You Can Probably Guess The Thing David Tracy Assumed 80% Of You Wouldn’t Recognize: Tales From The Slack

You would think I would tire of telling you about David Tracy and his weird, giant pop-culture blind spots. You would think that I would be merely grateful for the fact that David let me come to this wonderful oasis to work and that would stop me from writing about them. You might assume, incorrectly, that the fact that David allows me to have a job where I’m not traveling all the time might compel me to stop pointing this out.

In my defense, David is in Hong Kong now for a wedding and almost certainly sleeping so he cannot possibly defend himself for, like, at least another six hours.

Today’s Slack Tales is a little different because it’s not from the general channel but, rather, from my own personal direct messaging with David. Specifically, David left me a couple of notes on today’s The Morning Dump. I had a subhead that was “Blame Can… California” initially.

This whole “reference” thing is tough. The general rule is: if it’s a reference that most people will get, it’s fine. No action is required. If an author thinks most people will not get the reference, in general, we require the writer to either call it out or provide a link to it. If I say “A real thug is a thug that’s hush” I don’t assume most of you know who KRS-One is, so I need to link to it. If I say “Show me the money” it would be almost insulting to you, my dear readers, if I link to a clip from the film.

So why have a reference at all? It can easily become a game of “look how smart and cool I am” if I start dropping increasingly obscure references. Doing so doesn’t make anyone smarter or enhance the piece, it’s basically just onanism. Or it’s the “Dennis Miller doing Monday Night Football” thing.

I try not to do it too often and, in doing so, I’m often hoping to make a specific point. Or I’m trying to reference something so obscure but so on-point that, even if only one person gets it, it’s gonna make that one person’s day. These are the tradeoffs.

In David’s defense, since he cannot defend himself, just saying “Blame Can…” isn’t perhaps clear enough, so I did amend it to “Blame Canad …” for clarity’s sake.

Here’s another danger. I can make references all day, but my reference set is clearly age-restricted. If I only make Millennial-aged references then I’m necessarily excluding younger readers. I like to think of myself as “young-ish” but there’s a limit to that thinking.

All that being said, I think many people will get this reference. Here’s my guess, by age demographic:

• Boomer – 60%
• Gen Z – 90%
• Millennial – 90%
• Gen Z – 30%

The reference is to “Blame Canada” from The South Park Movie and, while not everyone saw that film, the song was ubiquitous in 1999 and 2000.

BTW, that Oscar thing is real. Here’s “Blame Canada” as performed by Robin Williams at the 72nd Academy Awards, where it lost to the song that Phil Collins wrote for Tarzan.

He persisted! Can you imagine?

Also, this is an excellent reference because in the story Stellantis is blaming California for having to lay people off when, at the same time, the company has the most inventory and the worst sales of any of the large manufacturers in the United States. In the film, the parents of South Park decide to Blame Canada for their inability to raise their own children.

I did a quick test in our Discord and:

Seems scientific to me.

Also, this makes me miss Jason more, because Jason is always the tie-breaker.