Gutfeld Goes Too Far On Fox News

Fox News network is reportedly one of the highest rated in the USA. I’ve never been a particular fan of it, I’ve generally found a lot of their reporting more along the lines of a national gossip show, sort of like the broadcast version of the National Enquirer. I’m a Canadian, so for the most part, what passes as news south of the border isn’t really my business.

I’ve grown up with an awareness that a lot of Americans have very little awareness of their neighbour to the north. I can remember as a kid encountering other children in Algonquin Provincial Park, (that’s in Ontario) and them asking me what ‘state’ I came from. When I told them I lived in the Province of Ontario, the usual response was “what state is that in”?

I well remember how strange I thought those kids to be that they couldn’t fathom that they were standing in the province I came from. It was later I learned that ignorance came from a lack of information about this country and even less interest in knowing.

Back to Fox News. One of their so called news shows is called “Red Eye” hosted by Greg Gutfeld. For the most part Gutfeld and the cronies who participate on the show with him think they are rather funny in their perspective. Sort of Fox’s answer to the Leno or Letterman.

Recently Gutfeld decided to pillory the Canadian military after Lieutenant-General Leslie noted that our military will need an operational pause after our mission in Afghanistan is complete. The clip has been posted to YouTube here.

While the panel mocked Canada for relying on the US for our security, Ian Welsh made an interesting point on Huffington Post that we don’t actually need the US to protect us. He also provided some interesting stats about Canada’s involvement in military operations over the years.

The most obvious is that when it came to the two world wars, Canada was in pulling its weight and above its weight long before the Americans arrived:

In WWII Canada had 1.1 million men serving and lost 45,364. The total population of the country in 1945 was 12,072,000. Canada thus had a per capita loss rate of .376%. America’s death rate in WWII was .21%.

In WWI Canada had 64,944 military casualties in a total population of 7.2 million. The per capita death rate was thus a wopping 0.9%. The US lost 53,402, in absolute numbers less, and the casualty rate was .054%.

Using the link Ian provided, during the Korean War the US had a casualty rate of .005% while Canada’s was .02%. While our smaller population makes our absolute numbers of Canadians involved in the wars smaller, our rates of sacrifice of our young to the world’s battles are consistently higher.

Makes me grateful Canada is pretty picky about what battles we send our troops into.

Ellen over at News Hounds expressed her outrage over their mocking of our forces.  She also provided an email link along with a suggestion that her readers should email Fox to express their outrage at Gutfeld’s outrageous behaviour.

In addition to this blog post, I have done exactly that. My email reads:

Dear Sir:

I can appreciate humour as much as the next person. I can even appreciate humour made at the expense of Canadians (which I am). The genius of humour is timing which apparently Greg Gutfeld and the buffoons appearing with him fail to understand. Either that or they are woefully ignorant of their subjects.

Their recently aired segment titled “Taking A Break” pillorying our military for stating they will need an operational pause after our troops depart Afghanistan was beyond the pale.

Canada has had troops in Afghanistan since 2002. They were sent there to support our ally and neighbour to the south after the attacks of 9/11. In 2006 our troops moved into Kandahar province replacing American troops being pulled out to fight your war in Iraq. There is currently 2,800 Canadians serving in Kandahar.

Since 2002 a total of 116 Canadians have died in the Afghanistan war, 5 of that number died at the hands of our American allies, 112 of those deaths has been since 2006. As has so often happened in Canadian history, our troops have been punching above their weight in Kandahar and sustaining casualties at 2.6-4 times those sustained by the US and British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At 2pm today, a plane carrying the bodies of four Canadians killed in Afghanistan on Friday, while taking part in a joint mission with US and Afghan troops, will land in Trenton, Ontario. They will be met by grieving family members, fellow military, our Governor-General (military commander-in-chief) and the Minister of Defense.

About 90 minutes later a motorcade of four hearses, grieving families, military escorts and police will start out along Canada’s busiest highway carrying those bodies to Toronto. There are 50 bridges between Trenton and Toronto, on all of them will be Canadians totalling in the thousands who are there to honour those fallen Canadians and show support to their families. I will be one of them.

Every one of our fallen Canadians have been met this way. Those four brings the total to eight Canadians who have died in the last few weeks in a war that Canadians entered to support their American neighbours. As painful as it is to stand on the bridge and watch those hearses pass by, I have and do support the troops and their mission in Afghanistan.

Do you have any question why Gutfeld and his buffoons have chose the wrong time to target Canadian troops? Fox News claims to be fair and balanced. Seems that Gutfeld needs to do some apologising for his tasteless behaviour to balance this out.

Patti May
Colborne, ON
www.outoftheshadows.ca

Add your voice, send an email to redeye@foxnews.com

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