The Last Laugh

Rather than resurrecting the dying art of satire, Canadian networks are betting on safer fare. Two of the country’s top-rated shows, ctv’s Corner Gas and cbc’s Little Mosque on the Prairie, are both small-town sitcoms. Meanwhile, the ctv-owned Comedy Network hasn’t found a winning recipe and relies on US imports (which comprise over a third of its prime-time content) for its ratings.

American satirical shows are less inhibited, says former 22 Minutes writer Bob Kerr. “If we had that kind of power and could dance along merrily as we pleased, I think the comedy scene as far as satire goes would be a lot more popular here,” he adds. Kerr is referring to the protections afforded by the First Amendment, the first and most significant covenant in the US Constitution and the wellspring of Yankee satirical freedom. “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” It’s a clear and rigid prescription, though one that was overlooked until 1964.

It was the height of the civil rights movement, and the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Freedom in the South had taken out a full-page ad in the New York Times to raise money to defend King against a charge of tax evasion. The ad accused the Montgomery, Alabama, police department of being complicit in a campaign to smear the reverend’s good name. It also claimed that “Southern violators,” armed with shotguns and tear gas, had detained black students engaging in peaceful civil rights demonstrations. L. B. Sullivan, the city commissioner in charge of the police force, took these allegations personally. His reputation, he said, was ruined, and he sued the Times for libel. Up to this point in American juridical history, defamation cases had favoured the plaintiff. Sullivan was confident that the court would presume that what the Times had printed was untrue and that, to win his case, he’d only have to prove the paper had printed the libellous material.

The case made its way to the Supreme Court, where the judges ruled that the American legal system had been abridging free speech for close to 200 years. How could a society purport to embrace free speech if it assumed that everything voiced or written in the public domain was untrue? The court decided to place the burden of proof on the plaintiff rather than the defendant. Sullivan would have to prove that the contentious words were both false and published with malice in order to win the case. He couldn’t. Some of the accusations turned out to be untrue, but the Times didn’t know that when they printed them. A new precedent had been set, and American comics were effectively unmuzzled.

Prior to the 1960s, American comedy was dominated by “A rabbi, a Polack, and a Greek walk into a bar” jokes. Lenny Bruce, the comedian lionized after paving the way for daring stand-ups of the 1970s like Richard Pryor and George Carlin, went broke fighting two obscenity charges (the first and most famous for saying “cocksucker” on a San Francisco stage in 1961) that he felt violated his First Amendment rights. Though he was acquitted on both charges, it wasn’t until 1975 that the changes in American defamation law began to impact TV programming. That’s when Thornhill, Ontario, native Lorne Michaels debuted Saturday Night Live, the late-night sketch program that directly attacked politicians and social mores, often in the Weekend Update segment that popularized fake news. More than thirty years on, 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday night is no longer a cultural touchstone, but plenty of American satires have carried the torch. The Simpsons’ halcyon days lasted from 1991 to 1996, and South Park is still relevant after eleven seasons. The turn of the millennium saw a fresh injection of satire in The Daily Show, Chappelle’s Show, and, most recently, The Colbert Report.

In Canada, where freedom of speech is protected under Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—but only, as stipulated in Section One, “to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”—it’s no wonder our satirical bounty has shrivelled and died. We’re being outperformed. We’ve got an unfriendly legal system, small budgets, nervous producers, and softballing writers versus First Amendment protection, big budgets, and, well, faster balls. Our bare-bones television industry doesn’t need to put everything on the line to make a great satirical show when it can just import one. And after years of doing just that, our producers and writers have forgotten how to deliver that knockout punch.

However, the gears may be shifting. Tony Burman, the editor-in-chief of cbc News—known for his brusque leadership and journalistic acumen, if not his sense of humour—has emerged as a possible saviour. Burman is the chair of the broadcasting consortium that cut the deal with the federal political parties to limit the use of election debate footage. Following Mercer’s outburst in the Times, The Daily Show’s “coverage” of the issue, and the small flurry of outrage in the blogosphere (led by the Toronto Star’s Antonia Zerbisias), Burman decided the footage should be made available to satirical programs.

With a new round of debates looming, he has reopened the satire issue with the consortium. Negotiations are still in the early stages, and even if all the broadcasters come to an agreement, the federal parties will have to consent before anything is ratified. Burman acknowledges that when it comes time to sit down with the politicos to talk about the debates, there may be more pressing matters to address but, he adds, “these programs, every year, are more popular and important.” Canadian politics could no doubt use the help in becoming more popular and important. Fingers crossed, Rick Mercer will be tearing Gilles Duceppe a new one for his podium demeanour this spring.

What confuses Burman is not why Mercer and the media complained, but why no one did it earlier. “This has been the arrangement since 1988,” he says, “and unless I’m suffering amnesia, I don’t recall it being an issue before.” If we want better Canadian satire, it looks as if asking would be a start.