For Your Further Consideration

Pondering The Dark Arts

For those as weary of political attack ads as I am, The Star's Carol Goar has an interesting column in today's edition. Entitled Debating ‘dark arts’ of political campaigning, Goar relates her experience of moderating a panel over the weekend comprised of

... Jaime Watt, the primary architect of former Ontario premier Mike Harris’s two election campaigns in the ’90s; David Herle, co-chair of former prime minister Paul Martin’s two election campaigns a decade later; and Chima Nkendirim, the strategist behind Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s victory in 2010.

While each had his own definition of his role during a political campaign, Herle and Watts defended the use of what they called 'negative ads'. While averring their distaste for attacks on a person's personal life, and agreed that mocking physical appearances/disabilities, they both feel it is fair game to question a candidates motives and fitness for office, which, to me, despite their rationalizations, is tantamount to endorsing character assassination, probably in many ways much worse than mocking of physical attributes. Nkendirim was the only one who felt his prime duty is to defend his candidate vigorously.

Rather disingenuously, Herle professed to being deeply troubled by low voter turnout:

“When 40 per cent of the population isn’t voting, the results are wildly unrepresentative of the people,” he acknowledged. “But we don’t know what the driver of that is.” He suggested it might be the reduced relevance of government in an age of globalization and market economics.

I suspect a bit of willful ignorance on Mr. Herle's part. As political observers far more astute than I have observed, there is little doubt that political attack ads, by the very fact that they lower political discourse to the level of schoolyard taunts, are a disincentive to voter participation.

And as I have suggested before, that is precisely the outcome desired by those who have proven to be such adept masters of these dark arts, the Harper Conservatives.

Harper Hate-Mongering

The latest attack ad, this one against newly-appointed Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, serves as a timely reminder of the Harper government's seemingly endless capacity for hateful and divisive propaganda. In this, I make an all-too obvious observation. But I have, for some time, wondered about the audience for those ads, and searching my blog archive, I don't think I have commented upon this aspect previously.

No matter which Conservative attack ad one chooses, and there have been many, it seems that a standard template for the imagery and the narration predominates, both always out of context and derisive in tone. Designed to inspire fear, resentment and mockery towards their targets, they reveal something very significant about their collective architect, the Harper regime: a morally bankrupt and debased view of the electorate.

I have often wondered whether the target audience, the general electorate, has ever stopped to think about the implications of having a government that regards them as little more than Pavlovian dogs, deficient in intellect, general awareness, and sensibility, poised to respond to the latest offering from their 'master'. Consider the ad against Justin Trudeau, which I posted yesterday. There is a kind of carnival music playing in the background, suggestive of frivolity and lightness, the image they are trying to instill of Trudeau in the viewer's mind. The Liberal leader is shown doing a kind of striptease and behaving in an exaggerated, almost effeminate way. Cue the contempt.

The other ad released yesterday listed Trudeau's experience as a camp counsellor, rafting instructor and drama teacher for two years, the later delivered with particular derision (the message: a real leader has contempt for the arts). While its message is blunt and obvious, that very bluntness makes the intended audience manipulation more than obvious, something that Canadian citizens should be offended, outraged, and disturbed by, inasmuch as it is a bald admission that power is the regime's only raison d'etre.

And yet we are told that attack ads are very effective. I can only hope that more and more people begin to exercise their innate critical faculties and see these ads for what they really are: a blatant expression of contempt for the voters of Canada.

Pernicious Effects of Harper Politics on the Young

This, I assume, requires no further comment:

Conservative Attack Ad - UPDATED

I suspect many will agree that this ad says more about the Conservative Party behind it than it does about its subject:

UPDATE: This Star editorial provides some useful context for and analysis of this attack ad.

Jesus Christ, Still a Figure of Controvery

Many years ago, the iconic writer and broadcaster Pierre Berton wrote a book entitled The Comfortable Pew. Yapdates gives the following summary of the book, commissioned by the Canadian Anglican Church in 1965.

... the author accuses the church of forgetting its main identity and what it first stands for. Broadly speaking, there are two main issues with church. Firstly, the church has become institutionalized in the sense that it is more concerned about conformity and keeping the status quo. Secondly, the church is in danger of being fossilized because of its inability to stay relevant to the people and the society at large. Both of these contribute to the crisis of the church.

Those who visit my blog regularly may be aware of how highly cynical I am about institutions. Whether we are talking about bodies that exist to protect us, educate us, spiritually revitalize us, represent us politically, etc., all seem to inevitably fall victim to a kind of self-promotion, complacence, conservatism and careerism that ultimately subvert their primary purpose. Indeed, such decay was probably best explored in Chris Hedges' Death of the Liberal Class.

I couldn't help but think of these things yesterday when I read a story in The Star entitled Sculpture of Jesus the Homeless rejected by two prominent churches.

Sculptor Timothy White created a piece depicting Jesus as a homeless person, an outcast, sleeping on a bench:

It takes a moment to see that the slight figure shrouded by a blanket, hauntingly similar to the real homeless who lie on grates and in doorways, is Jesus. It’s the gaping wounds in the feet that reveal the subject, whose face is draped and barely visible, as Jesus the Homeless.

Despite [the] message of the sculpture — Jesus identifying with the poorest among us — it was rejected by two prominent Catholic churches, St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

Initially it was enthusiastically embraced by the rectors of the two churches, but higher-ups in the New York and Toronto archdiocese turned it down, feeling that it might be too controversial or vague. The artist was told that “it was not an appropriate image.”

I can think of no more damning an indictment of institutional cowardice than the previous sentence. But perhaps the last word on how the message of Jesus has been so distorted and perverted over time should best be left to Wood Guthrie:

On Insincere Apologies

I'll probably have more to write later, but for now, here are some always reliable insights by Star readers on the 'apology' from RBC CEO Gord Nixon:

Royal Bank chief executive makes public apology, April 11

An open letter to RBC President and CEO Gord Nixon:

Don't outsource jobs at your Canadian operations at the expense of your Canadian employees. That's the message we RBC customers want you to get and act upon. Your Canadian customers and shareholders are the ones who made your bank rich enough to expand around the world. Show us and your loyal hard-working employees some respect by not jumping at every strategy to enhance your profits even further. It's not like the bank is strapped for cash. How much is enough for you?

John Bruce, Niagara Falls, Ont.

Businesses have a right to find ways to reduce operating costs, and if it means lowering labour costs, so be it. However, displacing local workers and shifting them onto the ranks of the unemployed will increase the number of recipients and the cost related to the EI benefits program. It is well known that governments in Canada have being gifting banks and many other corporations with all kinds of largesse at our expense. So perhaps now is the time for them to shoulder some of the responsibilities to support the resulting social and economic upheaval that their choices have caused. All levels of government should levy a hefty tax per job lost on those businesses that choose to farm out jobs.

Frank Arturi, Etobicoke

Why would anyone consider a formal apology from RBC acceptable when the jobs in question are still being outsourced? There is something morally wrong with a business model that financially rewards executives for taking good jobs away from Canadians under the guise of exceeding shareholder expectations. Outsourcing decisions to drive corporate profit and executive compensation come with a significant ongoing cost to our society.

Jean Binns, Burlington