AGAR: Canadians should keep calm and carry on at U.S. border

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It’s easy to be anti-Trump. Don’t let that ramp up to Canadian anti-Americanism.

An example is the rhetoric that Canadians will have trouble at the border if visiting the United States.

After I said on the radio that there is no evidence that’s happening, some people sent me links, as supposed “proof” that I am wrong, to comments made by comedian Nikki Glaser, who is performing soon in Toronto.

The tone was, “See, she is having trouble.”

The New York Post wrote, “Stand-up comedian Nikki Glaser said she is worried that making anti-Trump jokes while touring abroad could prevent her from being allowed back into the U.S. She recalled a recent incident involving a comedian friend of hers who had been entering the U.S. from Canada.”

“I have a friend, Jena Friedman, who posted on Instagram that she was performing in Vancouver and when she came back, Customs asked her what she did. She said she was a comedian and they asked her if she talked about politics and made fun of the president,” Glaser was quoted as saying.

OK, then what?

Friedman got arrested? Had to stay in Canada? She’s sleeping on the couch in the green room at Yuk Yuks while her lawyer tries to reason with U.S. President Donald Trump?

No. Friedman said, “It was a brief exchange and I got through.”

Oh, so nothing.

A woman wrote to me saying she is a singing coach and the border guard asked her to sing. She seemed to think that was outrageous proof of the abuse we can experience at the border.

They ask questions like that all the time.

When they ask me what I do for a living, which happens from time to time, I say I’m a broadcaster.
Sometimes the follow-up is, “What kind?”

“I am a talk-show host.”

“What do you talk about?”

I have gone so far as to say, “I complain about the government full time.”

They seem to think that answer is amusing. Maybe as public employees, they complain about the government. Everybody likes to moan about management.

The other disturbing thing is that some people, when I talked about this, wrote to me to make it a race issue.

They say, “Easy to say for you to say, Jerry. You are a white guy.”

What does that have to do with it?

Can you send me a credible story, reported by a reliable news source, of brown and Black people turned back from the Canada/U.S. border due to skin colour?

Asians in chains? You got that one?

You can’t send me those stories because they aren’t happening.

If it were, all of us in the media would be lining up furious activists and outraged, disaffected travellers to report their stories.

Politicians would be all over that one. I would be outraged if it were happening.

It isn’t.

Here is a prediction.

Nikki Glaser will come to Toronto and Montreal next week.

She will make fun of Trump and virtue signal to her audience about how she hopes she can go home — and then she’ll go home and do her scheduled shows in Austin, Texas.

Here is another prediction.

The next time you go to the border, it will go the same as the last time.

Calm down and carry on.

And don’t be anti-American.