It’s the age old question, and one that, frankly, we aren’t quite sure why we’re trying to answer in the second millennium. Oh, that’s right; visual aids.
Canadians were aghast this week when they were bombarded by photos of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in brownface, followed by photos of the Prime Minister in blackface, twice, at completely separate events.
After only nine days of the federal election campaign, Canadians are wistfully mis-remembering a time when political discourse was based on a rational analysis of policy instead of comparing lists of racist commentary and behaviour from the top two choices.
In response, some networks went straight to their go-to political commentators, most of whom are white, to get their thoughts on centuries of racism and its effect on people who are not them.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, the Liberal and Conservative partisans wreaked havoc over everything from the media not being quite dick-ish enough, so as to show their liberal bias, to spending too much time and effort on a major news story, so as to confirm their conservative bias.
From the sidelines, the only leader of a major national party who is actually a person of colour, managed to have a quote or two added to stories about Trudeau, prompting absolutely no one to point out what Canadian media’s real bias may be.
No one asked Elizabeth May, or Maxime Bernier, whose insight can be found on their Twitter feed, begging for attention.
The real winner is likely the conservatives who can now respond to every pro-Trudeau tweet with one of three photos featuring a brown or black-faced Trudeau while the Liberals still have to use long, boring, wordy facts and citations.
This post is satirical.
Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean
Deirdre is a political commentator, columnist, reporter, and podcaster in Alberta. She relies on facts, snarky Twitter, and satire to share knowledge and a laugh.
contact: [email protected], [email protected]
Twitter: @Mitchell_AB for all the commentary; @thisweekinAB for posts; @politicalRnD to guess “who tweeted that”?
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