It can't be easy to be one-eighth of a travelling political roadshow, when all eight of you belong to the same party, all have the same goal in mind, and all want you to choose them over the other seven to help attain that goal.

That's life for the eight NDP-ers who want to become party leader, to replace the late Jack Layton, and to overthrow the wicked Stephen Harper Conservative government at the earliest possible opportunity. And to do all that without saying anything too too negative about the other candidates. They're all brothers and sisters, after all.

Here's what I think about SlutWalk:

A police officer in Toronto spoke to a group of university students and in the course of his talk, he told them that if they don't want to be raped, they shouldn't dress like sluts.

This outraged the students who know that rape is a crime of violence and power and it has nothing to do with how anyone dresses. Women of all ages, of all shapes, sizes and colours, blondes, redheads, women with grey hair, women tall and short, women with physical or mental disabilities -- all can be targeted for rape.

Women who work as teachers, lawyers, dancers, mothers, doctors, sex workers, architects, waitresses, nurses, secretaries, chambermaids -- all can be targeted for rape.

This morning, my 16-year-old son, understanding the depths of my devastation, asked me, "What will he do?"  Though it wasn't his intent, it reminded me that so many people scoff at the idea of politics, even of voting, by saying, "What's the point of voting? They're all the same."

No. They're not all the same.

I told my son that Stephen Harper's minority government has already done terrible damage to our country while laying the groundwork for the days and years to come. I said there would be some things he would chip away at, quietly, and other things he would attack openly and arrogantly.

An election campaign is one of the times when the belief that repetition matters really comes to the forefront. If you hammer on any point long enough, the belief goes, it will eventually penetrate the collective consciousness and be accepted as true.

There were two news events this Monday morning, as week three of the campaign begins, that are connected to this belief. The first was an item I heard on CBC radio's World Report at 7 a.m. about the NDP platform that had been released the day before. It's of interest because, in two different clips, it countered what has become common wisdom by virtue of having been repeated so often.