Fox News show raises ire by mocking Canadian Forces
Last Updated: Monday, March 23, 2009 | 10:42 AM ET Comments568Recommend364
CBC News
A government spokesman is calling for U.S. cable network Fox to apologize for a recent broadcast of derogatory comments mocking the Canadian Forces during an over-the-top, late-night show.
Dan Dugas, a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay, described the remarks made last week on the intentionally inflammatory Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld as "despicable, hurtful and ignorant."
"No one is laughing and they owe Canada — and, more importantly, the families of each one of our fallen heroes — an apology for their ill-informed mistakes," Dugas said.
The extreme late-night cultural commentary show — broadcast on Fox at 3 a.m. ET during the week — is hosted by Gutfeld, a former Maxim and Stuff magazine editor.
He moderates a round table of panelists who deliver off-the-cuff musings and crack jokes about a wide range of topics from the worlds of news, entertainment and sports. Commentators have included comedians, Fox News anchors, actors and Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis.
'… the Canadian military wants to take a breather to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white Capri pants.'— Greg Gutfeld, Fox News moderator
In the five-minute segment broadcast last week, Gutfeld mocked the Canadian Forces, noting Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie's recent comment that the military may need a year to recover after Canada's mission in Afghanistan ends in 2011.
"Meaning, the Canadian military wants to take a breather to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white Capri pants," Gutfeld said.
"I didn't even know they were in the war," panellist and comedian Doug Benson added. "I thought that's where you go if you don't want to fight. Go chill in Canada."
The panellists continued by joking about invading Canada and also poking fun at the RCMP.
Canadian soldiers, who have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, have spent the last four years in the country's most violent regions. On Friday, military officials announced that four more Canadian soldiers were killed and eight others were wounded in two separate roadside bomb blasts outside Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan.
Canadians express outrage
The Red Eye segment has sparked outrage from a range of Canadians, including thousands of comments on YouTube and Facebook.
"Our soldiers are dying for them and they have the audacity and the ignorance … to say something like that, it is insulting. It's the most ignorant thing I've ever heard," Sam Warren told CBC News after watching the segment.
The segment also drew criticism from Conservative author, columnist and commentator David Frum.
"The clip in question is a sequence of goofs about the feebleness, uselessness and absurdity of the Canadian armed forces. Why would I call that dumb? Here's why," Frum says on his New Majority.com blog before listing the Canadian soldiers, aid workers and a diplomat who have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002.
"Sorry I disrespected your show, Red Eye fans, but you disrespected the dead," Frum adds.