I Defend Your Right to Stupidity

Canadians are not smarter than Americans.

It pains me to say this. For many years, I've laboured under the assumption that, blessed with a better education system and a necessarily broader worldview than our southern neighbours, Canadians could lay claim to, if not a higher average number of IQ points, a better track record of putting them to use.

I had this sense that Rick Mercer's "Talking to Americans" was an accurate snapshot of the differences between the countries - on the one hand, well-meaning and awfully nice but just not-so-smart folks and, on the other, witty and intelligent people with perhaps the slightest (yet understandable given the circumstances) tendency towards condescension.

Coming to America has challenged this assumption. First, I have come to realize that not all Americans are mindlessly patriotic warmongers. I've met people who have helped me to see that loving one's country does not mean excusing it, and that the stereotypes I accepted as reality were about as accurate as the "I left my dogsled at the border" ones.

Accompanying this elevation of my opinion of Americans had been a simultaneous downgrading of my opinion of Canadians. Whence this plummeting status, you ask? From a place one would least expect it, a place with an impressive pedigree and accompanying sophistication.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The news section of their website to be exact. About a year ago, the powers that be over there took the ill-advised ("ill-advised" in that I was not consulted) step to allow comments on their news stories. No longer content with reducing Radio 2 to appeal to the lowest common denominator, the news service directors decided in their wisdom that Canadian readers needed a voice, and that this voice would be an integral and important part of the dynamic conversation that results from people interacting with the breaking news stories of the day.

It's not.

In fact, far from being an avenue of intelligent, thought-provoking discussion, the comment forum is often little more than a cacophany of uninformed pontificating. It descends all too quickly to the blind leading the blind or ad hominem attacks directed towards the people discussed in the article. Though there are indeed examples of erudition and well-spoken words, they are often lost among the sneers directed towards other regions and self-righteous soap-boxing based on blatant misreadings of the article/issue at hand.

What gets my proverbial goat the most is the howls of derision that go up whenever the commentor disagrees that a particular story is newsworthy: "How is this news!? I can't believe our tax dollars are paying for this drivel/CBC should be ashamed of itself for posting this" is a common theme, particularly in some of the op ed pieces. You know what? My tax dollars paid for your public school education and you seem to be similarly squandering my investment, so let's just call it even, shall we?

As angry as they make me (even as I can't stop staring - they're like a train wreck and I continually find myself reading them even as my pulse starts to race and I get all sweaty with ire) and as painful as it is to come to terms with the truth, I have come to the realization that, ultimately, comment sections - whether on CBC or on TMZ - are good things.

First, it's a bit like the old proverb "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Except that before all doubt was removed, I thought that Canadians were, as a whole and across the board, smarter than everyone else. Which in turn led to a misguided sense of superiority and compromised my abilities to appreciate my current country of residence and its citizens.

Second, voice is important. I may not agree with the voice, I may roll my eyes, and I might even become so angry I can hardly speak. But the typing fingers at the other end of the comment that infuriates me belong to a person. A person who, in all likelihood, has a vote and a say in how the country is run. (Which is actually more than I have at this point.) A person whose opinion should not be discounted, even as I disagree with it. A person who simply cannot be reduced to a few words typed on a page.

And so I say with Evelyn Beatrice Hall, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Well, maybe not death. But you get the idea. I won't be writing to the news directors and begging them to remove the comment section for the good of all Canadians and our reputation everywhere.

Instead, I'll continue trying to ignore the ones with which I disagree and restrict my own comments to this relatively private space, where my own uninformed pontificating, sneers, and soap-boxing have a restricted audience and will be less likely to damage international perceptions.