Angry in the Great White North

OK, anyone who doesn't think a video will end up on the Internet is a fool.  So when someone deliberately takes a video of an event involving public personalities like politicians or celebrities, even a video of what normally would be a private function, that person has to know it's going to get out there.

Everyone knows that.

So why not use that knowledge to your benefit?  Let's say you want to get something out there.  Let's say you want to make a splash with it.  Then frame it as a "private" video that was inevitably leaked.  Everyone will buy that story, and then watch the video to see what dirty little secrets are revealed.

So we have a video of Stephen Harper giving a speech.  In the speech, nothing controversial is said.  Basically the well known tenets of Canadian conservatism are expounded, specific planks, again all well known, are mentioned, and finally, there is the new message of the need for a Conservative majority to foil an attempt to reconstitute the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition.

All of this is old news.  Even the freshest element, the need for a majority to counter a coalition, was out there before the video was made public.

Indeed, the video is rather boring in that it doesn't reveal anything that was not already known.  Even the delivery by Stephen Harper is no different than how he would deliver a speech at a public event.  Despite the partisan crowd and the so-called privacy, the closest he got to name-calling was to dismissively describe the coalition as "little".

The video was clearly taken in plain site.  The camera is steady (for a handheld).  No one gets in the way, or even slightly in the frame, from among the audience.  Together that means the cameraman who had the camera was comfortably positioned, and that anyone around him knew enough not to get in the way.

This was not a spycam hidden in a hat.

At the end of the speech, when Stephen Harper left the podium and shook hands with someone on stage, the camera smoothly panned and captured the action.

So let's put aside the notion that this video was somehow taken surreptitiously.  Everyone in the room knew a video was being taken.

But why record this speech in the first place if it was meant to be private?  One reason to make a video is to duplicate it, and distribute it to other Conservatives.  But then it would certainly have leaked out.  Who would be foolish enough to deliberately record a private speech if they intended to keep it private?

The obvious answer is no one would, and that means the underlying premise is wrong.  That premise is that this speech was supposed to be kept private.

So this is a speech that the Conservatives wanted Canadians to hear.

Indeed, if the Conservatives wanted to get this message out there, why not make a professional recording, ask media outlets to play the video in its entirety, have the media encourage everyone to watch it, and then add to the exposure by asking media pundits to write columns about it?

The reason is, of course, the media would not do any of this.  No, the video would only get played if there was a hook.

So the hook is this.  The video was secretly taken. Then the Liberals got their hands on it.  From the Liberals it went to the CBC.  And now everyone can watch the private video.

Oh no!

Mission accomplished.