I hate American Idol as much as the next person, but making someone cry over their failure sounds pretty awful to me.
I think that segment was a bit too much. Those people didn’t seem to know much English, and it just came across as rude. The vomiting in the Chinese deli/butcher shop was just insulting. We get it, they eat different foods than us.
Watching that, I assumed the butchers were in on the joke – surely they gave permission for the “vomiting,” as they didn’t seem a bit surprised when it started.
Just have to comment briefly on the debate about Americans’ knowledge of Canadians and vice versa. Yes, I have always found that Canadians (and in general most people around the world) know far more about us than we know about them. But, significantly, that seems to be just about the only thing they know about in the international arena. I don’t think Canadians are on average at all more interested in the “world outside their borders,” except, for some reason, when it has something to do with the United States. Okay, so Canadians can discuss US politics and geography with some fluency – but how many can just as easily discus the political situation in, say, Indonesia, or Brazil? Precious few in my experience. And when they do know something about a country besides the United States, it tends to be because the US is, or has been, involved in some way there. Just about the only times I’ve heard people discussing Vietnam was in the context of the American war there (and just the American war – never the French). Nobody discusses Chile except to talk about the CIA supported coup. Hugo Chavez tussles with the US, and suddenly everyone knows something about Venezuela. The US might not be good at teaching its own citizens geography, but it certainly seems to teach the rest of the world.
THIS ENTIRE STATE IS THREATENED WITH THREE WHOLE DAYS OF SHADE!
Ed the Sock, actually.