The most shocking thing I learned this week concerns the 10 per cent of people I never thought existed in this province: people who don't like Brent Butt.
The Mainstreet polling company is relatively new on the block but sometimes they come up with interesting things. In the era of Fox News polls, CBS polls, etc, we need to make sure we trust the company doing the polling before we can start to understand the data. With 20 years of experience, they're pretty good at this with no real complaints.
Mainstreet did a Saskatchewan-only poll on favourable/unfavourable views of public figures, and with a margin of plus or minus 3.1 per cent 19 times out of 20, it's fairly accurate as far as polls go.
The most popular person is Darian Durant, with a net positivity of 51 per cent. There were 58 per cent of people that had a favourable view of the former Roughriders quarterback and seven per cent negative.
Second place was Corner Gas creator and comedian Brent Butt, who echoed Durant's 58 per cent positive but someone had earned the negativity of 10 per cent of people for only a net positivity of 48 per cent.
What. In. The. World?
In Saskatchewan, we can understand when a politician like Brad Wall was 42 positive and 44 per cent negative for a minus two rating. It's part of the game that Justin Trudeau is a mere plus four, after 44 per cent positive and 40 per cent negative. These people in power make decisions that positively and negatively affect our lives in ways that they know aren't going to make them particularly popular for everyone.
All Butt did, meanwhile, is create the iconic Dog River for the Corner Gas TV show and movie, as accurate a reflection as we've ever had of ourselves on television. The cultural impact the show created spanned generations and combined elements of slapstick with clever social commentary embedded into it.
Even cultural impact aside, the financial boon that the show created in its 107-episode run turned into one of the biggest job creators aside from natural resources and health care in southern Saskatchewan. The show had special guest appearances from fans as divers as Lorne Calvert, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper to the Tragically Hip, Darryl Sittler and Lloyd Robertson.
Who on earth doesn't like this? A fair ten per cent of us Saskatchewanians apparently.
I'll admit I've only watched a handful of shows, plus the movie. It's not for a lack of appreciation for Butt as a comedian or the show itself. He's a consummate professional when it comes to his standup act, which never quite teeters into the obscene so there's no real puritan element of the dislike that I can see.
This is a stretch, but I feel like there may be some resentment over the fact he's based out of Vancouver now instead of his hometown of Tisdale. He may be seen now as an interloper, coming in to draw unwanted attention to us and then fleeing into the night. It's really the only reason I can think of.
But as the film set is now flat land and the Dog River sign on the old grain elevator becomes faded and peeling, I feel like we really only had the one chance to let Brent Butt know he's more popular than an ex-Rider quarterback in the hearts and minds of Saskatchewan people.
