{"id":476,"date":"2008-09-25T17:00:59","date_gmt":"2008-09-25T22:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/election08.cusjc.ca\/?p=476"},"modified":"2008-09-25T17:02:24","modified_gmt":"2008-09-25T22:02:24","slug":"cultural-polarization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=476","title":{"rendered":"Cultural polarization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Cohen<\/strong><\/p>\n

So Stephen Harper is now training his artillery on artists, actors, writers and poets. He sees votes in beating up the country\u2019s cultural elite.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a bunch of people, you know, at a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers, claiming their subsidies are not high enough \u2026 I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s something that resonates with ordinary people,\u201d he said on Tuesday this week.<\/p>\n

A rich gala. Subsidies. Ordinary people<\/em>. Here is a populist\u2019s lament. Mr. Harper didn\u2019t use the word \u201celite\u201d. He didn\u2019t have to.<\/span><\/p>\n

He wants the people to know that he doesn\u2019t like this pretentious crowd, which is why you won\u2019t find him at those fancy fundraisers at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He sends his wife instead.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the spirit of George Wallace, the scrappy, segregationist governor of Alabama, who gleefully painted his enemies as \u201cpointy-headed intellectuals.\u201d When Mr. Wallace poured out his invective, you could see the dirt under his fingernails and the sweat on his brow.<\/p>\n

Mr. Harper is no George Wallace, but his broadside shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone in a targeted campaign pitched to specific voters. The point is to create differences between us (the people) and them (the snobs), playing off one against each other, appealing to that deep well of resentment in the land of the Tall Poppy.<\/p>\n

This is a strategy. It is the same reason that Mr. Harper proposes cracking down on juvenile crime, even as criminologists tell him crime isn\u2019t rising and his punishments won\u2019t work. No matter; tough talk sells among rock-hard conservatives.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the Prime Minister has spent the campaign trying to show his soft side \u2013 wearing a sweater, kissing babies, playing the piano. Now he\u2019s showing off his folksiness. Soon Mr. Harper, who has an MA in economics, will start droppin\u2019 his \u201cg\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

But culture matters. While Mr. Harper\u2019s $45-million in cuts to the arts may have little \u201cresonance\u201d in English-speaking Canada, they are an issue in Quebec, where both St\u00e9phane Dion and Jack Layton are exploiting the issue. Mr. Dion even announced his promise to increase spending on the arts last weekend in Place des Arts in Montreal.<\/p>\n

Mr. Harper knows this, which is why he isn\u2019t pushing the anti-cultural line in Quebec, where he sees his majority. When he was asked to repeat his \u201cgala\u201d comment in French, he shrewdly refused.<\/p>\n

\u00a0(This column originally appeared in the Metro<\/em> newspapers.)<\/p>\n

Andrew Cohen is a member of the faculty of the School of Journalism and COmmunication at Carleton University and most recently the author of Extraordinary Canadians: Lester B. Pearson<\/em>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Cohen So Stephen Harper is now training his artillery on artists, actors, writers and poets. He sees votes in beating up the country\u2019s cultural elite. \u201cI think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a bunch of people, you know, at a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers, claiming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election2008","category-election-2008-campaign-strategy","category-election-2008-faculty-links"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}