Something is rotten in the state of Quebec. And put away those bad thoughts of French cheese and bathing habits.

I’m talking about Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Conan O’Brien’s cigar-chomping hate-spewing … hand puppet.

Yes, the hand puppet that rocked the world. Or something like that. Headline writers on both sides of the formidable Canada/U.S. border are having a field day with Triumph’s (and O’Brien’s) weeklong visit to Toronto.

Triumph and his creator, Robert Smigel, took a side trip to Quebec during O’Brien’s Toronto show, where they, as anticipated, insulted the French.

Imagine a small brown hand puppet spitting dumb insults, in English, to French-speaking Quebecois about their bathing habits, their cuisine, their dull personalities.

Then imagine being the show’s translator.

The New York Times: “An Insolent Puppet Roils Canadian Politics”

Toronto Sun: “Conan sics dog on Quebec”

The non-francophone audience in Toronto laughed at the bit, and uproar ensued. Alexa McDonough, a member of Parliament from the social democratic New Democratic Party, demanded the show return the $750,000 it received in Canadian taxpayer’s promotional money for coming to Toronto.

Quebec politicians generally refused to comment, but the Toronto Star blasted the bit in an editorial, saying that “O’Brien would never have dared such a stunt at home in New York City with American Hispanics or Jews,” according to the New York Times.

Triumph has made something of a career of insults, and sometimes to good effect. American Idol auditioners have felt the brunt of his snubby snout, as have devout Star Wars fans. And really, sometimes animals are just funny.

But the rules for pop culture and politics don’t always mix. Celebrities are always fair game. So are people who willfully fight for publicity, like American Idol auditioners.

But the personal is still political. And nowhere is that more evident than in Quebec’s relationship with Canada. They nearly voted to secede from Canada in 1995 — how did the Late Show think the Quebecois would respond? With laughter?

We’ve created a fairly pervasive pop culture image of Canada in the United States — the dumb Mountie, the calm quasi-socialist, the dork. It plays well here, where we lap up insulting images of our northern neighbors who have the gall to implement universal health care and gay marriage. South Park did it the best, utilizing the image while making fun of its source.

Pop culture, however, doesn’t always translate into actual political will. Canadians may be famed for breeding comedians, but that doesn’t mean that they’re just going to sit back and take an insult.

A New York Times article contained a telling, if slightly editorial, comment about Canadian humor.

“Political satire is a big part of Canadian culture, and it can be rather ribald. It can also be rather anti-American, with hefty helpings of insults about President Bush and American ignorance about things Canadian.

Crude anti-French jokes are not uncommon outside Quebec, but they are generally told in private along with other ethnic humor not considered ‘politically correct.'”

Anti-American comments aside (c’mon, how many of you really know anything about Canada?), it appears that O’Brien’s show hit an exposed nerve in our neighbors to the north.

Imagine a white, accented Canadian coming to the United States and telling Richard Pryor/Chris Rock-style jokes. The humor is still there, but the context is missing.

We tend to forget the Quebecois are considered not only a different nationality, but a different “race” in some parts of Canada.

O’Brien’s show simply amplified the underlying current of tension in Anglophone/Francophone Canada. He did what a comedian is supposed to do — laugh at uneasy topics — but it might have helped if he had created a little context around it. If his own country hadn’t long ago destroyed its credibility with ridiculous anti-French projects like “Freedom Fries,” he might have succeeded.