coupland's Journal: CBC and Patriotism

Today while mowing the lawn I started thinking about the relative absence of good political satire in the US. Sure, there's good satire to be had, but here in Canada you can turn on the TV just about any night of the week and hear our leaders being mocked, sometimes mercilessly, on prime time. For example, there is a show here on the CBC named "This Hour has 22 Minutes" that is absolutely biting political satire. No politician comes out unscathed.

Normally I would just shrug it off and think about something else, but it occurred to me there's something odd about this situation. The CBC. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. A Crown Corporation. Government-run. How come our local government-run broadcasting system turns out so much more biting political satire, directed at itself, than all the private stations of the US? Isn't this the opposite of how free market vs. socialism should work? If anyone is reading this I'd like to hear some theories, but I'll throw out a few. I'm not saying I'm endorsing any of them, I'm jut throwing them out for thought:

The Lowest-common-denominator Syndrome - Maybe private companies are so fixated on ratings and popularity that they don't dare say anything controversial for fear of dividing their audience along political boundaries. I suppose that wouldn't help them sell more Tide. Everyone knows the CBC has a lot of cultural programming they couldn't get away with if they were in a race for ratings, no doubt some of this attitude applies to political commentary as well.

Culture and Political History - Perhaps it's the difference in cultural makeup between Canada and the US. Certainly our comedy is noticeably different, and Canadians tend to share the same love of satire as the British. No one can deny that Canadians and Brits love political satire. But the fly in this ointment is that the US and Canada were settled at the same time, so we have the same parentage. However, we embraced British culture longer because of our loyalist history. Certainly the CBC is modelled after the BBC. Perhaps American political satire died a quick death because after the Revolution there was such a sense of pride in the fledgling government, and such a desire to avoid outright criticism of the government in its early years that political satire died a swift death. Just ideas and conjecture, nothing more.

The War Culture - This will be unpopular, but anyone with a remotely objective view of things will admit that the US has been in a war economy since the 40's. In times of war political satire can lead to dissent and is necessarily supressed to some degree. No doubt even through self-censorship. Perhaps the uncertainty of the second world war, the trepidation of the Cold War, the repression of McCarthyism, the political maelstrom of the Vietnam conflict, countless minor wars, and the solidarity of post-9/11 America have all contributed to a culture that avoids criticism, and instead rallies behind the President. The flaw with this argument is that political dissent in America has always been healthy and strong, just not in the media, and not in the form of political satire.

Ultimately the reason may be none of the above, or more likely, a combination of the above and some other factors. I just find it odd that our state broadcasting corporation thrives on brutal political humour, yet the power of the private sector in the US doesn't seem to have any inclination to do the same.