By now, you’ve probably seen the “America First, Netherlands Second” video from the Dutch comedy show Zondag met Lubach. The clip, a humorous response to US President Donald Trump’s statement that “It’s going to be only America first” during his inauguration speech, has spawned countless derivative memes since it went viral at the end of January.
Netizens all over the damn world have jumped on the bandwagon, producing “America First” videos for their own countries, and Hong Kong’s finally joined in on the fun with this mostly lulz-worthy attempt:
The “official Royal message” opens with a statement that “the government of Hong Kong is currently too busy guessing their next leader who is best at shoeshining Peking”. (Grammatical errors aside, that’s pretty accurate – hands up, who else is getting politics fatigue from all this election talk?)
From then on, it follows the standard “America First” meme format: a Donald Trump voice impersonation that’s vaguely reminiscent of Dr. Evil, introducing the locale in question (with, of course, esoteric in-jokes), like references to people getting basic information about the city wrong (“not King Kong, and we’re not China”), and the importance of McDonald’s to Hong Kong society. “We do everything there: selling insurance, private tutoring, dating.”
We’re not sure if we agree with the assurance that Cantonese is “the most beautiful language in the world”, but we have to admit the line “we have six tones, Mandarin has four, and French only has one. Sad!” is gold. (And we know Trump loves gold.)
It quickly deviates into a sweary faux-language exercise to “demonstrate” tone differences and a frankly hilarious tangent about how brave Hongkongers are for not running away from disasters… which cuts to footage of commuters hanging around the devastating MTR fire a few weeks ago to document it on their phones. Topical.
Speaking of topical, the narrator later plays on Trump’s controversial “Muslim ban” by saying, “If you don’t like Muslims, you can send them here. They already work in our homes, taking care of our children … on weekends, we like filling up parks with Muslims. They just sing and picnic. Very peaceful.” Touché, but may we add: they also operate mobile libraries and dance to rally against violence. It’s awesome.
Other highlights include: “Almost everyone here lives in a tower, even slums. We call it a public estate”, a comment about how our buildings are “famous for getting destroyed by robots and aliens in your Hollywood movies”, and a catty twist on the requisite ending. “We totally understand it’s going to be America first, but can we just say Hong Kong second? Or eighth? We’ll take anything, just not China first or Singapore first.”
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