Canadian Sitcom Awarded Farm-League Nobel Prize
Another month, another requirement to shoehorn some north-of-the-border content into the Defamer proceedings—part of a comprehensive 200-year restitution deal for those regrettable Canadian containment camps of WWII. Little Mosque on the Prairie—think Aliens in America (shot in Vancouver, ironically enough) as interpreted by the cast of Degrassi Junior High— has been awarded with a peace prize, raising the CBC sitcom with the somewhat backbacon-handed take on Islamic race relations to the esteemed ranks of Bishop Tutu and Jimmy Carter:
Little Mosque on the Prairie," a Canadian sitcom about a Muslim community in a fictional town in central Canada, is getting the Search for Common Ground Award. [...]
The award, which will given to the show Nov. 6 in New York, aims to recognize individuals and organizations that find common ground between those in conflict.
Past recipients have included Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu, former President Jimmy Carter, newsman Ted Koppel, retired heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
With every prestige recognition, there are those bound to feel slighted: In this case, that would fall to Canadian sitcom also-ran Rent-a-Goalie (while chock-full of hockey humor, voters felt it didn't quite go as far as Mosque in underscoring racial injustices), as well as the prairie province of Saskatchewan, aka Canada's Awards Show Capital, passed over by the Common Ground selection committee in favor of somewhere a little more "easily accessible"—which, let's face it, is thinly veiled peace-prize-organization-speak for "less hick."