Randy Hillier’s team has given me an exclusive first look at their new ad. Here it is.
Here is the original Reagan ad. I think they matched it quite well.
Category: Other
Announcing IggyFacts.ca
Today, I launched a new political mini-site at IggyFacts.ca.
The site is meant to be a humourous take on the definition campaign of the Leader of the Opposition and of the Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff.
The site is meant to be integrated with, but does not require, Twitter. Random facts about Michael Ignatieff are presented and with a single click of a button, they can be “re-tweeted” (repeated) via a person’s twitter account. You can even submit your own facts.
Twitter + Politics + Crowdsourcing = IggyFacts.ca
For those that aren’t familiar with Twitter, the service is like building your own mailing list. People sign up to receive information from you at your discretion. For example, at the time of this writing, I have 3,846 people “following” me on Twitter. This means that several times a day, almost 4,000 people read my updates on a variety of topics from politics, what I’m thinking or even doing (or whatever else I’d like to write). The political implications of this are large because each one of these people have their own “following” (or list) and this presents the opportunity to spread a message. Some people that follow me are web designers, some are Democrats, some Republican, some Conservative, some Liberal, some Calgarian, some Australian, among others. A police officer that follows me on Twitter may find a message that I write interesting enough to re-tweet (or repeat) it along to his list of his police officer friends, his Vancouver motocycle club twitterers and even his fellow jetskiers on Twitter. In turn they may pass the message along too. This bridges groups and it can find a message going out beyond one particular community. Blogs are often read by die-hard partisans and not often by swing voters. Since Twitter allows you to read beyond the highly integrated political blog community, it is a powerful tool for politics.
Seen on Parliament Hill – despite Michael Ignatieff’s best wishes
This fellow was just off of Parliament Hill today showing passers-by a portable video playing the video clip of Michael Ignatieff saying “You have to decide what kind of America you want. Right? You have to decide. It’s your country [the US] just as much as it is mine.” The clip can be seen in the Conservative Party’s “definition” ads on the Leader of the Opposition.
Aparently, the man dressed as Uncle Sam was protesting Michael Ignatieff’s attempts to goad C-SPAN into ordering a cease-and-decist against the Conservatives for using video from their network.
Glen MacGregor of the Ottawa Citizen reports from an interview with C-SPAN’s Bruce Collins,
“He wanted to know if we were aware if our video was being used in this way,” Collins said. “If our rights were being violated, he wanted us to enforce them.”
Collins goes on to say,
“There’s nothing legal to do with it, Collins said. “Given the way video is used throughout the world, with YouTube, it would be fruitless.”
Collins says he watched the ad and believes it falls within the fair-use provisions in copyright law because of the short length and subject matter.
“It’s the highest form of speech — political speech,” he said, adding there would be no economic loss to C-SPAN resulting from the ad.
One might have thought that Michael Ignatieff would have read the first amendment to the US Constitution protecting speech during the decades he was abroad. For someone who claims ownership of the United States as Ignatieff does, he should believe in political free speech, even if such rights are generally not afforded Canadians when it comes to using CBC and CPAC footage.
