Friday, January 12, 2007...2:27 pm

Friday Funnies: My Futile Attempt To Make You Punch Your Monitor and Hate Your Country

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From the Australian show The Chaser’s War on Everything:

15 Comments

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15 Comments

  • MonkeyPants
    Friday, January 12, 2007 at 4:23 pm

    Oh god. My head hurts. I’m going to lie down.

    Reply
  • BB
    Friday, January 12, 2007 at 5:57 pm

    Please tell me those were “paid actors!”

    Reply
  • ScribeLA
    Friday, January 12, 2007 at 6:05 pm

    Oh no you di’nt. Geesh. Americans, classy as ever, right? My favorite – Q: “What country starts with a “U”?” A: “Utah.” LMAO. I think it should be noted, or maybe it is just blind hope, that the people being interviewed are from the fly-over states. Please, tell me it’s so.
    Scribe

    Reply
  • PJ
    Sunday, January 14, 2007 at 7:50 pm

    I’m stunned that you can slap any country’s name on the map of Australia and we’re under an automatic threat of invasion!

    Reply
  • max
    Monday, January 15, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    You have been nominated for and won the Celluloid Blonde award for Best Americans Are Stupid Post. Congratulations.

    Reply
  • feartheseeds
    Monday, January 15, 2007 at 11:28 pm

    I don’t know… pick fifty random people from any random country, ask them thirty questions each, edit the thing down to five people, one question and one answer and of course you’ll have ten minutes of ignorance. There’s a guy here in Canuckville who has been making a living doing this type of… humour? for years, Rick Mercer. He goes down to the US and gets people, including Senators and Congress-People to comment on fake Canadian stuff… like “congratulations, Canada, on your tenth anniversary with 24-hour electricity”. Then we’re supposed to laugh at the ‘ignorant American’, but I’m pretty sure we could find a few hundred Canadians who would have said the same frigging thing. Same for any fifty random “likely decended from a murderer” Aussie’s…

    Reply
  • Karen ;-)
    Tuesday, January 16, 2007 at 9:32 am

    America. F*ck yea.

    Reply
  • max
    Tuesday, January 16, 2007 at 11:25 am

    You really think that is true? You think the world population is that ignorant? Uninformed? Bereft? The rest of the word cannot afford this type of ignorance, the rest of the world is heavily aware the United States is the extreme military power in the world it could quash them at any time. And, also aware of where they are on maps. And, where other people are.

    Interestingly, the people in the country that contains the most drastic destructive power on the planet generally are not informed. Why would we be? We only have the power to destroy the world at our fingertips and the peasant fodder to back it up with a few bayonets uninformed about the destructive properties of radiation. That kind of power surely does not carry a responsibility of knowledge.

    Reply
  • monica
    Tuesday, January 16, 2007 at 11:48 am

    how ’bout that zudo wrestling?

    Reply
  • feartheseeds
    Tuesday, January 16, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    “You think the world population is that ignorant? Uninformed? Bereft?”
    6.5billion people out there, 99.99029% of whom get their news from Mary Hart, or a village elder or a series of drums and ringing sounds which, to the untrained ear may sound like noise, but is in fact a loose translation of Mary Hart. Americans have no monopoly on stupid people, and they certainly don’t have some sort of moral responsibility to know and understand more about “others” than those “others” do about themselves or Americans.

    Reply
  • swedishfish
    Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 10:02 pm

    I hate to burst the bubble of the person above me, but if we Americans want to hold some sort of idea that we are in the ranks of other industrialized, ‘modern’ countries, the vast majority of those people should have been able to correctly answer every single one of those questions with no less than a stutter or a pause, and I don’t blame a single foreigner (or fellow American for that matter) for taking jabs at it. And why is that? Because most of those people are of voting age and should hold a sizable amount of knowledge that enables them to make educated decisions when at the voting booth! Any other country amongst the ranks in which we seem to believe we belong has far greater voter turnout than in our country, and there is no excuse for that. None whatsoever. I personally believe that this problem with people getting off their bums and into the voting booth is a large part of the reason we’ve involved ourselves in so many messes lately, and I think we can rightly blame how blissfully ignorant the American populace has become. The majority of inhabitants of the great U.S. of A. are rather fortunate people compared to the rest of the globe, and one can see that in nearly every statistic from the average BMI to the amount of mobile phones per capita. Considering our pampered little lives, educated voting should be, if not for the more noble reasons, something done in appreciation of such privilege.

    Reply
  • feartheseeds
    Friday, January 19, 2007 at 3:28 am

    “…the vast majority of those people should have been able to correctly answer every single one of those questions with no less than a stutter or a pause…”

    The only purpose of the video was to make Americans look like idiots so a few Australians could feel smug about their own lives. To do that the producers asked dozens of people ten or more questions, then picked the most ridiculous responses for airing. How is this some kind of statistical representation of American intelligence? Would you accept a similar methodology if someone wanted to prove all women were idiots? *They Wanted To Make Fun Of Americans* They could have done the same thing to any other nationality, by using the same methods, in any other country. They chose America because they knew their audience would have no problem laughing at “those rich bastard stupid Americans” as opposed to “those kind of middle class stupid Spaniards” or “those quasi-poor ignorant Bolivians”.

    And since when does education have anything to do with voting? Turnout in Australia is 95% does this mean Australians are Super-Intelligent PhD’s when it comes to their political process? Or is it because voting’s mandatory down there?

    Reply
  • swedishfish
    Friday, January 19, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    Oh, yes, I understand the point of the video, but Australians aren’t the only ones laughing at it. Other Americans are laughing, too. Having spent time in television cutting rooms I saw all their tricks in that clip, and they sure got away with a lot. I’m relatively sure that a good amount of those cuts were portrayed unfairly. It doesn’t excuse calling Utah a country or not knowing where South Korea is.

    “And since when does education have anything to do with voting?” Ha! Wow! That was a terrible question to ask. If it wasn’t for that last paragraph I would have a lot less today!

    It’s not that Americans are stupid because of a low voter turnout, or the other way around (which is what you seemed to draw from it), it’s that knowledge of rather important issues (or lack thereof) is important when it comes to making an educated vote. That clip is not a statistical representation of American intelligence whatsoever, and I never said that. What you should realize is in that handful of people – and there are enough people that were interviewed – most of them should have had enough of an education by the time they were twelve to answer those questions. And furthermore, the issues covered by the Australian television crew are completely relevant to voting (asking whether or not someone supports Bush’s stance regarding a particular country, for instance); that’s part of the point the crew was trying to make. Voting is part of the democratic process, and education (whether it be through the media or a proper academic education) is essential to that. Part of the point the Aussies were trying to make was that support for a president for whom these people voted was generated by people who didn’t have that education. Is that such a stretch? Besides, voters who don’t know the issues tend to not go to the polls.

    It’s no secret that Americans are not very aware of what is going on in the world outside of the U.S., and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that they aren’t aware of much else inside the little U.S. bubble, either. This Australian television crew managed to exaggerate it a little and make it rather funny, but it doesn’t change the truth. Sorry, but I don’t really have much faith in many of my fellow countrymen when the Bush approval rate is still hovering anywhere above single digits.

    Also, voter turnout is quite high compared to the U.S. in places even where voting is not mandatory.

    This is all I have to say within these comments. Let’s not turn this weblog into a podium for debate. Contact me through the e-mail link on my weblog if you wish to continue this.

    Reply
  • feartheseeds
    Monday, January 22, 2007 at 7:24 pm

    I’m not sure what the debate would be, you think rich people have a responsibility to be educated and I think people of every background have the right to be idiots without having cameras jammed into their faces so other people can mock them.

    “…that’s part of the point the crew was trying to make.” If I stopped you on the street, asked you twenty questions — 19 of which you answer politely and accurately — then I air the one you screwed up… is that an accurate sketch of who you are?

    “Other Americans are laughing, too.” Yeah, they are. People all over the world love to feel smug and superior when compared favourably to all the other peoples of the world. Hardly a breakthrough in modern psychology.

    An Australian camera crew didn’t fly to America to film stupid Americans saying dumb shit to be aired in Australia as a way of showing Americans how dumb they are. This wasn’t a “The More You Know: Get Educated” PSA for NBC, this was a comedy sketch meant to amuse Australians specifically by making Americans look feeble in their brains. It was unfair, cheap and could easily have been done to the same effect by substituting Aussies.

    I think evi gets a kick out of people using his site… gives him an air of respectability.

    Reply

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