65: Who's Canadian?
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From PRI Public Radio International. From PRI Public Radio International. From WBS Chicago, it's this American life from our glass. And our program today really began at a dinner conversation about a month ago. Three members of the This American Life staff, at least Nancy and Paul, were eating together. Well, we were all out at Leo's. I don't know how it came up. I don't know which one of us brought it up. I don't know how it started. I don't know how it first came up. I don't even remember how we got on the topic, honestly. But we started mentioning Canadians. And I guess I was doing most of it as the Canadian in the group. He started with William Shatner and I thought that was wrong. What did he say? That he was Canadian. People got increasingly freaked out. That's what he said about him. That's all he said about him. But he was Canadian, yeah. And what's the problem with that? Well, the problem is that I grew up watching, you know, Star Trek. And he's just, he is like my American ideal. I mean, he represented for me everything that's good about America in a way. The least was saying, you know, if William Shatner is Canadian, I might as well be Canadian. It isn't just that there are Canadians among us. It's that they're at the very epicenter of our culture. It's the guy who created Saturn in it live and Jim Carried and Michael J. Fox. It's Mike Myers and the blonde from Baywatch, Pamela Anderson Lee. And the director of the Terminator films, James Cameron. It's Matthew Perry and Jason Priestley, Alaines Marissette, and Celine Dion. And the bassist and Courtney Love's band, Hole. I remember Elise being continually and repeatedly amazed. I was shocked. I was very shocked. I mean, she stopped eating, I think. And she, and it wasn't just that, you know, she'd be shocked at one and would then sort of go on. I mean, she'd come back to ones that were shocking earlier. You know, Peter Jennings, I can't believe it. I remember Elise being really freaked out about Peter Jennings. Peter Jennings especially. But he's just a news reader. But he delivers information about America to Americans. He's like the leader who binds us together. Yeah. And he interprets our culture for us. So it's like having, you know, some like Chuck O'Silvacian is like a group vice president or something. I mean, it's just like wrong. There's something about that that's wrong. She just thought it was wrong. Like that it actually, there should be an actual blog against it. For there to be a Canadian broadcasting the news? Well, anchoring. I mean, I think CNN should probably let a CNN anchor be Canadian, but not ABC. Well, I think that Americans generally think of Canadians as a pretty quiet, nondescript, stay-at-home kind of culture. And when Canadians come to the United States and have that kind of impact on the culture, I think it's a surprising fact. But I also think that it's a little disturbing. It's spooky to Americans because they haven't known. You know, it's like suddenly discovering that everything you believed about someone was false. I guess it's the whole invasion of the body snatchers syndrome. You know, they look like us, but they're not us. It's weird to like people hearing that somebody they didn't know was gay is gay. And it turned them back on themselves, that they could have brushed so close and not known. He's Canadian, so that's why he never married. Exactly. The thing about the Canadians among us is it's not clear what it means. Well, I think that's part of what is so compelling about it, is that it doesn't suggest anything. You know, it's not that, you know, "Oh, he's Russian. He must be communist." You know, "Oh, he's French. He must be rude." It's just a sense of that they're a little off somehow in some way that you don't understand and you can't pin it down and that makes it all the more unsettling. You can't put it anywhere and just have it rest there. It's just sort of continually surprising and disturbing. Well, today in our program, we try to make some sense out of what it means, having this Canadian menace among us. If it is a menace, all this hour's stories buy and about the Canadians in our midst. Act one, white like me, one Canadians attempted passing in New York City, Act two, the world's most perfect pneumatic vacuum in which around Sarah Val arm wrestles with Ian Brown of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, over what it means to be an American and what it means to be a Canadian. And if they are any different at all. Act three, uting, an exposé on the pro-Canadian bias in Peter Jennings, nightly newscast for ABC and more. Act four, who's Canadian? Two siblings, separated, not at birth. One gone to live in Winnipeg, one gone to live in Manhattan. Their stories stay with us. Act one, white like me. As a 17-year-old David Rakoff moved from Toronto, Ontario to New York City, he's been there now for half his life, works in publishing, and as a writer and actor. This American life listeners may remember his story about portraying "Sigmund Freud" in the Christmas windows at Barney's, a few months ago. David Rakoff says that from the day that he arrived in New York City, he decided he was going to try to efface his Canadianness and pass for a local. My tactics were to adopt a certain kind of world where he jaded anxious neuroticism. And it was taken on as a cosmetic mantle at the beginning until such time as, you know, you simply can't pull the mask off your face. Oh my God, it stuck. There you are years later, a jaded, affectless, neurotic, disenchanted, sad person. But, you know, that's fine. Would you consciously not bring up the fact that you were from Canada at any point when you think that's one of those years? No, no. I would never consciously not bring it up. I would occasionally consciously bring it up because it would, amazingly enough, make me more exotic. Because let's face it, in New York City, I'm a Jewish guy with dark hair who works in publishing with a gift for the gab. You know, I meet myself coming and going 12 to 14 times an hour. So occasionally I'll need that little bit of spice. And what's more spicy than being Canadian, I ask you. I tell the Canadians tend to know who else is Canadian, you know, who's famous. All the time. Everything. And that, to me, is chemical. You know, they're the easy ones, you know, Glen Ford, Kate and Alagan, Hume, Cronin, Cowboy, Junkies, Monty Hall. Monty Hall, wait. Monty Hall. Monty Hall.
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