Stephen Colbert, the crown prince of self-satirizing Americana, recently took a stab below the belt of Canadian national consciousness by lampooning the turmoil surrounding the Hockey Night in Canada theme. In a segment for his Comedy Central show, the Colbert Report host declared his intention to purchase the song’s rights. The song would thus serve as exciting musical accompaniment for American activities “like punching beavers in the face.”
The two-minute Colbert Report sketch received a fair amount of media coverage in Canada, though the joke was not universally well-received. After all, Colbert was tackling a pretty sensitive subject.
More than a week has passed since the CBC’s announcement of its Hockey Night licensing woes and CTV’s subsequent purchase of the theme song’s rights, but lamentations over its loss have yet to subside.
Summer is upon us, and melodrama appears to be the flavour of the season.
One news piece, published over the weekend in the Edmonton Journal, went so far as to compare the iconic jingle’s appeal to the “primal” satisfaction gleaned from sex and drugs. Dopamine receptors in Canadian brains have formed a chemical dependency to the beloved tune, the article says.
Apparently, when there is nothing left to say about an exhausted news event, procuring scientific proof of its importance is a good save.
That the 40-year-old Hockey Night theme holds profound sentimental ties for legions of Canadian hockey fans is without question. Whether the CBC’s loss of the tune is truly a national catastrophe is open for debate.
It’s probably safe to say that more important things have happened.
Like Julie Couillard’s rack, for example.
The hubbub surrounding Maxime Bernier’s affair is entering its second month of heavy rotation, and it seems that the time for thoughtful analysis—if ever such a time existed—is well behind us. Now there is little left to discuss, save for the physical attributes of Bernier’s former flame. After all, aren’t they the only reason we still care?
The Bernier story can be summed up remarkably quickly: Foreign Affairs Minister foolishly leaves government documents at his girlfriend’s house; for his carelessness, loses job. The Bernier “scandal” is an entirely different animal, spawned from rhapsodizing rhetorical acrobatics and a loving attention to detail—specifically, the oft-cited details of Couillard’s former-model status and past biker boyfriends. A month of media scrutiny has transformed Couillard from an ordinary woman with unfortunate romantic inclinations into something resembling a Sweet Valley High villain.
It would be easy to dismiss Bernier’s political blunder as an act of recklessness on his part; but wryly blaming the downfall of the “best-dressed man on Parliament Hill” on his ex-girlfriend’s bosomy charms is much more satisfying. The plunging dress worn by Couillard at Bernier’s 2007 induction ceremony may soon require its own Wikipedia entry.
In a summer thus marked by natural disasters and political turmoil in other parts of the world, we can at least rest assured that, in Canada, the bulk of our drama is self-made.
