Hehehe...just found Ed The Sock's opinion on Conan...
"Okay - time for me to rant a little bit. If you haven't heard, Conan O'Brien is shooting some shows in Toronto in February. I'm sure you must have heard, since the press are falling all over themselves to write about him like they do every American TV star who has discovered there's a country north of the 49th parallel.
During his initial press conference, Conan and the other PR flacks kept insisting they wanted his shows in Toronto to feature Canadian celebrities and have a distinctly Canadian flavour. They also insisted they weren't coming here to mock Canada, but to help Toronto recover from the SARS-related tourism downturn.
Uh huh.
So we see Conan running around town shooting pieces while wearing a mountie outfit, shooting things at the Hockey Hall of Fame and with the Maple Leafs and inviting Stompin' Tom Connors on the show to sing about...you guessed it, hockey. At least they're avoiding milking cheap stereotypes for easy laughs.
But Stompin' Tom is the only legitimate made-in-Canada guest they're using. The roster of "Canadian" guests Conan is featuring include Mike Myers, Michel J. Fox, Eric McCormack (from "Will and Grace")...Canadians who neither live nor work here. They had to fly Canadians to Canada to be guests. And the musical guests? Nickelback and Barenaked Ladies - both of whom have been mainstays of U.S. radio.
But the biggest piss-off for me surrounds their dog puppet. Anyone who lives in Canada knows where that puppet came from. Conan's show had tapes of me in their hands, and a little while later their dog "appears"...a puppet with a gruff personality, smoking a cigar, insulting people. A co-incidence? Riiiight.
But the media here wanted to have me meet their dog in a segment. It seemed like a natural fit for Conan's show, showing commonality with their Canadian hosts. But guess what? It's not going to happen. Even though I thought having two puppets insulting each other on TV would be about the dumbest thing ever, I was open to working something out. We talked. But it seems that someone is afraid to face me. Not that I blame him - he would suffer by comparison, especially since he's admitted to dubbing his insulting comments in after-the-fact instead of coming up with them in the moment as I do.
Plus, maybe that same someone doesn't want American audiences to know that he wasn't the first cigar-smoking gruff-natured comic puppet.
None of which would bother me so much, except that O'Brien comes to this country, brings his ex-patriot Canadian buddies, falls back on Canadian stereotypes for humour and then totally avoids the biggest star in this country...namely me. He could have shown respect and acknowledged not only the roots of his dog puppet, but the fans of his host country by having a legitimate Canadian performer on his show. He didn't.
When are we going to stop bending over and grabbing our ankles every time an American celebrity comes to town? When are we going to stand-up as Canadians and say "enough - show us respect"!
Anyway, if you want to let them know what you think of them not using a legitimate made-in-Canada star on their supposedly Canadian shows, e-mail them and urge them to have me on. I'd like nothing better than to represent for our country, and show them what real Canadian humour is. Their e-mail is latenight@nbc.com
Oh yeah - might as well be nice about it, no swearing or the like..they'll just ignore you."
