The Following Is A Free Political Announcement

One of the things I actually enjoy (Heaven help me) about election campaigns is the free-time political broadcast.

I'm not talking about the paid advertisements, which are another story altogether. I'm talking about the rule that says the networks have to give a certain portion of broadcast time to each and every registered political party. Elections Canada has a brief blurb about it here. The amount of time given to a particular party depends upon things like the number of candidates and percentage of the vote it received the last time 'round.

My wife and I saw the first of these a couple of evenings ago. The local CBC affiliate ran them at around 11:30 p.m. (I wonder when some of the private broadcasters air them ... my guess would be at around 3:30 a.m., in between infomercials).

Unfortunately, they weren't all that entertaining: First, we saw was about 4 repeats of the Liberals' "30 million reasons to vote Liberal" ads, which have been thoroughly fisked here and elsewhere.

Next, we saw a Bloc Quebecois candidate, whose name escapes me, sitting at what looked like a really cheap talk show set (complete with fake cityscape backdrop) and speaking in heavily-accented English. I'd tell you what she had to say for the historical record, but she was drowned out by much laughter and derision from my wife when the candidate started complaining early on about how Quebec was unfairly paying for Alberta's oil & gas (or words to that effect).

What was lacking - and what I'm really looking forward to - are the el cheapo ads from our two (count 'em! two!) national communist parties (and no, I don't mean the Liberals and the NDP *rimshot*).

If you've ever seen the free-time ads from the Communist Party and/or the Marxist-Leninist Party during past elections, you probably have an idea as to why I find them so damn funny. They ususally feature a Beardo-the-Wierdo "activist", sporting a greying ponytail at the back of a balding skull and a circa-1973 tweed jacket, who spends his 30 seconds haranguing the viewing audience about the evils of capitalist imperialism and the joys that could be ours if we adopted Karl Marx as our personal saviour. Now that's entertainment.

(By the by, if anyone can explain why we as a nation are blessed with two communist parties, and what the heck the difference is betwixt them, and why they seem bound & determined to split the communist-Canadian vote pool, please do leave a comment and tell us why.)

More later.