22 Feb Messaged up the ass

AllNovaScotia.com has a good piece this morning by Paul McLeod (subscribe!) detailing the obsessive control Premier Darrell Dexter’s office exercises over all departmental communications, to the point that answers to even the most routine and trivial inquiries often wait hours for a nod of approval from the Central Committee.

In a companion piece by McLeod,  ex-Premier Rodney MacDonald’s Communications Director Wade Keller, now toiling for Labatt’s, endorses the Dexter government’s approach as necessary for managing the government’s message.

Trouble is, communications during Rodney MacDonald’s brief term were atrocious—precisely because of excessive message management. As one of Keller’s predecessors aptly put it, the young premier always sounded “messaged up the ass.”

Dexter government communications are starting to sound the same way. When you find the phrase “for today’s families” inserted into every freaking news release and government document, the words lose their intended warm syrupy meaning and take on a completely contrary impact, i.e.: “This government thinks I’m an idiot and is trying to manipulate me with focus group-tested cliches.”

As someone who feels sympathy for the multifarious problems facing government, but dismay at Dexter & Company’s slow pace in tackling them, I offer this friendly advice: retire the witless party slogans, ease up on the controls, and let the (mostly very capable) folks at CNS do their jobs.