NEW YORK (AP) – A video posted on an Al Jazeera YouTube channel over the Fourth of July weekend mocks Americans for dubious “achievements” in obesity, pornography production and gun ownership.
The satirical item, under two minutes long, was produced out of San Francisco by a digital arm of the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network. It has not been seen on television, including on the beleaguered Al Jazeera America channel.
Debuting on the weekend set aside for celebrating the birth of the U.S., the video is entitled “Americans Show Why USA is the #1 Country in the World.” It begins with a man who explains that most people probably know that Americans lead the world in Olympic medals won, Nobel laureates and billionaires.
Then it goes on to list other benchmarks, including the large number of people imprisoned and the amount of guns owned. The U.S. also has a leading percentage of obese people, one man said.
“A third of us can’t even see our own toes,” he said.