From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Toronto Sun: another case of paranoia???
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 04:15:11 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.235904.10209@cerberus.ulaval.ca> duquet@astro.phy.ulaval.ca (Jean-Remi Duquet) writes:
(With a whole pile of previous followups that are unattributed.  Flame
at your own risk :-)). 
>>>Quebec Separatist are an enemy of Canada. The Bloc Quebecois have as
>>>their mandate, the separation of Quebec. Therefore they are an enemy of
>>>Canada. Remember this comic strip did not attack Quebecois ONLY
>>>Separatist. 
>>
>>It IS hard to tell the difference sometimes between Quebecois and the
>>Separatists.
>>
>>The Separatists would like everyone to think that ALL Quebecois (and
>>probably generalizing further, all francophones) are Separatists.
>>
>>Since a Quebecois reading an English cartoon may be passing through a
>>couple of levels of cultural translation, it may be difficult to grasp
>>the distinction between hatred of Separatists, and hatred of
>>Quebecois.
>>
>
>OK, agreed. But how can you HATE 30%+ quebecers while "loving" the
>remaining 70% or so ? How does it affects your feelings toward a group
>of quebecers when you don't know their political "color" ? The reciprocal
>would be, say, hating "royalist" canadians. How would you accept a
>similar strip, mutatis mutandis ?

(1) You can appreciate the good points, while being less than
receptive to the "bad points";

That is, I could say "I enjoy French cuisine", quite validly, and
enjoy seeing other colourful manifestations of Quebec culture, and
still feel that the political actions of the nationalist Quebecois are
unacceptable.

(2) The people that are into the "hatred" thing have a tendancy to be
pretty xenophobic, and probably DON'T have any appreciation for "nice"
things like Quebecois culture.  They're too busy hating to do any
appreciating of good points.

About the royalist thing?  You'd be surprised!  There's lots of people
out there that are purely anglophone that are either
a) Monarchists
or
b) Anti-Royalists 

You probably can't SEE the difference between them more than a few
times a year.  When the Queen visits, the Monarchists are in the front
row, hoping to shake her hand.  The Anti-Royalists are either at home
muttering, or are carrying pickets WAY back from the Queen.

Both may be either rich, poor, have British accents, or "Canadian"
accents.  The ones with British accents are probably more likely to be
"hard-liners", whichever group they're in, but it might be difficult
to generalize about them further.

A Quebecois cartoon strip trashing the Royal Family would probably be
seen to be in poor taste as well.

Dumping on someone you're kind of "expected" to dump on isn't very
funny, unless it gets mean enough that it's in very bad taste.  It's
hardly subtle.  It's often more funny to "make fun of yourself."

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |===================================
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