From: knight@mrco.carleton.ca (Alan Knight)
Subject: Re: Reform ads misleading, ironic
Keywords: penguins, lobotomy
Reply-To: knight@mrco.carleton.ca (Alan Knight)
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 20:24:03 GMT

In <1992Oct16.172806.14568@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> golchowy@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Gerald Olchowy) writes:

>In article <knight.719247776@cunews> knight@mrco.carleton.ca (Alan Knight) writes:
>>
>>  It's interesting to note, that although the Reform party ads purport
>>to be based on facts and issues, rather than making emotional appeals,
>>they consistently refer to the Charlottetown Accord as "Mulroney's
>>Deal", attempting to make use of the negative connotations associated
>>with the word Mulroney. As Chris Cobb in the Ottawa Citizen points
>>out, this is "at best misleading, and at worst an outright lie". 
>>

>Take this in context though...the government of Canada is spending
>millions of dollars on feelgood ads which violate the spirit if not
>the letter of the referendum law.  Even there ads for the 1-800 number

I'm not quite sure why (except perhaps in Quebec) ads which try to
make people feel good about Canada are taken to favour the yes side.
There are no enemies of Canada on the no side.

>In many news reports, I've seen Mike Harcourt call it the Canadian Unity
>Agreement...which is infinitely more misleading than calling it 
>"Mulroney's Deal".

 It is Canadian, it is an agreement. All 10 provinces and the federal
government agreed to it. Whether it's a "unity" agreement is the only
questionable point. If you (as I'm sure you do) think the agreement is
divisive, then you won't like the use of the word Unity, but that's
far more a matter of interpretation than calling it Mulroney's deal,
which is an error of fact.

>Isn't the YES side being just as misleading by having the best political
>operatives of the mainline parties running the campaign, but putting
>a bunch of yespersons out as fronts for the political parties and
>premiers which are really responsible for the deal.

The political parties and the premiers have been pretty
front-and-centre in all the coverage I've seen. No one is suggesting
that June Callwood or whoever is responsible for the deal, just that
they support it.

>Geez...we're in a political campaign of sorts...and one side gets
>upset that the other side invokes the name of the leader of the YES
>side...Mulroney constantly invokes the names of Manning, Trudeau,
>Rebick, Carstairs, and Parizeau.

 There's a difference between invoking their names and attributing the
entire deal to them. Calling it "Parizeau's No campaign" wouldn't go
over too well. Mulroney is not the sole leader of the yes campaign,
and he wasn't the principal author of the deal (It was the evil
socialist Clark/Rae duo, doncha know). Maybe Manning should start
calling it Clark and Rae's deal.

-- 
 "Our present constitution has served us for 125 years" - A No ad with
a very short memory.



-- 
 Alan Knight  knight@mrco.carleton.ca  +1 613 788 2600x5783   Vote
 Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering                Yes/Oui
 Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1S 5B6        Oct. 26

Newsgroups: can.politics