Politicunts: Canadian Elections, Part II

Continuation of my new series on election coverage, Politicunt. Which, "honours" already obnoxious/stupid/indecent political comments and articles. (The original articles are available by clicking on the title links). The second edition covers the upcoming Canadian election.

Harper apologizes for 'tasteless' bird-excrement attack ad on Dion
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
CBC News

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper offered a rare apology to his rival Stéphane Dion on Tuesday for an online campaign attack ad that featured a bird defecating on the Liberal leader, which Harper called "tasteless and inappropriate, yet hilarious."



The ad appeared to deflect attention from the Liberals' Tuesday launch of a website aimed at revamping the image of their, at times, bookish leader, where he is shown reacting to the Two Girls One Cup video.

The Tory web page, which was active until Tuesday morning, featured an image of "Professor" Dion at a school blackboard, followed by puffin flying over his head and dropping excrement on Dion's shoulder.

The puffin was mentioned last year by then-leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff as a potential mascot for the Liberal party because the "noble" birds "hide their excrement", in what many took as an awkward reference to the sponsorship scandal.

After selecting Dion, the Liberals instead chose the ostrich as their mascot.

When asked about the site, Harper said he had seen it late last night after receiving an email from a friend, but had been assured by his national campaign manager that it was promptly taken down from the party website and uploaded on youtube.com and funnyordie.com

"We're shitting enough on the Liberals without getting into that kind of thing. Bestiality is not a conservative value. Let's keep it to a human level!" Harper told reporters at a campaign event in Winnipeg.

The Tories said the bird was created by an overactive web designer and not noticed by his parents. While the puffin is still flying on the site, it is no longer defecating on Dion, who said he accepted Harper's apology.

"He went far too far today and he had to apologize," Dion told reporters outside his campaign bus during an unscheduled stop in Napanee, Ont., to empty the bus' septic tank

"I accept the apology, but this is the topping of the turd when it comes to their decade-long "shitting-on-liberals" campaign." he said.

For her part, Green Party leader Elizabeth May called the puffin ad a reminder of the importance of guano in some ecosystems and said she hoped Canadians would remember her.

"Well, here's a story where our party can actually get involved in the debate, well not THE debate per se, but I mean the race, and yet talk about our platform. I think it's the first time it happens in a media other than our website. By the way, we've got fifty hits yesterday! I was checking the stats while rewriting some HTML codes and I was so pleasantly surprised!"