Lauren & Emira posted this article yesterday, but it’s so worth reading that I decided to post to it myself. And include a different quote, for good measure:
There are a few reasons why we think the Americans have no sense of irony. First, theirs is rather an optimistic culture, full of love of country and dewy-eyed self-belief and all the things that Europe’s lost going through the war spindryer for the thousandth time. This is all faith-based – faith in God, faith in the goodness of humanity, etc – and irony can never coexist with faith, since the mere act of questioning causes the faith fairy to disappear. Second, they have a very giving register that, with a sense of irony, would be unsustainable (how can you wish a stranger a nice day with a straight face?). Third, because we think Canadian Alanis Morissette is American, and she proved some time ago, with her song Ironic, that she didn’t know what irony meant (this is so ironic – first, because we think we’re the more sophisticated and yet don’t know the difference between America and Canada, second because America sees Canada as such a tedious sleeping partner, and yet Canada is subversively sending idiots into the global marketplace with American accents. Of course, I’m being ironic. Canadian accents are not the same as American ones!)