First it was the Sunday football game. Then it was all the primary results on Tuesday. But most of all it was the attention, the rhetoric and the seemingly continuous hype of everything American, this week. Between coverage of the presidential race, rants on the U.S. recession-watch and the apparently billions of people following all this on television and the Internet, it drove a colleague of mine to distraction.
“When is all this U.S. ‘super’ nonsense going to stop?” he asked.
I have to agree with him. Our neighbours to the south have outdone themselves in self-analysis and self-aggrandisement yet again. They’ve reached new heights (or perhaps depths) in looking at themselves in the mirror. It doesn’t seem to matter what aspect of their lives is on view. It’s got to be the biggest, the most exciting, the greatest (or worst) moment in the history of the world, simply because it happened in their backyard. And because they’ve run out of superlatives, it’s just got to be super. Or, as some U.S. commentators began saying, “It’s Super-Duper!”
To be fair, the National Football League championship on Sunday deserved some of the accolades. While most of the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and New York Giants was a snoozer, the last few minutes got pretty exciting. The Giants’ touchdown with only 35 seconds left, for the 17-14 victory, was dramatic. So too were the audience sizes. Overnight the ratings folks determined that 97.5 million Americans watched the 42nd Super Bowl, making it the second most-watched TV program in U.S. history (the finale of “MASH” in 1983 remains first with 106 million).
Nevertheless, lost in all the weekend sports hype from Arizona, was Emily Brydon’s victory in the downhill skiing competition at St. Moritz. On Sunday, the 27-year-old Canadian, from Fernie, B.C., came back from a couple of potentially career-ending, knee surgeries to hurtle down the Swiss slopes at just under 115 kilometres per hour and win the women’s downhill by 4/10ths of a second. And, yes, the event is called the World Cup “Super-G.” That’s its official name.
For all the attention that Tuesday’s race for the U.S. presidential nominations received here in Canada, one would think the campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney and John McCain were tantamount to the second coming. Again, I admit that the voting to determine delegates in 23 states (almost half the country) holds great significance. And true, whomever Americans elect in November has tremendous impact on Canada’s currency, environment and politics.
Nearly lost in all the U.S. Super Tuesday hype, however, was perhaps an equally important political event in this country – Ed Stelmach’s call for an election on March 3. Who’s Ed Stelmach? Well, since December 2006, he’s been the premier (since Ralph Klein stepped down) of the most dynamic, booming province in the country. In the last two weeks, for example, the (PC-elected, but not popularly elected) Alberta premier has announced $1.3 billion in spending in that province, that’s about $4.7 million an hour, reporters said. OK, the dollars might not be up their with Microsoft, but if one believes Alberta’s opposition parties, this election might just witness the fall of one of the longest-standing political dynasties in Canadian history – 36 straight years of PC government in the richest province in the nation.
But U.S. super-duper hype has no apparent end. The Americans have also hyped the state of their teetering housing market and their sub-prime interest fiasco – “the worst economic slump since the Depression,” one commentator said. Back in the sporting arena, this week the NHL commissioner announced plans to take the annual outdoor classic to “super-duper” Colorado next season. Isn’t it a Canadian city’s turn? And the U.S. media can’t stop themselves from gushing over the train wreck that is Britney Spears’ life. Can’t gossip columnists and the paparazzi find any Canadian celebrities to smear? Conrad Black or Céline Dion for example?
In all of the America-centric focus this week, it seems to me, reporters and pundits have all missed the biggest and perhaps most significant event celebrated in Canada or anywhere in the world for that matter. Today – Feb. 7 – marks the beginning of the lunar new year in China. Overnight, across the Asian continent, 1.3 billion Chinese began celebrations of the Year of the Rat, the implications of which – in the most populous part of the world, in the most buoyant economy in the world, in the most secretive society in the world – will likely influence more global political spheres, more international economic balance sheets and more of the Earth’s atmosphere than ever.
I wonder what the Chinese equivalent for “super” is.
