HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2010-09-09, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2010. PAGE 5.
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a
swill bucket
– George Orwell
Iused to find George a trifle harsh in his
dismissal of the advertising business, but
I’m beginning to think he was just
ahead of his time. Maybe it’s a reaction to
those pop-up ads that blossom like Whack-a-
Moles on my computer screen when I’m
trying to read something; perhaps it’s the
memory of all those smiling athletes
during the Olympics pimping crap food
in TV ads for McYouknowwho’s.
Or maybe it was the guy from Victoria,
British Columbia who came up with the idea
of plastering photos of a dozen women Tiger
Woods dallied with onto golf balls and selling
them in boxed sets of 12 as “The Mistress
Collection” – for $49.95. He calls the concept
“Tail of the Tiger”.
“Tail”….geddit?
Sleazy? You bet. Tacky? Oh, yeah.
Commercially successful? Stratospherically.
“We’re getting orders from Korea, Poland,
Germany, France, Ireland…” Roger Sevigny
told a newspaper reporter for the Victoria
Times-Colonist. “I figure it’s got legs at least
to Christmas.”
I figure he’s probably right, alas. H. L.
Mencken once wrote that no one ever went
broke underestimating the taste of the
American public. He could have pushed the
border north at least as far as Victoria.
And Vancouver. A couple of entrepreneurs
there have come up with a line of gag decals
for travellers. The decals are big enough to
stick on the side of a suitcase and they’re
terribly clever. They make it look like the
luggage has been damaged – ripped open –
enough to reveal what’s inside. One decal
makes it look like the suitcase is stuffed with
packets of cocaine. Another shows what
appear to be a variety of kinky sexual aids.
Still another seems to reveal a flight attendant,
hog-tied, gagged, terrified and stuffed into the
Samsonite.
You laughing yet? Neither is the federal
Department of Transport. A spokesman has
declared the stickers to be ‘not funny’
and warns that any Canadian travellers who
plaster one on their luggage do so at
their peril.
No kidding. I can imagine the reception
you’d get coming through Customs with a bag
that looks like it’s stuffed with Colombian
nose candy. When it comes to smuggled drugs,
those guys at the border have such a good
sense of humour.
Everything’s for sale and everybody’s trying
to make a buck advertising it. Take Ernie
Hemingway. Sure he’s been dead for going on
half a century, but that doesn’t mean you can’t
walk a mile in his shoes – if you’ve got the
dough. The Hemingway Footwear Company is
launching three lines of (I quote from the
brochure) “Handcrafted footwear inspired by
the footsteps and lifestyle of the great man
himself.”
You can choose from the Sportsman line,
reflecting Papa’s belief that “the primal stuff
of man must, on occasion, be tested against the
wide open sky, earth underfoot and the steady
rhythm of the blood.”
Or perhaps you like the Literary line of
shoes “designed to assuage the weary traveller
“in those moments of quite contemplation …
for a journey not yet begun.” There’s also the
Angler line, “crafted with the man in mind
who keeps the wind at his back and the sea in
his heart.”
Or maybe you’d just like to lean over and
gag yourself with a shoe horn.
You can’t escape advertising anymore. It’s
on the sides of high rises and cross town buses;
the once-pristine boards of our hockey rinks
are a blizzard of spot ads. Video ads
unreel in elevators, airport terminals
and the backseats of taxis. Soon in
California you’ll be stuck in bumper to
bumper traffic, glance at the licence
plate of the car in front and watch it morph
into an ad for Taco Bell or the San Francisco
Giants.
Seriously. If a bill currently on the table
passes, San Francisco will soon introduce
to the world something called the Smart
Plate – a licence plate that switches from
the usual letters and numbers to a
quick-hit video ad as soon as the car
comes to a stop for more than four seconds.
California is trying to dig itself out of a
U.S. $19 billion deficit hole, and state
legislators think the ad-spewing Smart
Plate could be a real revenue cow. Me,
I think I hear the rattling of a stick in
a bucket.
There are other points of view of course.
Canada’s own Marshall McLuhan once
opined: “Historians and archaeologists will
discover that the advertisements of our time
are the richest and most faithful reflections
that any society ever made of its entire range
of activities.”
Now, that is truly a horrifying thought.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Advertising: how low can we go?
Like so many other things, this year the
Belgrave, Blyth and Brussels School
Fair is struggling to stay afloat in this,
its 90th year, requiring volunteers to keep the
event in existence.
The fair, one of the oldest and most
cherished traditions in the North Huron area, is
yet another one of the aspects of life that has
been (or will be) directly affected by the
decision made by the Avon Maitland District
School Board to close several area schools.
In a full-page ad in the July 22 issue of The
Citizen, the Blyth Idea Group chastised North
Huron Council for ignoring the economic
impact the closure of Blyth, East Wawanosh,
Wingham and Turnberry Central Public
Schools would have on the area. Group Chair
Rick Elliott said closure would “contribute to
economic decline” and that North Huron
Council had failed the people of Blyth.
Huron East Mayor Joe Seili has expressed
similar concerns at sessions of Huron County
Council, saying that the rails have been
greased for the board and that council hadn’t
fought the decision hard enough and asking for
a traffic study, among other things, to ensure
that due diligence be done before a decision
with such dire circumstances be carried out.
It is these issues that can affect the minds of
residents, despite being battered with decisions
being made out of the hands of municipal and
county-wide governments, but it is the loss of
something like the Belgrave, Blyth and
Brussels School Fair that can affect the hearts
of residents.
I couldn’t help but smile, attending the fair
year after year, at the sprint that occurred once
students were dismissed from opening
ceremonies and ran to the community centre as
fast as they could to see their work displayed
proudly around the arena walls.
The sense of pride and anticipation on the
faces of the students was exhilarating and
intoxicating.
The fair brought me back to my days as a
student in Pickering. I remember dragging my
mom down the escalator at the Pickering Town
Centre to see a piece of art that I had made that
was on display, or pulling my dad by his
forearm down the hall of St. Anthony Daniel to
my classroom so he could see my project on
the wall during parent-teacher night.
The pride I felt in showing my parents what
I had accomplished was the highest seal of
approval I could have at that age, and really, at
any age.
For 90 years, the fair has been Belgrave’s trip
to the Pickering Town Centre and to take that
away is yet another step in the big-box-store
approach to education that is being thrust upon
rural Ontario. Students will make what could
be their last run into the Belgrave Community
Centre as they await the construction of their
new, state-of-the-art McSchoolhouse, which
may or may not end up in Wingham.
There may be another fair, but the identity of
a 90-year-old fair will be lost, in favour of
something that’s brand new.
And in this potential situation, a synonym for
the loss of several area schools is seen. As
many people have already stated, with the
closure of historic area schools, new and shiny
is replacing rural and state-of-the-art is
trumping character.
In the future, the school work of North
Huron students may be shown at a fair, but the
possibility remains strong that it won’t be the
91st annual Belgrave, Blyth and Brussels
School Fair. And that’s just another unfortunate
wave rippling through the community from the
school board’s pond.
A fair shake
Has anyone seen an Ontario political
leader recently or are people content
with glimpses of Stephen Harper?
Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty and other
Ontario party leaders have almost disappeared
during the summer, while the Conservative
Prime Minister and his chief challenger,
Michael Ignatieff, are in view every time you
switch on the television or open a newspaper.
This is a big mistake by the Ontario
politicians, who appear to have assumed
nobody is interested in politics in summer,
when Harper and Ignatieff are proving the
opposite.
The federal leaders face a possible election
soon, so it can be argued they need to be
in the field earlier, but there have been many
alarms of a federal election that turned out
false.
But the Ontario politicians are committed to
fight an election in October of next year, so the
time they are losing for promoting themselves
this summer could be valuable.
McGuinty and Progressive Conservative
leader Tim Hudak, his main challenger, cannot
be accused exactly of being missing in action,
but little has been seen of them compared to
their federal counterparts.
McGuinty has emerged only a handful of
times and these have been not to advance
his party’s fortunes, but merely rescue
missons aimed at shoring up his crumbling
empire.
The premier had to apologize and shelve a
program under which he allowed retailers to
collect fees on articles they sold that could
harm the environment, which they could not
have done without his knowledge.
The premier then felt obliged to shuffle his
cabinet, but stopped short of boasting he now
has a team he would be proud to lead in an
election, because it would not have rung
true.
McGuinty has not said a word about a new
outbreak of shootings and knifings that are
killing people, mostly young black men, in
some of Toronto’s poorest areas and making
them sound like Dodge City.
The premier did not even make an effort to
reply to demonstrators against his laws
controlling pit bulls, considered the most
dangerous dogs, although the allegation he
protects residents too much is shaping to be a
major issue in the coming election.
Hudak, after some aggressive speeches in
the early summer, has barely been seen
since.
The Conservative leader may feel he does
not have to do much after a poll for the first
time showed he is ahead of McGuinty, 36 per
cent to 35 per cent, but this does not leave a
large margin for relaxation.
The poll also provided some questionable
findings. It said respondents feel they
can trust Hudak more and believe he has a
better vision for Ontario, which surprised
those who cover the legislature daily and
are are still waiting for the Conservative
leader to reveal enough policies to be called a
vision.
These defects suggest the Ontario
leaders should be attempting now to improve
their images.
Harper has spent a lot of time in the Arctic,
promising to defend Canada’s sovereignty,
spend more money there and talking of
nation-building, which will please many
Canadians.
He has been helped by many pictures of him
driving an all-terrain vehicle over the ice and
joining in traditional native dances, adding to
the image he has been trying to create for
months as an ordinary guy.
Harper also has been in more accessible
areas preaching his gospel of getting tougher
with criminals and more recently people who
come trying to avoid regular immigration
channels.
Ignatieff, after a slow start when his cross-
Canada tour bus broke down, has been getting
some helpful publicity.
He said he has stopped in 126 communities
and has not found anyone who believes
Harper’s claim the national census he wants to
cut invades personal freedoms.
Reporters following his tour say he also has
been able to shed some of the image he has as
a snob with little interest in ordinary
Canadians – who says politics takes a holiday
in summer?
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Shawn
Loughlin
SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee
Ontario leaders lose summer chance
You better live your best and act your best
and think your best today, for today is the
sure preparation for tomorrow and all the
other tomorrows that follow.
– Harriett Martineau
Final Thought