Ha Ha Ha --Ay?

In today's WSJ, Mark Steyn sniggers about the squabble between late nite TV host Conan O'Brien (who called Canadians obnoxious, dull and mostly homosexual) and Canada's politicians (who, being dull, called Conan "utterly vile" "racist filth" and "vicious"). Steyn defends Canada to the last Labatts: "Just for the record, Canadians are not humorless. We're humourless, OK?"

But Steyn worries humor is a casualty of modern multi-culti government that discourages assimilation:

There's a lesson here, both for the European Union and an increasingly Hispanicized U.S.: Gags are one of the great pillars of a common culture, but they're one of the first things to get lost in translation--and if you can't share a joke, it's hard to have a shared culture. That's why multilingual societies tend toward the humorless: see Switzerland and Belgium.

Canada is worse--the various concessions that deflated Quebec secession allowed Francophones to dominate Anglophones and thus rule Canada:

Today modern Trudeaupian Canada, being semi-French, is a semi-detached member of the Anglosphere. A year ago public opinion in English Canada was more or less as pro-war as Britain and Australia. Over 60% of Canadians outside Quebec supported American action against Saddam. But French Canada was overwhelmingly antiwar. . .. The "Francization" of the political culture has ensured that the entire country has been relocated to the rue des Pussies.

Like the man said, there's a lesson here.