Beyond The Commons

 Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

More of this please

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 12:32pm - 5 Comments

CBC does its best to hide such things online, but if you go to the podcast of yesterday’s episode of Politics and scroll to about three-quarters of the way through, you’ll find arguably the most intelligent discussion of politics broadcast on Canadian television in the last decade—Rick Anderson, Elly Alboim and Susan Bonner talking about the new Conservative ads and the nature of political advertising. An engaging, civil debate with only slight prodding from the host.

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  • Emmett

    “arguably the most intelligent discussion of politics broadcast on Canadian television in the last decade.” Really? How about 75% of Steve Paikin’s shows…

    Sure this was civil… but, was there anything so insightful said that warrants such platitudes?

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

    Definitely a good discussion. If the consensus is that negative advertising character assassination (whether that applies to these Iggy ads or not) is legitmate, though, i.e. that ordinary decency doesn’t really apply in Canadian politics, one’s faith that substantial policy will indeed eventually be debated, that a Golden Age of grown-uppitude and mutual respect will eventually be restored, starts to flag. And then you wonder why you care about public policy, or the future of the community, at all. Life, after all, is short, and there are lots of other interesting things to think about apart from politics; if this meaningless grind is the happily accepted future, why not turn to something less insipid?

  • Johnny

    You can see the video of this exchange from the Tuesday show here:
    http://www.cbc.ca/politics/

    (It occurs at about the 30 minute mark)

  • Anon

    Susan Bonner will make a good replacement for Don Newman.

  • Wascally Wabbit

    See I read it slightly differently.
    Rick is always somewhat guarded with his answers – since he is more often then not commenting on something negative that the government of the day (for the last three years) has done.
    Last night – I thought he was skating very fast – heaping praise on the whole concept as both fair and effective – from the viewpoint of a political operative on the Conservative side of the spectrum – while at the same time – as an individual – he was decrying what the ads. were doing to decorum in politics!
    Very strange!

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