Screen: HBO
Last Week Tonight Addresses Would-Be Ottawan Cheaters In Language They'll Understand
But not moose. This doesn't concern them.
Belonging to a mostly invisible community, as we Canadians do, means we must be a tiny bit proud even of those Canadian achievements that are, by any reasonable standard, shameful. It was true of CGI's involvement in HealthCare.gov, and it's true as the news dribbles out that infamous cheaters' website AshleyMadison.com, recently targeted by hackers, is a Canadian innovation.
Though I feel most Canadians are with me in finding the existence of a website like Ashley Madison repugnant and its users basically subhuman...what makes this news item so exciting for us is how it upends the stereotype of Canadians as polite and well-mannered: what could be less polite or well-mannered than marital infidelity? (That said, hooking it up via anonymous website affirms our national commitment to being reserved.) And it's exactly this incongruity that Last Week Tonight has just mined for comedy in its latest episode.
Though Ashley Madison has (gross) users all over the world, it seems the highest concentration is in Ottawa, widely known as "The City That Fun Forgot." So in an attempt to rescue the city from its married citizens' sexual incontinence, Last Week Tonight made this direct appeal to Ottawans to consider abandoning their accounts and getting their lives back on the right track.
The attention to detail in this presentation is extraordinary, from the legit Canadian accent ("down" IS pronounced more like "doan" than "doon") to the basically lame Ottawan tourist attractions to the acknowledgement that most Canadians' husbands ARE named Gordon. My dog, an adopted Canadian named Gordon, approves. If I could, I would give this clip a 15 on the Canadianosity scale, but since I can't, a merely perfect score will have to do.
Just how Canadian is this?