The Americans (1974 parody)

The American dollar took another pounding on the international exchange today, and the pound took a franking as the Deutschmark and the Yen lorded it with familiar Axis-like arrogance over the Yankee buck that rebuilt their bombed-out bailiwicks from scratch. Well, this is one Canadian who thinks it's time to speak up for the American dollar or else unpeg our currency from theirs, which, given the high possibility of an invasion, seems unwise.

Can you name me one nation that's anything like the Americans? I thought not. Whenever there's a fire, a flood, an earthquake or another act of God anywhere in the world, who gets there first with cameramen, photographers, reporters, and color commentators? The Americans. Yet when a tornado hit a midwestern town, causing what President Nixon called the worst disaster he had ever seen, with the exception of his personal tax returns maybe, did one country from Southeast Asia send in an eyewitness news team? I ask you.

Whenever, for two hundred years the people of Cuba, The Dominican Republic, Chile, Bolivia, Mexico, the Philippines, Libya, Korea, and Cambodia didn't know what was good for them, who helped, with CIA agents, marines, counter-insurgency forces, and bushels of laundered cash? The Americans.

When tiny Vietnam found itself being overrun by Asians, who came to its aid?

I, for one, am damned glad the Americans had the generosity to invade Canada three times or we'd never have found out who our real friends are.

And when Canada decided to dam James Bay, flood the tundra, and destroy the ecology of the North in order to produce hydro-electric power, it was the Americans who offered to buy that power at a price they could afford.

Come on, let's hear it. Who but the Americans could have produced the DC-10, the technological breakthrough that's done more to control the population explosion than anything since the fragmentation bomb? You talk about your Japanese technocracy and you get the electric dildo. You talk about your German technocracy and you get eighteen minutes of silent recording tape. But you talk about your American technocracy and you get men on the moon, playing golf, and drinking Tang.

And right here on our Canadian streets there are draft-dodgers, free to come and go as they please, as long as they don't talk out of turn or get too near the border, and many of them have pockets full of letters from Mom and Dad back home, begging them to turn themselves in to Leavenworth for the Commies they are.

Sure the Americans are in a bind right now, but they put their scandals right in the store window, where they're sold to the highest bidder. And when they come out of this with their flags flying at half-mast, and they will, who could blame them if they said to hell with the rest of the world and gave back the fifty percent of Canadian land and the seventy percent of Canadian industry they own. And where would we be then? Would we know what to do with it? I ask you.

I'm one Canadian who's damned tired of watching the Americans kicked around, and I'd give up watching the American news if it wasn't the only channel I got.

And another thing; President Nixon announced the other day that when he's paid off his debts and lawyers, and all his back taxes, he'll be broke. And not a single Canadian has offered to help.

[from the Canada Show episode of The National Lampoon Radio Hour]