It's no big secret that I don't like Stephen Harper. It might also not be a big secret that I'm not a huge fan of Ignatieff either, and I'm sure that I may have mentioned my distaste for attack ads to some of you. But this is just the cream of the crap, so to speak.
Scott Feschuk had a great piece in this week's Maclean's about the ads, basically saying that it's a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. The ads attack Ignatieff for everything from spending a lot of time outside of Canada to being a "tax and spend liberal," an academic, and an elitist. His argument is that Harper is almost all of these things (and he illustrated the column with a photoshopped picture of Harper with a pot on his head).
I don't like attack ads at all. I don't think they contribute in any significant, positive way to political discourse. I know that the idea is not to make the attacker look good, but rather to make the attackee look bad, and I guess I'm just missing something, because I don't get it. I think it's made worse by every single advancement in technology, because now you can watch them on your smartphone, making it so much easier to access a wider audience with greater frequency.
What do you think?
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This is not directly related but am I the only person who's confused by the term "tax and spend liberal." Taxing and spending; that's kind of what government do. Would taxing and not spending be better? Or spending and only borrowing? Or maybe pillaging and spending is preferred.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, I'd like to say that a) I'm glad that someone other than Lion and myself is contributing to the blog and b) attack ads are dumb I suppose, though as a person who is consistantly motivated to vote not by the person he likes, but by the person he dislikes, I can see how they might work.
By the way, despite what you might have been led to believe by my punctuation, that first sentence was supposed to be a question.
ReplyDeleteI understand the "voting against someone, rather than voting for someone else." I just think they're a huge waste of party finances and voter time and energy.
ReplyDeleteAs far as "tax and spend liberal" goes, it's a criticism that's consistently levelled at Canadian Liberals (big-L) because it's supposedly better to lower taxes and government spending and let people take care of themselves. I guess. But my money's on Harper pillaging. Watch out America - under Obama's soft foreign policy, you guys may lose your edge.
this country is all fuckin' edge, bro.
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