Right, everyone as seen it by now, but it’s always nice to have a refresher.

Anyway, what has me so perplexed is the fact that, unlike seemingly everyone else north of the 49^th, I really wasn’t all that outraged. BlogWorld was on fire. It was all anyone on Twitter could talk about. Even after watching the video a few times, I couldn’t get my finely-tuned sense of indignation to fire. I was Outrage Impotent – a serious and embarrassing condition.

I simply couldn’t bring myself to care too much. Disturbing, because I’m usually the first one out there with the pitchfork when I pick up on a slight, real or perceived. But here…not so much.

Sure, it was ignorant. Sure, it was cheap. Sure, it was extraordinarily insensitive.

But, it’s just that it comes as absolutely no surprise. Red Eye plays on Fox News, after all. I don’t have a great opinion of most news organizations, especially in the US. But Fox is at the bottom of the barrel. Not only that, but Greg Gutfeld’s little comedy show plays at 3am. Three o’clock in the morning. How good can the guy be? They put him up against Law & Order re-runs and extended Snuggie infomercials.

So no, I wasn’t all that outraged. Gutfeld isn’t funny, he isn’t original. He’s got a show that plays like a fratboy trying to impress his friends – he has to try and be edgy. (What’s sad is that he thinks making fun of the Canadian military is ‘edgy.’ It’s not. We do it here all the time. It’s low-hanging fruit.)

Just like you can’t be outraged when an poorly-trained dog takes a shit on your front step, you can’t get mad when a second-rate funnyman tells hack-eyed jokes to get attention. It’s just his nature. We should all be proud of Greg Gutfeld for having the restraint not to have a diaper on his head when he said his little Gregalogue. (Case in point – he actually calls it that. It’s not even a pun, it’s just….hard to say.)

No. I wasn’t mad at Greg Gutfeld before. But then this happened.

“The March 17th episode of Red Eye included a segment discussing Canada’s plan for a ’synchronized break,’ which was in no way an attempt to make light of troop efforts,” host Greg Gutfeld said in a statement issued Monday.

“However, I realize that my words may have been misunderstood. It was not my intent to disrespect the brave men, women and families of the Canadian military, and for that I apologize. (emphasis mine)

Fuck you, Greg Gutfeld.

Comedy is about taking down sacred cows, by making people think by poking and prodding at convention and common sense. Comedy does it better than any other form of art.

That’s the one thing you had going for you – you weren’t funny, but at least you gave it a shot. But now you come back with this non-apology. Your “words may have been misunderstood”? Bullshit. You meant every single on of those words. When you did, maybe you thought that clips from your waste of airtime wouldn’t get back to us up here. Or maybe you didn’t think that the backlash would be as strong as it was. (Either way, you were dead wrong.) But you meant to say what you did, and now you’re too much of a coward to stand behind your own words.

That’s what outrages me – public figures that think an insincere statement is enough to fix any situation. “I’m sorry if some were offended…”, “If anyone took my words to mean…”, “I was misunderstood…” We hear it all the time from politicians, from the media, and from washed-up comedians. Those are not apologies, they are conditional statements. A real apology admits error.

A real apology comes with actual regret. A real apology doesn’t just happen to quell outrage.

A real apology isn’t followed by this:

So, Greg Gutfeld, I wasn’t outraged when you poked fun at Canada. Sometimes, I think we’re a bit to sensitive about criticism from the States, so I would welcome more of it. (Although if you could try and make your comedy monologue funny next time, extra points!)

But I’m insulted by your insincere attempts to wiggle out of things, to try and be the provocateur one night and the misunderstood everyman the next. I was okay with you when you were the loud, obnoxious, perfectly-ignorable late-night host. I’m much less down with the cowardly insult to satire.

Of course, guess there is a reason you’re on at 3am, isn’t there?

Three dead at the scene of restaurant shooting

Syncrude worker dies on site

Two Canadians shot in Mexico

Two dead after separate avalanches at B.C.’s Whistler Blackcomb

A great start to 2009.

Environmental issues used to be at the forefront of the collective Canadian consciousness: it was a huge issue in the lead up to the last federal election (I mean the real one in October, not the will-they, won’t-they soap opera we’ve been treated to recently.)

The issue of a building a greener Canada has, of course, falling to the side after the global economy attempted a high dive into a drained pool. The public at large loses its taste for green initiatives when things are looking dire economically – after all, conventional wisdom is that you can either help the economy, or help the environment, right? It’s a zero-sum game.

Well, like a lot of conventional wisdom, this idea is pretty big on convention and short on actual wisdom. In reality, not only can we give the Canadian economy a jump-start – we can make sure that the booster cables are attached to a renewable energy source.

How? Through feed-in tariffs. It’s concept pioneered by Germany, and had helped make that country into a green energy superpower. In brief, feed-in tariffs are laws that require energy companies to purchase a certain amount of their electricity for a premium from green sources.

Germany’s feed-in tariffs have had the pleasant side effect of encouraging microgrids: instead of large, centralized power companies, smaller individual and community operations have started up. Villages set up solar panels and turbine farms to power their homes and sell the excess back into the grid. Farms and ranches convert animal waste into bio fuel, and use the by-products as fertilizer.

Now, back here, Canada is like Toyland for the renewable energy sect. We have huge tracts of land ideal for wind generation, rivers for hydro, a large ranching industry that produces a literal crapload of biofuel. On top that, in the very northern reaches of the country, we have places where the sun doesn’t stop shining for months at a time. But with all of those resources, we’re still lagging behind in the green energy game. With only 5% of our landmass, Germany is producing 12.5 times the wind energy we do.

Ontario, so far, has been the only province to really experiment with feed-in tariffs, although others are starting their own. The program was, unfortunately, a spectacular failure. Not because the rewards weren’t high enough to get individuals interested – in fact, Ontario’s tariffs were nearly excessive. Instead, the problem was one of infrastructure – individuals were building turbines and solar collectors, but the province wasn’t willing to build the powerlines that would hook these people up to the grid and allow them to sell their excess juice. (The same infrastructure that large, centralized plants don’t seem to have any problem getting built for them.) Without any ability to get connected, microgrids withered on the vine and the initiative failed.

But now, were in a time where the economy has to be jump-started. To do this, the Conservative government will be introducing a budget with healthy amount of infrastructure spending. Increases funding of hard services is one of the basic ways to jumpstart a flagging economy – these labour-intensive projects put money into the pockets of workers and suppliers – with more money in the pockets of these workers, more is spent in the service industry, and the whole economy gets a boost. To climb back of the likelihood of a looming recession, Canada is going to need a new New Deal – public works projects like highways, treatment centres…and power lines.

Right now, the financial situation in this country puts the economy and renewable energy in a rare symbiotic position – both are in need of greater infrastructure to grow. P.E.I, Quebec, B.C, and Saskatchewan are all wither considering or implementing feed-in tariffs – the Harper government should consider allocating some of those economic stimulus funds to encouraging decentralized power production all over the country.

The costs associated with the tariffs are minimal – looking back to the Germans, they are now to the point where 12% of their power consumption is produced through renewable means, and it has ended up raising the average power bill slightly over $2 a month. But this cost would be more than paid for in the economic boost Canada would see not just from infrastructure spending, but through a growth in a new, green industry. Estimates tag the jobs created by renewable energy in Germany to be around the 215,000 mark – more people than are directly employed by the auto industry in Canada, which was so vital to the country that it warranted a $4 billion bailout (which is likely to grow).

We’d not be asking for much under the tree – just some funding in the January budget for infrastructure and a push to institute feed-in tariffs country-wide. Because anytime we can get a little greener while giving the economy a boost – well, that’s pretty much a Christmas miracle.