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8 Comments

news

Joe Pantalone Tries to Turn Shortness into Votes

By Steve Kupferman

20100929pantalone-ad-header.jpg
Joe Pantalone’s campaign has decided to capitalize on assets that no other candidate in this mayoral election possesses: adorability, and portability (adoraportability?). A new series of campaign posters, released online earlier this afternoon, depict the councillor dwarfed by his own ad copy, which says things like “SMALL WONDER,” and “The little mayor that could.”


Pantalone is five-foot-one, which makes him shorter than the average politician, but not too short to ride the rides at the CNE.
Are the ads effective political messaging? Only time will tell. Torontoist’s Michael Chrisman points out that the posters faintly echo one of the most successful print campaigns of all time. So that bodes well.

20100929pantalone-ad-verticals.jpg


And in a mayoral campaign dominated by squabbling amongst large, bellicose, balding men, there is something appealing about a huggable little guy with a full head of hair, sleeves all rolled up like he’s about to lay down some light rail lines with his own bare, tiny hands.
Heck, compared to the last attempt by an Italian-Canadian mayoral candidate to score points with the electorate on personality alone, these ads are downright brilliant.
Get more municipal election coverage from Torontoist here.

Comments

  • http://undefined spacejack

    I shall henceforth be referring to Pantalone as the “smail wonder”.

  • http://undefined mark.

    I find it strange that fairly early in the campaign most people agreed that making fun of Ford’s body was distasteful, disrespectful, made the mocker look worse than Ford, etc. But making fun of Pantalone’s body hasn’t seemed to have generated this agreed opinion. I’m not trying to present some goody-two-shoes, politically correct argument here. And I’m perfectly aware that Pantalone is performing self-mockery here, as he has frequently throughout the campaign, whereas Ford has only sheepishly admitted that he needs to loose some weight. But, it’s interesting that after Ford released that horrendous Youtube video with his so-called ‘financial plan,’ Torontoist was quick to quell the LULZ and provide a very good analysis of his claims in the video. I would think a similar analysis of Pantalone’s promises and policies would surprise some people but I have a sense that, if this were to happen, it wouldn’t be born out of a desire to stop people from either mocking or “loving” how cute and “adorable” he is.
    Again, I’m not trying to present a moral argument here (that Torontoist or others should or shouldn’t be mocking someone’s body) but rather provide an observation about the relationship be politics and aesthetics, in this case bodily aesthetics.

  • http://undefined rek

    SMAIL WONDER

  • http://undefined rek

    “Fat Pride” has become a real thing south of the border (even getting mouthpieces on the HBO series Hung in the form of the obese teenage daughter, the new sitcom Mike & Molly, among others), I wouldn’t be surprised if Ford has benefited from early stages of it here.

  • http://undefined quickymgee

    Haha damn i almost missed this I was wondering what spacejack was talking about. The second time’s the charm!

  • http://undefined InscrutableTed

    Ford has been referring to himself as “300 pounds of fun” lately.

  • http://www.mooneyontheatre.com Megan Mooney

    Mark,
    I suspect that there’s also a nod here to David Crombie. It’s not just self-deprecating humour, it’s allying him with someone who is widely seen as the best mayor Toronto has ever had.
    I know that we’re talking 32 years ago here, but you’d be surprised the number of people I’ve talked to about these ads, especially the ‘good mayors come in small packages’ one, who have said ‘yeah, kind of like David Crombie’

  • http://undefined mark.

    Thanks! Interesting point. I’ve been reading Caulfield’s The Tiny Perfect Mayor, and so far Crombie doesn’t come across as great as many remember. Many of the “progressive” things done during his reign were done by the “reformist” councillors, and many times these councillors were opposed by Crombie.