Old Sock Drawer

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#011: Of essays and elections

September 22nd, 2008 by Mary Leong

Currently listening to: “Ho Ma Jolie” – Les Trois Accords

So as of yesterday, I’ve completed my first Arts One essay.
A wave of apprehension (furry green sock-wearing, nail-biting, grapefruit juice-spilling, etc) is taking over as I await next week’s tutorial and the necessity of reading said essay aloud.

Now that we’ve got that proclamation out of the way, presenting…CANADIAN ELECTION COMMENTS AVEC MARY.
[Disclaimer: The subsequent expressed views are the expressed opinion of this writer, and do not represent the views of the University of British Columbia.]

Firstly, the Conservative-Liberal competition has taken a turn towards the extremely childish. Mostly on the Conservative side. After all the hoopla surrounding notaleader.ca, I decided to take a look and form my own opinion about it. (Goodness knows the media’s been all over it; it’s time I actually read through it…) Now I’m neither a Liberal nor a Conservative, so with a most neutral perspective, I approached with caution, and found a shambles of a website dedicated to the sole purpose of personally attacking Stéphane Dion. No, not attacks on Liberal principles or campaign platforms, but rather, a full-blown attack on his competence. Complete with little Flash animations, pop-ups and such. Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but all this slanderous back-biting seems terribly immature. The initial (and well, current) purpose may have been to waylay the Liberals, but the fact that they have stooped to such an extent to distract from the focus point simply reflects doubly poorly on the Tories.

Secondly, statements like the following are not useful when I’m deciding who to vote for.
“The Bloc talks a lot about child care. But what can they actually do other than talk? With the BLOC, we can’t achieve anything.” – The Conservative Party, on childcare
On the other hand, the NDP doesn’t even mention the Bloc, or the Green Party.

Thirdly, despite the fact that the Bloc Québécois serves absolutely no purpose for 70% of the country, they do have some of the more entertaining and creative campaign ads- including a singalong and a music video. (The songs from the 2005 election were better, though.)

Fourthly, may I just point out how much I love the layout and design of the Green Party website.

Fifthly, I intend on attending as many political rallies as possible (the schedule seems rather unrelenting at the moment), just to get a better first-hand view of everything up close and personal, rather than simply from the papers/news/websites. It shall be interesting, to say the least.

Now that I’ve rambled quite enough, I’ll be off.
Ta for now.

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