January 11, 2006

Post Cereal and attack ads

I don’t claim to be a public relations expert, but I do question those who believe attack ads are effective at luring voters. If anything, they’re a sideshow to the actual politicking (which itself is a sideshow but I digress). The Conservative “The Liberal Party is Corrupt” ads are laughable at best, featuring the familliar wooden actors (incidentally where did the Conservatives find these actors anyway? They are terrible), “the liberal party is corrupt” voiceover, looped in a trance/europop styley, and why are all the bad actors fixated on watching the loop on a fake TV show? You could say that perhaps they are hypnotised by the Liberals (which might be sort of interesting) BUT they are clearly disapproving of the Liberals. Their disapproval, of course, is demonstrated with head shakes and rolled eyes. It’s a terrible terrible commerical, and I always cheer when David Dingwall comes on. Just because I think it takes a great amount of strength to get through life with a name like “Dingwall” and for doing just that, perhaps he is entitled to his entitlements. I haven’t seen many of the Liberal attack ads- but I don’t watch much TV so this doesn’t mean anything. The Liberal ads I’ve seen are more polished than the Conservative ads (but then again so is Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod’s Bodybreak) but they are still ridiculous. They attempt a jovial comraderie, and say absolutely nothing. “He might be a Satanist. He might not, but you never *really* know. Do you?” Focus on evil Harper face. It’s stupid! I have only seen one NDP ad, and it was so boring I hardly noticed it. When I was an English teacher, we taught this absolutely idiotic lesson where students had to say “Someone’s got to do something about crime”, or “They’ve got to do something about pollution”. The NDP ad seemed just as specific as my stupid English lesson.

I just do not believe that attack ads are effective. When I was little, I didn’t eat Post Cereals because they attacked General Mills and Kelloggs in their ads, and I thought that just indicated they had nothing of themselves to market. And perhaps this indicates that I was a strange child. But I would vote for the party whose platform was so subtantial that they didn’t have to resort to character assassination and attack ads that insult electors’ intelligence. Unless there was definitely something worth attacking, but trite accusations and tape loops aren’t it.