Tactics of Truth Suppression #11

Number 11

Establish and rely upon fall-back positions. Using a minor matter or element of the facts, take the “high road” and “confess” with candor that some innocent mistake, in hindsight, was made — but that opponents have seized on the opportunity to blow it all out of proportion and imply greater criminalities which, “just isn’t so.” Others can reinforce this on your behalf, later. Done properly, this can garner sympathy and respect for “coming clean” and “owning up” to your mistakes without addressing more serious issues.

Health Minister – Body Bag situation
Here’s a quote from her apology:

“It was insensitive and offensive,” she said. “As minister of health and as an aboriginal, I am offended. To all who took offence at what occurred, I want to say that I share your concern, and I pledge to get to the bottom of it.”

Ok so the Cons got the first part of that right… now onto the blown out of proportion site by the Opposition?
Oh this is just making my writing too easy:

Aglukkaq said anyone suggesting body bags were the government’s solution to H1N1 was “sensationalizing this situation.”
The results of the inquiry will be made public, she said.

Look at that! They followed number 11 to a T. She apologized, made it personal, said the Opposition was out of line, and they’re going to make the results public. By her making it personal she garners sympathy. I mean come on, she’s a female rookie MP from Nunavut and she speaks quite softly for a politician, so getting sympathy is easy for her to do.

Another situation that shows this is the whole Raitt sexy isotopes issue.
She didn’t apologize at first, but when she did, she laid on the water works and made it personal by speaking about her personal experiences with cancer. She blamed previous Liberal governments for not doing anything for 10 years (even though the Cons had been in power for like 3 yrs at that point and could have acted) and she even fired the staffer who left the recording behind! Talk about garnering public sympathy!

One last example of this is John Baird apologizing to Toronto for telling them to fuck off. He really hit the nail on the head with this one. Let’s look again at the beginning of this tactic:
“take the high road and confess… it was an innocent mistake”
Now look at Baird’s apology

“I was speaking out of frustration, and I certainly expressed that,” John Baird said in the House of Commons on Tuesday. “This morning I phoned Mayor Miller and apologized. The mayor and I both agreed — let’s look to the future. Let’s continue to build on the important investments that we need to make in public transit and we committed to work with them over the next two weeks to make it happen.”

BANG!

The Conservatives really work with this one, which makes sense because they USE IT A LOT. They make a lot of mistake. There’s a reason why Harper controls what they say so much and this is why. Most instances where they do apologize it’s because a tape or some documents were leaked. So this is how they speak behind closed doors. I’m not saying the other parties aren’t guilty of it either but the Cons get caught quite a bit. Plus they make a lot of mistakes in public too.

Point being the Cons know how to work an apology to their political advantage while denying us the truth the whole time. Seems like a lot of the public falls for it hook, line and sinker.