Short attention spans will work to Dion's benefit

Gordon could be correct. In describing Gordon there seems to be a memory lapse too. Gordon used to be chief editor of the Brandon Sun for quite a while but it was so long ago he has probably forgotten!

Memory deficit

Short attention spans will work to Dion's benefit.

Dateline: Tuesday, October 23, 2007

by Charles Gordon

The other day there was a picture in the paper of some cabinet ministers dressed up in sweatshirts. Their actions were described as follows:

"Secretary of State for Sport Helena Guergis, left, Health Minister Tony Clement, centre, and the president and CEO of ParticipACTION, Kelly Murumets, yesterday launched ParticipACTION's first public awareness campaign with a walk from the Centre Block on Parliament Hill to the Confederation Building."

Well, if you haven't been in downtown Ottawa lately, you need to be told that they haven't moved the Confederation Building. It is still a five-minute walk from the Centre Block, perhaps a bit less, or a bit more if there are a lot of photographers in the way.

When the election is finally called, all Stéphane Dion has to do is to buy a new hat.



The fact that a national fitness program can be launched with a five- minute walk says something about how much time people are willing to commit these days. At the same time, the commitment should not be underestimated: in this electronic age five minutes is an eternity.

The fact that no one thinks past five minutes helps to explain why it won't hurt Stéphane Dion to wimp out on defeating the government. It's a big story right now, but there will be another one.

People who have long memories — there are believed to be six of them remaining — recall that many of the same criticisms now levelled at Dion were levelled at Jean Chrétien a few months before his landslide win over the Conservatives in 1993. Québec didn't like him, his English was not good enough, he was out of touch. Everybody forgot all that when some little campaign event pushed it out of the way and Chrétien was off to the races.

Newspaper stories in recent days have stressed the negative effects of various new gadgets on our attention span, not to mention the survival of the family. If you scoff at this, consider another startling example from current media.

This one is a commercial for a new movie, Gone Baby Gone. The commercial goes through the usual sequence of guns, clinches and good-looking people gritting their teeth and then an excited voice says: "You'll be talking about this movie for days!"

Days? In the old days movie blurbs would tell us that we would be talking about this movie for years. We might not have, of course, but we were supposed to, after we had seen Gone With the Wind, or Easy Rider or The Naked Gun. Now days are enough.

You can see a bit of capitalist logic in this. If we are still talking about Gone Baby Gone days from now, we might not be willing to spend our money to see the latest thing. So it makes sense to discourage people from talking about movies for more than a few days.

Those who are not good friends of capitalism might even go so far as to suggest that movies are designed not to be talked about for very long. You might consider that a sinister interpretation, but then, have a you seen a movie lately?

It is in this context that we must place Stéphane Dion, the Liberal party and the likely survival of the Harper government. For a while, perhaps even days, people will be talking about how Dion didn't have the guts to defeat the government and face the people. He will be mocked by the Conservatives, scorned by the NDP, sneered at by the Bloc, laughed at by the pundits.

But is he finished? Of course not. All he has to do is wait patiently until Stephen Harper calls an election and then buy a new hat. The first time he appears on the campaign trail wearing a new hat all attention will shift to it.

Newspapers will phone image consultants for their views on the possible effects of the hat. TV pundit panels will ponder the impact, particularly in Québec, but also in British Columbia where people like to wear different kinds of hats. Veteran columnists will examine the political history of hats through the ages. Polls will be taken, bloggers will be referenced. CBC will hold a Town Hall meeting.

In the middle of all this, some will say: "Let's not forget that this same man who is wearing a hat was the one who refused to defeat the government in the fall of 2007." People will look at her blankly.

Dion should choose his new hat carefully and make sure it's durable. It's got to last at least five minutes.

Charles Gordon is a humor columnist, who occasionally lapses into serious commentary on politics or music. Gordon is married, with two grown children. He is the author of six books. His latest is Still at the Cottage, new in 2006 and available at the SG Boutique! All his books are published by McClelland and Stewart. Gordon has written for National Lampoon, Canadian Forum, Cottage Life and Maclean's. He has won three National Magazine Awards and been nominated three times for the Stephen Leacock Medal. When not writing his once-a-week column for the Ottawa Citizen, Gordon plays jazz trumpet and cheers for the Senators.



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