The Trojan Horse is a CBC miniseries in two parts débuting Sunday, 2008.03.30. (It’s the sequel to H₂O [2004].) Starting after 2000 hours Eastern time on that date, I will be writing a superspecial liveblog of the show, which will not be at this address. (I’ve also been Teamade.)
Kottke (for it was he) did the same thing with the most-anticipated-ever episode of Myþbuþterþ. That’s one inspiration – if you want to call it that, since I’m pretty sure Kottke thinks I’m an asshole. I’m doing this mostly as a meta-riposte to Wedgie Fulford, who cannot shut the fuck up about CBC’s anti-Americanism, which, like Communism, he sees everywhere.
- “Different show, same message”
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Peter Raymont, the executive producer of The Border, has said his show resembles… 24 – “but with a conscience.” You can’t get any more CBC-sanctimonious than that…. The evil deeds of both CSIS and the Americans are frustrated…. This is the third anti-American drama on the CBC schedule this season, the others being Intelligence and H₂O…. All of them depict public-spirited Canadians fighting off the influence of greedy or just plain vile Americans. Apparently, our immigration department’s real enemies aren’t terrorists or smugglers. They’re Americans.
- “CBC’s torqued Intelligence” (sic)
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Low-life bad guys may shoot each other on the mean streets, but the really bad guys are sitting behind desks [and] we know precisely who those bad guys are: Americans. […] It sounds like the darkest fantasy of a Canadian nationalist. Mary may be devious and greedy for power, but she’s still a patriot. She throws all her resources into the struggle against the American empire. […]
[W]hen it comes to Washington’s power, [Chris Haddock is] addicted to the conventional wisdom of hysterical nationalism. On the question of water rights, for instance, he assumes we all agree that fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and Americans gotta steal our water. It’s their nature.
In the old days, paranoid anti-Americanism at the CBC appeared mostly in news shows and documentaries. That was enough to infuriate some of us. But in recent seasons it’s seeped into drama as well. There’s no question that the CSIS heroes on Intelligence consider the Americans our most dangerous enemies. […]
Conspiracy theorists will say that all this indicates a plot devised by latte-lapping leftists among the filmmakers in Toronto and Vancouver. Unlikely. Their motive is probably pure calculation. Their shows appeal to the anti-American mood that Liberal and NDP politicians, as well as a few editorialists and TV critics, have done their best to foment. They also, I imagine, attract nods of approval from grant-giving Ottawa bureaucrats who consider their product “relevant.” Our TV drama producers have learned at least one rule from American TV: Success begins with an appeal to prejudice.
Here’s to you, Wedgie. Stars and stripes forever!