For this week’s steel cage death match, let’s pair off an optimistic, smiley-faced Canadian ambassador to the U.S., Frank McKenna, and Fox News Channel’s Canada-hating personality, John Gibson.

In interviews last week, McKenna said he wants the substantial number of Canadians living in the U.S. to patiently try to educate their U.S. counterparts on the Canadian view, perhaps why Canada didn’t fall into line with the so-called “coalition of the willing.”

Gibson, in an article inexplicably carried last week by Maclean’s, pulled every insult out of his limited intellect in a calculated act of disrespect to Canada, to coincide with Canada Day celebrations.

Funny, I didn’t see any Canadian media figures writing hateful screeds about the U.S. as a Fourth of July greeting, not that I was looking for them.

But what can one expect of Gibson and his ilk at Fox News, who are to journalism what brownshirts were to Munich beer halls?

For a taste of Gibson’s ire check out this line: “But despite your efforts at hiding your most egregious embarrassments, the view here is that Canada is still a vast ice-encrusted wasteland dedicated to beer and America-bashing.”

And Windsor residents of course, can look across the Detroit River and see the paradise of urban renewal that is Detroit and turn green with envy, right John?

Or how about this threat: “Seriously, Canada: nearly three-quarters of your trade is done with the United States, and you think its OK to kick around the people who provide your standard of living?”

First, John, if the U.S. decided not to do business with Canada, how many U.S. citizens would lose their jobs making the goods for export to Canada? How many U.S. firms could shunt aside the collapse of their stocks on Wall Street after eliminating the Canadian export market from their portfolios?

That’s the two-way street that the almighty ethos of free trade is all about John. Didn’t the folks at Fox teach you that?

Oh, one more thing about Gibson’s threat that McKenna mentions in his comments: Canada is the largest source of imported crude oil in the U.S. — bigger than Saudi Arabia. You know, crude oil John: its the stuff that allows the U.S. to manufacture and export all those goodies to the ungrateful Canadians.

Maybe the U.S. should start listening to Canada instead of the echo chambers of opinion provided by Fox News, as evidenced by Gibson’s narrow thinking on the issue that is unfortunately mirrored by so many in my country.

If we can set the juvenile trade threats aside, my question is — do average U.S. citizens hold this kind of antipathy to Canada? From my experience, they don’t, although that may have more to do with our cognizance of Canada, a country that appears as an undifferentiated grey blob on our maps of the U.S.

McKenna even mentions the “Fox factor” as an obstacle to encouraging more respectful dialog between the U.S. and Canada. If Gibson’s tirade is an indication of things to come, Canadians living here will certainly have their work cut out for them.

But it has become clear, at least to this observer, that if Fox and the hard right want to generate antipathy toward Canada, unfortunately many Americans can be roused to manufactured anger and disgust by the folks whose tactics were exposed so skillfully in the documentary Outfoxed.

And that kind of heat, as McKenna would agree, serves no useful purpose. But one has to wonder how Canadians feel about being backhandedly “congratulated” for muzzling government members who dare criticize the U.S.? And maybe expatriate Canadians aren’t so keen to be doing McKenna’s job for him, especially if one is working a roomful of John Gibsons.

In truth, it almost seems as if Gibson is somewhat jealous of “anti-Americanism” becoming Canada’s “state religion” which worries me that this could be the start of his own campaign to turn the tables.

In fact, Gibson cites the case of a Nora Jacobson, a U.S. ex-pat who wrote in the Washington Post about her regret about moving to Canada because the “embedded anti-Americanism” was too hard for her to bear, even though she opposed the Bush administration’s war in Iraq.

When you read her protracted whine you’ll notice that she came to Canada for the money (strange how that works, eh?) and that in her own way, as many U.S. citizens do, her criticisms actually make the case for Canada’s feelings of moral superiority. Do people like Gibson and Jacobson ever consider the more they chastise a people for daring to have negative opinions about the U.S., the more they reinforce those negative opinions? Gibson has no excuse but Jacobson, a medical sociologist, should at least know better.

And as far as psychoanalyzing Canada’s inferiority complex vis-à-vis the U.S., let me ask my fellow citizens since when did we become so emotionally pre-occupied and thin skinned about what other nations think about us? Again, a street seems to run both ways here.

So I’m going to be in Toronto soon (I’ve been away since way before 9-11) and my wife has read all of this and is worried. She wonders if she should be girding herself for hurled insults and perhaps worse up and down Yonge Street.

I told her not to worry. Just lose all the “these colours don’t run” T-shirts, and replace all the American flag and “W” stickers on the car with “I (heart) the NDP” decals.

Actually, we don’t own any of the above-mentioned articles of apparel or bumper stickers. Seriously. But I wouldn’t mind returning with some NDP regalia (hint to babblers).

But I’m wondering: If we did stroll Toronto as clueless American tourists how would we be treated? I have to believe that the treatment some U.S. citizens received in Toronto recently reported in The Star, was something of an aberration.

You might remember that article a few weeks ago where David Bruser, posing as an American tourist in Toronto with a Southern accent and self-professed supporter of George W. Bush, had to put up with mild approbation and questions which, in some quarters, are termed “shrill.”

What did he expect to hear? “Would you like our sons and daughters for Iraq,” perhaps?

And if I find that T-shirt in a Queens Quay W. souvenir shop, the one Bruser mentions that says: “What’s the definition of a Canadian? An unarmed American with healthcare,” I might just bring it home. It’s funny.

In fact, I may do some “person on the street” interviews — sort of a Rick Mercer in reverse to gauge the opinions of average Torontonians on their perceptions of the U.S.

So after returning from our five day sojourn of my favourite North American city (sorry Chicago), I’ll file a report to let all of you know how this progressive U.S. citizen was received.

I’m trusting it will be with the decency Canadians have always shown and that I have been shown on previous trips.

And please remember, John Gibson doesn’t speak for all of us. Just the idiot faction.

Keith Gottschalk

Keith Gottschalk

U.S. Keith Gottschalk has written for daily newspapers in Iowa, Illinois and Ohio. He also had a recent stint as a radio talk show host in Illinois. As a result of living in the high ground...