Free Republic

Neil Peart of Rush nominated for his drum solo from Rush In Rio O'Baterista. Congrats Neil! Rock Instrumental Performance: "Instrumental Illness," The Allman Brothers Band; "Onda," Los Lonely Boys; "O Baterista," Rush; "Whispering a Prayer," Steve Vai; "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow," Brian Wilson.

Edmonton – The Spectatorians have asked me to comment on the outcry against Conan O'Brien here in Canada, and while I wouldn't dream of defending the phony indignation of a handful of socialists, kleptocrats, and race-baiters, there is a genuine cultural issue here. The people who are stamping their feet over the antics of a hand puppet are, I think, genuinely confused as well as politically opportunistic. There is no cultural referent here, you see, for the thing Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is actually parodying, which is the tradition of the insult comic. Canada lived in a British universe,...

-snip- Putting The Spectator to one side (which is always a good idea in this Gilliganista phase), these are certainly strange times in Trudeaupia. The country has chosen to go to war with a puppet — Triumph The Insult Dog. As his name might have forewarned, Triumph has insulted Canada. Nothing unusual about that. He insults people for a living. What’s unique in this case is that both Federal and provincial levels of government paid for him and his master, Conan O’Brien, to come to Canada to insult us; they put him up in the best kennel at the Chateau...

American talk-show host Conan O'Brien turned out to be Conan the Barbarian on his road show into Canada this week. His NBC program threw oil and matches down our national fault line Thursday night with crude jokes about French Canadians. The show featured a puppet called Triumph the Insult Dog, which wandered around Quebec City's winter carnival, sporting a French beret. It stopped Quebecers in the street and said stuff like: "So you're French and Canadian, yes? So you're obnoxious and dull?" Also: "You're in North America. ... Learn the language!" Thanks for the insults, Conan. Somehow you forgot to...

Ottawa – Canada's government has condemned a show by U.S. late-night television host Conan O'Brien that insulted people in French-speaking Quebec and seemed to suggest everyone in the province was homosexual. Ottawa and the province of Ontario paid C$1 million (400,000 pounds) to help O'Brien — who appears on the NBC television network — bring his show to Toronto for a week to boost the city's profile after a deadly SARS outbreak last year. But the federal government said O'Brien had gone far too far with the show broadcast on Thursday in which he went to Quebec, a province which...