There's a fine line between an homage and a blatant rip-off of an idea.
In this case, a video produced by local advertising company Bristol is pretty much a giant rip of a recent video by Will.I.Am based on a speech by Barack Obama.
The rip-off in this case goes beyond merely aping the style of the Obama video. It twists and distorts the fundamentally uplifting qualities of the Will.I.Am and Obama originals in a way that would be funny were the issues it raises not so serious.
Recall that Yes, we can! used an Obama speech, set to music and repeated by a host of musicians and actors. The Obama speech is as fine an example of public oratory as anyone on the planet has seen in a generation. It is delivered in characteristic Obama style and it's message is fundamentally one designed to bring people together in a united effort to bring about fundamental change in their country and in the world.
Listen to the words: Yes we can to prosperity and opportunity. Yes we can heal this nation.
By stark contrast, the recent speech by Danny Williams is one his vintage speeches of personal pride and division. The province and its people are a backdrop. The video reflects that, of course, by using Williams extensively. The only other people in the video are - as with the woman inserted in a still picture - in the background.
Even the Obama title itself - Yes, we can - is a positive, inclusive reinforcement of the defining feature of the Obama campaign: a movement of unity. Yes we have cannot be heard without understanding that, as the news stories of recent days conveys, others do not.
The Bristol rip-off starts, as with the Williams speech, with a toast, a celebration of triumph. It includes right behind it a clear sign that this is a triumph over others: who in their wildest dreams would have believed, we are told, that we would be "as good or better off than any other province." We know what we are fighting for, we hear yet again as if there is a renewed call to arms to be found in having the provincial government go off Equalization.
Of course, this is not the first time a stirring speech born of the politics of hope and unity has been twisted to serve the politics of division. In his acceptance speech at the 2001 Provincial Conservative convention, Danny Williams turned John Kennedy's clarion call to public service into something entirely self-interested:
John F. Kennedy said: "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country."
I say to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians: "Ask not what we can do for our country, because we have done enough. Let's ask our country what they can do for us."
In Newfoundland and Labrador, the ignoble politics of division rears its misshapen, misbegotten head once more.
Our country requires more than ever a renewal of hope among all Canadians for a future built on shared values and shared purpose. Our province and its people need the assurance that "have" status is built on the wealth and prosperity of the people who live and work here, not on the blind luck of high oil prices.
We do not need more of the anger that has characterized the past seven years of public rhetoric. No one needs to hear, even by implication, of the value of fighting.
Barack Obama's recent victory shows the power of hope and unity, of the unmistakable power of a style of politics which calls upon the very best qualities of the human spirit.
McCain and the Republicans tried what has become the international conservative stock and trade: fear and division.
Whatever led Bristol and its associates to produce this video, it should stand as an example of how much the relentless messages of strife have weakened the foundation on which our society is built.
We must wait, evidently, for an awakening within individual Newfoundlanders and Labradorians that what we need to have is a rekindling of the optimism, the abundance of hope and the compassion in our souls that we had, not so very long ago, and in far darker economic times than the one we now face.
Only with those values in our hearts will have not truly be no more.
-srbp-