Friday, March 13, 2009

On cults of personality, Canadian edition

Chantal Hebert has caught-on to the latest re-branding of The Harper Government™, noting the cult of personality they seem to be building on their new economic crisis Web site action centre thingy:

Its home page features no less than five pictures of Harper and he is sporting a different tie on four of them.

That's a good thing because very little else differentiates the pictures from each other and they take up most of the page.

Its focus is squarely on Harper as an action man rather than on the government's action plan and the rest of the website fully lives up to that advance billing.

In less politically mature countries, it could be construed as an effort to substitute a cult of the personality for solid policy dialogue. Here, it is just the latest silly production of a muddled Conservative brain trust.

Every link leads to more pictures of the Prime Minister.

On the page devoted to so-called real action, the government's web masters have actually managed to fit in a dozen postage-stamp-size shots of Harper.

It is not clear whether they were trying to draw a subliminal parallel between Harper's current travails and the 12 labours of Hercules or just trying to make sure no one was under the impression that someone else could single-handedly lead Canada out of the recession.

Myself, I prefer this more clever version of the Web site. (h/t knb)

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2 comments:

Steve V said...

Harper was at it again today, reannouncing NOTHING NEW. I wonder if someone could ask him how much taxpayer money is being wasted so he can run around the country, making non announcements?

deBeauxOs said...

Harper has a personality to cultivate?!?!?

This is breaking news, isn't it?