Fill out our Daily Orange reader survey to make our paper better


Election Humor

Why Americans are underachievers

Donald Trump’s campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again,” which hints at the fact that America is currently not great.

He and many of his supporters blame Mexican immigrants for the U.S.’s lack of greatness, saying that they’re stealing American jobs.

But why do we care about Mexican immigrants when the numbers show they tend to lead in low-skill jobs? Canadian immigrants, on the other hand, are who we should really feel threatened by. They’re taking the biggest and most important jobs out of the hands of the Americans who deserve them.

The first, and maybe most evident, example of the Canadian invasion is the abundance of Canadians in the American music industry. Three of this year’s biggest names in music were all born in Canada: Drake, Justin Bieber and The Weeknd.

How are Americans supposed to pregame, dance and make love to the music of these men, respectively, when they were not born in the United States of America? Also, side note: JBiebs, why is your Canadian city hometown of London, Ontario named after England’s capital? America doesn’t have a town named after Canada’s capital, Ottawa — other than in Illinois and Kentucky.



It’s not just the artists of 2016 who are missing out, though. Canadians have been stealing jobs from hardworking American musicians forever. The Americans who lost out on those jobs are not always random people. They could have been people close to you; maybe even your family.

Imagine, your American grandpa could have been Neil Young, your grandma — Celine Dion, your dad — Michael Bublé, your mom — Alanis Morissette, your sister — Avril Lavigne and your other sister — Carly Rae Jepsen. Think about the fact that you’re missing out on being part of the Young-Dion-Bublé-Morissette-Lavigne-Jepsen superstar family because of Canadians stealing our musicians’ places.

Although these artists are recording their music, going on tour, paying taxes and living in America, think about all those Americans who could have had these highly coveted jobs.

So, you’re wondering how can you escape from these Canadian musical brainwashers? Don’t turn to television and movies, because our northern neighbors are all over those platforms too.

“Deadpool” was a great movie, wasn’t it? Now, imagine Ryan Reynolds hadn’t stole that job from a hardworking American actor. Someone who could’ve done it justice. Someone like Ben Stiller.

Wish the hunky superstar and the fawning starlet in “The Notebook” weren’t from another land? Imagine someone like Ben Stiller in that role instead of Ryan Gosling and an anthropomorphized T-Rex instead of Rachel McAdams. We could have had “Night At The Museum” in 2004 instead of 2006. It’s a shame we had to wait those two extra years.

Even many of the “American” comedic greats are from Canada: Jim Carrey, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Martin Short and many more. Those are roles that could have put hilarious American comedians to work. Imagine Ben Stiller instead of all those Canadians. Stiller is so versatile. It’s really a shame.

Worst of all, it feels like Canada is leading a coup on our government. Remember that crazy, sweaty, camera-bumping-into, cocaine-using Toronto mayor Rob Ford? He captured the continent’s attention with his farcical antics, but Americans are supposed to be the ones who elect people who really shouldn’t be in office.

How are we, the country that elected a man to govern one of our largest and most important states based solely off of his muscles, accent, and ability to say “I’ll be back,” letting Canada elect the weirdos?

Canada just elected the cool, sexy, super young, liberal Justin Trudeau as their prime minister. Less than 8 years ago, we elected the cool, sexy, super young, black, liberal Barack Obama. Now we’re choosing between uncool, unsexy, old, white Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Pretty soon all other countries will lose respect for us, and change one of the six national languages of the United Nations from “American English” to “Canadian English.”

Look, some people may have a problem with immigrants who don’t assimilate into our culture. But that’s not the problem with Canadians. The biggest issue is that we can’t tell them apart.

A new young star comes up the ranks, and the U.S. is happy to embrace them, but the moment they say “about” as “a boot,” we should be hanging our heads in shame. Canadians are basically the same as us, except they speak French because they have to try and be better.

Our priorities aren’t straight. We need to stop inviting Canadians into our countries to take our jobs and steal our spotlight. We wouldn’t even need to build a wall to stop them, just a border patrol to politely warn them about our lack of free healthcare and Tim Hortons.

Josh Feinblatt is junior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly in Pulp. He can be reached at jfeinbla@syr.edu.





Top Stories