Oily the Splot

Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but  I have to think that convincing the up-until-yesterday president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture – who was publicly critical of the Green Shift just a few days ago – to run for the Liberals is going to make it a teensy bit trickier for Jason Kenney – who will apparently be acting as the human incarnation of Oily the Splot during the upcoming campaign – to stick to his original script, at least as far as Stephane Dion’s sinister anti-farmer agenda.

(Okay, maybe just “interprovincial”, since he hasn’t  — yet —  been dispatched across the border, but that doesn’t make for nearly as juicy a moniker.)

Alert Inkless commenter jwl notes that Barack Obama’s gas-pump political ads, eerily reminiscent of the Conservative Party of Canada’s Oily the Splot™ ads-that-never-ran a couple of months ago, will never run. This is because the U.S. gas-station advertising company, in an eerie repeat of events here in Canada, decided at the last moment that it didn’t want to run political ads, especially ads critical of oil companies. Also probably they realized the safety implications of putting gasoline in such close proximity to hot air. (Thank you! Thank you! Please tip your waiter. I love this town!)

Just guess where this Obama ad is playing. No, guess. Go ahead and guess!!

Otherwise, you run the risk of looking as silly as our defence minister.

Photo credit: stephentaylor.ca

So has anyone actually heard a Dion’s Tax On Everything radio ad or seen Oily the Splot at the gas station? Hope springs eternal.

Must-reads: Andrew Cohen on Judaism in Poland; Jonathan Kay on the decline of jihadism; Barbara Yaffe on the gender equality commissioner.

For what it’s worth, I don’t find anything particularly nefarious or illegitimate with the Conservatives’ wanting to advertise at gas-station pumps. There seem to have been substantial problems in execution, which I intend to continue chuckling over. But where I was brought up, nobody ever told me gas stations were supposed to be sacred havens from political discourse.

I am not making what follows up.