03.25.2011 08:54 AM

Currently on the Current

Did The Current this morning with my buddy Jim Armour.  The results will show up here eventually.

My point: tough ads about an opponent’s public record are fair and fine.  But going after someone’s family – as the Conservatives did last week with Michael Ignatieff – is disgraceful.

Listen in!

10 Comments

  1. intrep says:

    I disagree. Iggy put his own family up there as the target. The least he could have done was make sure the information was factual. Are we saying that no matter what candidates say about their personal lives or family, the information should be off limits?

  2. JH says:

    WK I ask this soley because of your books, war room experience etc.
    For the most part I believe as you do that the family is sacrosanct, however if a politician uses his family in the way that MI did, does he open himself up to the rebuttal arguments?
    Even his own supporters upon reading his writings on the subject, have acknowledged he did stretch the truth somewhat. If the situation were reversed and say Layton or Harper had done this with their family histories, what would a war room guru advise?

  3. Rick says:

    Nobody attacked Ignatieff’s family; they attacked Ignatieff’s honesty. That he happened to be talking about his family isn’t really relevant; he wrote something in a public space meant (in part) to gain political advantage, and it’s fair to call him on it if he wasn’t honest.

  4. Cath says:

    I can’t agree with you in this instance WK. Ignatieff hoisted his family up for all to see in this case. It’s fair game especially because he’s written so many books that seem to contradict him.

    In listening to Iggy speaking just now I hear echoes of the LPOC Red Book being recycled and regifted in Iggy-speak. Not sure how that’s going to work for him.

  5. Emily says:

    SWIFT-BOATING!

    Definitely the talent of the Reformatories whose followers have always accepted the defining of Ignatieff by the PMO bunker.
    The rest of Canadians? We want to learn more about him from his OWN mouth.

  6. Namesake says:

    So to all you conbots who have been dutifully championing the Con war room’s half-truths and elevating their innuendo into a charge of lying:

    here’s the real truth, which you claim to be concerned about, from someone & somewhere that are no particular friends of the Libs:

    Chris Selley, the National Post’s news round-up blogger guy, who’s actually read Ignatieff’s FATHER’s book — you know, the one MI was actually talking about in the innocent attacked ad, as having come to Canada with nothing, and having taught him the value of hard work:

    “In his 1984 memoirs, The Making of a Peacemonger, the late George Ignatieff explained … the [L]25,000 [pounds sterling that his parents had got out of Russia and bought a money-losing dairy farm with in England that they sold after ten years, and emigrated to Canada] was mostly gone by the time he arrived in Montreal in 1928, along with his mother and brother Leonid.

    He says the family subsisted on “a little over $100 a month” (about $1,300 in 2011 dollars), $45 of which went towards a bedbug-infested apartment in Notre-Dame-de-Grace.

    Is that “not anything”? No. It’s something. Nowadays we’d call it poverty. If a grocer or farmer or auto mechanic was recounting his family’s arrival in Canada, nobody would object to him describing such means as “nothing.” ”

    http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/minor+melodrama+best+forgotten/4500558/story.html

  7. Heard the interview and discussion. I think you mentioned that Mr. Harper will be known for two things –

    – introducing US-style attack ads to Canada
    – uniting the right

    So.. after disparaging Iggy’s tenure as a respected professor at a top school I think it a little ironic that the CPC, interested in US society, chose the one of the most negative US attributes to bring to Canadians.

    Yes, the genie is out of the bottle, not ever going back but have to say Iggy’s got a hell of a lot of respect for Canadians in his communications in my opinion.

  8. Pete says:

    Then, in your logic every lie and unethical deal done by Harper are fair game, including all the very embarrassing statements he made as leader of the NCC, etc. Some of those will get very personal responses on his character and his hinesty over the years. The trail will lead to him being exposed naked ambition at any cost.

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