I want to talk about an issue that’s suddenly at the forefront of our national consciousness and which threatens to explode into a national scandal, and that issue, of course, is logos.
Or more properly, the issue is logo abuse.
You probably know what I am talking about.
It’s all over the news about how the Conservative Party is slapping its logo everywhere with reckless abandon.
The party logo --- a stylized “c” gulping down a red maple leaf ---is showing up on everything from Olympic team jackets to over sized, cardboard “economic stimulus” cheques.
Anything it seems associated with government is in danger of being “logoized.”
Word even has it that the Tories are actually planning to tattoo their logo on Peter Mansbridge’s forehead.
(Ironically about the only place you can’t see the Tory logo is on their TV attack ads.)
Clearly, this has got to stop.
Political logos are designed to appear in only certain special settings, such as those polling graphs seen on TV.
To use political logos for any other purpose violates the all-important, constitutional ideal normally referred to as the separation of state and trademark.
When I think of Canada's National Economic Plan and the stimulus package, I think of pure pork barrel politics with much of the stimulus money going to Conservative ridings. I see big deficits, and a reminder of a "national icon" Stephen Harper reminds me of--Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
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