Saturday, January 21, 2006

“Real Poeple”?

In their campaign speaches you generally hear Paul Martin use the word "Canadians" in sentences like "teh values of Canadians" and "Canadians want this or that". Jack Layton uses "people", as in "the NDP is looking out for the interests of people". The implication that I take from this is that in a business vs. people scenario, the NDP would tend to support the individual. That's all well and good, and expected from them.

On the other hand, I was watching a Stephen Harper campaign speech today in a Toronto riding and he kept using the phrase "real people". What exactly does he mean by that?

Who is a "real person" in his mind? And more importantly, who isn't?

What sprung to mind was the long-time use of the phrase "real Americans" to essentially mean white americans.

Surely Harper's speechwriters deliberately chose this phrase. Who are they aiming this to, and why?

A lot has been made of Harper's rather more middle-class family life than Martin's. Stories of him getting up early and driving his kids to hockey practice seem to be a favourite of reporters and teh Conservative party.

It's too bad such a question would be so easy to dodge with platitudes, but I still would like to hear an explanation of why they chose to identify some unknown subset of Canadians as "real people".
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By al - 12:06 p.m. |

Comments:
-"real people" meaning people who are in the majority for whatever he is fighting for. anyone who is not in this majority, or just plain not on his side, is not a "real person". which also means that their say no longer matters, which also means that he is always right and awesome.

-his writiers also "cleverly" snuck in "god bless canada". oops, i almost typed american there. how silly of me.

-ps. peter, that last paragraph of yours gave me a very disturbing mental image of harper. i'm going to go curl up in the fetal position now and think of pretty purple flowers and fluffy kitties.
 
i just realized that you spelled "people" wrong in the title.

i'm usually so anal about such things when i'm reading.
 
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