Saturday, May 14, 2011

Quebec Humiliated Over Asbestos on the Daily Show

Quebec support for asbestos has come home to roost.
Sometime it's better not to give interviews.    THE DAILY SHOW....... Ouch!

17 comments:

  1. I couldn't see the video link earlier on my desktop. Could it be limited to Canadian web surfers?

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  2. @ Edward J. Cunningham:
    The Comedy Network most likely blocks its stream to surfers outside Canada, just as Comedy Central blocks its stream to surfers outside the U.S. (if you've got the know-how to work around this, more power to you).

    Try one of these links. If they work in the Show-Me state, then they'll likely work throughout the U.S.
    - http://www.thedailyshow.com/#tool_tip_3
    - http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-may-12-2011/ored-to-death

    Let us know if it works.

    I’ve always loved The Daily Show, and I think it’s a shame that we don’t have something with a similar format in French in Canada (Lord knows we’re not at a loss for content). That said, Infoman is an excellent start.

    I absolutely love how they subtitle the businessman (Coulombe) at the beginning.

    A few of these are pure gold (or sad, depending on how you look at it), actually. I guess capitalism mixed with politics and opportunism doesn’t change much, no matter how far you travel

    * LOL the businessman's face @ 1:03:
    Mandvi: "Does asbestos mean something different in French than it does in English. Because in English, it means slow, hacking death"
    Coulombe: "Oh yeah?! It means that?!"

    * Gagné's clueless facial expression when he either realizes he got owned at the end of the dialog starting at 2:13 (or possibly to slow on the switch to realize it):
    Mandvi: "So what is your proof that your form of asbestos is safe?"
    Gagné: "You drove in our city, and you saw that nobody's sick here."
    Mandvi: "Right, right, right. Because sick people are always out walking in the streets."

    * When looking at the CAT scan of the lungs of a person suffering from the lung cancer lung scan of a person suffering from 2:35 When talking to the doctor:
    Stanbrook: "This is a CAT scan of somebody's lungs. This lung on your right side is healthy. This big white thing on the left side is a lung cancer, called a mesothelioma, the kind that someone with asbestos..."
    Mandvi: "Okay fine.. I walked around the town, and I didn't see any sick people. What is more scientific than that?"
    Stanbrook: "Well, I would say THIS is more scientific than that."

    And Coulombe’s insultingly dismissive and trivializing of the matter by suggesting that Indians are somehow naturally immune (@ 4:29):

    Coulombe: "Maybe they are used to the pollution there, hehhhe!"
    Mandvi: "Yeah they're used to pollution, right. And so they can handle it; they're not pussies like westerners".
    Coulombe: "It's like antibiotic, they have natural antibiotic."
    Mandvi: [fake laugh] "naw I'm just kidding man, that's really fucked up, man. I mean selling them things that are gonna kill them. That's my family over there. I mean, what is the French Word for douchebag?”


    Local authorities have wasted no time to respond with canned disappointment:

    A more balanced summary (en français, thankfully) here:
    http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jo0wryCAOsuOHcJJIMEhUHaYm7Ww?docId=6843393

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  3. On a more general note, spotted the following Léger poll:

    http://www.ledevoir.com/documents/pdf/sondage14mai.pdf

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  4. "What is the French word for douchebag?"

    ...Les Quebecois.

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  5. @Anonymous 12:35 PM

    Some among us might occasionally be "souchebags", but to lump us all into one gigantic vaginal residue container isn't any more or less accurate than it would be when comparing any other population, be they English-Canadians, Jews, Arabs, cyclists, or residents of Hérouxville.

    We've all got our douchy moments.

    By the way, a half decent translation is provided here:

    http://fr.canoe.ca/infos/quebeccanada/archives/2011/05/20110513-191227.html

    Enjoy the rest of your day. Try not to be too much of a gros con yourself.

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  6. In Quebec they complain about Alberta's environmentally unsound, dirty oilsands, but they never refuse the huge amount of money they receive that is generated by the oilsands.

    With the oilsands, it is the citizens of Alberta who will be mostly living with the consequences of exploitation: forests stripped away, removal of topsoil, toxic tailing ponds, etc. In Quebec, they mine the asbestos, ship it out of their own jurisdiction, and then look the other way. The Quebecois could care less if people in poor, developing countries develop lung cancer from exposure to this poisonous product.

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  7. To Anon @ 3:6PM: Touché!

    If India is foolhardy enough to buy the stuff...

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  8. That Daily Show was pretty funny! I don't know if a two hour drive from Montréal would be worth it, but taking a picture of this sign is tempting:

    http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/1e/9f/6f20963348ef8b008f95a0ed6419.jpeg

    Ironically, the Washington Nationals' (formerly the Montréal Expos) regional archrival Baltimore Orioles are owned by Peter Angelos, a lawyer who made his fortune from abestos lawsuits.

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  9. When you sell Asbestos in French, it doesn't hurt as much as when you sell it in English.

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  10. @ Apparatchik, May 14 at 3:20 PM,

    The majority of Quebecois support a racist, discriminatory language law called Bill 101, which qualifies most of them as "douchebags" in my book.

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  11. Believe it or not, somebody made a graphic novel about Abestos, QC and the Jeffries mine which made the town name infamous. Here's the web site about the book in both French and English:

    http://megaprojects.uwo.ca/asbestos/

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  12. I dislike the current form of our French Language Charter myself (more on that some other time, perhaps).

    For now, I’ll simply say that our (misguided) support for that law is largely the result of ignorance of its effects as well as a dexterously assembled diet of fear, emotion, and politics that has been served to us for a very long time. We’re not the first group to support something on the basis of expert manipulation.

    Otherwise rational groups anywhere have shown that they can be whipped into a complete frenzy.

    Otherwise ethical investors have made a few bucks of dirty money in their time.

    Maybe there's a little douchebag in all of us. With the right coaxing, it comes out to play.

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  13. @Apparatchik

    When it comes to being douchebags, my fellow countrymen are kings.

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  14. Glad you went there and not me, Ed.

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  15. This is really the second time that I'm aware of that Comedy Central based shows have done stories in Quebec. Colbert had run a story when they tried to get a union in a Wal-Mart up in the Sag several years ago. That one didn't turn out to have as much bite in its humour as this recent Daily Show story did.

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  16. "...my fellow countrymen..."

    Nice moustache,do you drive a pick up truck Eddy?

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  17. @AngloBuster

    I'm a fan of a certain baseball team formerly from Montréal. The moustache belongs to the mascot Teddy Roosevelt who participates in the President's Race in the 4th inning of every Nats' home game.

    ]http://www.welovedc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/LauraTeddy-375x500.jpg

    Edward J. Cunningham
    Rockville, MD

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