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Yet another silly scandal sullying this election
“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner
Op-Ed Commentary
Perhaps the biggest question facing Canadians in this wacky election is why bother?
I say this because the leader of the party I was thinking of voting for has been caught up in a mini scandal of her own. That’s right, Elizabeth May, the former theology student and executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, was chastised in a National Post story for a picture of her that appears on the Green Party’s website.
So what you say, as indeed many are saying, about the Trudeau blackface scandal except that the Green Party picture was manipulated in a highly political way. At this point, I can hear many of you saying you mean you can’t trust what you see in a picture? Sadly, that appears to be true, at least in this case.
The original picture was a happy, smiling image of May looking almost angelic in a striped top and a crucifix hanging from her neck. What’s wrong with that you say? Absolutely nothing. In fact, it’s a good, honest image. One that would certainly grace any website page and lord only knows why the Greens didn’t leave it like that. But they didn’t. We’re in an election after all and one must take advantage of every opportunity. And the Greens did just that.
The website pic is decidedly different because it contains an object that didn’t appear in the original picture, namely a paper cup emblazoned with the Green logo. O.K., very tacky, but not exactly a scandal. Ah, but there’s more. Apparently, Photoshop was also used by the Green apparatchiks to insert a straw into the cup, but not a normal plastic straw. The straw in the manipulated picture was made of metal.
Groan!
Yes, metal. Now, I know messaging is critical in politics these days and no politician regardless of party will normally go “off message.” It’s just not done. And May, generally considered to be the most popular of the national political leaders, apparently didn’t know the picture was manipulated by her handlers to protect the Green Party brand. Protecting your brand is everything in politics in the Digital Age and if you have to manipulate a picture to deceive the public then so be it.
I’m sure the Green apparatchiks will disagree and I don’t blame them. After all, the intention was good and the world is indeed drowning in a maelstrom of plastic. So, the message was honourable, but the execution was a mite sleazy. Like Trudeau’s claim he didn’t know blackface was demeaning to people of colour because he came from a privileged background and didn’t know any better. Really now!
As a long-time environmentalist, I freely admit I’m thinking of voting Green myself and I don’t like kicking dirt in the face of the party I tend to support. But this whole straw thing was a bit much. Does anyone really think getting rid of plastic straws will save the Western Industrial World? I’m a soda drinker. Does that mean I should be walking around with metal straws hanging from my pocket? I hope not. Yes, I get the message, but our beleaguered planet is in need of much more radical change than just changing our drinking straws.
For starters, how about getting rid of the internal combustion engine and the pipelines that feed them? How about reducing the methane-producing meat we eat, the carbon-spewing flights we take, the oceans we’re polluting, the forests we’re burning, not to mention the piles of “stuff” many of us have that all contribute to the pollution of Mother Earth? And, yes, how about a world-wide carbon tax that would do more than anything else to clean up a planet choking to death on its own emissions and fumes?
Ah, but that would be getting serious and how many politicians and voters are willing to do that? Ask Greta Thunberg. I bet she’d say damn few.
Personally, I’m still thinking of voting Green because I think a green lifestyle is necessary to save our planet. But we’ve got to get serious and eschew silly, token measures when it comes to a task as gargantuan as saving Mother Earth. Because if we don’t there’s another choice we can make on our ballots.
None of the above.
Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who is still amazed at how trivial and useless politics can be.
