Inkless Wells

 Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

On negative ads

by Paul Wells on Saturday, May 16, 2009 12:48pm - 50 Comments

Here’s the first NDP ad of the 2008 campaign in Quebec. Note the line “It’s a pro-war vote that makes us slaves of the oilmen” and the child’s exploding head.

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  • Jarrid

    This is an attack ad directed against the Conservatives. There is no issue to discuss here.

    Attack ads by the Conservatives are the only ones that raise debatable issues.

  • Riley Hennessey

    The broken guitar (the horror), the millions of soldiers who are going to march through our streets and the hands in chains towards the end of the ad. For a second, I thought I was watching the new French ad for “Terminator: Salvation”. Maybe McG produced this ad for Jack.

  • Blues Clair

    Good campaign ad, only the facts.

    • Jarrid

      You know BC, as long as your beloved leader Michael Ignatieff keeps Warren Kinsella as Chief of the Liberal Party of Canada elections war room operations, the quibbling of Liberals such as yourself to Conservative negative ads can only be construed in one way: so much hot air.

      • Blues Clair

        Sorry, Ignatieff ain’t my cup of tea, nor Kinsella.

    • sf

      LOL, blowing up a child’s head in an ad is ok as long as it’s during the campaign. OK. Gotta take note, it’s tough to figure out what the rules of conduct are.

      • Blues Clair

        Can’t argue with facts.

        • sf

          I knew that one of the loony Lib partisans here would make that reply. I knew it.

  • http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

    Does anyone know how these ads were received in Quebec? I love this commercial, and I remember seeing a couple of others just like it, and wish there were more of these types of ads.

    I am tired of the standard monotonous ads we normally get and stirring it up a bit, like these ads do, is just what we need to get people interested in issues and elections.

  • sf

    Holy toledo, there really is a child’s head exploding. I did not notice that before, and it’s sort of subliminal, it happens so quickly.

    No wonder they did not do well in Quebec, the conservatives. Voters were thinking “if I vote conservative my child’s head will be blown off”.

    • Scott M.

      I missed that too until today… not only does the child’s head blow up, but the explosion percusses down the entire length of the body with little bits flying off everywhere.

      Wow.

      That’s a little over the top, but interesting nonetheless.

  • anon

    Pro-Bush, pro-war, he’ll make us slave to the oilmen?

    Looks like all they have to do is make a few edits and they can use that ad against Michael Ignatieff.

    • sf

      Good point. That will make less of a dent in their budget.

  • http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

    7 months after the election Wells finally notices the NDP had ads too.

    • Paul Wells

      Everyone will be astonished to see you’re wrong again.

      http://www2.macleans.ca/2008/09/11/a-pro-war-vote-that-makes-us-the-slaves-of-oilmen/

      • http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

        Great rebuttal to my wisecrack. I can’t wait to see how you slap down one of my limericks.

        • Critical Reasoning

          I like it when McClelland tries to pick a fight with Paul. It gives us another chance to witness Paul’s mastery of the smackdown.

        • http://www.maple-leaf-forever.com Lord Bob

          There once was a writer named Wells,
          Who wrote about jazz ‘cus it sells.
          He opened a blog,
          But he sat afraid and agog,
          For the comments were all sorts of hells.

          (I could do a better one for Coyne. I just know it!)

  • Derek Pearce

    Anybody here a horror movie fan? I’m actually not, but the part with the kid’s head exploding reminded me of “Halloween 3″ from back in the 80s. Talk about Over. The. Top. I am not making this up.

  • WDM

    I said at the time, and I still believe it’s the case, if the Conservatives or Liberals had run that ad against the other, its the first story on the National. The NDP got away with it with than a peep from most mainstream media outlets (with the exception of Wells, and IIRC Andew Coyne as well)

    • http://accidentaldeliberations.blogspot.com The Jurist

      Or conversely, the Conservatives or Liberals would have gotten weeks of free media out of the same ad and ensuing discussion, while the NDP got a couple of blog posts beyond what it paid for.

      • WDM

        Soldiers with Guns in Your Streets didn’t exactly propel the Liberals to victory. They were universally slammed for it.

        • Canuckistanian

          it did keep the conservatives from a majority though.

          • herringchoker

            Yeah…that’s what it did.

            I think Paul Martin might have a different view on that.

          • Canuckistanian

            he may, but he would be wrong. check the polling numbers: conservative majority numbers; soldiers in the streets ad; led to conservative minority…i’m not making this up ;-)

  • seth

    And……to those who say attack ads don’t work…..Layton won 40 seats, 2nd best showing ever for the NDP

    • http://www.tennisvagabond.com BigDaveS

      And how many in Quebec, the only place where the ad actually ran?

  • Dale

    Sure this ad is over the top, and some of the positions it attributes to the CPC are a bit… fanciful. But isn’t it a little more policy-relevant (cuts in culture, against Kyoto, etc) than “he lived outside the country for 34 years”? Or, as helpfully pointed out on ignatieff.me, that he drinks espresso and has been known to sing opera.

    Maybe I haven’t been paying attention, and please feel free to point me to an ad that would prove me wrong, but I haven’t seen ads by anyone other than the CPC that focus so intently on aspects of a leader that are so weakly related to what they would do as PM.

    • http://www.tennisvagabond.com BigDaveS

      Amateurish opera singing is unrelated to what he would do as PM??

    • sf

      Policy relevant? That would suggest that there is some truth to the ad. Did you miss the exploding head? How is that related to his job as PM?

      Maybe if Ignatieff actually told us what he would do as PM then we could talk about that. Everything he says, he says the opposite later, and doesn’t seem to take a firm position in anything.

      Frankly, though, considering his love of the opera, you can probably infer from that he supports subsidies for the arts, since there is no opera company in Canada (feel free to correct me if I am wrong) that supports itself without arts subsidies.

      • Dale

        “That would suggest that there is some truth to the ad”

        I pointed out two specific places where there was “some truth” to the ad. With an active imagination and a few tenuous inferences (as tenuous, say, as liking opera = supporting arts subsidies) one could see more truth in the ad. On the other hand, the exploding head is a good example of what I meant by “over the top”.

        It’s a fair comment that he hasn’t said much about what he’d do as PM, but this is not the overriding theme of the first ad, or of ignatieff.me (I haven’t seen the TV ones). The theme is personal, and it smells an awful lot like the anti-intellectual/anti-elite stuff that Bush et al pulled on Kerry in 2004 and what the GOP tried with Obama in 2008. Not to mention Dion. In two of those three cases it worked, and for some people this justifies the approach. But isn’t it just a little embarrassing, given that there are solid rational arguments that can be made for so many (C/c)onservative positions, that this is the path they choose?

        The difference is that in one case exaggerated policy positions are attributed to a party using scary imagery. In the other the policy positions (or in this case the lack thereof) are only ancillary to the central point, which is basically personal. Both are cheap, and both degrade politics, but I think the latter is more so.

        PS, BigDaveS: Yeah.

  • Sam

    During an election, candidates are in competition against each other, trying to persuade the electorate to vote for them. It is natural and therefore accepted that they will point out the differences from where they stand. Sometimes this is clean, and sometimes, it is just plain dirty.

    For me, it is sad that this type of bashing is taking place outside of an election, during a time when elected MP’s should be working together, harder then ever during this economic crisis, to serve the best interests of the people of Canada. With a fractured minority government, I’d say it is even more important to co-operate, and let certain matters rest. This is not the way that a country as great as Canada should be lead…

  • Critical Reasoning

    Few would deny that this NDP ad is packed full of depraved, ludicrously false propaganda. It amazes me that some are perfectly willing to tolerate attack ads like this one, yet they consider attack ads focusing on Iggy’s lack of Canadian experience to be beyond the pale.

    • Dot

      Oh give up this partisan stuff. You’re challenging Robin Sears (you’re a very distant second) for most recently diminished.

      • Critical Reasoning

        I call ‘em as I see ‘em. As soon as we start talking about another issue, I’ll return to my usual cheerfulness and good humour.

        • http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

          That “we’re not making this up” ad really ticked you off, eh? As, I hasten to add, it did me.

          • Critical Reasoning

            Jack, it really did tick me off. Not just the one ad, but a number of them. The Tories have also run ads in the past that ticked me off, but nothing in politics has ever irked me as much as Martin’s desperate 2006 campaign.

          • http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

            I was, uh, abroad during that campaign so I only saw them online, so it didn’t affect me quite so much; but like you I found that Martin campaign (indeed, his entire tenure) macabre. Come to think of it I’m only seeing these Tory ads online too; but I happened to be watching TV this evening at a friend’s place and felt that strange horror I always feel at that accursed medium, in which lies (= ads) parade as revealed truth, world news competes with ShamWow!, etc. And I can see how deliberate distortion in a political ad seen on TV would be peculiarly off-putting. Fortunately, as Paul points out in this post, from the sublimely medacious to the ridiculously incompetent there is but one step.

          • Critical Reasoning

            from the sublimely medacious to the ridiculously incompetent there is but one step.

            Well put. That simple fact is our saving grace. We are indeed fortunate to live in a country where the vilest political distortions are ridiculous, rather than sinister.

          • http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

            Yes, we are strangely lucky about that. E.g. the 1993 backlash on Chretien’s face; and wasn’t there a backlash against “we aren’t making this up” too? At least post-election — both earnest and mirthful. (“We’re not making this up” was a standard joke for a while, wasn’t it?) I don’t think you could have run this “slaves of the oilmen” ad in English Canada without a major backlash, and not just of mirth. Well, I guess there are advantages to being the nation that produced Kids in the Hall and Mike Myers.

          • herringchoker

            Not to worry boys Bensimon-Byrne, the agency responsible for thwe We’re Not making This Up ad campaign (which included Soldiers in Our Streets), will bring their special form of magic to the next Iggy campaign (http://tiny.cc/PymfJ). There’s bound to be loads of fun.

    • Sam

      The main difference is that this propaganda ad was put together during an election.
      It is pretty cheesy, but during an election, you run with whatever you think works best,
      so long as it is not libelous, and you can back it up and stand by it.

      Anyone with a background in the history of political parties in this country could easily point you towards way crazier things that have been said and done during election time!

      After all,
      During an election, your focus is to defeat your opponents.
      However,
      After an election, your focus should be on governing a country.

      • Critical Reasoning

        There is really no excuse for an ad like the one posted above. Ads like that one degrade us all.

        • Sam

          Since the inception of Confederation, Canadian political parties have done all sorts of inexcusable things during election time. We are not talking about a stray MP or so – we are talking about the political heroes of this country! As technology evolved, so did the techniques of attack.

          Election time is similar to war time – shady actions are “accepted” as the norm.
          Doing such things during a ceasefire – there simply is no excuse for that!

          • Critical Reasoning

            It seems like I’m preoccupied with the content, and you’re preoccupied with the timing. Guess which one is more important.

          • Scott M.

            Why can’t it be both? Political ads between writs should be banned completely. Incorrect ads should be disallowed as well.

  • http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

    For the record, the truly amazing thing about this ad isn’t the “slaves of the oilmen” line or the child’s exploding head . . . it’s Layton saying, “Un seul geste et tout ça peut s’arrêter.” Dude: you can’t introduce an apocalyptic scenario and then whisk it away with a vote! Either we’re the slaves of the oilmen or we aren’t! Either the kid’s head has exploded or it hasn’t — voting NDP won’t bring it back!

    • Sam

      Do not under-estimate the mad wizard powers of Jack Layton!
      Perhaps he very well could reconstitute that poor child’s head! ;)
      But only if you vote NDP!!!!

  • Sam

    “It seems like I’m preoccupied with the content, and you’re preoccupied with the timing. Guess which one is more important.”

    I don’t think guesswork is really needed to surmise that you believe your stance is more “important”, but I wouldn’t exactly call that critical reasoning.

    My comments on content are such that at one point or another, all parties have flung dung at each other during elections (consider it an evolutionary trait that just has not faded). This is an established tradition, where there have been far worse tactics used (judged via present day context, and even the context of the time within which it originated) than this NDP tripe. In a healthy democracy, people use an election to voice their various differences, and the citizens vote accordingly. Once elected, it is the duty of the MP to serve the best interests of his/her constituents. Explain to me the benefit (for the Canadian populace, and not the party) of attack ads? Timing is totally key. Use the designated time to fling your dung if need be, but outside of that, grow up, and do your job.

  • http://www.chuckercanuck.blogspot.com chuckercanuck

    I may be a harpermaniac, but one thing I know: these are kick ass ads that should be remembered as some of the best negative ads ever made.

    David Lynch, how much were you paid??

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