Stardust, cyber-bullying, and newly-found efficiency
April 26, 2013
Jennifer Ditchburn’s CP story this morning delineating the homophobic subtext in the posters set to be sent out by Conservative MPs to their constituents made it clear that it was time for me to get the charge card out again. So $50 went off to Justin. Interestingly, the once-creaky Liberal Party machinery worked very smoothly this time. Boom. Correct data on the splash screen already there. Pump in the amount and the card number. Thanks. Bye.
According to pundits Trudeau’s most daunting task over the next two years will be the update of the LPC’s archaic organization. This latest online encounter was the first time I have ever dealt with the Liberal Party of Canada that I was impressed by their efficiency.
I doubled the amount of the contribution out of resentment of the hypocrisy of the publicly-funded mail-out campaign to begin June 1: how can Harper meet with the parents of a girl who was harassed to death and take a public stand against cyber-bullying, yet praise the content of these deeply personal attacks upon an opponent? And if it isn’t bullying to get all of the other MPs to gang up on the intended victim in this attack, what is it?
I said a month ago in a post that Justin and Sophie will slay Stephen Harper on the campaign trail just because of their teamwork and sex appeal. Face it: manly men look up to someone who is getting more sex than they are. That’s just the way it is, Steve. Justin has a lock on this with Sophie and his kids. Sprinkling fairy dust around a picture is just going to make people mad at you and grease the Liberal fundraising machine.
According to The Canadian Press, I’m far from the only grouchy old white guy who is put off by attack ads.
Rod
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Unintended consequences: Tory attack ads fuel donations to Liberal party
By: The Canadian Press
Posted: 3:22 PM | Comments: 2 | Last Modified: 3:56 PM
OTTAWA – Conservative attack ads against Justin Trudeau have turned into a financial boon for the Liberal party.
The party raised $336,000 in the 48 hours following Trudeau’s landslide victory in the Liberal leadership race Sunday.
Officials say that’s more than double the party’s previous top haul for an e-mail fundraising campaign.
They say the donations poured in after two back-to-back mass email solicitations that urged Liberals to fight back against Conservative attacks.
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Allison Cross
17 April, 2013
The National Post
Donations to liver foundation surge after Tories’ ‘striptease’ attack ad against Trudeau
Attack ads, again.
April 15, 2013
It’s no secret that I hate attack ads. From this page I have raged at Harper’s minions and at the culture which rewards such rot with political success. I even turned on Michael Ignatieff when he went negative in response to the ad blitz designed to destroy his reputation and standing among Canadians.
And now Harper has started again. This time it may be defensive: it’s beat Trudeau down or resign, if one is to believe the polls.
But this time I won’t bother to rant.
In response to the first Conservative attack ad I have just sent the Liberal Party of Canada a donation of $20. I’ll do the same for every new ad brought to my attention, up to my legal maximum donation.
I invite others who hate attack ads to join me in this attempt to clean up this rot in our culture.
Update:
Just saw a second attack ad. Away goes another $20 to the Trudeau War Chest.
Update April 16, 2013:
The response of the Trudeau team was an interesting one. Justin strolled out and held an informal scrum with reporters in the corridor of the House of Commons. He answered questions about the attack ads with good humour and wit, taking his time to turn the tables on his attackers (You don’t support The Liver Foundation?), and made the news on You-Tube, if not nationwide, with his 8 1/2 minute, cost-free rebuttal.
All eyes had been on Question Period this day, but it turned into a non-event. The major fail of the day was when the Conservatives gave Justin an excuse to go face-to-face with Canadians at supper hour. The overnight poll shot the Liberals to 43%.
Not bad for someone who is in over his head, eh?
Every politician wants to be Grace Park.
June 13, 2010
If you want North Americans to pay attention to what you say, present it as make-belief. The Canadian-made T.V. series Battlestar Galactica ended a four-year run this spring, touted as the smartest thing on television by Rolling Stone, loved by its avid viewers who at some level bought into every one of the humanitarian issues it raised. What’s more, its cast moved on to other lucrative show business positions as soon as they retired from the old Vancouver warehouse where the series was shot.
So the Battlestar Galactica legacy is struck: every politician in Canada wants to be Grace Park and have endless offers of other roles when this gig is finished. A clumsy, makeshift stage set in a cavernous old barn of a warehouse, some intellectually unchallenging but edgy issues raised and dealt with in a 46-minute format, and then the credits roll. Plywood space ships sliding around the floor to simulate crashes? No problem. It’s the characters and the ideas that are of interest, not the special effects or the credibility of the plot.
So Stephen Harper’s myrmidons can hardly be faulted for the Fake Lake, the odd fanciful gazebo, prop lighthouse and an old, creaky ship. It’s as close as they can get to emulating the appeal of Battlestar Galactica. Of course they may not have thought it out too carefully – as with the maternal-health-for-the-Third-World kick. On T.V. the writers can just cut to a commercial and then roll the credits, but in the world of politics there’s still Question Period. As well, unfortunately PMO staff are all too likely to be compared to Cylons, and Harper’s apparent contempt for the environment makes more sense if his supporters all aspire to nabbing seats on the first ship to escape the doomed planet.
Perhaps I overdo it in suggesting that control-freak Stephen Harper would prefer the world were safe on a video screen where his editors could have complete and final control over the message mix. For one thing a brief look at any history of Canadian cinema will make it obvious that the Fake Lake follows a noble tradition of government and corporate propaganda films to promote immigration to Canada from Britain and Western Europe. That’s what the media centre’s for, right? Showcase Canada and encourage immigration, trade and investment.
As early as 1910 the CPR and Sir Wilfrid Laurier worked on films to get people to come here and fill the gap between Thunder Bay and Vancouver. Then as now, the image Canada presented to the rest of the world was much more important than the reality the settlers discovered, once exposed to the Canadian climate, its insects, and above all, its intimidating vastness.
I love the spoof video, “If I Had a Billion Dollars.” It shows genuine wit, and makes excellent use of You-Tube. But the more I think about the Fake Lake the less I feel inclined to ridicule it. This week’s Liberal ad on the subject makes me want to defend the alleged “boondoggle” because I detest attack ads, whatever their source.
In the prequel to Battlestar Galactica the inventor of the Cylons offers this: “In my business if it makes no difference, there is no difference.”
Look at what the organizers are doing: they’re taking a group of urban electronic journalists and allowing them to remain in their chosen milieu: close to the bar and away from bugs, sunburn, bad weather and scarce toilets, a milieu they trust and understand, plunked in front of a giant T.V. feed. A few shiny images of Muskoka will do the job, for the sheer multiplicity of imagery can only confuse the camera. It has to be simple and a bit artificial to work on T.V.
So let’s give Harper and his crew some credit for the imagination to see that all that really comes out of the summits is a few select photos and sound bites, and that significant effort must go into the manipulation of these bits. Most likely the cabinet’s tepid response to opposition baiting in Question Period this week has been due to their unusual position on this issue: for once they aren’t called upon to defend the indefensible, and they simply haven’t gotten around to dreaming up a rational response to legitimate questions about its cost.
So they have created an opportunity with the Fake Lake. It’s a chance to showcase the work of the many animation studios around Toronto as well as the Vancouver and Montreal movie industries. How they use the propaganda machine will to some extent contribute to Canada’s image as a world technological leader, but even more on the domestic front it will determine the Conservative Party’s immediate future. They’d better hope the film-at-11:00 is good. If the Fake Lake bombs, come fall there will be a lot of ex-MP’s lined up with Grace Park at casting calls for the next CBC blockbuster series.
The Final Taboo
April 19, 2010
In 1988, trailing badly in the polls to Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, Republican George H. W. Bush reluctantly allowed a line to remain in the final draft of a speech: “Read my lips: no new taxes!” That sound bite (and attack ads questioning his opponent’s sanity) won him the election, but then he was forced to impose a 10% income tax surcharge to cover the cost of the Persian Gulf War or face a bankrupt administration. In the 1992 election Bill Clinton made Bush into a one-term president by forcing him to eat his no-new-taxes pledge.
George W. Bush started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time as American president. Unlike his father, “W” made no effort to pay for his foreign adventures. While traditionally governments have called for a strong commitment from the citizenry to support wars, Bush recognized the paper-thin public support for his projects and avoided seeking a visible public commitment such as a tax levy or a draft. Instead he ran deficits while pumping up military budgets and even cutting taxes. The cost of the two wars has almost hit a trillion dollars ($985 billion), and there is no plan to pay for it. It costs a million dollars per year to keep a U.S. soldier in the field and Obama recently sent 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. The fiscal abyss looms, but few dare gaze upon it.
George Sr. had been forced into this tax position by the right wing of his party, and from that point on national campaigns in North America have been more about getting elected than laying the groundwork for a successful administration. In fact, the disparity between what it takes to run a country successfully and what it takes to get elected to the position soon widened to the point that tactician Karl Rove Jr. is afforded the sort of respect in the media formerly reserved for senators who had championed important legislation. All Rove has done is get George W. Bush elected through dirty tricks.
What does this have to do with Canada? I fear the Republican’s fiscal recklessness has made its way north. In Diefenbaker’s day it was said that the party ruled which marched to the left while proclaiming it marched to the right, and claimed it would never change while adapting to every eventuality. Harper’s government seems to have adapted the rule to: “Crow about how prudent Canada is fiscally while spending like a drunken sailor.” Or perhaps it involves warning Canadians about the threat of socialism while nationalizing GM and Chrysler.
The recession of 2009 struck and stimulus funding was needed to protect the minority government from the opposition. Free market principles be damned, away went $65 billion dollars to Conservative discretionary spending projects. With the GST reduced to 5% and the $13 billion surplus from the Martin administration spent, there’s no real prospect of balancing the budget without increased revenue, but with the Bush taboo, no politician can admit to a plan to increase taxes and win an election. Look what happened to Stephane Dion with his carbon tax. Thus Jim Flaherty clings doggedly to the party line and insists that growth will take care of the deficit within five years…. or fourteen.
Most likely Canadians will face a federal election within the year. That will mean another round of attack ads. Rumour has it that the favourite Conservative attack line this time will be: “Ignatieff: we just can’t afford him.”
Why? When asked by a reporter if he would raise taxes to pay off a deficit, Ignatieff once said he couldn’t rule it out. That’s it. A $65 billion dollar Tory war chest and millions more spent on American-made signs, and airplanes to fly MPs around to hand out cheques with the Conservative logo illegally attached. But an attack ad blaming the other guy for trying to balance the budget will probably work.
The No-New-Taxes pledge – I’ll call it the Bush taboo – means that no potential leader can honestly speak to voters, because voters themselves are dishonest. They commonly vote their prejudices and their wallets, and only on rare occasions, their aspirations.
So what’s a voter to do? Reject attack ads. Say an ad comes along during a hockey game: “Stephen Harper. The way he’s handled the Guergis situation, if he were a school principal he wouldn’t last a week.” Change the channel. Don’t change your attitude toward Stephen Harper, even though you know in your heart it’s true.
And of course if a politician asks voters to think rationally about paying for our war and funding our pension plans and medical care instead of passing the problem on to the next generation, we would likely be wise to pay attention, rather than allowing the nearest bully to shout the idea down in an attack ad.
The Attack Ad
May 31, 2009
I hate attack ads. There I was, settled in for a Saturday evening of Hockey Night In Canada. The tempo of the game riveted me to my seat. At the end of the period I didn ’t dash away, perhaps because of the quality of the game, or perhaps because of fatigue after a day of gardening. I sat there, willing even to listen to Don Cherry’s rants. And on it came, the “Just Visiting” ad. It doesn’t say much, just that Michael Ignatieff spent an entire career outside Canada and now wants to be Prime Minister out of personal ambition. My first reaction when I saw the ad on You Tube was to ridicule it as a feeble attempt to weaken the powerhouse that is Michael Grant Ignatieff.
I remembered that Ignatieff’s uncle, George Grant, wrote Lament for a Nation. Since its publication in 1960 this book has defined what it is to be Canadian. I further remembered that among Michael’s ancestors lie two principals of Upper Canada College, one principal of Queen’s University, and Vincent Massey, perhaps Canada’s greatest Governor General.
“Just in it for himself?” No. That’s Stephen Harper using Flaherty’s fall economic update to attack personal enemies: women, the public service, opposition parties. That’s Stephen Harper proroguing parliament to save his own political career. That’s Stephen Harper’s attack on Quebec during question period because they refused to give him the seats he needed for a majority.
I know these things, but when I’m watching Hockey Night In Canada I’m not in the mood for political debate. I’m watching two romantic groups of men competing with all their hearts for the holy grail of sport. My mind is far from the rational, pragmatic attitude which protects me from the demagoguery of an election campaign.
This is the genius of the attack ad long before an election call: it hits the viewer in a deep, emotional place, far from the intellect which can tell fact from fiction, and it repeats the attack many times per night at the one time of the year when the Canadian male is at his most vulnerable, the Stanley Cup final.
So I know in my mind that Michael Ignatieff has one ancestor who was the first Canadian-born Governor General. Another family member wrote the book on what it is to be Canadian. His father was a diplomat, and Michael is following a strong family tradition of public service. But that’s another part of my brain. The television says that he’s just in it for himself, and as the song goes, so does my heart: “I know it’s true, oh so true, ‘cause I saw it on T.V.”
the Walnut Diary 