Skip to main content

Fair Election 2015: Let the Games Begin

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again: election season! Time for the third of the population who actually votes to go and figure out which of this year’s crop of party leaders is the lesser of three evils. The election was called today a mere ELEVEN weeks before we’re actually going to be casting our votes. Yippee….
Each of the major leaders gave a speech when the election was announced. So did Gilles Duceppe and Elizabeth May (May’s in particular was adorable –she really believes she could get a seat). And so everyone’s gearing up, stating their platforms, who they’ll fight for, and so on. The Conservatives and Stephen Harper have the advantage so far in that in addition to showing their Trudeau attack ads every couple minutes on most major Canadian networks, they’ve also recently passed the Fair Elections Act which is stacked pretty highly in their favour. For example Elections Canada is not allowed to encourage young people to vote. Young people who generally may not be inclined towards the Conservative government to begin with. And this already in a country whose voter turnout is pathetic. The Act also allows greater spending in longer elections. Convenient, considering the Conservatives have much more money than any of the other parties and can also afford this elongated campaign more than them. I expect Harper and Pierre Poilievre are enjoying a bottle of Chateau Lafite right now. The empty bottle costing about as much as the Bloq’s entire fund.
Tom Mulcair of the NDP launched the very originally named Campaign for Change with Parliament Hill conveniently in the background for broadcast. He spent a lot of time criticizing the government’s economic and environmental policies and bringing up interesting points as he pitted himself as the alternative. There was no better way to spark an intriguing discussion of a potential NDP government. Or at least there wouldn’t have been, if he had taken a few questions. Come on, even Harper answered a couple this time. You were so close Tom! Justin Trudeau made sure to speak from the Vancouver Pride Parade, an event that Mulcair had cancelled, just to assure us that HE valued pride events. Like Mulcair he did the popular thing of criticizing Harper and setting himself up as the alternative. He says the Liberals have a plan, which is great! I look forward to hearing it at some point. His podium had the slogan “REAL Change” again proving to be very original and a one-up on the NDP.
So we have eleven weeks of this until October 21st. And let’s hope it’s exciting. Or as much as Canadian elections can get without former first ladies, tasteless holocaust references, or a toupee’d but mesmerizing hothead spouting a mental patient’s hilarious ramblings. And if all else fails, I say just stick Harper, Mulcair, and Trudeau in a ring and have them go at it Mortal Kombat style until one emerges the victor and we rally behind them as our leader. In fact I’m not at all sure that’s not already in the Fair Elections Act. Makes about as much sense as anything else in it. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Disney's Mulan, Cultural Appropriation, and Exploitation

I’m late on this one I know. I wasn’t willing to spend thirty bucks back in September for a movie experience I knew was going to be far poorer than if I had paid half that at a theatre. So I waited for it to hit streaming for free to give it a shot. In the meantime I heard that it wasn’t very good, but I remained determined not to skip it entirely, partly out of sympathy for director Niki Caro and partly out of morbid curiosity. Disney’s live-action Mulan  I was actually mildly looking forward to early in the year in spite of my well-documented distaste for this series of creative dead zones by the most powerful media conglomerate on earth. Mulan  was never one of Disney’s classics, a movie extremely of its time in its “girl power” gender politics and with a decidedly American take on ancient Chinese mythology. It got by on a couple good songs and a strong lead, but it was a movie that could be improved upon, and this new version looked like it had the potential to do that, emphasizing
Post a Comment
Read more

The Hays Code was Bad, Sex in Movies is Good

Don't Look Now (1973) Will Hays, Who Knows About Sex In 1930, former Republican politician and chair of the Motion Picture Association of America Will Hayes introduced a series of self-censorship guidelines for the movie industry in response to a mixture of celebrity scandals and lobbying from the Catholic Church against various ‘immoralities’ creating a perception of Hollywood as corrupt and indecent. The Hays Code, or the Motion Picture Production Code, was formally adopted in 1930, though not stringently enforced until 1934 under the auspices of Joseph Breen. It laid out a careful list of what was and wasn’t acceptable for a film expecting major distribution. It stipulated rules against profanity, the depiction of miscegenation, and offensive portrayals of the clergy, but a lot of it was based around sexual content: “sexual perversion” of any kind was disallowed, as were any opaquely textual or visual allusions to reproduction, and right near the top “No licentious or suggestiv
Post a Comment
Read more

Pixar Sundays: The Incredibles (2004)

          Brad Bird was already a master by the time he came to Pixar. Not only did he hone his craft as an early director on The Simpsons , but he directed a little animated film for Warner Bros. in 1999, that though not a box office success was loved by critics and quickly grew a cult following. The Iron Giant is now among many people’s favourite animated movies. Likewise, Bird’s feature debut at Pixar, The Incredibles , his own variation of a superhero movie, is often considered one of the studio’s best. And for very good reason, as the most talented director at Pixar shows.            Superheroes were once the world’s greatest crime-fighting force until several lawsuits for collateral damage (and in the case of Mr. Incredible, a hilarious suicide prevention), outlawed their vigilantism. Fifteen years later Mr. Incredible, now living as Bob Parr, has a family with his wife Helen, the former Elastigirl. But Bob, in a combination of mid-life crisis and nostalgia for the old day
1 comment
Read more