Adrift, as usual

The best show on U.S. television is HBO's Real Time, with comedian/ringmaster Bill Maher.

It is must-see TV. (HBO Friday nights, 11 p.m.)

Our Canadian gatekeepers (the CRTC, networks and specialty channels operated on the cheap) think Real Time too Yank-centric and averse to political apathy and consumerism to show northern sheep. God forbid we bleat.

Our gatekeepers are, of course, idiots.

Bill Maher's take on the great New Orleans flood...

- "Finally, convoys of troops and aid have started to arrive on the Gulf coast. Five days after the hurricane! It kind of makes you miss those innocent days when Bush only sat on his ass for seven minutes." (The hapless president sat thru kindergarten story time when he learned skyscrapers were under attack on 9/11)

- "It only took Bush four days to make a plan. Unfortunately it is a faith-based plan. It involves getting two of every animal onto a big boat."

- "He could have made a plan on Saturday when everybody knew a big hurricane was going to hit the city. But Bush thinks the jury is still out on weather forecasting..."

- "There's one big difference between George Bush and Marie Antoinette. When Marie Antoinette said 'Let them eat cake' ...THEY HAD CAKE."

- "He was on the ground today, you saw him hugging the starving. Touring the devasted area. His quote was that New Orleans is more devasted than New York on 9/11. Then Bush grabbed a bull horn and vowed: 'We Will Get Mother Nature! Dead or Alive!'"

- "If you want to help the victims hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina, Fox News has posted the website of the Republican National Committee."

Canada missed a clear opportunity in the early hours of the tragedy to finally jump aboard a US humanitarian issue with both feet and score some Brownie points.

Why is it always ordinary Canadians who out-perform their government now, as in the aftermath of 9/11?

But then Liberals are too busy buying confetti for their glorious re-election. It is good to be petty. Their traditional hate-the-Yanks tune serves them well.

What else does charmless cipher Paul Martin have going for him?

Ideas? Integrity? A vision?

Now there's a joke.