Political Satire in Canada
I live up in the frozen wasteland, the Great White North, Canada. I can say "up" when referring to Canada because Google Analytics shows most people who read stuff here are in the US. Most of you can just skip ahead to the next unread subscription, because I'm going to talk about the state of news and political satire in Canada.
I saw the movie Man of the Year recently, and loved it. It was brilliant. The premise, in a nutshell, is that a Jon Stewart clone runs for president of the US, and hilarity ensues.
One of the points they made in the movie, that I've heard elsewhere recently as well, is that more and more people are getting their news from "fake news" shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Bill Maher, SNL, and similar shows. Shows that you're watching because they're funny. You're not really there for the news, but in the process, you become aware of what's going on politics and to some extent, in the world around you.
But only if you live in the United States.
What do we have in the way of political satire entertainment in Canada? Well, there's This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and the Royal Canadian Air Farce. In my opinion, slim pickings - and they're weekly shows. There is no daily fake news in Canada.
On the web, a few I've found are The Hammer, Daily Hog, and The Toque, none of which are publishing on a regular basis.
The US shows cover world news, which interests Canadians, and Canadian media generally covers US politics anyway, so all that's missing from US satire is any sort of local Canadian content. But that's a big loss.
Instead of jokes about American Politics, we need news about Tim Hortons and toques and hockey sticks and curling and people saying "Eh?" and newfies and the Canadian Tire guy and his wife and everything else that we identify as Canadian. And the news, of course.
The reason for this post is to ask, what am I missing? Are there some great programs that I'm just not watching? Share them with other Canadians by posting them in a comment here.