'The Year of Death and the Donald': Looking for humour in a brutal 2016
With 2016 slowly approaching its expiry date, it's become an annual tradition at The Current to look back at the year that was with satirist Terry Fallis and comedian Amanda Barker.
Fallis and Barker join The Current's guest host Piya Chattopadhay to look back on what they both agree was a brutal year.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Piya Chattopadhay: What did you think more broadly of 2016?
Terry Fallis: Well it's tough. I mean when you look back at all the things that happened, you've got Brexit, you've got Trump, and I promise I won't say Trump for every answer, though that will be hard … But you know Aleppo, and Zika, and the refugee crisis. We had the fire in Fort McMurray and the pipeline standoff. I mean it was a year that was filled with conflict and we haven't even talked about … celebrity deaths. Everyone died this year.
PC: Amanda without using the T-word, or any other colorful language. How would you describe 2016?
We all learned that death isn't going anywhere. In fact I've got the list in front of me if you want me to give you a little truncated version of what we have.
Bowie. Cohen. Prince. Glenn Frey. Gary Shandling. Mohammad Ali. Florence Henderson. John Glenn. Alan Rickman.
PC: Alan Thicke.
TF: Fidel Castro.
PC: What do you think Terry was the the most under-reported story?
TF: Well I had to dig deep on this but I think this year's most under-reported story was last year's over-reported story, and that is the Senate. Last year we were filled with all the scandals in the Senate. This year, very quietly Justin Trudeau has appointed — I think it's 21 new independent senators from various walks of life following his 50 per cent women standard, and they really do come from all sorts of different parts of the human experience, and they include some senior civil servants.
There weren't many stories about this. And when you think about it, if Trudeau continues to do this, appointing well-qualified, interesting people not associated with the party sitting as independent senators, the Senate may in fact redeem itself and become what the founders of our country envisaged for the Senate back in the 1860's.
AB: I think actually what a lot of us aren't realizing is that it's actually a really good year for the LGBTI community. In September, the Human Rights Council appointed its first independent investigator to help protect gay and transgender people worldwide. That's a big one. And then about a month later back in Canada we amended bill C-16 for trans rights. I think that was very under-reported. But you know, it happened in September … the week that Brad and Angelina broke up. So we were all a little bit distracted.
PC: Terry Fallis, what was the, 'oh we have to hear this again, I'm so sick of this story' for you for 2016?
TF: I was so done with the Hillary private email server story that seemed to come by over and over again. Endlessly it was returning to our headlines. You know, usually when you admit an indiscretion or a mistake and apologize for it and promised not to do it again that tends to be the end of it, at least in our political experience up here, but not so in the uber partisan world of presidential politics south of the border. It just kept coming back like a very bad smell.
PC: Some people are saying, Terry, it was important that we knew all that stuff.
TF: And we did know it. We knew it. I don't know why we had to know it 45,000 times.
AB: I'll piggyback on that a little bit and just say that I think one of the big winners worldwide this year is Russia. You know I think they just deliberately hijacked the whole year. That's my opinion. I'm blaming my bad year on Putin. I'm going to go ahead and blame obviously the entire election. The alt-right movement across the world. Fake news. That's all him. I'm also going to blame the fact that you know it's a great excuse. Russia is just a great excuse in general right now. If you didn't answer an email back, 'Hey Russia put it in my junk mail.'
Listen to the full segment at the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Howard Goldenthal.