party of the people, oh yeah, sure.....
right up there with "winnable nuclear war"
A set of blistering radio ads paid for by the Conservative Party targeting Paul Martin's Liberals and Adscam weren't approved by party brass and will never air because some are racist, the party's interim president told Sun Media yesterday.
Not having seen (heard?) the ads themselves, it's hard to say. However, I can imagine a stereotypical depiction of a caribbean easily crossing the bounds of either decency, good taste, or racism.
We probably won't know exactly what, or how the message was presented. The article doesn't give us much, I suppose they expect us to take their word for it.
Whenever that happens, I usually look at the source of the story for the usual axe-grinding suspects. The Toronto Sun? Make your own conclusions.
Not related to the story itself, but canoe.ca links usually die within a day or three, so I like to try and find a more permanent link if I'm going to include one at all. This one seems to be hanging around, for now anyway.
I actually saw this ad on TV a week or so back. There was nothing racist about it. I guess the fact that the man's accent was Caribbean was racist? I don't get it. All it was was the Caribbean guy doing a voice-over saying that the tax rate in Barbados was lower and that our PM figured it out years ago and that's why his shipping company was headquartered down there. Please, how is this racist?
This is what happens when politically correct goes too far. Shall we outlaw all accents in radio and TV spots now because they *might* be construed as being in poor taste? Oh wait, isn't that racist in and of itself? Ooh, where do I draw the line? I want to be politically correct and appeal to everyone while offending no one but I'm in danger of breaking my own "rules" regarding racism. Lighten up. Or bring on the newspeak. That would be doubleplus good.
They played the ad on the CBC a couple of weeks ago. My wife (of Barbadian descent) was offended at the guy's accent... he was supposed to be Barbadian (Bajan) but he sounded like someone who wasn't very good at accents trying to sound Jamaican.
Not racist, just hypocritical... if ANYONE uses tricks like offshore tax 'havens' to cheat their own countrymen out of tax money, it's conservative-types.
" ... if ANYONE uses tricks like offshore tax 'havens' to cheat their own countrymen out of tax money, ..."
If CSL was a US company, there'd be no need, because all foreign income is tax-free in the US while domestic income is taxed. (It's illegal, has been ruled so by the WTO, but it hasn't been changed by the US).
CSL must compete in world markets with these US firms, and does so without losing money by having two head offices; one for Canadian operations located in Canada (which pays as much corporate tax as anyone) and one for International operations located offshore.
The only other option they had was to move entirely out of Canada, to the US. Which do you prefer?
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