Rick Mercer Report: The Paperback Book - Softcover

Mercer, Rick

 
9780385665193: Rick Mercer Report: The Paperback Book
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0385665199 ISBN 13: 9780385665193
Verlag: Doubleday of Canada, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Rick Mercer Report: The Paperback Book is an updated, expanded remix of its bestselling predecessor, Rick Mercer Report: The Book, containing 10,000 words of new material from the show’s fifth season.

Rick’s celebrated rants are some of the sharpest political commentary to be found anywhere in the country’s media, and certainly the funniest. They are featured here, along with other moments from the show—including encounters with Conrad Black, Jean Chrétien, and Anne Murray—and many additional pieces, some of which first appeared on his website. Because when he’s not jumping into a lake with David Suzuki or Bob Rae, or helping the leader of the Green Party kill a tree, Rick Mercer likes to relax by blogging. From Kabul, say. Or the bearpit of a leadership convention.

Rick Mercer Report: The Paperback Book will help you make sense of five extraordinary years in the life of Canada—or at least laugh despite them.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

RICK MERCER co-created and performed on CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes, created and starred in Made in Canada, and created and starred in Talking to Americans, the most-watched comedy special in Canadian television history. He went on to host the hugely successful Rick Mercer Report for 15 seasons. Rick was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2014 for his work with charitable causes and "his ability to inspire and challenge Canadians through humour." He is the co-founder of the Spread the Net campaign. In 2019, he received a Governor General's Performing Arts Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award. He is from Middle Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador.

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The truth is I rarely know where I am going to be from one day to the next. My luggage has remained packed for over a decade and I have more long underwear than any city dweller in his right mind should need.

Over the last four years, while on the job, I have almost lost consciousness midair while doing aeronautics with Canada’s Snow­birds, I have experienced intentionally induced hypo­thermia at the hands of a celebrated university professor in Winnipeg, I have made a five-thousand-foot free fall out of an airplane over Trenton, Ontario, and I have done donuts in the middle of Halifax harbour while operating a tugboat. I have faced death (or at the very least the possibility of severed thumbs) when lying “nose down, bum up” on a skeleton sled while hurtling down a bobsled track in Calgary. In Rockland, Ontario, I signed a waiver and got behind the wheel and joined a demolition derby.

My job description includes ­sleepovers at Stephen Harper’s house and getting buck naked with Bob ­Rae.

Despite the latter two I am still convinced that I have the best gig in Canadian show business. And through it all I have managed to stay true to my one ultimate career ­goal–­no heavy ­lifting.

The travel is the best ­part.

If you are lucky enough to spend time in the North it will change you. It will inform the way you feel about the country in a way that no amount of reading on the subject ever can. When you spend time eating raw caribou north of the tree line with a politician in Nunavut or listening to an Inuit hunter before he heads out alone on the ice to hunt a polar ­bear–­those things tend to stay with ­you.

The same can be said for spending time on the Prairies, in Northern Ontario, Newfoundland, the oil sands of Alberta, or in any of the many Chinatowns or Little Indias that dot the ­country.
Canada has so many ­problems–­and geography is often the root cause. For the size of the population we are simply too bloody ­big.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a situation where five people were busy complaining about what the problem was with another part of the country that they were happy to admit they had never ­visited.
I’ve had cabinet ministers lecture me on why people in Newfoundland should never have control of their natural resources and then in the next breath tell me they have it on very good authority that the province is very pretty. Not a surprise really. Stephen Harper coined the phrase “the culture of defeat” about Atlantic Canada before he bothered to go ­there.

Ottawa is a favourite place that Canadians love to attack without having set foot in the place and God knows everyone in Eastern Canada seems to have an idea of what Calgary is all about without ever having met the people whose drive and determination are responsible for our very own emerging ­superpower.

There is no simple solution, of course. Again size is to blame. It’s easy to have an opinion on how Canada should deal with an issue in Nunavut but actually going there requires a time commitment and an airplane ticket. Unfortunately, time and money top the list of what most people don’t have enough ­of.

We live in a country where it’s cheaper to fly to Paris than it is to fly a few provinces over and see for ourselves what another part of Canada is really about. More Canadians visit Florida than Manitoba. In a country with unity issues, this does not bode ­well.

I’ve been very lucky when it comes to exploring Canada. The show lets me experience another part of the country almost every week. And despite the occasional near-death experience and/or outbreak of nudity, every single week I become more enamoured with the ­place.

This book is for the most part a collection of commentaries that I have written and performed on the show during the last four seasons or posted on my blog at rickmercer.com. It contains, for lack of a better term, my “rants.” When you follow politics in Canada either as a living or because it’s just in your blood there is never a shortage of subjects to rant about. The problems are legion and the situations are often absurd. The rants often write themselves. I started ranting about Canada a long time ago and I really don’t see any end in sight. It’s what I do and I have never lost sight of how lucky I am to get to do it every ­week.

And ­sure, ­on the surface Canada may appear hopelessly dysfunctional, but the more I rant the more I realize that we are also spectacular in every sense of the ­word.
Canada, for all its challenges, is worth ranting ­about.

Rick ­Mercer


GETTING WHAT YOU VOTED FOR


In a minority government timing is everything. And when a minority government looks like it’s teetering on the brink of collapse, whether actually or imagined, orchestrated or not, you can rest assured that once the structural flaws are exposed a chorus of pundits will start to sing: “Canadians just aren’t in the mood for an election.” Personally, I am always in the mood for an ­election–­but that’s a character flaw of mine. Most hockey fans would be happy with ­back-­to-­back ­play­offs, and that is pretty much the way I feel about ­elections.

Bring ’em on. It takes ten minutes to vote, folks, and the results are always worth ­it.


An unelected idiot? | Feb. 2, ­2004

I’ve always thought that the worst thing that could ever happen to Canada would be that somehow a complete idiot would get elected as prime minister. And so far we’ve been pretty lucky. Brian Mulroney was called lots of things, but stupid wasn’t usually one of them. And Jean Chrétien made no sense whatsoever, but it turns out he was actually fairly ­bright.

Which brings us to Paul Martin (not that he’s been elected). Watching him on the job for the last couple of weeks, I think we’ve all been thinking the same thing: we’ve seen brighter lights on small ­appliances.

Here he is, a Liberal prime minister facing a united Conservative ­right-­wing party, perhaps the most serious threat the Liberals have faced in over a decade. And what’s he doing? Every time he turns around he’s attacking Jack Layton and the NDP. And the more he attacks the NDP, the stronger the NDP ­gets.

Then it dawned on me: perhaps Martin’s no fool. Perhaps he’s been boning up on The Art of War and he’s going to use the NDP to destroy the Conservatives. Sure, Martin would love to stand up and say, “Hey Canada, you want Conservative, vote for me. I’m more Conservative than Brian Mulroney ever was.” But he can’t say that because the sign on the door to the prime minister’s office says Liberal. So how’s he going to get that message out? The NDP. So he’s doing them every favour he can think of. Hell, he even tried to give them Sheila Copps, and that’s a gift that keeps on ­giving.

So don’t worry, ­Canada–­no matter what you think about Paul Martin, at least we know one thing about him: like every great prime minister before him, at least he’s not as stunned as he ­looks.


Minority show | Oct. 25, ­2004

Over one hundred of the MPs in Canada’s 38th Parliament are brand spankin’ new. Think about that. A third of our MPs have never done anything like this before in their lives. It’s ­mind-­boggling when you consider the layers of dumb that have yet to be revealed to...

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Verlag
Doubleday of Canada
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385665199
ISBN 13 
9780385665193
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
294
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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