Are You Serious? Bad Advertisement #1

One of the things I like to talk about is bad advertising.  Not 'bad' as in failing to entertain or persuade, but bad as in misleading, ridiculous, offensive or worse.

Also, every election, attack ads get more and more outrageous, exploding past the limits of good taste and into the realms of fantasy and insanity.  One of these ads is in rotation now and is from the CFO of the Ontario PC Party.  Interestingly enough, the only spots I've heard/seen this election have been from the PCs.  I assume that the other parties are in fact promoting themselves, but they aren't doing good enough a job to reach me.  Is this coincidence (am I tuned in to the wrong broadcasters), an indication of injustice or an indication of the size of each party's war chest?

Apparently, PC stands for Progressive Conservative but it just as easily could stand for Probably Confrontational, Parliamentary Contempt, Possibly Corrupt, Pro-Corporation, Pot & Cannabis, Potentially Clueless, Prevaricating Crook(s), Plotting Conspirators, Pathetic Clown(s), Polluting Carbon, Political Cheaters, Perverting Capitalism, Perpetrators Club, Peter Cottontails, Petulant Children, Pickled Cucumbers, Philistine Cads, Plodding Cavemen, Preserved Cadavers, Peppercorns, Peppermint Candy, Postal Couriers, Paternal Custody, Perplexed & Confused, Pet Cause, Public Crib, Psychoactive Chemicals, Punish Canadians, Prison Crew, Paper Cup or a virtually limitless number of other combinations.  To be fair, most of these apply equally to politicians of all stripes.

I'll take you directly to the offensive language and let you decide.  The PCs would like to paint the Liberal Party as epic tax-raisers and in their effort to do so present the following words to be admitted into evidence:

"...not to mention all his future taxes."

In other words, we, the voting public, should indite "him", meaning Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals, not only for their track record, which may or may not resemble the picture the PCs try to paint, and of which you may or may not approve, but for things that haven't happened yet.  There are words for things that haven't happened yet.  "Fiction" is one of them.  I suppose we could technically justify this as a "Future forecast" if we check the Liberal election platform and find that they have announced tax raises slated for the immediate future.  Sadly for this advertised argument, they haven't.  So what gives?

Making (or trying to make) people responsible for things that they haven't done or things that haven't happened yet is patently ridiculous!  It is the realm of dystopian science fiction.  (That's never good.)  Popular movie examples, which are probably more widely recognized than literary examples, include:

1. Michael Radford's (adaptation of George Orwell's novel) - 1984 (released, not surprisingly, in 1984)
   Sure, you haven't done anything offensive but your thinking has fallen out of step with the party line. Expect to feel the wrath of the Thoughtpolice!
   
2. Steven Spielberg's (adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story) (with Tom Cruise)- Minority Report (released in 2002)
   Why wait for criminals to actually commit crimes when you can have (powerful?) psychics predict the crimes before they happen?  After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, isn't it?  The 'victims' certainly seem happier this way.  Do we question the validity of the psychics' predictions?  Should we?  I mean, this is all established science and "I saw it in my dreams" is all the hard evidence a jury needs to convict, right?
   
3. J.J. Abrams' - Person of Interest (forthcoming TV series, scheduled to premiere this month)
   A scientist invents a machine presumably capable of seeing into the future and asks an ex-CIA hit-man for help eliminating people that presumably will be responsible for great tragedies and crimes against humanity.  Minor problem -- the machine isn't so good at differentiating between perpetrators and victims.  All are just 'persons of interest'.  So who do we kill?  Maybe it's spree time?

For more examples of dystopian fiction, see:

AccreditedOnlineColleges.com's 20 Greatest Works Of Dystopian Literature

Snarkerati's Top 50 Dystopian Movies Of All Time

Popcrunch.com's 15 Greatest Dystopian Films Of All Time

Listverse.com's Top 10 Dystopian Films You Haven't Seen

Wikipedia's (extensive) List Of Dystopian Films

(Will October 7th's newspapers be another indicator of a dystopian future?)

Disturbingly, this ad isn't being promoted as fiction.  You're supposed to treat it as 'fact'.  So, the Ontario PCs ask you to vote PC in the upcoming election in order to punish the Liberals for the crime of levying or increasing unspecified and uncertain taxes at some vague point in the future.  In this case, they don't even provide any evidence (other than the weak suggestion of past tax increases) that this future 'fiscal crime' is going to happen; they simply ask you to trust them that they can predict the future -- without the benefit of psychics or mysterious inventions I may add -- from their oh, so unbiased position as a self-interested, opposing political party.  Not much of an engaging plot really; I expect the movie to have a high splat/rotten factor over at Rotten Tomatoes.  It might even win a Razzie!  Not only is this the worst kind of dystopian science fiction, it is blatantly undemocratic.

So, what does this advertisement tell me?  It tells me that there is an equation in Ontario politics, possibly with an even broader truth, namely "Conservatives = dystopia".  Come October 6th, try to remember that before you cast your ballot -- the Thoughtpolice are monitoring you!