How the Woke Manage Scandals
[guest post by JVW]
U.S. News and World Report has an interesting article on how the Trudeau campaign team and the candidate managed the revelations from a couple of weeks ago that the Prime Minister of Canada has had quite an affinity for appearing in blackface throughout early adulthood. The author, David Ljunggren (I believe the first “g” is silent, but the second “g” is pronounced twice, once hard and once soft, or perhaps vice-versa), takes us to the scene as P.M. Trudeau and his brain trust were preparing to fly from Halifax to Winnipeg when they learned that Time magazine was about to drop a bombshell:
While some aides prepared a contrite message for Trudeau to deliver to the media, the 47-year-old prime minister began calling as many Liberal legislators and cabinet ministers from ethnic minorities as he could, hoping to beat the news on Twitter. One was Omar Alghabra, a Liberal parliamentarian of Syrian descent, who said that Trudeau’s heads-up came with profuse apologies.
Still on the plane, Trudeau called a nationally televised media conference at which he not only apologized repeatedly but also admitted to another incident of donning dark make-up.
As admirable as it might be to own up to one’s faults and get out ahead of the story, I can’t help but feel more than a bit of contempt for the idea that the Prime Minstrel’s first order of business was to dial up his political allies of significant pigmentation and — I’m going to take a wild guess here — remind them that any default overreactions they might have would do long-lasting damage to their political party. Had it been the Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer who was pictured in archaic racist garb, it’s hard to believe the Liberal Party’s minority commissars quickly offering absolution. The article mentions with bare-suppressed irony that the Liberals were about to launch a campaign theme accusing the Conservatives of — what else? — racism:
But the crisis meant the Liberals had to temporarily toss their general-election play book to the side. It had called for an aggressive campaign that painted the Conservative Party of Canada as a haven for racist, anti-gay and anti-abortion candidates while stressing measures to make life more affordable for Canadians.
That approach, the aides who spoke to Reuters said, had been intended to help the Liberals get around another obstacle: voter distrust after Canada’s ethics watchdog formally reprimanded Trudeau and his top officials in August for inappropriately interfering in a corporate corruption case.
A winning strategy in these stupid days no doubt, right up until pictures of Jolson Trudeau singing “Mammy” emerged.
The October 21 election in Canada is shaping up to be a nail-biter. Even the Liberal Party’s staunchest supporters, including of course the dominant media, seem to believe that the best case scenario for the Liberals is to maintain a small majority, perhaps even requiring a coalition government to maintain power. But it’s equally likely that Mr. Scheer could usher in a new Conservative government in Ottawa, especially if woke young progressives disillusioned with the P.M.’s entitled white privilege stay home on election day.
I don’t think Canada, North America, the Commonwealth, the Western Hemisphere, NATO, or the Anglosphere will suffer grievous harm if Justin Trudeau is sent packing. Over at the Washington Post, Canadian writer J. J. McCullough marvels how the political scion managed to make it so far without any sort of thorough vetting of his background, a concept that brings back painful memories to those of us in the U.S. who were around eleven years ago and experienced the exact same phenomenon.
Here’s hoping our friends in the Great White North are treated to a fresh start.
– JVW
At the risk of interrupting yet another scintillating conversation about Trump and his adversaries, internal and external.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/5/2019 @ 2:40 pmI hear Northam and Trudeau are dressing up as each other for Halloween.
harkin (58d012) — 10/5/2019 @ 4:09 pmThat’s a bad pairing if only for the possibility all the social media wishcasting for Melania to hook up with JT instead hits MILFy Pam Northam.
urbanleftbehind (5bec2f) — 10/5/2019 @ 4:28 pmTo me, this would be a winning strategy: The pols know they wore blackface. They know it as much as we know we haven’t worn blackface. They also know that, eventually, someone will dig it up, and it will be made public. So why not come clean *before* an election, and before making political enemies? Just admit to it form the get-go, make the required apologies, and move on. Heck, given how many politicians have been caught having worn blackface already, it’s apparently more commonplace than I, or I’m guessing others, ever imagined. The point is, own it from the get-go, and see if the people respect upfront ownership by their votes. If so, great. If not, you screwed up, and that needs to be owned. One does not deserve to be elected, one earns it. It seems far worse to wait until the point where Trudeau is (before an election) because any in-play stratgery will only come off as pandering and self-serving. Meh.
Dana (05f22b) — 10/5/2019 @ 4:38 pmAmazing.
Trudeau has done no great good for Canada, Raising the debt, fiddling with its heritage, downgrading what was left of its military, appearing in endless obsequious costumes, and preening on the cover of the Rolling Stone. And THIS is what he’s in trouble for?
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/5/2019 @ 4:41 pmThe only way that would work, Dana, is if the candidate could credibly explain that he was celebrating artists or characters of another race by putting on a costume, and not denigrating or mocking them. That’s a tall order in these times, when people are so easily offended by just about anything.
Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1) — 10/5/2019 @ 4:47 pmSlavery was almost unknown in “The Maple Leaf State”, and abolished around 1800.
At the time Trudeau was born, there were only about 35,000 blacks living in Canada, thanks to racial immigration restrictions.
It’s not entirely clear who he was offending at the time, although today there are many more people of African descent (~1.2 million).
Dave (1bb933) — 10/5/2019 @ 6:25 pmA thorough vetting of candidates apparently doesn’t work anymore…as those of us who were around three years ago also remember.
My guess is that the vast majority of Canadian “progressives” will find a way to be okay with Trudeau. I don’t know if that will be enough for him to win, but I don’t know that it will do any long-term damage to the leftists up there, either. When your set of ideas is already discreditable, objectionable, and reprehensible, it’s hard for your leader’s poor conduct to make the situation any worse…
Demosthenes (7fae81) — 10/5/2019 @ 7:10 pmThe Conservative Party candidate has a citizenship problem -he’s also an American citizen:
The leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, Justin Trudeau’s chief rival to become prime minister, acknowledged on Thursday that he also holds American citizenship.
Andrew Scheer, 40, did not disclose his dual citizenship until The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, revealed it.
….
When asked by reporters why he had not brought up his dual citizenship earlier, Mr. Scheer said: “No one’s ever asked me
…..
The revelation comes as Mr. Scheer has faced questions about his résumé and past. While he has long boasted about his time as an insurance broker in Saskatchewan, his adopted home province, he recently acknowledged that he never held a brokers license but had worked in a low-level insurance job for “six or seven months.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/world/canada/andrew-scheer-us-citizenship.html
Rip Murdock (b6df96) — 10/5/2019 @ 8:17 pmIf you’ve cultivated allies over the years, why not call on them? Smart politics.
Nic (896fdf) — 10/5/2019 @ 8:22 pmLMAO
Dave (1bb933) — 10/5/2019 @ 8:47 pmWhen you have the media running cover for you, these scandals are much easier to handle.
NJRob (4d595c) — 10/6/2019 @ 6:06 amThree different media organizations discovered and published the photos that created the scandal…
Dave (1bb933) — 10/6/2019 @ 8:31 amThe problem was, that the government minister he overrode (he didn’t want the company that was affected to lose the right to do business with the governmenT) was an indigenous (what we’d more usually call Indian or even aboriginal or perhaps, if it applies, Eskimo) woman whose elevation had been touted before, and she was ousted.
http://www.netnewsledger.com/2019/02/14/no-justice-there-the-firing-of-minister-jody-wilson-raybould
Trudeau had also, in 2015, named a cabinet with an equal number of men and women. That also wasn’t working out well:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/03/canada-trudeau-feminism-wilson-raybauld/584677
Sammy Finkelman (0d0ca8) — 10/6/2019 @ 8:51 am13. Dave (1bb933) — 10/6/2019 @ 8:31 am
Could be blackbirds, as Eugene McCarthy famously said.
Sammy Finkelman (0d0ca8) — 10/6/2019 @ 8:53 amAre you sure, considering Canada wasa destination for escaped slaves before the Civil War.
4. Dana (05f22b) — 10/5/2019 @ 4:38 pm
Well, if someone was like Clinton would do is get a favorable or less damaging version of the story out there in a way that did not attract much attention and then say it;s old news when any other person wanted to write about it.
Sammy Finkelman (0d0ca8) — 10/6/2019 @ 8:58 amData
Dave (1bb933) — 10/6/2019 @ 9:31 amThree different media organizations discovered and published the photos that created the scandal…
Time, an American news organization, broke the story. Just like when it was bloggers, not the mainstream media. who found Jeremiah Wright’s bigoted sermons on YouTube.
JVW (ac9348) — 10/6/2019 @ 10:10 amIt is realy bad when people make money on “Scandals”
StuDybay (e8b4e7) — 10/10/2019 @ 8:19 am