Patterico's Pontifications

10/5/2019

How the Woke Manage Scandals

Filed under: General — JVW @ 2:38 pm



[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

19 Responses to “How the Woke Manage Scandals”

  1. At the risk of interrupting yet another scintillating conversation about Trump and his adversaries, internal and external.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  2. I hear Northam and Trudeau are dressing up as each other for Halloween.

    harkin (58d012)

  3. That’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)

  4. To 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)

  5. Amazing.

    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)

  6. The 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)

  7. Slavery 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)

  8. A 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)

  9. The 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. If you’ve cultivated allies over the years, why not call on them? Smart politics.

    Nic (896fdf)

  11. When asked by reporters why he had not brought up his dual citizenship earlier, Mr. Scheer said: “No one’s ever asked me”

    LMAO

    Dave (1bb933)

  12. When you have the media running cover for you, these scandals are much easier to handle.

    NJRob (4d595c)

  13. When you have the media running cover for you, these scandals are much easier to handle.

    Three different media organizations discovered and published the photos that created the scandal…

    Dave (1bb933)

  14. 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.

    The 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

    It caught all attentive Canadians by surprise when she was suddenly moved from the Justice portfolio to the relatively junior position of Minister for Veterans Affairs. But make no mistake, Minister Wilson-Raybould was not “shuffled” in this pre-election re-arranging of cabinet deck chairs. She was fired! She has since resigned from cabinet, and probably for very good reason!

    Let’s cue the context of this story that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) would likely keep swept under the rug.

    SNC-Lavalin is a multi-million-dollar multinational corporation with expertise in engineering and infrastructure services. They have operated in most of the countries of the world receiving billions in contract dollars while employing 9,000 people in Canada alone. Of paramount importance in this emerging scandal is the location of its international headquarters which is in Montreal, but a stone’s throw away from the Prime Minister’s riding. The Quebec government considers SNC-Lavalin to be one of the ten keystone corporations in the province. Furthermore, and of vital importance to this sordid saga, it is also one of the major financial contributors to the Liberal Party of Canada.

    The corporation’s legal troubles began some time ago when they were caught attempting to bribe officials in the Bangladeshi government respecting the awarding of a multi-million- dollar contract underwritten by the World Bank, the international community’s preeminent source of loan and grant monies for the developing world. This blatant act of bribery and corruption had SNC-Lavalin banned from any further bidding on World Bank contracts, costing the corporation a king’s ransom.

    Seemingly undeterred by this significant setback they compounded the fraud by twice repeating the same mistake in Libya. Not wanting to leave their home base out of the mix, SNC-Lavalin was again caught up in bribery charges involving the construction of a Montreal hospital.

    Although she has remained wisely mute on the subject, it is generally held that Minister Wilson-Raybould was preparing to proceed to trial with formal bribery and corruption charges against the corporation.

    Then came the wrinkle in the rug! Cue PMO!

    Based on recently adopted legislation on corporate crime in Canada Minister Wilson-Raybould could have instructed her officials to enter into negotiations with SNC-Lavalin and grant a “deferred prosecution agreement” permitting the corporation to wring their hands, apologize for their improprieties, fork over a fine and avoid the public humiliation and cost of lengthy trial proceedings. No doubt this strategy would also serve to reduce any negative public perception of the severity of their crimes. Further, there is a vital monetary advantage to pursuing this option: If a full and open trial produced a guilty verdict, SNC-Lavalin would be prohibited from bidding on Canadian contracts resulting in a severe impact on their financial bottom line. A “deferred prosecution agreement” would not so restrict SNC-Lavalin. The Minister however apparently refused this option and, playing no favourites, believed that she had sufficient evidence to proceed to trial and obtain a conviction, thereby sending a clear message to Canada’s corporate community that fraud and bribery are not acceptable ways to conduct business in Canada or anywhere else.

    The major issue at stake is whether or not the Prime Minister or operatives in his office attempted to influence the Minister of Justice and Attorney General for Canada by pressuring her to move to a deferred prosecution agreement with SNC-Lavalin….

    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

    But the problem with running on a feminist agenda is that when two of your strongest female cabinet ministers resign, you face something of a feminist reckoning. Trudeau has earned international accolades for his vocal support of women’s issues; here at home, he has been criticized for virtue signaling…Accounts of why Wilson-Raybould was originally demoted diverge, depending on whom you choose to believe. She says she was moved out of her post for standing on principle. Trudeau’s office says there was no pressure, that Wilson-Raybould simply interpreted their interactions “differently.” The prime minister first tried to move her to the indigenous-affairs portfolio, a shortsighted idea that would have placed the country’s most prominent female indigenous politician in charge of legislation, the Indian Act, that has for years perpetuated the country’s history of colonialism. [history of colonialism!? -SF] When she understandably turned that offer down, he moved her to veteran affairs.

    After Wilson-Raybould testified to a parliamentary committee in February, her colleague Jane Philpott resigned from her own cabinet post, as the president of the Treasury Board, in solidarity. In Philpott’s resignation letter, which she made public this month, she wrote that she’d lost confidence in Trudeau’s moral authority to govern. Since then, another rookie female member of Parliament, Celina Caesar-Chavannes, has announced that she won’t seek reelection. Some observers suggest more resignations might come before the month is over.

    Sammy Finkelman (0d0ca8)

  15. 13. Dave (1bb933) — 10/6/2019 @ 8:31 am

    Three different media organizations discovered and published the photos that created the scandal…

    Could be blackbirds, as Eugene McCarthy famously said.

    Sammy Finkelman (0d0ca8)

  16. At the time Trudeau was born, there were only about 35,000 blacks living in Canada, thanks to racial immigration restrictions.

    Are you sure, considering Canada wasa destination for escaped slaves before the Civil War.

    4. Dana (05f22b) — 10/5/2019 @ 4:38 pm

    The point is, own it from the get-go, and see if the people respect upfront ownership by their votes. If so, great.

    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)

  17. Three 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)

  18. It is realy bad when people make money on “Scandals”

    StuDybay (e8b4e7)


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