Talking to Americans

rdf:langString Talking to Americans

rdf:langString Talking to Americans was a regular feature presented by Rick Mercer on the Canadian political satire show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which was later spun off into a one-hour special that aired on April 1, 2001 on CBC Television. The purpose of the skit was to satirize American lack of awareness about Canada, by interviewing Americans on the street and convincing them to agree with ridiculous statements about their northern neighbour. Mercer freely acknowledged that he did not think Americans were collectively stupid; in an interview on Nightline, Mercer explained that "I'm just looking for the short answer. Some people hem and haw and they seem to be on to me, and of course we don't include them... About 80 per cent of the people give me the right answer, by which of course, I mean the wrong answer." He also acknowledged that it would be entirely possible to put together a similar feature getting Canadians to agree on camera to strange statements on topics they knew little about, with the primary difference being that Mercer couldn't do it himself as Canadians would recognize him. In his 2021 memoir Talking to Canadians, Mercer described the segment as having had its genesis in 1998, when he was in Washington, DC to film an unrelated segment for 22 Minutes. While waiting to begin filming, he met a Capitol Hill staffer whose apparent willingness to talk freely about subjects he didn't actually know anything about led to an impromptu filmed interview in which the staffer was asked questions about a fictional presidential summit between Bill Clinton and Ralph Benmergui, and was successfully convinced by Mercer that Canadians were unfamiliar with the concept of alphabetical order.