Yes, yes.  I am a shit-disturber, as Bob R. says.  It’s how I roll, baby.

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Most people – most normal people, anyway – pay little or no attention to politics. 

They’re Joe and Jane Frontporch, and they’re busy. Ferrying the kids to and from hockey practice, getting stuck in traffic, worrying about paying the mortgage or the rent, trying to catch up on their sleep. Busy.

 They don’t have time for voluminous political party platforms, or sitting through ministerial speeches, or reading departmental press releases. Most days, Joe and Jane Frontporch don’t care about any of that stuff. In the digital era, they’re overwhelmed by too much information – what American writer David Shenk calls “data smog” – so they just tune it all out.

That’s why the politicians who attract the most attention are the Donald Trump and Rob Ford types. Guys like that are so outrageous, they break through the data smog, and capture everyone’s attention. But smoking crack or making racist statements – while indisputably newsworthy – isn’t always the best way to win elections.

So politicians and politicos instead devote most of their waking hours to dreaming up ways to pierce the aforementioned data smog, and capture and maintain the attention of voters. They concoct ways to simplify what they’re doing, or what they want to do. Thus, back in 1992, Bill Clinton was all about the economy, stupid. At any point in his 40-year career, Jean Chretien was the unity guy – vive le Canada! And in 2008, Barack Obama represented “real change.”

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals liked Obama’s 2008 slogan so much that they stole it in 2015. “Real change” was their mantra, repeated over and over, until it became their brand.

In the early days of the new Grit government, the outlines of something else is emerging. Real change is taking place, to be sure – in fiscal policy, on law and order issues, on the refugee file. No question: it’s a real change from what preceded it.

But something else is happening, too. And it’s this: Justin Trudeau’s government is the TV Government.

TV is pictures, and pictures are power. More than any Prime Minister in our lifetime, Trudeau seems to understand that they best way to captivate Canadians – the best way to pierce the data smog – is to be all about pictures.  

So, there he was, greeting Syrian refugees at Toronto’s airport in the middle of the night. Or sitting on the steps of Parliament, talking to a school kid having a bad day. Or posing for Vogue magazine, or taking a Maclean’s magazine pop quiz. Or taking a bunch of hospitalized kids to see Star Wars. Or – day after day after day – cheerfully posing for selfies with average folks.

Some people have noticed, and some of them are not impressed. Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose sniffed: “While on the international stage we saw leaders of the Western world come together, coalescing around the fight against ISIS, the impression that was left with Canadians and the international community was that our prime minister was consumed with taking selfies,” Ambrose said, hastening to add: “I mention this because it was mentioned to me many times by constituents.”

She added that last bit, of course, because she knows it’s working. Trudeau does, too. Asked about the selfies at town hall thing run by Maclean’s, Trudeau verbally shrugged. “It’s not about image, it’s about substance,” he said. “You have to get to know people.”

Of course. For sure. But it’s more than that. Trudeau was pretty young when his Dad rubbed shoulders with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, thirty-odd years ago. But even a little kid could understand that Reagan was always much more preoccupied with images than words.  

One of Reagan’s most influential advisors, Michael Deaver, didn’t hide it. “I have always believed that impressions are more important than specific acts or issues…I believe TV is a great boon to us in judging our leaders. It lets us see all the dimensions that, in the past, people could only see in person: the body language, the dilation of the eye, the way they perspire. We see them when they are tired, worried, under great crises. If television focuses on somebody every day, it shows all the dimensions.”

So too Justin Trudeau, who the camera loves and – to his critics – loves the camera right back. Trudeau knows, perhaps, that leaders are measured by the impressions they create, not the policies they promulgate.  

There’s a risk in all of this, naturally. If, six months from now, Trudeau is branded as Prime Minister Selfie – if his administration is simply regarded as a four-year-long photo op, punctuated only by state dinners and the occasional foreign trip – he’ll be in trouble. He needs to be more than the callow and shallow caricature his opponents suggest he is.

But if his visuals strategy works – and it’s working so far, big time – he’s golden. He can end up in 2023 as Reagan did: beloved by his partisans, and remembered as the great communicator by all.

So far, so good. But it can all end pretty swiftly, if Joe and Jane Frontporch sense that you’re all sizzle, and no steak.

UPDATE: And here’s the Troy media link. And, yes, for those who have asked, I am suing Michael Bate and Frank magazine – again – for their latest bullshit. Bate evades service, however. Anyone with info on locating him will be richly rewarded!

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Quote:

The famous New York City punk outpost CBGB & OMFUG, where Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, Talking Heads and many others cut their teeth and sullied its notoriously disgusting bathroom, closed in 2006. But now it will get a second life, nearly a decade later as … an airport restaurant.

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Quote:

“…the federal Liberals have agreed to remove a section of law that allows parents to spank their kids without fear of prosecution.

Groups that oppose corporal punishment of children have spent many years urging successive governments in Ottawa to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code that permits parents and teachers to use reasonable force to correct the behaviour of youngsters in their care.”

This is a watercooler story: notwithstanding anything else that average folks are supposed to be talking about, this is a story they will be talking about.

The police and the Crown always have discretion to determine what charges should be laid, when, and against whom. In the past, they seemingly have had the tools to deal with this issue – see here and here.

So, will this change result in some of your neighbours – some of your family members, or even you – being hauled before a judge? Or will folks be okay with it? Or will no one notice the change at all?

Interesting times. Someone is going to get spanked, to be sure, but not the acting-up five-year-old anymore.

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From @iyad_elbaghdadi: “This iconic picture will live in history. When a women escaped ISIS territory and was able to wear color again.“

I love this.  This is my favourite photograph of the year, I think. Take that, you ISIS pricks: joy.

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Here’s a Brit-born writer living in Toronto:

“Harper embodied the qualities you’d look for in a bookkeeper or accountant: he didn’t seem to have much personality to get in the way of the dull tedium of governing the country. That’s the source of the Trudeau costernation. Conservatives fond of Harper aren’t so much offended by Trudeau’s earnest popularity as they are mystified by it: they can’t imagine why anyone would want to take a photograph with the person they chose to run their country. The warmth and geniality Trudeau project so effortlessly are not, at least to the incurious or unimaginative, easily reconciled with the demands of the Prime Minister’s office.”

Some great writing, therein, and I’m pissed off he anticipated my next Hill Times column, which reads in part:

“So too Justin Trudeau, who the camera loves and – to his critics – loves the camera right back. Trudeau knows, perhaps, that leaders are measured by the impressions they create, not the policies they promulgate.  

 There’s a risk in all of this, naturally. If, six months from now, Trudeau is indeed branded as Prime Minister Selfie – if his administration is simply regarded as a four-year-long photo op, punctuated only by state dinners and the occasional foreign trip – he’ll be in trouble. He needs to be more than the callow and shallow caricature his opponents suggest he is.”

Conservatives forget they had their own image-conscious deity, however: Ronald Reagan. 

And he was popular for a long, long time, as I recall. And lots of conservatives would’ve lined up for selfies with him, too.

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Write an innocent post offering Christmas wishes, while simultaneously poking fun at agnostics and atheists, and what do you get? This is what you get.

He’s 17.

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Ran those fun little polls yesterday on 2015’s Best Politician, Best Political Advisor, and Best Political Strategy. Check out the results for the several hundred who voted, below. It wasn’t even close.

Here’s what you said as of this hour:

• Best politician: Stephen Harper – 342 votes over 241 for Justin Trudeau
• Best political advisor: whoever advises Brad Wall – 314 votes over 173 for Trudeau’s principal secretary
• Best political strategy: never, ever using social media – 301 votes over 179 the Grits’ “real change” mantra

[polldaddy poll=9236751][polldaddy poll=9236757][polldaddy poll=9236767]

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