The Conservative attack ads on Michael Ignatieff are brilliant. There, I said it. I'm swimming against the tide here, I know, but after the steady drumbeat of criticism aimed at the ads, I figured someone had to point out that they're not insulting or demeaning or bad.
They're brilliant, and they perfectly frame everything that is wrong about Michael Ignatieff, everything that the media seems all too happy to ignore.
The ads are being panned by the press, but, frankly, that doesn't matter. It's the impact on voters that counts.
But put that aside for a moment. The ads are not sly insinuations of the sort the Liberals and the NDP throw around (the classic is the Conservative "hidden agenda", which by definition has to be insinuated, or else it wouldn't be hidden).
As with Stephane Dion, Michael Ignatieff's own words come back to haunt him. Michael Ignatieff treats citizenship as some sort of trivial contrivance to be used to influence lesser minds:
But the fact is that America is neither the redeemer nation, nor the evil empire. It isn't always right, but it isn't always wrong. Ideology cannot help us here. In the weeks and years ahead, the choices are not about who we are or what company we should keep nor even about what we think America is or should be.
This is not a quote from the attack ad. It is another quote from Ignatieff in which he pretends to be an American.
Why does he keep doing this? And why am I asking that question? That's the job for the mainstream media.
Since they don't seem to be doing it, the Conservatives will do it for them. If the media is offended by someone else doing their job, then they should just start doing it themselves instead of complaining about it. If they don't like the job the Conservatives are doing ("too partisan!"), then show everyone how it's supposed to be done. But don't complain because the Conservatives have stepped in to fill the gaping vacuum left by the media on this important point.
And what point is that?
Ignatieff lied to millions of Americans through his writing and his television appearances every time he talked about "we Americans". He's not an American. To Americans, he's a foreigner. Foreigners have opinions about American policy, and certainly Americans will listen to opinions from all sorts of people. But Ignatieff won't risk his opinions being relegated to some second tier status on the basis of being an outsider looking in.
He's freekin' Michael Ignatieff!
Americans must listen to him, and if that means telling them he's an American too, then so be it.
It's just citizenship, after all. Only rubes who salute flags care about nonsense like that.
Canada has rubes too. They also care about citizenship. So Ignatieff churns out a pamphlet called True Patriot Love in which he pretends he's in love with Canada. That'll fool 'em.
The Liberal leader lied to Americans about who he is. Is he lying to Canadians too? That's a pertinent question. The media ought to be asking it. They're not. So the Conservatives have stepped in.
If the media took questions like this seriously, there wouldn't be attack ads. Well, probably not.
Maybe the media doesn't take the question of citizenship all too seriously either. Maybe the media thinks proud Canadians who would never deny being Canadian, and who would never claim to be anything but Canadian, are just a bunch of rubes too.
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