The Levant Rant: Political Comedy, Political Tragedy

“I think you were trying to be entertaining.”

  - Sun News Network vice-president Kory Teneycke to Sun News Network on-air personality, Ezra Levant

Trying?  Maybe.  Succeeding?  Well, if that were the case, Sun News would have the audience traction to show for it, one would imagine.

Teneycke's definition of entertaining seems to differ from that of the majority - we will laugh at a bigoted rant, because it makes us uncomfortable and might offer a bit of social commentary, but not with it - because in our polycultural society, we're well aware that vitriol could easily be pointed our way, too. 

There's a distinct difference between a bitter diatribe and a gently-poking bit of comedy, but subtly isn't everyone's strong suit.  If you want to see a rant done well, try out Rick Mercer, Canada's equivalent of John Stewart.  There's a reason the political right south of the border take such issue with The Daily Show - cwacked wegions are no match for communal laughter.

Take the Vic Toews Affair, for instance.

@Vikileaks was an unmitigated disaster - hurtful, cruel and done anonymously.  Nobody laughed.  In fact, many called foul, which it was.

#Tellviceverything, however, was cheeky fun and therefore a viral hit.  It also played a role in forcing the New Harper Government to back down on Bill C-30.

This isn't speculation or personal opinion - it's a matter of historical record.

But back to Levant's Rant.

I'm sure there's some sincerity to the bitter tone of the anti-Roma attack, but I'm also pretty sure Levant was trying to play to his crowd and draw in some more viewers.  Controversy sells, after all - nothing draws an audience like a car wreck.

It didn't work, did it?  We are drawn to car wrecks, but nobody wants to contribute to one. 

Then, there's #NoFreeRide, OPSEU's new video calling out Tim Hudak on his proposal to make Ontario a "Right to Work" province. 

 

It's cheeky fun, it's allegorical and it doesn't attack Hudak directly (though it grieves me they still throw in the "who dat" bit, which is kinda lame) - instead, the focus is on his message.  This isn't a hard approach to take - "right to work" actually means "right not to pay for a union that supports workers."  It would be like calling a bid to make taxation optional "right to society."  Society is already paid for, right, with roads and schools and all?  Someone else got that, I don't need to, or something.

 

We'll see how well this video plays, but I guarantee it won't generate the wide-spread horror of the Levant Rant or @vikileaks; it's not mean-spirited, so how could it?

 

Comedy is a deliciously effective way to communicate a message and rap opponents on the knuckles without crossing the line of good taste.  The trick is to tell the joke, not become the punchline.  People have little sympathy for those who dig their own graves.

 

Political comms folk trying to play the game should consider this nugget of comedic wisdom from Mel Brooks:

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."

 

Thinking Ahead

“for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.  To me it is a prison.”

Hamlet

 “Like everyone else, you were born into bondage.  Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch.  A prison for your mind.”

Morpheus, The Matrix

Canada is embroiled in the beginnings of an ethics/corruption scandal – some folk organized vote-suppression calls in a manner that was undeniably unethical and anti-democratic.  Shockingly, in this age of social media and information access, these calls are slowly circling back to bite the perpetrators in the ass.  Who could have seen that coming?  A bit prematurely, to be sure, but some other folks are making comparisons between this and Watergate, the mother of political scandals.  When there is so much evidence of how stunts like this can go horribly wrong, why would people continue to perpetrate them?

And why do we insist on sticking by “gate” as a suffix for any new political scandal that comes along?

Also in Canadian politics, we had a federal Minister trying to pass a security law that gives control over who pokes their noses into the e-bedrooms of the nation to unspecified parties, without much in terms of justification required.  The response has been been outrage from a generally complacent public.  The Minister reacted by telling an Opposition MP “he can either stand with us or with the child pornographers,” later denies having made the comment and eventually has to backtrack entirely.  There’s also evidence that this Minister has been aggressively defending a Bill despite not being entirely clear on the content.  What gives?

Related to the Toews Affair, a Liberal staffer took it upon himself to dig in to and expose Toews’ dirty laundry – setting himself up, robo-call like, to reap what he sowed.  Did this guy think his actions through?  If so, did he disregard the consequences and do it anyway?

Many outraged people got behind vikileaks, saying that it was okay to fight fire with fire, essentially reacting in the same way as Toews and the young staffer did; some are now suffering from an outrage hangover.  What caused the hyper-emotional reaction?

Then, there was #tellviceverything, a clever response to the Bill that invited people to overshare with Toews, making a mockery of both the Bill and Toew’s position.  #tellviceverything has been heralded as a brilliant piece of politicking and has also inspired a following.  Why?

Connecting The Dots

The global economy is in the bust part of the boom-and-bust cycle – a cycle we’ve been through before.  The Conservative Party of Canada is slowly imploding, a train wreck unfolding before our eyes, despite having the benefit of seeing the exact same scenario play out for the Opposition Liberals over the past decade.  Broadly, it’s like society is a macrocosm of Charlie Brown; we tell ourselves that this time, we’ll kick the ball and are repeatedly caught by surprise when we don’t.

How can we continuously not see this coming?

I could go on and on about history repeating itself, but that’s boring.  What we really want to know is, why?  What’s the math behind this?

By and large, people are linear thinkers.  We see life, business, even conversations as a trajectory, like a train heading somewhere.  Our carrot-and-stick approach to education, business and politics all serve to keep us on this linear track.  In reality, though, our world is a bit more like an equation – it’s multiple trains leaving multiple stations at a variety of times and speeds.  You can’t do the math if you don’t have all the variables.

If you could map out those variables, what would they look like?  Perhaps something like this:

 This is a map of a neural network.                                                 This a map of a societal network.

                                               This is a map of ideas.

 Here’s another story that’s slowly taking hold of the global subconscious; there’s a rising awareness of a mental illness crisis that’s costing us billions of dollars and impacting productivity, family life and social cohesion.  We’re trying to find new ways to treat the growing numbers of anxiety/depression cases, which is a lot like trying to cure lead poisoning.  At the same time, we’re looking for ways to make “crazy” people with conditions like bipolar disorder or Attention Deficit Disorder more normal. 

Normalizing = train wreck.

Empowering = filling in the dark corners of our cognitive, social and global maps.

By repeating the same behaviours over and over again, we’re building up social repetitive stress injuries.  On the individual level, these injuries manifest themselves as diagnoses of cognitive stresses like anxiety and depression.  On the social scale, we have protests, revolutions and a burgeoning economic meltdown.

The solution?  We need to add a few dimensions to our linear process – think outside the box, if you will.  Every journey needs a destination, but you can’t plan your trip without a map.

When You Fight Fire With Fire...

 

Following the back-and-forth in Canadian media and social media over all things Vic Toews, there’s been a sharp polarization of views.  Everyone is leaning into a posture that, in short, amounts to “what goes around, comes around.”

For those on both sides who think this is a good strategy, I ask you to consider just two examples from history of why this is a dead-end approach;

World War II Japan

Apartheid

When you fight fire with fire, everyone gets burned.