CBC New Branding is Misleading

 Nothing new here folks.

The CBC's latest effort at self aggrandisement,  a new branding and slogan campaign, was bound to be criticized as 'misleading'. Part of CBC's DNA the critics would say; an inevitability.

For the memory challenged among us, a quick recap:
A short while back the marketing gurus at The Corp decided to burnish their rather tired brand.

The result was this ear numbing slogan:
All aboriginal, All the time, All the way!

To many this breezy triad resonated. And not just sonically. It was almost intersectional.
It encapsulated economically the state of affairs in the ether for the CBC's many services.
The media and platform mattered little.
You could count on their loyal staffers to come through in spades (racist?), reds (oops) with appropriate content to fill the slot.

But this remember, is The Corp.
Adequate will never do if you can go over the top.
And in the result, they mislead. They deceive. By overstating their case.

Each use of the word "All", and it's used 3 times in an 8 word sentence, is a blatant exaggeration.
In none of the 3 instances is the word used truthfully. Nor will repetition  make it true.
What's true? Well, I wouldn't grouse if the slogan was:
Lots of aboriginal, lots of the time, lots of the  way.
But I can not let the hyperbole go unchallenged.

Attentive listeners and viewers will have no problems spotting the tiny fissures through which the non-aboriginal content slips through.
You know  the content I mean.
The Womans, Gender, LBGTQ+, re-education pieces, racial sensitivity items, climate change warnings, and pandemic hysteria.
None can deny that this stuff slips through.

One may be forgiven for not immediately being alert to the seepage.
Far too often the contaminating content is smushed together with the Aboriginal angle.
A piece about a transgender eco-warrior having trouble with her tomatoes due to climate change is every bit an Aboriginal story if it takes place with a day's drive of a reserve.

But I say: Enough.
Time to call out CBC for its egregious deceptions.
It ain't All Aboriginal. It ain't All the Time. And it ain't All the Way.

Ashtrays - 70 years on

 Harry S Truman was the President of the United  States when I was born (1952).

Some federal museum in Washington recreated the presidential office as Truman used it, and recently I saw a photo of it.

A tidy desk with a small desk sign is among the objects taking up surface space. Famously the sign reads:

"the buck stops here"

from the phrase 'pass the buck' - referencing a convention in some poker games to use a buck horn (handle) knife to mark who had the deal

The desk intrigued me for other reasons.
There, a bit to my surprise was an ashtray. You know, for holding tobacco cigarette ashes and butts.
Actually there were 3 ashtrays on the one main desk unless I miss my guess. And for good measure at least one other ashtray is visible on the credenza behind the desk chair. Four, count 'em, ashtrays within the reach of the chair's occupant.

One may safely assume that Truman in office was the very exemplar of appropriate American culture and values. Smoking was obviously OK by him.

Somehow though, the masses seem to be experiencing some collective amnesia about the former prevalence of smoking, and the huge implications of that prevalence.

Collective amnesia is all the rage these days.
Residential school issues come to mind, along with gender and race matters.

Historical revisionism is ascendant.
Leading to manifestations of a Cancel Culture.
How sad and misguided.