CPC MP’s video: “You’re talking Eskimo”

As his government moves to end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, Saskatchewan Conservative MP David Anderson posted a home-made video knocking the single-desk buyer.

The video was made on Xtranormal, an Internet service that animates and voices a video based on the script you submit. In the video on Anderson’s page, a character called Franklin Futurefarmer outlines his plan to grow wheat and sell flour to his brother’s gourmet bakery.

The Wheat Board official Mr. Smith (portrayed by a bald character in a tie) responds in monotone, “Slow down, young man. You’re talking Eskimo” — that is, he sounds foreign cannot be understood or makes no sense.

Wheat Board Guy explains how the existing rules govern crop sales, and Franklin replies, “How can such a system exist in Canada? That sounds sort of Communist.”

Later in the video Mr. Smith says, There you go, talking Eskimo again.”

Unclear is whether It doesn’t look like Anderson created the video himself. The same video is also on YouTube.

But I’m pretty certain that — Edmonton’s football team notwithstanding — “Eskimo” hasn’t been considered a polite term of address for anything but ice-cream sandwiches for about 20 years.

UPDATE: Inuit leader Mary Simon has complained about this, and the video has been taken down from Anderson’s website.

15 thoughts on “CPC MP’s video: “You’re talking Eskimo”

  1. This Xtranormal video has been around for awhile. It was not in any way made by Anderson, as you strive so hard to imply. Get a clue!

    1. How, I ask was the author striving so hard to imply MP made the video?? It CLEARLY states, “Unclear is whether Anderson created video himself or simply allowed it to be posted on his site.” No implications there.

  2. So, he didn’t make the video…but he posted it on his website, which implies a pretty serious endorsement, regardless, no?

    1. Well, it is an excellent video and he is endorsing the main message. Most people would not zone in on the Eskimo comment, and it is just a fact-based joke anyways. Most people do not speak eskimo and therefore it can be used to infer an unfamiliar dialect.

  3. The only whiners I see are people opposed to freedom.
    If you dont like it to Fin bad.

    If I said something that offended you let me know,
    I so would love to do it again a few times.

  4. “Talking Eskimo” which isn’t a racist statement… it’s just a way of saying “it’s Greek to me”. The saying is neither intended to disparage the Inuit or marginalize them.

    The term Eskimo is also not an inherently racist or pejorative term. It simply is an inclusive term to include all Inuit and Yupik people. Now it certainly is annoying to use Eskimo when referring to the Inuit when the more specific term is relevant (like using the term Caucasian when referring to a Brit, Frenchman or German), but it isn’t an invalid term in and of itself.

  5. Eskimos (or Esquimaux) or Inuit–Yupik (for Alaska: Inupiat–Yupik) peoples are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia (Russia), across Alaska (United States), Canada, and Greenland.

  6. I work in the arctic, with Eskimoes.
    I have never heard them bitch about that term.
    Not even once.
    While it may be technically ‘offensive’, I don’t think many of them give a shit one way or other about it.
    More PC nonsense.

  7. So it appears we now have to delete from our stock of idiomatic expressions all allusions to nationality or ethnicity.
    No more Scotch tape, French kiss, nor French leave.
    Split, Siamese twins!
    Spanish fly? Not a cure for German measles.
    Indian summer, Chinese gooseberries, Turkish bath, Roman holiday — all banished!
    So too Arabian nights, Berber rugs, going Dutch, and Chinese whispers.

    A form of linguistic Russian roulette?

    Mind you, knowing how hypersensitive some in our midst have become, like MPs Niki Ashton and Carolyn Bennett who called the use of the word Eskimo “a slur” during today’s QP, maybe the young and the reckless who work in Conservative MPs’ offices should have known better than to use that expression.

    Maybe it would have been better to use “It’s all Greek to me” as Yanni at October 24, 2011 at 4:41 pm wisely pointed out. The Greeks are too busy with other things to notice such a potential purported “slur.”

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