{"id":5049,"date":"2013-04-15T16:18:37","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T20:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=5049"},"modified":"2013-04-16T09:20:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T13:20:03","slug":"justin-trudeau-too-sexy-for-his-shirt-too-sexy-for-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=5049","title":{"rendered":"Justin Trudeau: Too Sexy For His Shirt, Too Sexy For Canada?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The only thing more predictable than Justin Trudeau&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=5026\">win in the Liberal leadership race<\/a> was that it would be followed by Conservative attack ads. For those curious what the sequel to &#8220;Not a Leader&#8221; and &#8220;Just Visiting&#8221; would look like, the wait is over:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1qKps7uG6eM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It should come as no surprise that the ad is repugnant, immature, and, as Stephane Dion would say &#8211; &#8220;completely unfair&#8221;. The central quote about Quebecers being better than everyone else is literally from a different century, and in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ctvnews.ca\/video?clipId=905697\">full interview<\/a>, a 20-something Justin appears to be paraphrasing his father&#8217;s philosophy on why Quebecers don&#8217;t need special status. <\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve come to expect out of context quotes from the Conservatives, but what is surprising is this level of slopiness. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sGWuN3ZVuxU\">companion ad<\/a> uses the &#8220;just a teacher&#8221; attack, which merely gives Trudeau an opening to springboard onto his &#8220;what does Mr. Harper have against teachers&#8221; soapbox which he used to great effect <a href=\"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=4951\">last weekend<\/a>. Oh, and that fake striptease footage that dominates the commercials? That came from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.ca\/2011\/11\/18\/justin-trudeau-striptease_n_1101153.html\">Canadian Liver Foundation fundraiser<\/a>, where Justin&#8217;s little turn on the catwalk raised $1,900 to fight liver disease. <em>Oops<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s safe to say the reaction to these ads will be overwhelmingly negative. But I&#8217;d remind people there was a chorus of criticism about the Dion and Ignatieff ads &#8211; <em>they distorted the truth, they were &#8220;too mean&#8221; for Canada, they were sure to backfire<\/em>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ctvnews.ca\/most-find-anti-dion-tory-ads-unfair-poll-1.228108\">Some polls<\/a> even showed <em>Not A Leader <\/em>landing with a thud among those who saw it. But those ads <em>worked<\/em> &#8211; even if no one wanted to admit they worked.<\/p>\n<p>So it would be foolish for the Liberal Party to dismiss this latest assault with a wave and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liberal.ca\/you-just-have-to-laugh\/\">a laugh<\/a>, or to assume the whole country has been innoculated against them by Trudeaumania. I suspect the core message &#8211; that Trudeau isn&#8217;t mature enough to be Prime Minister &#8211; <em>will <\/em>resonate with many Canadians. As Tom Flanagan would say, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.canada.com\/edmontonjournal\/news\/opinion\/story.html?id=ecdeed59-2c18-434a-900b-4ee8c675d811\">it doesn&#8217;t have to be true, it just has to be plausible<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; and no matter how ugly the packaging is, the message inside these ads is definitely plausible.<\/p>\n<p>At every Liberal Party event I&#8217;ve been to over the past two years, someone has gotten up and said &#8220;we can&#8217;t let ourselves be defined by Conservative attack ads again&#8221;. Of course, Liberals said the same thing after the 2008 election, then snickered at the Just Visiting ads, confident they would backfire, given that Michael Ignatieff was far more popular and a far better politician than Stephane Dion. I don&#8217;t care how charismatic Trudeau is, he needs to hit back, and he needs to hit back <em>immediately<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>That said, I think lowering himself to Harper&#8217;s level, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/commentary\/editorials\/justin-trudeau-should-fight-back-against-attack-ads\/article11243660\/\">a series of negative attack ads of his own<\/a>, would be nearly as damaging as not responding. The challenge isn&#8217;t for Trudeau to define Harper, it&#8217;s to define himself &#8211; and by joining Harper in the mud, he&#8217;d dull the shine on his message of hope and optimism.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, the Liberals need to open up the &#8220;leader defense fund&#8221; and get something on the air as soon as possible, where Trudeau talks directly to Canadians and addresses the ads &#8211; but then pivots to the positive. Have Justin remind Canadians the reason he&#8217;s in politics is to move beyond the nastiness that Stephen Harper revels in. Use the ads as a platform to share his vision, and talk about the future he wants for his children.<\/p>\n<p>The Tory ads are clumsy and mean spirited, but we&#8217;ve seen clumsy and mean spirited work before. If Trudeau punches back quickly with a positive message then maybe, just maybe, these ads will serve as the foil he needs to prove he practices the type of optimistic politics Canadians long for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The only thing more predictable than Justin Trudeau&#8217;s win in the Liberal leadership race was that it would be followed by Conservative attack ads. For those curious what the sequel to &#8220;Not a Leader&#8221; and &#8220;Just Visiting&#8221; would look like, the wait is over: It should come as no surprise that the ad is repugnant, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1355,1000,1098,1354,1094],"class_list":["post-5049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ads","tag-just-visiting","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-michael-ignatieff","tag-not-a-leader","tag-stephane-dion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5049"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5055,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049\/revisions\/5055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}