I will use this opportunity to shamelessly point out that I, unlike everyone else, predicted the re-election of Premier Redford. Here.
Also, I will use this opportunity to point out that, in the days that followed April 23, 2012, I delighted in mocking the many folks who got it wrong. Here and here and here.
Following tragedy, offering one’s “thoughts and prayers” on social media is commonplace. People now do it in a ritualized fashion whenever bad things happen.
After the murders in Boston last week, average folks felt compelled to offer their “thoughts and prayers” to the victims, allegedly of the Tsarnaev brothers, on platforms like Twitter. And, after the Boston Marathon murders — after 9/11, after Newtown, after any number of other calamities — politicians offered up their thoughts and prayers, too. Most of what they had to say is as banal as it is meaningless.
But the media and their critics carefully scrutinize their words, to ensure that it carefully aligns with the mood of the moment.
Justin Trudeau learned this lesson the hard way last week. A couple hours after the Boston bombings, when emotions could not be higher, Trudeau sat down to a scheduled interview with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge. The Liberal MP had won his party’s leadership the day before, so making the rounds with the TV networks was de rigueur. But, in Boston’s immediate aftermath, the encounter was fraught with peril.
Mansbridge’s first question about the attacks was as predictable as it was fair. As prime minister, “what do you do?”
Trudeau’s answer, as is now well known, was an unmitigated disaster: “First thing, you offer support and sympathy and condolences and, you know, can we send down, you know, EMTs or, I mean, as we contributed after 9/11? I mean, is there any material immediate support we have we can offer?”
That was uncontroversial, if communicated poorly (in all, Trudeau said “you know” nine times in a single answer). Then Trudeau got himself into big trouble. Instead of expressing outrage about the terrorist attacks and sympathy for the many victims, Trudeau chose instead to play amateur sociologist.
“At the same time, you know, over the coming days, we have to look at the root causes,” he said.
“… There is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society. And our approach has to be, OK, where do those tensions come from?”
Trudeau similarly went on for another 126 words, but the damage had been done.
Stephen Harper immediately seized on the Liberal leader’s words, as did much of the conservative-dominated commentariat, deploring Trudeau’s response as insufficiently tough and too bleeding heart.
It did not matter that Harper himself had said there is indeed a need to determine the root causes of terrorism.
As Maclean’s Paul Wells revealed, in 2011 Harper had given a speech on the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism, pledging to find out “as much as we can about terrorists, their tactics, and the best solutions to protect people.”
That isn’t all that different from what Trudeau said, of course. But, much like his father would have done, Trudeau put reason ahead of passion. These days, in the social media era, passion always precedes reason.
Trudeau may not approve of that, but — having won his party’s leadership riding the crest of a social media wave — he should have known better.
He is unlikely to make that mistake again.
…but not in a way that any of us would like, of course. This one is a bit close to home, as my Mom is on that train run regularly.
Quote:
Except:
The attack ads are working. Twitter “teaches” nothing; mostly, teachers do. Obama lost the gun control vote. Question Period changes nothing.
Twitter circulated an avalanche of false information about the Boston bombings, and arguably made false stories easier to spread. Nobody donates to, or as a result of, Twitter. It “inspires” no one. It just is.
It’s a tool, tool. It’s not the summit of human achievement. Get a grip.
That more than 140 characters? Too bad.
Apropos of the season, I’ve been tossing out a few “friends.” I do this periodically. Out they go to the blue bin, like old magazines. Bye-bye.
A couple full-on lied to my face, which never makes me feel terribly enthusiastic about the durability of the relationship. One I have made repeated attempts to reach, to no avail; he’s one of those friends who disappears when the going gets tough. He’s accordingly disappeared for good.
Some will say that life’s too short to dispense with certain “friends.”
I say: it’s because it is that you do.
What’s amazing about the Conservative Party’s Justin Trudeau advertising isn’t their content, or their tone, or their mere existence.
Some of us predicted (a) the anti-Trudeau attacks were coming and (b) the Cons would target his life (in)experience. And so they have.
No, what is amazing is how Liberal partisans, and Trudeau himself, reacted to them.
The two spots themselves will prove to be effective, of course. They’re well done. Both have a sarcastic, biting tone, like all the best negative political ads do. Both contain cited Trudeau statements that legitimize the spots’ main critique, namely that he lacks the right judgment and experience. And both make extensive use of Trudeau stripping his shirt off for a charity — a reaction that prompted one friend to say: “I can’t unsee that, now.”
TV is a visual medium, so pictures matter more than words. That’s why so many people have reacted so strongly to the liver cancer charity striptease segment (for which Trudeau raised thousands, by the by, and for which Stephen Harper’s wife has also lent support). Whatever the context, whatever the motivation, Trudeau’s decision to remove his shirt for the cameras will indeed leave some voters wondering whether that is, you know, the behaviour of a prime minister.
The newly minted Liberal leader may look terrific, and possess impressive pipes.
But the fact remains, if you were to ask them (and you can bet the Conservatives did, in coast-to-coast focus grouping), lots of Canadians will likely say they do not want the nation’s leader cavorting like Channing Tatum in Magic Mike.
That said, the poison at the centre of the attacks is not the striptease stuff, nor Trudeau’s Pirates of the Caribbean-style facial hair, nor the snide references to his job experience (a “drama teacher,” the narrator sneers, as if drama teachers are somehow less reputable than Justin Bieber).
What is potentially lethal is the ancient, and out-of-context, quote of Trudeau saying these words: “Quebecers are better than the rest of Canada because we’re Quebecers.”
Those words — uttered before CTV News cameras in 1999 — are deadly. They dramatically buttress the notion that has been at the centre of the Conservatives’ anti-Trudeau narrative for months: That he puts Quebec before Canada. That he, like Stephane Dion, like Michael Ignatieff, owes allegiance to another place, and not Canada first.
It worked in 2008 and 2011; it can work again.
If the Conservatives’ spots are backed by a substantial media buy, then, they will make Trudeau less popular. But Trudeau stubbornly refuses to fight fire with fire. And, like Dion and Ignatieff before him, he is letting the Conservatives define him with non-Liberals before he can define himself.
When asked about the attacks on his first day on the job, Trudeau gave a Trudeau-esque shrug. Canadians are “tired of negativity,” he said.
No, actually, they’re not. Canadians, like voters everywhere, may express a lack of enthusiasm for so-called negative advertising. But the fact remains, mountains of studies have shown that such advertising works. It is the advocacy that voters tend to recall the most, as they head to the ballot box. It is the type of advocacy that has been shown to most affect citizens’ hearts and minds.
The reaction in the mainstream media, and on the Internet, was largely the same as Trudeau’s. Commentators claimed Harper’s ads will backfire, and no sensible person will heed them.
If they look back, these commentators will see they said the same thing when the anti-Dion and anti-Ignatieff barrages started, too. They were wrong then, and they’re wrong now.
Should we aspire to live in a world where such advertising doesn’t work? Of course.
But we don’t live in such a world.
As I always say: No one likes car crashes, either.
But they always slow down to have a look.