The United States of America tends to like to poke fun at their neighbours to the north. They imitate our accents, laugh at our road closures in the winter and complain about our state-funded health care because it's making them question their own system.
We've all heard the jokes about how we all live in igloos, even in the summer, about how it gets dark here at 11 a.m., about how polite we all are, in every situation. But I heard a new one this weekend.
An American television show made fun of how respectful of privacy we are - or at least have the reputation of being. That respect, they believe, extends to our media.
When it comes to this, I think, Americans may actually have it right.
I think our own Rick Mercer put it best in one of his rants on "This Hour Has 22 Minutes." In Canada, he indicated, even when it comes to our politicians, we don't really have an interest in their personal lives. If it doesn't affect their job performance, we don't want to know. Or, as Rick put it, "what happens inside the snowsuit, stays inside the snowsuit."
Is this a cultural thing? Or an attitude? And if it is, why?
It's only in recent years that Canada has started to produce entertainment news programs. Before that, we'd catch a glimpse of Canadian actors, producers or otherwise celebrities the odd time on the news, or on the American channels. Did we care if they had a new movie coming out? Yes. Did we really care what their marital situation was, or who they were dating? Not really. It's still rare that I catch an entertainment news program because it doesn't seem to have a bearing on my life.
Canadians, for the most part, I believe, just want to hear actual news. We would rather catch up on the latest commodity prices and any legislative changes proposed up on Parliament Hill than who wore what to the Oscars - because the former actually can affect us. We would rather listen to the weather forecast than the couples report from Hollywood because it's more important to know if rain or snow is coming than what celebrity is dating who.
Of course, some people do care about all that entertainment news. We're not all the same, after all. Some people think that who Bradley Cooper is dating is knowledge they need to have. But when flipping through my mental rolodex of people I know, I just can't picture most of them breathlessly awaiting that night's style report, even if they don't take in the local news, either.
So if it is a cultural thing, why? As Canadians, do we respect people's privacy, or are we just too wrapped up in real life, in our lives, to care about what someone in the public eye is doing?
Could it be the former? Are we really that respectful of privacy? Because when it comes to Canadian small town life, we all know how much privacy a person actually has. Gossip does run rampant here, and not all of it is about how nice somebody is, like the American television show I saw this weekend would lead one to believe. But we do, as a culture, have harsher rules for the media than we do for coffee row, so maybe we do respect people's privacy, at least when it comes to what is reported on the news.
As for the latter option, maybe that's part of it. Maybe another part is that we inherently consider ourselves pretty equal as Canadians. Many of us don't subscribe to the class theory at all. So is it somwhere in our minds that actors don't deserve more respect, or drawing more interest, than the farmer down the road merely because their profession is public and a farmer's is not? Maybe that's why many watch the Weather Network more than E.
Maybe respect for privacy is a cultural thing. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just another American misconception of those of us who call the Great White North home, one we can laugh at, tongues firmly in our cheeks.
