Fox News’ war with Canada

The 3 a.m. Fox News show “Red Eye” “bashed the Canadian military” last week, said Alexander Panetta in the Winnipeg Free Press, but it was Fox that beat a “strategic retreat” with an apology Monday. Host Greg Gutfeld and his panel of “jokesters” caused an uproar with a segment ridiculing the Canadian military for planning a one-year hiatus from combat in Afghanistan—“to do yoga,” Gutfeld joked, before suggesting the U.S. invade “ridiculous” Canada. (Watch clip)

Oh, lighten up, Canada, said Canadian journalist Kathy Shaidle in her blog. Gutfeld is a “rare thing: a talented conservative humorist,” and it’s “pathetic” that Canada’s Conservative government demanded an apology for his stating of an “unpleasant truth” about our underfunded military (not our soldiers). Honestly, “the yoga jokes write themselves.”

“Canadians are a humorous people,” said Canada’s Langley Advance in an editorial, and we don’t mind a good joke at our expense. But what Fox News did “just wasn’t funny.” Canada has lost 116 troops in Afghanistan, including four last week, and Gutfeld’s mockery of our troops “was shocking in its insensitivity and outright stupidity.”

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