Halifax — The upcoming Nova Scotia election has been steeped in scandal, most of it NOT related to parties’ campaign platforms. Instead, the controversy has to do with incriminating online content created in the past by several candidates.
Examples of this have been cropping up all over the political landscape over the past couple of weeks. The NDP’s Bill McEwen dropped out out of the running when it was discovered he created a sexist website several years ago, featuring the slogan “…in a world of breast implants, fast food and cheap beer, what’s not to love about being a man?” The Liberals dropped Matt MacKnight when an offensive tweet came to light. The Tories dropped candidate Jad Crnogorac over a Twitter joke about the date-rape drug known as roofies as well as numerous other questionable items she had shared.
The only viable solution to the problem was presented this morning by Premier Stephen McNeil, who is “strongly suggesting” that all candidates disable their social media accounts, for their own good.
“It’s like your mom always said: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” said McNeil. “With this move we’re simply ensuring no one posts anything racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive before the May 30th election.
“I wish I had a time machine so we could all go back and just not create social media accounts in the first place, but that’s not an option — I checked.”
McNeil, who himself has not shared any damaging online material — that we know of — is taking it upon his Liberals to scour the Internet daily, ensuring no potential leader has any active online profiles, blogs or webpages.
“It’s just in case — if these people are able to use Facebook or Twitter, it’s wayyy too tempting to share a joke about rape or a racist video. Clearly Nova Scotia candidates can’t control themselves.
“We’re also going to make sure they’re not on Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, Goodreads, Medium, and of course any dating sites… those are especially risky, what with dick pics and all. Heck, I wouldn’t put it past this batch of candidates to share a racist recipe on Allrecipes.com or a sexist song on SoundCloud.”
Progressive Conservative Leader Jamie Baillie said McNeil confiscated his phone just this morning. “He said he needed to make a call, but then he just walked away with it. Not sure what the deal is,” recalled Baillie, scratching his head.
NDP Leader Gary Burrill had his smartphone taken, too. “McNeil said that no one in Canadian politics should be glued to their phones, and that the three of us should be leading by example. But I was in the middle of a really funny tweet about how fat Trudeau’s mama is!” exclaimed Burrill. “It was gonna be a riot.”
McNeil said physically taking the phones was another necessary precaution.
“Phones have hundreds of apps these days that can be used to express sketchy opinions that destroy an entire party’s, or even province’s, reputation. But don’t worry too much; after the election everyone can go back to being bigoted assholes for all I care.”