Maybe if you’re not a Star Wars fan.
I totally get that, and even found a lot of the gags funny. “You’re French-Canadian? So that means you’re obnoxious and dull?” That’s funny. (And the guy he said it to even found it funny, after it was translated for him.)
What makes it “not funny” is knowing that, for many people, it’s deadly serious. There are a lot of exclusively francophone Québécois who can’t be expected to be regular Conan viewers and wouldn’t have the context of the Triumph schtick. All they’re going to see is the Canadian government paying to have a puppet wrapped in the Canadian flag saying that French people are smelly and stupid and should learn to speak English, since they’re in North America – and a Toronto (and by extension ROC) audience booing at the mention of Quebec and cheering on the disparagement of the Quebecois. At a time when the number of Quebecers who support separation is hovering around 50% and we’re facing the possibility of another referendum, something that might affect the opinion of 1% of the population of Quebec could aid in the disintegration of the country. Not funny. (Yes, it seems absurd to consider the possibility that a scatalogical hand-puppet might have such a catastrophic effect on a nation’s history, but politics are often absurd, and we’re right on the brink.) Not funny.
Heh. This is me. 
I can’t say that I’ve done the cosplay thing (as an adult) but I haven’t missed an opening day since 1977.
It’s no biggee if Star Wars fans and Trekkers don’t get along. That just makes it more funny. 
Yeah, I see your point, I’m not disagreeing with you but I just wanted to point out that not every frog was losing sleep over it. And I was raised partially in the US (like from about 12-18) so I suppose “get” Conan’s shtick since I had known about it for a while. Although, I’m pretty certain Triumph is based on Bill the Sock, a Canadian foul-mouthed handpuppet. Who I am almost positive makes anti-frog jokes.
I just find it hi-la-rious that when I heard/read people claiming that it renewed their patriotism due to their ire over a handpuppet. Then again, I am not a home-grown francophone, just an immigrant who was raised there while anti-immigrant sentiment was raging, so I doubt I have the same attachment to Quebec that they do. To tell you the truth, I have almost no attachment to it whatsoever (aside from a fondness for my alma mater) so perhaps that’s why I found it so funny. Carry on.
Are you a fellow, Canuck, btw?
I still think the surprise appearance of Mr. Spock at the Star Wars premiere line while they were filming Triumph was entirely too coincidental.
Enjoy,
Steven
Triumph does indeed get away with saying things that a real person wouldn’t be able to. Sometimes it is comedy gold, but other times it can be downright rude and sometimes even disgusting!
In my own defense, and admittedly it is not much of one, about my run-on paragraph post: it was 4 am and I wasn’t thinking too clearly. Most definitely, I was not thinking of how to construct a literate, readable post. :smack: I will endeavor to make any future posts with that in mind, but make no promises.
And I had just viewed that near-pornographic clip of Triumph with the accupuncturist, talking dirty to Triumph while he treated him with the needles while wearing the executioner-style mask. That was enough to make my head spin!
“Talking to Americans” is a stitch, but a puppet hurting the feelings of some francophones is oh so terrible, huh? :dubious:
Uh, in case you missed it, he gave a pretty good explanation for why insulting the Quebecois was a serious matter. Since you haven’t managed to counter his assertions, your lackluster attempt at ridiculing them is not all that impressive.
Is it on the Web somewhere, or was it aired this week?
I think it originally aired on Conan last week; what I caught was on the Conan re-run at 3 AM Thursday morning. It may be available on the main Triumph page, which I don’t have the URL for at the moment unfortunately, or on Conan’s show page, which would be on NBC’s main page You have to look for the late night link, then click on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I’d really try Triumph’s page first, though. Google Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and it’s probably going to be one of the first sites that pops up.
Hope this helps some - sorry I couldn’t be more helpful, especially about Triumph’s page!
Argh. The link above is not the right one. Here is a link directly to Conan’s Triumph page: Triumph video clips This does not contain the recent clip of Triumph in Chinatown for Chinese New Year, however.
If a MOD could please fix my previous post by exchanging the direct link to Conan’s show with the no-good msnbc one. I don’t know what I was thinking because Conan is most definitely not an MSNBC show.
I’m surprised no mention of Triumph’s trip to Spin Alley during the Presidential debates.
http://www.streakoflight.com/triumph.html
“…no self respecting man would go to an event like this and prop up a puppet…except for DickCheney.”
Here it is. There are also a bunch of other clips.
“J-Lo! Let me sniff your butt! … For a dog, it’s like climbing Mt. Everest!”
I gave the link to Triumph’s site. Check the “Come Poop With Me!” post, above. THe Chinese new year video is not on there. If you check my second link a few posts upstrream, the Chinese New Year video is there. First video on the list, with a picture of the masked actupuncturist. In fact, here is a direct link to that video. Here’s to mutual understanding.
Yea, I saw what he said. I’m not buying it. When one of the most popular bits on Canadian TV is based upon the premise “Hey, look at how stooopid Americans are”, one has no room to get upset when an American show does the same thing, hysterical Gallic snit fits notwithstanding. Sauce for the goose.
“If you’re so against gay marriage, why don’t you get that stick out of your ass?!”
What I find faintly amusing is the notion that Americans should know things about Canada. When they prove that Americans don’t know how many provinces Canada has, all it shows is that Canada is not as relevant to Americans as the converse. Why would Americans care about the Canadian government? What relevance does it have to us?
It just reinforces the fact that we in the USA are a bunch of monolingual, wrist-shotting dopes. 
It just seems like this insular attitude is much more common in the U.S. than outside.
My seven-year-old niece has no difficulty identifying all fifty U.S. states on an unlabeled map, as well as all the thirteen Canadian provinces and territories, and her older sister has a solid understanding of the U.S. electoral system, as well as the Canadian electoral system. It’s not that it’s somehow more relevant to us, (what an egotistical idea,) it’s just that there’s value placed on understanding the geography and politics of world outside your own national borders.
Invite non-Americans to comment on the American view of the rest of the world, and you’ll find the same perceptions again and again.
Now I have no doubt that it’s relatively easy to find equally blinkered world-views in the population of the rest of the world, and many of the most well-informed and intelligent people I’ve spoken to are American, but I think that it’s much less common outside the U.S. to find so many people to whom this sort of remarkable educational lacuna seems natural to the point that they seem almost proud of it.
I mean, when back when G.W. was running for president, the rest of the world was paying close attention when he was asked in an interview to name the current leaders of the Chechen Republic, India, Pakistan, and Taiwan and scored 0/4, I think very few outside observers seriously considered that he might be electable. This is the sort of world knowledge that a reasonably-literate person is expected to pick up from the morning paper while they’re working on coffee and a danish. The idea that a guy with aspirations to be elected Head of State can display such ignorance and then go on to actually win is pretty incomprehensible.
To give you an idea of how foreign this seems to everyone else, imagine somebody getting elected after admitting to be an atheist.
I kid, because I love.
Don’t get me wrong - I think it’s sad how little Americans know about the rest of the world. But I’ve been to Canada. They spend as much time covering American politics as they do Canadian. The newspapers are covered with stories about the United States. And there’s a reason for that - Canada is a small country, and its neighbor is far larger. Canadian politics play a far smaller role in our lives than American politics do in you guys’. I’m not trying to insult Canada - but it’s a small country. It’s got, what, 30 million people? The goings-on in Canada just don’t affect our lives. I’m sorry if that’s egotistical - it just happens to be the truth.
I’m not trying to defend the rather insular attitudes of Americans here, but you don’t make much of a case for that when you point out that we don’t know the capitol of New Brunswick. By the same token, in the U.S. most of us know who the governor of California or New York is, but less of us know who the governor of Nebraska is. Because it doesn’t matter who the governor of Nebraska is.
How is this so? At breakfast today, I read (okay, skimmed) a detailed article about abortion politics in the U.S., with a half-page graphic illustrating which states have no restrictions on access to abortion services, those with restrictions which are unenforceable because of constitutional issues, and those with access restrictions like parental consent and the like, the percentage of counties without any available abortion services (something like 90%) etc.
What practical difference does it make to Canadians if South Dakota outlaws abortion? None at all. It’s just something that’s happening in the world. Population has little to do with it – hell, how does it effect us if the Swedes have given their authorities the power to plant listening devices in private homes? They’re much smaller than us, half a world away, and speak a whole different language. But there it is, in the paper, just as if it mattered to us somehow.
Who has? It’s the same up here – most of us know the governors of New York and Cali, and are probably a little hazy on who’s running the show in Rhode Island.
Weirddave brought up Talking to Americans, so I assume we’re using that as a benchmark, as silly as it is. We’re talking airstrikes against Saskatchewan, here. Saskatchewan isn’t something that’s irrelevant to Americans, it’s your largest source of uranium, for starters.
Geez, Canada is your largest trading partner, even if we do have a tenth of your population. Cripes, Ontario is Michigan’s largest trading partner (and more populous, so neener-neener,) but Governor Engler still accepted “Jean Poutine” as PM.
Argh; this has drifted quite a way from how funny Robert Smigel is with the dirty dog. Sorry for dragging it here.