04.01.2014 09:46 AM

That was then, this is then, too

Check out this Star story on what the Ontario Liberals are planning.

Then read this gem from the www.warrenkinsella.com archives:

“November 24, 2005 – Looking at the communications carnage in today’s papers – and recalling last night’s newscasts – I can now pass judgment. And my judgment is this: yesterday, Dithers’ government broke every communications rule in the book, to twist Sheila Fraser’s memorable aphorism.

In one short day, they:

  1. Stepped all over their own announcements
  2. Looked panicked, cynical, confused and desperate
  3. Could not articulate a single compelling reason for why they were announcing what they were announcing
  4. Lost control of the news agenda, utterly

Residential schools money; Air India inquiry; grain seed farmers boodle; labour market training agreement; immigration program dough; candidate rumours; judicial appointments – and, at day’s end, as dessert, an income trust announcement wherein the Minister of Finance was flatly contradicted by his own Parliamentary Secretary. 

It was insane. It was nuts. It was like 100 monkeys on a hallucinogenic, writing cheques. (Actually, monkeys know more about communications theory. Cheque-writing, too.)

Anyway, the final indignity came when all of their hard work – all of their frenzy of announceables, to use the Ottawa idiom – came to naught. Good old Danny McTeague stomped all over every damn announcement, every billion, with his demand that rapper 50 Cent be kept out of Canada. It dominated every newscast. Blew away everything else.

I swear to God, you can’t make this shit up, even if you tried. If these guys get re-elected, it’s because God is mad at the remaining 30 million of us for something we did in a previous life.

Ta. I’m off to write 39 competing press releases, which I intend to release simultaneously, late on a Friday afternoon and just before a long weekend.”

What does it all tell you (besides the fact that I’ve been doing this stupid web site for way too long, that is)?  It tells you that barfing up a ton of announcements (a) doesn’t ever work and (b) that the hapless gang who was in charge in 2005 federally is now in charge in 2014 provincially.  You know: the Martin gang.

The result will be the same.

.

6 Comments

  1. m5slib says:

    As someone who was for Chretien and against Martin, I would say that it seems like Wynne has more public goodwill, a less effective opposition, and a media not as concerned. Scandals aren’t what they used be.

  2. Arnold Murphy says:

    lmao, perhaps they are constructivists, we have no time for this in the real world only academics can pursue such creative thinking. It is why they are usually left in the theoretical world and academia.

  3. Merrill Smith says:

    I was working in communications at Transport Canada in those days — the rash of announcements went on for at least a month and it convinced me the time to retire had come.

  4. Matt says:

    If these documents were indeed leaked to the PC’s by members of the civil service, isn’t that an indication this government is very near its end?

  5. Swervin' Merv says:

    First thought was that the Star story was an (admittedly more elaborate than the usual) April Fools’ joke. Not so, apparently, given the widespread media pick-ups.

  6. e.a.f. says:

    god that was funny. yes the martin people. they went on to work in B.C. and ruined that also.

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