The media are falling all over themselves in faux outrage over a cartoon puffin shown crapping on Stephane Dion’s shoulder at the Conservative party website notaleader.ca. It’s been yanked, with some lame excuse about an overzealous web designer.
You know, we tried to warn you idiots.
The Conservative official said the type of voter targeted by notaleader.ca at tends to be someone between 18 and 30, who has not yet developed a loyalty to one political brand or another.
“They are anti-establishment, libertarian, web- and tech-savvy, and politically incorrect,” said the Conservative adviser. “We set out to build a website that appeals to them.”
Just more evidence that…
There exists a persistent misconception inside political/media circles that the political interweb is the domain of “tech savvy twenty-somethings”. The Conservative’s website has, in all likelihood, been influenced by this ridiculous assumption and that means it’s time to fire some of the high-priced help. If your web people haven’t even a remedial understanding of their audience demographic, they have no business being involved in your communications strategy.
Hello? Is anyone out there listening? Your web designers and your web audience are two different demographics. Just because the guys behind the scenes writing code are in their twenties, does not mean that the people searching for political content are.
Update: Good point. Flash? The web designers aren’t even good at the tech side.
Dead on Kate.
But the media won’t let it go. It brings to mind the Liberal “soldiers in the streets with guns” ad the last time around.
The Liberal media said “well it never made it to air” never mentioning it was on the Liberal web site.
But this morning I heard CTV say “but it’s out there!”
The Liberal media will push it and push it in that light.
Not very impressive, There are still a lot fence sitter voters out there. Leave the cheap theatrics to the Liberals.
Well they’ve already committed the first cardinal sin of web design: Making the front page entirely out of Flash! When will people get it through their stupid heads? Flash is for animation ONLY, not wholesale web design and layout! If all you know is Flash, then you’re NOT a web designer!
i just sent off a mail to the party, Basically saying scap that crap stick to the facts, We don’t need to make Dion look like a fool as he shoots himself in the foot all the time anyways. Lets not lose the momentum on tacky ads that the msm will have a field with. Remember the backlash on the chretien photo.
have a good trip kate
Someone needs to get control of this and fast!
Anyone in the CPC listening? This could be a BIG negative.
I’m pissed.
An excellent policy announcement ruined by puffin shit.
I’d be firing people.
Harper just apologized for the ad during questions in Wpg.
When a Radio-Canada guy asked the PM about the birdshi* he just couldn’t resist bringing up the Chretien facial distortion from ’93 and some added commentary to boot. Harper looked sincere apologizing (twice).
the star & GM are having a field day with this, Comments section are not good (although they never are anyways)
Good part Week 1 could & should lose traction when we get into the meat of the campaign.
And a Yes somebody should be canned for this.
bryanr is right, Dion already does a great job of looking foolish. So let’s back off of that theme somewhat.
The last thing we want is for “poor picked on” Dion to get any sympathy from anywhere. Plus, there is the possibility that the Liberal base will get energized, and motivated to work harder to fight that “bully” Harper.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Oh, c’mon, folks. Big deal. It’s just a website.
Besides, I thought it was funny and clever, though perhaps the puffin dumpin’ on Dion was a little too adolescent.
And, no, just in case anyone wondered, I didn’t have anything to do with it, even though I’ve used similar silliness myself; all I do is run my fully independent blog, period.
Anyway, as I said in a post on my site this AM, did y’all notice the little cartoon of a gun-toting feller in the lower right corner of the page? Click on it for a surprise about Iggy! I’ve never before seen that old video of him in what appears to be Afghanistan, with Iggy shooting an assault rifle along with some scruffy, insurgent-looking dudes, yukking it up as they shoot at stuff… Am I the only one who noticed the video???
You guys would do far better if you stopped whining about how the MSM is treating this issue, and recognize that YOU CAN DO F*CK ALL ABOUT IT. The issue is out there, and it’s entirely of the CPC’s making. Whoever approved this “ad” needs a kick in the ass, because they should have bloody well known this type of reaction was going to happen. This was such a childish, pointless ad anyway.
Who’s running the show on this one?
The Cons may get short-term flak for this, but the pathetic image of Dion and the puffin will stick in people’s minds. So maybe this will be short-term damage for long-term gain. I think the average person will think this is no big deal. It’s certainly not like calling somebody a liar over and over on national tv.
The Cons may get short-term flak for this, but the pathetic image of Dion and the puffin will stick in people’s minds. So maybe this will be short-term damage for long-term gain. I think the average person will think this is no big deal. It’s certainly not like calling somebody a liar over and over on national tv.
I doubt that this little thing will be damaging at all for the Tories. Really.
What is damaging is damaging for the Liberals, the way they react, accusing Stephen Harper himself, personally, of having something to do with the poopin’ puffin. This reminds us of the false accusation they made against the Prime Minister for which they’re being sued for defamation.
If anything, the poop’s on the Liberals.
it’s a fart in a windstorm.
But I’d still be kicking some ass in the War Room about being stupid. There’s be some heads down quiet workers who’d be thinking twice before pressing the enter key.
Well I am royally pissed…
And to think I’ve given the CPC, on average, about $900 a year for the past three years, and this is the kind of stupid, adolescent sh!t they use my money for?
This is the kind of crap that loses elections…
http://www.notaleader.ca/index.php?p=createads
…is still up. Hello CPC!…pull the friggin’ plug now.
You “rabid rightwingers” may have noted that one of Canada’s intrepid “investigative journalists” has discovered this site. As has Newswatch.
Appears that the MSM will be conflagrating the Conservative Party with anonymous conservative commentators.
Someone should warn them that half the remaining Liberals in the country spend their days here posing as disaffected Conservatives.
sentinel:
No different then the ads in the last election “military in our streets”. That ad did not fair well for the Libs & it did not even make it to prime time. We don’t need crap to get the point across, but like others have said it is out there now & The PM has apologized, thankfully it was in the first week. Will it go away I doubt it. MSM will play this for all its worth,Lets remember the MSM wants Harper out we don’t need to supply the amo. Will it resinate on the voters lets hope not because half the country don’t know about the Puffin dig on Iggy.
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“Scratch a Liberal… find a Rainman.”
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The puffin’s right up there with Ralph Goodale’s comment…”the knuckle-dragging neanderthals that some of those ministers in the Conservative cabinet are.” Cease the mud-slinging. Sure, like THAT’S going to happen.
http://www.discovermoosejaw.com/index.php?option=com_ezine&task=read&page=11&category=1&article=6043&Itemid=235
Its probably due to a twenty-something IT manager supervising twenty-something ‘technology’ programmers, and I use the word programmers loosely.
Stupid is as stupid does. The CPC has to seriously damper its natural tendency for childishness.
David Akin is posting the main entry from Kate and ALL comments at
http://davidakin.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2008/9/9/3876670.html
And to make my point further, Just go visit ctv.ca
What should the Headline grabber be? The PM’s annoucement today Re:Diesel
What’s up, the Puffin Crap & the comments are being bombarded, ctv will play this for all its worth the liberals don’t have too & they know it.
sorry to keep talking about this But man the more i think about this the more it pisses me off, Frign F/U’s lose elections. Gawd is that mole in the tory war-room this time.
I went to the Conservative website on the first day of the campaign to see what kinds of interesting policy they might open with. The of the four or five highlight boxes on the main page were about why Dion sucks.
Does this party not realize that they most recently formed government? I’m already displeased about the revised copyright legislation, their failure to make any real overture to reforming Sec. 13 of the Human Rights Act, and other various sundry issues which I don’t feel they’re addressing. Add to that the Ford handout, and I’m inches away from becoming a disaffected Tory who will vote for any yokel running rather than my Conservative MP.
I sent a letter to them on the first day suggesting they smarten up and, failing that, let me take over as their manager of messaging. No job offer has yet arrived.
Defiantly appealing to the lowest common denominator:)
Do you think it’s easy to download a webpage?
ROFL
…ya know, the marketing/imaging firm the CPC is using will cost them the election.
Agreed, Flash is for images, not website infrastructure.
People like shiny things, but not that shiny.
While they’re cleaning up their website get rid of wanna-be punk rocker WK.
Does anyone there know
his geezer band”Shit From Hell” is playing a CD release party on Sept. 11? Not the respectful image any political party should be embracing.
“Shit For Brains” is a more appropriate name for WK and his band and for whoever hired him.
That’s it. CPC lost my vote today. The bird was bad enough but I just linked to this : http://www.notaleader.ca/dionbook/?p=profile&id=c128cd70b61bf0c145a6ee485e5aa014
directly from conservative.ca.
This is what they are spending taxpayer election funds on? Truly embarrassing both from a political and comedic standpoint.
I hope the Liberal in my riding wins by one.
Those few drops of white guano do not merit the attention this is getting.
I actually think the original ad was cute and funny. Needless, yes.
The Liberals seem intent on gaining pity points for this incident.
This pooping puffin was there in the first iteration of this site, months ago. Didn’t anyone bother to look at it then?
Are you people serious? Good Lord, change your diapers. For conservatives you sure spook easily. There is no big red machine lurking around the corner. Trudeau’s clenched fist is not thrusting up from the mouldering grave as we speak.
I called up my local Conservative candidate Monday morning. Left a message telling them I have an MBA, 10 years in telemarketing and fund raising, and offering my help. Still waiting (Tuesday afternoon) for a call back.
notaleader.ca is another site that I can’t see on my browser because it relies on flash. Haven’t the guys who put up this site ever heard of html? I refuse to do constant flash upgrades because doing so requires me to agree to license terms which I find unacceptable.
Normal practice for website design is to have one version for people that have browsers capable of viewing html only and another version for people who have the latest bandwidth wasting bloatware for displaying flashy content. There are a lot of people out there who are browsing the internet with 80486 based systems and are only capable of seeing html only sites.
Dropped this over in the Canoe comments…
HA!!!
Harper really should have apologized for having the poor puffin in that scene. More aptly, it should have been a dodo bird symbolic of the Liberal’s demise.
But then, all the left wing loonies would have said dodo birds can’t fly and missed the point entirely.
HA!!!
On the lighter side:
“Guess I should have seen that one coming”
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=BzjLlqIuVhI
The real Poop on Puffin Poop
I haven’t heard anyone mention this yet, but this whole mess (pardon the pun) got started about a year ago from an infamous quote from Michael Ignatieff.
——————————–
Ignatieff champions puffin as symbol of Liberal party
Last Updated: Friday, August 31, 2007 | 9:13 AM ET
The Canadian Press
The beaver is one of Canada’s national symbols and now a senior Liberal wants to make the puffin the symbol of the country’s self-proclaimed natural governing party.
Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff says the industrious little seabird — with its black and white plumage, distinctive striped beak and orange feet — is a “noble” creature that exemplifies Liberal values.
“It’s a noble bird because it has good family values. They stay together for 30 years,” Ignatieff said Thursday outside a Liberal caucus retreat in the Newfoundland and Labrador capital.
“They lay one egg (each year). They put their excrement in one place. They hide their excrement.… They flap their wings very hard and they work like hell.
“This seems to me a symbol for what our party should be.”
Ignatieff was charmed by the birds during what was supposed to be a whale-watching tour for Liberal caucus members Tuesday. The MPs and senators saw no whales but did get a close up view of a colony of puffins nesting on a rocky offshore island.
The Atlantic puffin is the official bird of Newfoundland and Labrador. About 95 per cent of the puffins in North America breed around the province’s coastlines.
—————————
And speaking of great quotes, you got to see Dion state his green shift policy in six words:
. . . cut income (long pause) taxes (pause) shift (pause) to pollution.
Whaaaatt?
(Watch it on CTV from his campaign stop at Napanee Ont. today)
The website is juvenile and the notaleader.ca site is getting to be embarrassing. It’s one thing to make the base laugh because they’re in on the joke (ha ha, see, Iggy IS the puffin, ha), and totally another to try to attract swing/fence sitting voters with crass crap like that. Time to grow up, make the website appeal to more than just the base, and concentrate on winning the election, not just beating up Dion. Unless you guys want Scott Reid to be right, for once.
Occam’s Carbuncle 3:16
For me, this isn’t about being spooked. This is about expecting the party that I support to behave as though they are grown adults capable of running a country. Thus far, it appears that 22-year-old children who don’t happen to be binge-drinking and slapping girls’ asses are running the communications show over there.
I reiterate: I expect the incumbent party to behave as though they are the incumbent party. “We’re not Stephane Dion” (“and we poop on him…bwahahahaha”)does not work as a marketing message when you are the party most recently in control of parliament.
Given their questionable record on some matters ($80M handout to Ford…reek of Liberalism anyone?), they’re on a short rope for my vote.
This is not about getting spooked. This is about demanding the representation that we deserve.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha! HAHAHAahahahahahahahahahahah!
*snicker* *giggle* Teeheeheeheeeheeeheeeheee!
Aha…AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA!
Heh. This is awesome. Let’s get real here, hens: y’all ain’t conservatives. Or Conservatives. Nunnaya. The jig, she is up.
Enjoy losing, losers, I’ll be on board THE BIG BLUE MACHINE BABY ONWARD TO VICTORY!!!!!!!!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
(mocking anticonservatives is entirely moral, btw)
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“gene says… That’s it. CPC lost my vote today. The bird was bad enough but…”
yeah, gene… i’m with you, this was way, way beyond all bounds of decency…
“puffins in our streets… with guano”
conservative b@st@rds!!!
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Legacy Moralist, you come across very clearly as the kind of voter that the Cons were trying to entertain with their poop fiasco. And yes, you’ve called it…Kate is the biggest non-conservative of them all. Well done, sleuth.
“This is not about getting spooked.”
Sorry. Waxing outraged over some puffin poop is the definition of easily spooked.
The website is not exactly Rovian in its strategic ingenuity, but hardly a campaign killer. Swap out the Pampers and move along, now.
Despite a juvenile mistake on a website (of all things), take a deep breath and remember:
Trudeau, Chretien, Martin and now Dion. 200 scams. Collusion. Contempt. Multiculturalism. Taxes on taxes. Special Interests. Etc., etc.
Then give your head a shake and say, “What was I thinkin’?”
I doubt very much that this ad and Harper’s subsequent apology weren’t part of a plan.
In one fell swoop the image of the Conservatives as the party of Grumpy Old Men, which was statistically false to begin with by the way, is gone. Now, they might be the only conservative party in world history to be associated with the younger generation. The CPC has the best researchers and analysts money can by, the commenters here don’t, and I suspect they identified the South Park Conservatives as the juiciest demographic cohort to court. Men under 40, even the Liberal leaning ones, can’t be excited about voting for a dork like Dion and this – being funny and irreverent – gives them a reason to vote Conservative.
Too coincidental for it to happen so early in an election, and the CPC’s record of discipline and flawless electioneering make it pretty likely to me that it was all a set up. At any rate, notaleader.ca is the best bit of political advertising I’ve seen since HuckChuckFacts. I’ll bet you people hated that one too.
Yes Puffin Poopgate was inappropriate,but what was hilarious was Mad Dog Dion’s faux indignation and his pathetic attempt to pin the blame on Harper and score some pity points.
Look, this is stupid.
I mean, Kate made The National with her comments. Clearly that’s, um, good.
But, thankfully, people can differentiate between Harper and a foolish website. However, if this happens again, God help the web brain trust.
And Gene, I call B.S. If that makes you lose your vote, then anything the Liberals have done in the last 15 years should make you never want to vote for them again.
The symbolism of the puffin (Liberal Party) dumping all over Dion is, to my mind, fair political comment.
Notice that only Canwest media reporting Liberal candidate Brent Fullard’s comparison of Stephen Harper to Adolph Hitler (for which Fullard apologized).
I suppose Liberal gaffes don’t matter because the Liberal Party is Canada’s Natural Governing Party. They do whats best for Canadians so Liberal gaffes can be overlooked.