Categories: Blog Central, Capital Read, Potter Gold

This is Liberal Advertising

by Andrew Potter on Saturday, September 20, 2008 7:23pm - 35 Comments

Glen McGregor pointed this out to me today, a new Liberal spot. Is this the worst political ad ever made?

Liberal Leadership

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Cool Blue

Ya, pretty bad. I think that hand-clapping one was worse though.

Funny how despite this ad claiming Dion saved Kyoto, not even the Liberal platform is calling for meeting our Kyoto targets.
Justin Case

It’s not very good, neither was the clap ad. But they are both innocuous. The listeriosis ad is offensive and will turn many people off. It’s a toss-up between it and the Pinochet “Soldiers in the street” ad for the all time worst.
Carson

“You should express your to the world–Please”

How polite
catherine

Worst ad? You mean you like talking oil splotches, slot machines and scratch and save cards better? Or bird poop?

Actually, I thought it was quite a feat getting the US on board. They usually are kind of happy standing alone. And a real contrast to Harper, where it was just him and Bush standing against all the other countries.
Mike

I dunno, it has a weird kinda spiritual quality — perhaps intended to appeal subliminally to more

spiritual values, like “turn the other cheek.”

Examples…

Christianity

“Those who are insulted but do not insult others in revenge, who hear themselves reproached without

replying, who perform good work out of the love of the Lord and rejoice in their sufferings… are “as

the sun when he goeth forth in his might.”

Judaism:

“One should choose to be among the persecuted, rather than the persecutors.”

Buddism:

“For behold, they had rather sacrifice their lives than even to take the life of their enemy; and they

have buried their weapons of war deep in the earth, because of their love towards their brethren.”

Mormons:

“In wars to gain land, the dead fill the plains; in wars to gain cities, the dead fill the cities.

This is known as showing the land the way to devour human flesh. Death is too light a punishment for

such men who wage war. Hence those skilled in war should suffer the most severe punishments.”
Jarrid

?
Andrew Potter

Aight — worst ad ever, today’s edition? It’s pretty lame.
Blues Clair

Almost as lame as Harper’s sweater ads, almost… But at least when Dion is getting tough on somebody he says please.
http://tigerinexile.wordpress.com Ben

I actually found it rather endearing.

But yes, he comes across as weak.
Mike

Jarrid:

I make the big posts to draw your wonder.
Garnet

I don’t know that it’s so bad. The Tories’ ads in this campaign and the last have gotten a load of mockery in the chattering classes for their insincerity or apparent clumsiness, but they seem to have been effective. I wonder what pro ad men make of this one.
Mike

Oh–and Jarrid–I put the hard returns in there to deliberately confuse you. Sort of like your posts confuse me. Just exactly whom do you think you’re message is reaching?
Mike

Jarrid:

I am sorry. Carried away. Your posts are quite good, really. Sometimes, bad days make me cranky. I regret you were the target.
kody

Dion hosted a meeting.

Remarkable.
kody

It’s not every day one can get a bunch of tenured international technocrats to sit around the table and pretend they’re saving the world, on their respective government’s (or the UN’s) dime, while accomplishing little of substance.

No wait.

That’s what the do every day.

Dion was holding the gavel though. I hear those gavels can be quite heavy.
Peter

I guess when you throw the “green shift” under the bus, you have to shore up you green bonafides somehow…….
john g

You’d have to get a lot worse to beat Reform’s “Is this the face of a Prime Minister” in 1993.
Mike

“It’s not every day one can get a bunch of tenured international technocrats to sit around the table and pretend they’re saving the world, on their respective government’s (or the UN’s) dime, while accomplishing little of substance.”

Everone–please–pay attention! Kody is such a–wise guy!
Mike

So like Kody and his hero Steve are actively engaged in “global problem solving” (gratuitous quotation marks). And Kody has enlisted in the Canadian armed forces. He is sending his children to fight and die for his beliefs, just like that Liberal that was “outed” by Sparrow. And his grandma died of listeriosis, because Liberals and Greens and NDP like “big government” and hate capitalism. Oh. and did I forget to mention, my RRSP is only worth one-tenth of its original value because the “markets” Kody and his hero “worship” are as almighty as their infallible Christ?

Kody–if you are older than 16 years, get a library card and read something more than Mother Goose.
ARX

I thought the ad was fine, not the best I’ve seen, but definitely not the worst. I mean, it demonstrates Dion in a global leadership role, reinforces his environmental credentials, and has added benefit of him succeeding at building agreement in a UN conference (granted, that last point may not resonate those who don’t have an affinity for the UN). I don’t think it’s a stretch to see how this positive ad lets Dion stand in stark contrast to Harper, both as a leader, and as a representative of our country on the world stage.

Now, as to whether the ad will be effective at erasing Dion’s negatives, that I can’t even guess, but from my point of view, it definitely raised him in my eyes…
Mike

More for Kody–a quote from the Tyee:

“…What do close advisors to Stephen Harper and George W. Bush have in common? They reflect the disturbing teachings of Leo Strauss, the German-Jewish émigré who spawned the neoconservative movement.

Strauss, who died in 1973, believed in the inherent inequality of humanity. Most people, he famously taught, are too stupid to make informed decisions about their political affairs. Elite philosophers must decide on affairs of state for us…”

Not saying I agree. This kind of dismissive reasoning makes me cringe. Yet, Kody, why are you so certain?
Andrew

Rightly or wrongly, many Canadians have a lot of respect for the UN. I don’t think it’s the worst organization to associate oneself with in political advertising.

Why does Harper refer to his time running the NCC as ‘running a medium size business’?

Is he embarrassed of the NCC and what it stands for?
catherine

Peter writes “I guess when you throw the “green shift” under the bus..”

Actually, that was an interesting and disturbing example of journalism. That seemed to originated with the Toronto Star, who had a “news” article claiming Dion was backing away from the Green Shift and used some ambiguous quote about ‘you said, not me’ to base this story on. The next day the Star wrote that Dion had said it was a “very important” part of the platform in the same response, and now today they admit that Dion said it was the “foundation” of the Liberal plan in that same response.

It appears the Star took a few words out of context, didn’t repeat the rest of the answer and ran with a story which said exactly the opposite of the point Dion was making.

Anyway, I find this interesting that newspapers can get this far off track by purposely ignoring what someone says and using a phrase to write a false story. The Blogging Tories sure picked up on it.

Bottom line: Dion is certainly not throwing the Green Shift under the bus and don’t believe everything you read in newspapers.
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

Catherine

If you believe the Tor Star is out to get Dion, think again. Linda Diebel was on Duffy this week talking about how her, her newspaper, and other reporters are deliberately withholding info from the public about Dion and Lib campaign to help them out.

It’s a lame ad because many of us think that chairing a meeting is not all that spectacular and getting countries to agree to a plan they have no intention of complying with is not that great an achievement either.

If he wants to be seen as a leader on the green file, Dion should have done something more than name his dog Kyoto while he was environment minister and not whined about how hard it is to make priorities.
catherine

jwl, didn’t see that, but do you think Diebel is saying that to help or hurt the Liberals? That doesn’t strike me as an example of a Toronto Star reporter helping the Liberals out! Do you have a better example?

Anyway, I have no idea what the Toronto Star is up to, just that Brennan’s article in the Toronto Star was obviously misleading. Dion has, was and is selling the Green Shift. That is obvious. Other newspapers covering the exact same event as Brennan reported so, while Brennan reported that Dion was backing away.

Why did Brennan do it? I have no idea. Whether this is more widespread at the Toronto Star, I don’t know. Haven’t been paying much attention to them. Brennan just caught my eye, because his article made no sense. Once I saw the full quote, it also struck me as an clear example of trying to spread the opposite of truth, sometimes referring to as lying.