In a confidential diplomatic cable sent back to the State Department, the American Embassy warned of increasing mistrust of the United States by its northern neighbor, with which it shares some $500 billion in annual trade, the world’s longest unsecured border and a joint military mission in Afghanistan.
“The degree of comfort with which Canadian broadcast entities, including those financed by Canadian tax dollars, twist current events to feed longstanding negative images of the U.S. ”” and the extent to which the Canadian public seems willing to indulge in the feast ”” is noteworthy as an indication of the kind of insidious negative popular stereotyping we are increasingly up against in Canada,” the cable said.
A trove of diplomatic cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of publications, disclose a perception by American diplomats that Canadians “always carry a chip on their shoulder” in part because of a feeling that their country “is condemned to always play ”˜Robin’ to the U.S. ”˜Batman.’ ”
Very true about the Canadian press, esp. the CBC (self-proclaimed “Canada’s public broadcaster”), and esp. during the reign of George W Bush, since the Canadian press hates conservatism of almost every sort. They state their views in such a way as to give the impression that they are the views of the avg. Canuck on the street, but not so. Polling fairly consistently shows the avg. Canuck to be far more conservative than the CBC would like him/her to be. The same goes for our view of Americans– our media does not represent the avg. Canuck in that regard either.
Ian+, I can partly agree, but I think you’ve gone too far in the other direction. I think it would also be helpful to draw a distinction between Americans and America.
What’s wrong with the CBC calling itself Canada’s public broadcaster? Is there any other national public broadcaster? None that I’m aware of.
Is any of this really news? Its the kind of opinion that is willingly shared at cocktail parties. Diplomats are a fairly pragmatic lot.
Not news to me.
Having known well quite a few Canadians and visited there several times, and my wife having worked among Canadians for nearly 20 years, I certainly agree that many have a chip on their shoulder about the US. Sort of a love/hate relationship.