This isn’t jewlicious and it’s not meant as a political statement but it is pretty funny. A Canadian comedic duo managed to get through to Sarah Palin, convincing her staff (and her) that the speaker was French prez Nicholas Sarkozy. Note to the Canadianly-uniformed: the name they mention is not even close to the name of the Canadian Prime Minister (Stephen Harper) and there is no Prime Minister of Quebec, though there is a Premier. From SCTV to Kids in the Hall to Trailer Park Boys to this, Kanadian Komedy is still where it’s at.

Ed Note: In response to Larry’s ludicrous assertion that the US should invade Quebec, here’s a little history lesson for you silly Americans c/o the Arrogant Worms and their song about the War of 1812. A war that all y’all lost. To Canada. Enjoy.
Love ck

[audio:Arrogant_Worms_The_War_of_1812.mp3]
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  • Although I am voting for Obama…. If i had power, I woudl declare war on Quebec and call in an air strike at that radio station. I would boycott all products made in Quebec, but actually there are none of any value to purchase. Although they thnik their bagels are all that.. they aren’t. BLAME CANADA! FOR McCAINS DEFEAT

  • Well, you would have thought the reference to Johnny Halliday early on would have given the prank away, but I suppose knowing anything at all about European culture would have been a betrayal of her base.

  • …And the accents were totally French Canadian but how would she know that? Nevermind the silly things they were saying in french were ludicrous like they mentioned a song Carla Brunei wrote called a pig in lipstick. But in French so she had no idea. A totally cringe-worthy performance. Though Sarah Palin does seem sincere…

    So yeah Larry. Last time y’all tried to invade Canada we kicked your ass and burnt the white house down. Also, Canada is the US’s largest trading partner and Montreal bagels are sublime while new york bagels are just doughnut shaped buns.

  • That Sarkozy is pretty hot for a guy with some Jewish blood in him.

  • The media is totally in the tank for McCain for not giving this more coverage. lol.

    That was hilarious – especially the fact that their accents were as French Canadian as French accents come.

  • “And thank you for taking two minutes to talk to… me!”

    Starf*&^er!

    She totally gushes like a little kid when he starts talking about her becoming president.

    Another hit moment: The nervous laugh she lets out when he talks about how pleasurable it is to kill things.

    The whole time she talks to him like she’s using a potentially diplomatic moment for more campaigning – on domestic issues. Always a useful series of items to bring up with foreign leaders.

    The permanent campaign is dead. Long live the permanent campaign.

  • “If one voice can change the world for Obama, one Viagra can change the world for McCain!”

    “Oh… good. Thank you. Yes.”

    “That was really edgieee.”

    “Well, good!”

    This is addictive. What a spectacle.

  • Maybe she’ll try to send the Mounties against them.

  • CK you wouldn’t know a real new York bagel if you got hit in the head with one. Plus your coffee sux. And y’all can’t spell. 😛
    Of course, for the last eight years we’ve been casting a nervous glance to our neighbors (sorry, neighbours) in the North as our last hope as the situation around here worsens…
    On a different note, maybe you & Muffti can explain how a country with some of the kindest & most peaceful people on the planet boasts the bloodiest & most violent sport as its national pastime…

  • What’s the coffee in Canada like? As long as it’s not as watered-down as in its southern neighbour, I’m game. 🙂

    BTW, this received a lot of media coverage, at least on traditional media and their internet appearances.

    Maven, I’ve encountered ignorance of European culture all over the political sphere in the US. The area I live in has got more UNESCO World Heritage sites than all of the US in total, but most Americans would neither know those here as little as they know their own. Maybe it’s culturual complacency; I’ve found Canadians on average to be more educated about foreign issues. I’ll do a post on the creation of intellectual elites soon.

  • Hi Sheela! Or as they say in parts of Canadia “Bonjour Sheela!” I lived in New York for two years. I’ve sampled all their bagels from what was considered the very best to the most pedestrian. Bread shaped like a doughnut. Sorry. Montreal bagels are very different. You should try them! I didn’t know there was anything distinctive about our coffee other than the fact that at least in Montreal, capuccinos and espressos etc. predate the advent of Starbucks.

    How is hockey the bloodiest and most violent sport of all time?? I thought that honour went to the sport of “Feeding the Christians to the Lions.”

    Anyone enjoy the song I embedded by the angry worms?

  • I am happy to fund and host a comparison bagel taste test on neutral ground between Montreal and NYC

    The Great Bagel Bake Off. $1 Admission. $1 gets you sample bagels and the right to cast a vote. All proceeds go to the Jewlicious Foundation Fund for Beer.

    The only reasons that the Canadians (British) beat the Americans in several War of 1812 battles were (1) New England states failed to provide troops, and (2) that was the year the Americans were busy studying for their SAT exams.

  • I’ve had “un pointe de pizza” in Montreal but no bagels. Hook me up & I’ll take you for cafe con leche in Washington Heights.
    Then we can watch a street brawl and if we’re lucky a hockey game will break out.

  • Sheela, Montreal bagels really do take first place but it’s ideal if you have them at 4 a.m. in the state people usually find themselves in if they are up at 4 a.m.

    Hockey has become pretty brutal but bloodies and most violent of all time? Have you never seen a boxing match?

  • Frau Froylein:

    Which area is that?
    I suppose a motto like “Europa wird kulturell sein oder es wird nicht sein” wouldn’t work in the USA, though, of course, the Jews were traditionally negatively labelled as “cosmopolitans” (which wouldn’t be such an insult now after Sex and the City), so I suppose we’re supposed to know more about the world. While I still think many people know who Johnny Halliday is, I suppose in the US anything in a foreign language is verboten, which is different than Europe (though I don’t anticipate a big Udo Jurgens fan club in the US under any circumstance).

  • Hey Maven, I once read that Udo’s actually got a fanclub in the New World. 🙂 But true, he isn’t exactly an intellectually challenging cultural highlight.
    My whereabouts is here: http://www.welterbe-mittelrheintal.de
    Agreed, (US) Jews appear more culturally educated than their non-Jewish peers on average; I suppose widely spread families and the not uncommon love of travelling help getting to know places.

    And will somebody finally enlighten me about Canadian coffee? According to Muffti, it’s about time I tried out Canadian men. 🙂

  • “Have you never seen a boxing match?”
    Sure did. Francois Leroux vs. Tony Twist 11/06. Helluva fight.
    Love the idea of a Great Bagel Bakeoff. Where do I sign up?
    Getting back to the topic, that prank was f’in hilarious.

  • Froylein:

    I know this is way off topic, but I have to say, that having grown up in a Jueddisch/Deutsch speaking household, listening to bands like Klee or Wir Sind Helden is strangely calming. I was with relatives in Boro Park (the Chassidic area) and apparently the hassidic kids around the age of 20 buy ipods preloaded with music, and apparently they are very into Bushido (probably for the same reason). Its one of the strange paradoxes which are described in this essay: http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/torah_commentary/chanukka.html/document_view

  • Maven, just scanned through the essay; interesting, but a few errors in it (e.g. while Protestantism rejected the Roman Catholic Church, it still at large put up episcopal hierarchical structures plus Luther and Melanchthon from the start argued that obedience of state authorities was a good Christian thing to do, but I digress). Many of my Chasidishe friends (you may find me in BP every now and then as well) love German pop music; much of current Yiddish music is somewhat cheesy and far from cool, so I can understand the appeal of modern German bands. Apart from the language they easily understand, the lyrics reflect issues young people are concerned with that you won’t necessarily find among frum music, e.g.:

  • Is that Juli? I have their albums, though I think the Wir Sind Helden videos are funnier 🙂

    In terms of the essay, the argument about Protestantism is Hermann Cohen’s, trying to convince the American Jews to oppose US intervention against Germany during WWI, arguing that the true allies of the Jewish people in history are the Germans with their creation of Protestantism, etc, not that of the author or Derrida. Anyway, its an eerie view of German-Jewish relations just before WWII, and had it not been for the nazis, it might still be arguable, as the presence of German rap on Chassidishe teen ipods attests…

  • Actually, our national sport has always been Lacrosse, but hockey was added after an amendment bill was passed back in ’94.

    Also, Tim Horton’s coffee is fantastic.

  • Indeed, it’s Juli. Beware of Rosenstolz though; in gay circles, it’s considered a common sign of “affiliation” if a man sings along to Rosenstolz at a bar/club.

    As I said, I’d only just scanned through the article, but found the ideas introduced partly somewhat absurd historically and theologically. There are still more affiliated Catholics in Germany (German-speaking parts of Europe) than Protestants, Catholicism and Judaism share the principle of the recognition and reception of scripture, teachings & tradition whereas Protestantism relies on scripture alone (“sola scriptura”) and argues that belief, and not good deeds (comparable to mitzvot), alone would lead to salvation (sola fide). The list could be continued.

    Chasidishe teens listen to German-language rap because they understand most of the language. It compares to, e.g. Turkish and Russian youths here listening to cheesy Turkish and Russian pop music because they understand the language. It adds to the feeling of identity, positive recognition and personal value and gives them less of a feeling of being outsiders to the “normal” world. It’s an issue of conflicted souls, torn between what they want to be perceived as and what the majority of their environment perceive them as (worse even, what their differently affiliated / less religious co-religionists perceive them as). The question that should be raised is not that of assimilation (which is actually impossible; in German, the period English speakers commonly to refer to as “Jewish assimilation” is called “Jüdische Aufklärung”) but a matter of successful integration. Integration means preserving my personal and cultural identity while understanding and accepting the core values of and functioning in my surroundings. Integration is a two-way-street; a society has to be willing to integrate others into their midst just as much as those “others” need to show willingness and effort to integrate themselves in their surrounding environment. That is where many Chasidshe yeshivas and seminaries (Monsey even worse than BP and Willi) fail at large scale; they turn kids into insecure outsiders instead of self- and culturally confident members of society.

  • Other than the song Ich bin Ich, Rosenstolz didn’t do much for me. I do like Karpatenhund alot, however, so I guess I don’t have to worry about my orientation 🙂
    I think you missed the point. The essay wasn’t attempting to argue for German-Jewish similarity, Hermann Cohen, the Marburg professor of philosophy, was making that argument. I suspect he did in fact know his church history. The point was the tragic outcome of such suppositions, as was the case with the Greeks in Chanukah, and yet at the same time the inability to seperate from those commonalities even when they are rendered absurd by the historical circumstance. This point is made by Derrida, who quotes Cohen almost without comment, just because of the innate tragic strangeness of the text, his letter to the Jews of America arguing why Germany is the true Jewish fatherland. It does resonate nowadays when one hears the Orthodox community being more right wing than most of the US, the “Jewish” roots of neo-conservatism and the Iraq war, etc. A warning of sorts, regardless of whether there may have been some oversimplification on the part of Hermann Cohen in 1914.
    Anyway, at the very least, it argues why chassidish kids listening to contemporary German rap is neither strange nor a bad thing 🙂

  • Oh, Maven, no worries, I get the point of the essay, but I still consider it absurd. It challenges incorrect historical information (obviously Cohen was only driving his own agenda as his explanations are so far off documented history that he either purposedly ignored reality or was simply unaware of it; looking up the TRE as well as the RGG, academic Protestant encyclopaedias of religion and church history, would have told him so) by providing anecdotal evidence. While this is good and nice for an informal conversation, this is flawy by academic standards. Anecdotes may serve as examples, not as arguments.
    I just find it a little strange that Chasidishe kids listen to Bushido in particular who has been characterized as anti-Semitic in the past. His anti-Israel stance might resonate well with certain groups of Chasidim though.

    cf. http://www.hagalil.com/01/de/Antisemitismus.php?itemid=1193&catid=6

    http://www.hagalil.com/01/de/nucleus/plugins/mailtoafriend/mailfriend.php?itemid=1076

  • 1. I generally admire Hermann Cohen and his “talmid” Ernst Casirrer, so I say lets let them rest in peace and give them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t have the original text, only Derrida’s quotations from it, and I’m sure the book is not available in the US at this time.
    2. I was unaware of this about Bushido, and a bit disappointed (please don’t tell me that Klee is on the right, I love them); I will guess that no one in the US knows about this, either.
    3. I will guess that very few people know what we are talking about, either, which is kind of neat.

  • I’ll see if I can find the original text somewhere here.

    Klee, Wir sind Helden, Juli etc. tend to be socially progressive and usually stay away from politics altogether. There’s little commercially successful political rock / poprock, even more successful punk bands (Die Ärzte, Die Toten Hosen) deal with social issues at large rather than distinct policies.

  • OH, you just listed another of my favorite bands (DTH)

    Anyway, as far as the Hermann Cohen project goes, let me know if you find it (I assume you have my email from the site), I think its an important document particularly with the rebirth of a German Jewish community.

  • Любопытно, а есть хоть кто-то, кто не согласен с автором?