Bowling For Sarnia

Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, wants to make Michael Moore an honorary Canadian citizen.
Bob Tarantino wants to kick his ass.
Over at the Shotgun, commentor Rick McGinnis speculates…

It’s interesting to think what would have happened to Moore, had he been born Canadian.
He’d have been born in Oshawa, the son of a middle management worker at GM. His dad would get him a job, but he’d quit the line after a day. He’d have dropped out of York University, and gotten a job at NOW magazine, where he’d experience a meteoric rise but would suddenly be fired after one too many personality conflicts with publisher Michael Hollett.
He’d turn to filmmaking, parlaying his connections into a short documentary that would get programmed at Images or the Perspectives Canada section at the Toronto International Film Festival, but would never see commercial release, and take several years before getting video release with an independent distributor who went bankrupt with most of the copies still in boxes in their warehouse. (Copies of the DVD of Moore’s film, “49th Paral-hell”, would turn up in sell- off bins for years.)
Moore’s best hope would have been to be Rick Mercer, except that he’s nowhere near as charming as Mercer, and we already have one, so he’d basically be relegated to the occasional underpaid rant in This Magazine and sporadic work as a production assistant on American TV movies being shot in Toronto.
Frustrated by the lack of opportunities for a (straight, white, but overweight) cinematic propagandist in this country, he’d move south, where so many other Canadians have found not only opportunity, but the mysterious freedom to dissent publicly in “facist Amerikkka”.

About right.

4 Replies to “Bowling For Sarnia”

  1. WESTERN ALIENATION

    Megan McArdle attended a conference in Montreal and was somewhat perplexed when she learned about the fragility of Canadian politics and the sentiments that could one day lead to Western separation. I wrote about such a scenario a while ago

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