I can guess what prompted this radio appearance:
Thursday morning, Amber Jones the leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan will be on the mail bag section of The Current on CBC.
She will be talking about women in politics. If you get a chance, tune at 9:30 and have a listen. If you’re busy, you can go to the CBC website and download the segment.
Thank you for the tip, anonymous blog reader.
@hotmail.com
![[EFC Blue Ribbon - Free Speech Online]](http://www.efc.ca/images/efcfreet.gif)
Aurelia | 01-May-08 at 9:54 am | Permalink
I heard it, it was well done. I think that Amber Jones will end up looking like the hero in all this, and of course if the original person had intended to hurt her politically, boy, that was a miscalculation.
Louise | 01-May-08 at 1:23 pm | Permalink
Alright everyone. Hold your breath and wait for CBC to interview Robert so that the Canadian listener to our state funded radio broadcaster can actually hear both sides of the story. I’ll have the paramedics on standby for when you pass out.
Saskboy | 01-May-08 at 4:06 pm | Permalink
Yeah, that makes sense. Give a RADIO producer time on the RADIO so we can hear her side of the story. Brilliant.
Aurelia | 01-May-08 at 4:12 pm | Permalink
Uh, besides she already had her say when she posted on her blog? And then updated again? She’s had plenty of chances to say whatever she wants.
And CBC did say that they had tried to get her comment and no dice.
Louise | 01-May-08 at 4:33 pm | Permalink
Are you suggesting that CBC is in competition with the radio station in question? Sounds to me like that’s what you are arguing.
Since one is run with private capital while the other is publicly funded and supposed to be reflecting Canada to Canadians, hell yeah, Saskboy, that’s brilliant. Given the CBC’s mandate and the source of most of its funding, it makes perfect sense to exclude one side of a Canadian story, just because it involves a radio station. Heck, they even missed a perfect opportunity to lambast the private sector competition.
Louise | 01-May-08 at 4:53 pm | Permalink
That last statement, by the way, was sarcasm. The contrary is likely truer. They may have avoided speaking to Robert for fear of having their bias given even more exposure. If they are going to present a somewhat sympathetic spin in favour of Earth Mother Jones (I did listen to it), how would they then deal with a private sector competitor without exposing their blatant bias.
Himpster | 01-May-08 at 5:24 pm | Permalink
I (personally) was pleased to hear that Anna Maria actually got to the heart of Tammy’s blog posting in her conversation with Amber today — using children as political props.
Whether or not Amber was using her baby as a prop at the legislature, I believe she needs to realize that there is a large contingent of people out there who’ve become jaded as a result of watching kids being used to advance causes for eons now…
From the ‘Save our Libraries’ folks in Regina a few years ago, to union supporters who take their children on the picket line (that’s a major ick for me…), to the kids chillin’ with Elwin in a TV ad two provincial campaigns ago to Chelsea Clinton on the campaign trail (who is supposedly a ‘private citizen’ yet is still on the trail pushing her mom’s message on college campuses) to the distraction of Rudy Guiliani’s son on the day he was sworn in as Mayor of New York City…
The fact is kids ARE often used for photo ops. Amber shouldn’t be shocked when someone accuses her — a politician (yes, she *is* a politician) — of doing the same thing. I believe her when she says she didn’t (although, that said, she could have always told CTV ‘um… no… I’m not going to pose with my daughter for you to get some b-roll…)… but she’s missed an opportunity to say that you can expect more politics-beyond-the-norm (the kind that DOESN’T use kids as props) from the Greens… it was a great way to sell the party’s unique selling proposition, and she missed it.
(This, by the way, is coming from a guy who voted for the Greens in the last federal election.)
As an aside… was it just me, or was the editing pretty bad on the interview. (It sounded pre-recorded… even a direct-out-of-broadcast school grad would have done a better job of chopping that tape. Yikes.)
Saskboy | 01-May-08 at 6:35 pm | Permalink
“The fact is kids ARE often used for photo ops. Amber shouldn’t be shocked when someone accuses her ”
But you’re just buying into cynical Tammy’s bogus argument which was constructed as a means of attacking where she had no capacity to attack otherwise.
Himpster | 01-May-08 at 7:09 pm | Permalink
I’m not buying in to anything.
The fact is that I think most people (me included) are cynical and jaded enough that they operate from the premise that kid + politician = staged publicity op.
I’m not saying it’s right… I’m saying it’s the way I’m kinda wired these days. Amber + Kid staged publicity op is fine… I’m just saying that to dismiss the cynicism and believe in an unrealistic utopia will only leave one disappointed at the reactions of others… and that’s something I hope has been learned through this.
It’s not completely unacceptable to have your kid there (although I also do believe that there is a time for business and a time for family…), but you have to work very hard to convince the public otherwise that it’s not a stunt to make you more endearing to the electronic eye.
Himpster | 01-May-08 at 7:11 pm | Permalink
note… i had put in a greater than/less than symbol between ‘Amber + Kid’ and ’staged publicity op’ for ‘does not equal’, but I forgot that like any good sysadmin would do, that would likely be filtered out for html safety’s sake… :)
Aurelia | 01-May-08 at 7:33 pm | Permalink
Actually, the real issue is why Amber Jones is being accused of using her kid for a publicity op when she had a concrete purpose for bringing the kid (seeing as she is breastfeeding on demand).
And the 99% of male politicians who drag their kids around and do photo ops and have absolutely no reason for bringing their kids never get accused of using them for photo ops.
In fact, I’ve never once heard of a male politician being slammed for sending out a Christmas card stuffed to the brim with kiddies.
Oh and Himpster…Chelsea is not a good example, since she is a grown adult and not a kid, and when she was a kid, she did not participate in campaigns. Unlike Obama’s underage kids and McCain’s underage kids who seem to get trotted out constantly.
Feel free to slam politicians for using their kids—just know that it should be all of them, male or female equally, and that the media only slams the women who put their kids in front of the camera.
Himpster | 01-May-08 at 8:00 pm | Permalink
“Feel free to slam politicians for using their kids—just know that it should be all of them, male or female equally…”
And that’s exactly how I feel.
“…and that the media only slams the women who put their kids in front of the camera.”
And I’m not buying that.
Saskboy | 02-May-08 at 12:33 am | Permalink
Harper did get slammed for shaking hands with his son for his send-off to school. It was stupid for the press to cover that to begin with, and I have to wonder if Harper requested it (unlikely) or if he hadn’t yet fine tuned his ‘buzz off media’ scowl to scare them away.
But Aurelia’s bang on about Amber not having a choice but to bring her baby, and therefore it’s ignorant and rude to accuse her of intentionally flouting her motherhood. It’s not a common thing for a politician, or indeed most work places, to have a nursing infant present, and like any bully, Tammy made light of an uncommon difference and picked on it. It’s just less obvious to some people that that is what Tammy did, because she didn’t choose something like Amber’s hair, or voice as the object[/behaviour] of ridicule.
Aurelia | 02-May-08 at 7:18 am | Permalink
I’ll concede that Harper did get slammed for that one, and he is a male politician, although the reason he got slammed was mainly for the handshake and not the kids in the photo op.
Interestingly, he did set up that photo op and asked the press to show up to see him walk his kids to school and see them off. (Unprecedented for kids of senior politicians for security reasons-RCMP had a fit.) I have a son the same age as Harper’s boy and while he wouldn’t kiss and hug me or his Dad goodbye if anyone was watching, we wouldn’t shake hands either. Some of the other moms at hockey with me were chatting about this and we all agreed that we’d pat him on the back or ruffle his hair or whatever, but shake hands? Not likely….which is why his attempt to show he was part of a normal young family backfired and just made him look like a stiffy.
It’s why using kids for photo ops can backfire, and if I had a choice I wouldn’t risk it.
Amber had no choice.
That said, I stand by my original assessment, her press clippings and google rank and name recognition have shot up a hell of a lot more than they would’ve if that blogger had just shut up and said nothing. And name recognition is like gold in the political business. So in the end, she wins.
John Murney | 02-May-08 at 11:33 am | Permalink
This is a non-story. What we see here in spades is a desperate attempt by a party that sings about the whales grab media attention. How shameless!