual newspaper.

The irony is rich, and layered, like an onion. Please, Angelo Persichilli, ace journalist whose words get printed on actual paper and get delivered to actual humans, teach us about how the unwashed masses of unemployed cheeto-stained bloggers are ruining the written word!

First of all, a warning – the entire first half of his article reads like something the football player would hand in as his essay for a first-year media studies course at a community college. Major points he makes: the internet lets people get involved with stuff, but with this level of participation comes a threat that journalistic integrity suffers. Angelo Persichilli has blown the lid off of this emerging story! Perhaps if he acquires a time machine and travels back to 1995, before everyone and their grandchildren had figured out these basic truths about the internet, he could sweep the 1995 Pulitzer Prizes. He stretches out this main point over about 10 paragraphs, making you believe that the football player half-assed this essay about a half-hour before it was due.

“I believe that the internet should continue to be used and in the future will play a more important role.”

THANKS FOR PERMISSION TO KEEP USING THE INTERNET, I guess! Honestly, this would be where the media studies professor rolls their eyes and goes “Didn’t anyone teach these kids how to write an essay before sending them to college?”

“Using the new medium might be fun for individuals who have nothing to lose if they make mistakes.”

You’re right! It is entirely fun for us wacky bloggers to use this “new” (i.e., “about 20 years old”) medium of the internet to commit wacky slander and lies, things that you, a respected vanguard of the written word and of journalistic ethics, would never do.

[Source: Hill Times]

[The Globe&Fail making fun of Persichilli, which is a bad sign]

Honestly Angelo, I give your plot a B+ for believability but a D for creativity

First, read the article written by this no-name, editorial-page space-filler, Angelo Persichilli, a man who makes up for his silly name with a God-given knack for juicy gossip! And by “juicy gossip”, I mean “making up shit”.

The premise of this world-exclusive scoop is that Bob Rae, Ruby Dhalla, Carolyn Bennett (who FOLLOWS MAPLERAG ON TWITTER, so, no rude things to say) and Glen Pearson met at the chic Chateau Laurier and plotted treason against their leader over cocktails. This would sure be big news, if it were true at all! Problem is, both Rae and Bennett have come out as basically saying “everything this Angelo guy says is one gigantic lie”.

Here’s Carolyn’s letter that she sent directly to the Star!

‘I was a participant in the conversation Mr. Persichilli’s [sic] cites in his Dec. 6 column. He was not. I participated in a conversation about ensuring that Michael Ignatieff becomes the next Prime Minister of Canada. The column is a fiction of the columnist’s own device. He has done himself serious damage as a political commentator.’

Yeah, good luck getting that printed, the Star letters-to-the-editor page has a pretty strict policy that filters out anything that isn’t 83-year-old hippies complaining about potholes on their suburban cul-de-sac/kids these days/the shame that Stephen Harper brings them.

Now, look back at Angelo’s column – and I’m calling him Angelo from now on, I’m not gonna be arsed to copy and paste his vowel-filled surname again – and you’ll notice that it’s oddly specific for a conversation that he wasn’t part of, and that wasn’t overheard by any reporters, and that probably didn’t exist. Angelo has concocted a thrilling narrative of direct quotes, actions, emotions and characters, given that he’s describing something that happened purely within his realm of imagination.

Here’s our own 100% true editorial response! Everything I’m about to say is as verifiable and factual as anything written in Angelo’s column:

On the morning of Sunday, December 6th, a man named Angelo needed to think of something to fill space in his important, widely-respected Toronto Star column. Angelo Persichilli was a horrible gremlin of a man, standing a mere three feet tall, living inside a dank, foul-smelling cavern within the labyrinthine basement of the Toronto Star building. As he chewed his fingernails, he came across an idea: what if a coup was being staged within the Liberal party ranks? O, what a spectacular story that would make! Angelo set to work: he looked into his desk drawer and came across four musty sweatsocks. He fashioned the socks with crude googly-eyes and smiles, and as he crouched behind his desk, he created an elaborate puppet show. He imagined that he was in a world of mystical fantasy, where four Liberal MPs had gathered to pound Jagermeister shots and stage an act of treason against their leader, setting the stage for a full-scale Liberal party revolt. Angelo cackled with glee at the spectacle, as he forced the puppets to recite dire-sounding quotes about Michael Ignatieff’s leadership qualities. He quickly transcribed the sock puppet conversation into his notepad, then sent the hastily-scribbled article to his editor. “I have a scoop! I hear Ruby Dhalla, and Bob Rae, and they were talking, oh, the things they said, I hear them all!” he croaked with glee, as he pranced merrily through the halls, sock puppets still on his hands.

CAN I HAVE ANGELO PERSICHILLI’S PULITZER IF HE DOESN’T WANT IT?

Alaska is America's Newfoundland

Alright, let’s break down the players in this story in case you’ve been in a coma for 23 years:

This Hour Has 22 Minutes was a popular CBC news-parody political-satire series. About 10 years ago. Apparently it’s still on! Honestly, have any of you watched 22 Minutes lately? It’s basically a horrible, walking zombie corpse of its former self, telling old, unfunny jokes for lobotomized septuagenarian Newfies. The show hasn’t been fresh, relevant or witty since the days of Rick Mercer, Jean Chretien, and, uh… what else did we Canadians enjoy 10 years ago… listen to B4-4, I guess? Anyways, this was once a cutting-edge show, responsible for the format which inspired later shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Nowadays compared to what Jon Stewart is doing, 22 Minutes is somewhere on the comedy scale between The Ron James Show and History Channel documentaries about the holocaust.

Sarah Palin is a dumb, illiterate redneck from our half-retarded leftward neighbour, Alaska. She’s a bland, uninformed hick who is also, somehow, the most dangerous and potent force in conservative politics in the world’s only major superpower. GOD BLESS AMURIKA USA #1.

Anyways, these two somehow had a chance encounter! Remember when 22 Minutes was edgy, when Rick Mercer got access to both Bush and Gore in the 2000 election and made them both look dumb? When various 22 Minutes characters got access to every sitting Prime Minister from Chretien to today, and made them look like assholes right in front of their faces? Anyways, these days 22 Minutes settles for sending their most tired, played-out character (memo to CBC: character comedy only works when the character is funny, see also: Sagdiyev, Borat) Marg Delahunty, played by 22 Minutes vet Mary Walsh, to mess with Palin.

Without any concrete plan, they basically relied on this formula: 1) Let Marg Delahunty (formerly known as Marg the Warrior Princess, based on the series Xena which ran from 1995 – 2001, which gives you an idea of how fresh this character is) bust into Sarah Palin’s whirlwind book tour which various rednecks and idiots had been camping overnight for. 2) Let Sarah Palin say anything. 3) Comedy.

Well we watched the whole episode (God help us) and here’s what went down!

Marg, dressed in a Palin-esque red pantsuit, basically charged into the book signing in Columbus, Ohio (civic slogan: “Whenever Cleveland and Cincinnati are fully booked, experience Columbus!”) and started shouting. There were probably a lot of funnier things she could’ve shouted given this level of access, but here’s the mildly backhanded thing she went with:

(paraphrasing, because there’s no way I’m pulling 22 Minutes back up on Tivo, fuck that, I’m drunk) “Sarah, we came all the way up [?] from Canada, do you have any words of encouragement for our Conservative government who are trying to dismantle our healthcare system?”

Immediately, about 5 strong-armed goons converged on her and started shoving her outside, BUT: Palin actually responded! Ignoring any media training she may have gotten to “ignore people who are being dragged away by security guards” or “ignore people who MAY be making fun of you”, she went ahead and responded to the CBC cameras.

Palin: (again, paraphrasing) “Well, KEEP THE FAITH, we’re all aiming for the same goals of private enterprise dictating healthcare choices” or something else stupid and bland like that.

Now, Palin might not have known it, but in Canada’s unique brand of wry, unfunny humour (see: rest of CBC lineup), she was being mocked! Y’see, pretty much all Canadians love universal healthcare, so the idea of some halfwit like Sarah Palin encouraging the Tories to dismantle healthcare… well, it’s funny I guess… jeez, I’m not explaining everything to you.

After the shoving-based encounter, Marg hid out in the loading dock of the Columbus Borders bookstore and shouted pretty much the same thing to Palin as she was getting back on her bus, and Palin responded loud and clear with the same basic message, with “Keep the faith” being the core of the message:

Palin (actual quote this time!) “Canada needs to dismantle its public health-care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit.”

Boy, I hope Jesus lets the Conservative government dismantle Medicare, just like Sarah Palin prays for and no actual Canadians even consider as a possibility!

Anyways, there’s no video online yet (WHAT THE HELL CBC, I PAY YOUR SALARY WITH TAXES) but here’s a news article which probably has slightly more detail than we included! Fair warning: the Canadian Press article is full of lies, such as the second sentence which begins with “Comedian Mary Walsh’s beloved character“, which would have been an accurate observation circa 2003, the last time anything remotely related to This Hour Has 22 Minutes was beloved.

Remember the last time Canadians punk’d Sarah Palin? It was mildly funnier!

[Read: The CP Article]

Background information: the Ontario Provincial Liberals may or may not be adjusting their plans for a harmonized sales tax, and coffee and donuts may or may not be part of that plan… honestly, I have no idea whether or not the coffee/donut plan even passed, the writing in this column is just so hyperbolic and sensationalistic that it meanders from topic to topic, shouting nonsense at shadows like a drunk. Anyways, are you ready? Here’s what he wrote!

Only a premier and entourage who spend too much time in the chi-chi coffee houses of midtown Toronto and think nothing of paying with paper currency of large denomination for their double-skim-soy-extra-hot-half-lattes-made-from-beans-picked-by-virgins-in-the-highest-peaks-of-the-most-remote-mountain-plantations could have been so tone deaf.

Finally, someone had the courage to… uh, talk about how the Premier drinks virgin-picked coffee… in some imaginary part of “chi-chi”, “midtown Toronto” that only Jim Coyle knows about… and they pay with “paper currency” (!!) like some sort of billionaire aristocrat oil moguls… and by doing this, Jim Coyle taught us all a lesson about… sales tax?

Jim Coyle, I swear to God, if you ever string together 22 hypens in one sentence again, I’m going to cry.

It’s not the sentence, really, it’s just the fact that this article is the sort of ridiculous, populist, good ol’ Canadian boy chest-beating you’d expect in the Sun, in some editorial about hookers, or the Leafs, or kids these days.

[The whole stupid article Source: The Toronto Star]