Canada? Oh, right: Canada

It's a very short drive from Canada's capital to that of the United States. Shorter still, and quicker to achieve, by flight. When Washington speaks, Ottawa picks up all the signals; overt, covert, blunt or diplomatic in nature. When Ottawa squeaks, Washington remains singularly unperturbed.

Canadians are constantly inundated by our own news media, with all the manifestations, the quirks and queries, the drama and the absurdities, the fervent pledges of loyalty and fealty, the nasty, intemperate smears and tempered partisan claims and ad hominem assaults attending on American general elections.

The president of the United States of America, after all, becomes a powerful, almost omnipresent, omniscient figure enabling harmony, or fomenting strife internationally. Mind, we Canadians are genuinely curious, fascinated indeed by American passions and political inveigling. We do want to be informed.

We wish to know all the details of the election process, the personalities, the unveiling of inconvenient realities. We know, deep in our gut that as this theater of the absurd reveals itself and the cataclysmic soul-searching resulting in a majority decision, will impact us economically, politically, socially.

Americans are fully cognizant of their elite status as a powerful, feared, respected, admired, loathed country. Docility, humility, caution, insecurity have no place in the public discourse, the emotional persona, the culture of the population's self-awareness.

Americans have no need to place their tentative, tenuous, worried finger on the impetuous pulse of their neighbour. They are satisfied with their state of complacent self-regard.

The U.S. is The World Power, unchallenged as the self-appointed conscience of the world; the realpolitik commander of the international body politic, the superior and outstanding economy of the world the voice of reasonableness and contrastingly, often belligerent entitlement.

And so, by extension, is every American graced with the belief in their own singular superiority, vis-a-vis the rest of the world. There are Americans, and there is the rest of the world. Vaunted and found wanting. But this type of group identification and separation has existed since time immemorial. It's tribal identification and fervent affiliation.

Yet America is conscious of its responsibilities to the world community. Extending prodigious effort, diplomatic and economic, to aid and assist the unfortunates of the world, in a manner consistent with noblesse oblige, the ancient concept of royal obligation, expressed as a purity of spirit. And by dint of divinely inspired righteousness.

America values its friends, enjoys warm relations with them, extends courtesies toward them. Americans know little of their neighbouring countries, their values, geography, traditions, prevailing culture. Little do they also know - let alone care to know - about other countries internationally. To what purpose, after all?

With the deep assurance given as to religious fundamentalists, that theirs is the genuine, the true religion, all others subservient, irrelevant, beneath notice. All of these observations obviously constitute an obvious and unfortunate stereotype, a caricature of the bold, rude, oblivious and obnoxious American.

Yet stereotypes embody true, observed and broad-based attributes motivating the hastily-improvised sketch. Here we are, as observers temporarily installed in a cottage in New Hampshire, a place whose incomparable geological formations and natural splendour draw us and many others, to these White Mountains. A mere 6-hours' drive from Ottawa, our nation's capital.

In a near week of assiduously screening The New York Times and the Boston Globe, staid old, familiar old, reliable old Canada rates barely a mention. Not that scrutinizing the news reportage through all U.S. media throughout four years of living in the South-Eastern U.S. ever resulted in reportage of any news emanating from Canada, that boring, whining, defensive neighbour.

So I am gratified to discover, on Page 7, bottom of the crease, 6 September 2008 in The New York Times, under thumbnail Sketches titled "World Briefing" under the Americas, fully seven lines of script noting Canada's prime minister is ready to drop the writ that will send the country to the polls.

Twice that number of lines devoted to Venezuela, detailing the capture of a fugitive. Twenty lines to report on Angola's peaceful general election; seventeen to note that Zimbabwe has been temporarily spared Mugabe's latest threat; and fourteen lines of reportage on Nigeria's temporary release from detention of an
American film maker.

And the Boston Globe of the same date, not to be outdone, reports also on Page A6, devoting a full quarter-column under the fold, to an Associated Press story titled "Canada preparing for early elections". Finally, we make the news. What.a.blinking.bore. Small mercies.

Look at that: Page A6 of 6 September 2008, NY Times (under the fold) a fulsome 5-column report, almost a full half-age of dense type, a story titled "Without Primaries or Consensus, Campaign for German Chancellor Begins. Big news.

This just in! Important update!

Monday, September 8, 2008, The New York Times International, page A12, above the fold, gasp! Moreover, encompassing a full half-page, no less, an electrifying article: "Canada's Premier gambles by Having Election Set for October, a Year Early". It's an excellent article, well written, all the facts concisely gathered. We matter, we do, we do, really.

Below the crease; a large article on Hong Kong's electoral populist gain. Also a smaller: "German Party Sees Shakeup As Its Leader Steps Down". Yawn. And too, a small, generally-if-at-all, Canadian-sized item: "32 Dead Found, and More Feared, in Cairo Rockslide".

There, we count! Yoo-Hoo!