Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Conservative wit - Dernier cri !

When writing last night's post - Conservative wit : a necessarily short post - about the ridiculous new Con website that attacks Dion in the most juvenile fashion imaginable, I failed to notice that Not A Leader.ca is in fact a bilingual website. Quelle erreur!

Rick Mercer noticed, and tonight he explains why it matters :

"From a show business perspective what is really interesting is that the Prime Minister is making this blog available in both official languages. Now this is cutting edge and very risky because comedy in English generally doesn't translate that well into French, especially this kind. And by "this kind" I mean the "let's make the French look stupid because they are French" kind.

In the official Conservative party's blog, Kyoto the dog likes to quote his "master" Stephane Dion, and of course Dion speaks in broken English. According to the dog, no matter what happens Dion simply says ""You don't know what you speak about!" This is the genius in the comedy. The dumb Frenchie can't speak English! Dion is not a leader because English is his second language and he makes mistakes. I am very curious to see if this will be the blog that breaks through in both English and French Canada.

What's also funny about the blog is that Kyoto says really clever things when he is saying goodbye, like "Time for bed. I'll dream about France. Stéphane tells me we will move back one day."

This is funny because Dion was born in Quebec and has lived most of his life in Canada but his mother is from France. Now this part I admit I didn't get but I think the joke is if you keep telling people in English Canada he is from France they will believe it and apparently this will make him even more unpopular than he already is. There is comedy for you – Stephane Dion is not a leader. His mother is an immigrant! An immigrant's son wants to be Prime Minister! Again while I'm sure this kills inside the Conservative caucus I'm not so sure it will elicit the same guffaws in Quebec."

Heh.
(Cross-posted at The Galloping Beaver)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not A Leader. ca will no doubt amuse our French brethren alright.
I can almost hear their chuckles now over the pathetic attempt at political satire.

The French are masters at the game, taking it to the fine arts level.
They can ever so innocently cut the heart out of a puffed up public figure and with a straight face, offer it up to them as the le repas du jour.

Check out some of the photo shops on this page:
http://www.lecornichon.qc.ca/cgi-bin/cornichon.cgi?dir=polcan

The best Harper gif I've seen has to be this one, it's a classic.
Warning - NSFW (Naughty, Saucy & Funny Wankerboy)
http://www.lecornichon.qc.ca/journal/elementscorni2005/harper.gif

The poor CPC, they do snark about as well as they do gnugov.

Alison said...

Ewwww!

Jennifer Smith said...

"if you keep telling people in English Canada he is from France they will believe it"

Why not? Harper and Bush have been carefully cultivating the impression that they are both good ol' boys from the wild west for years now, and it seems to be working for them.

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