Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: The Wogistan form book, in reply to Russell Brown,
Prosser’s remaining there besmirches his party
Like Martin, I had to have a little "bitch, please..." moment at what was an otherwise excellent editorial. Sorry for sounding like a broken record, but a not-insignificant proportion of the media has been bromancing Peters as some kind of lovable scallywag for the last three decades. Decades in which he's hardly kept his xenophobia, and flat out racism, on the downlow.
Prosser doesn't "besmirch" New Zealand First. His only mistake was being too honest, and his only real crime embarrasing Winston.
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Hard News: The Wogistan form book, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Brisbane. Try landing there in any aircraft which has a an overwhelming % of non-Anglo passengers and observe the way the security treat everyone on the aircraft as Osama’s right hand.
Quite - and I can't help comparing and contrasting the memory of when we flew into Vancouver, and ended up in customs the same time as flights from Mumbai and Paris. it was kind of nice being a rainbow coalition of the bored and exhausted, without the kind of delightful ethnic profiling Prosser is so hot for.
And I guess that's why I get a little impatient with folks who think Prosser's racism -- and Winston's passive-aggressive bullshit -- isn't a big deal, and we should all move on and focus on "real issues". Sorry, this guy is a member of Parliament. If next year's general election is tight, we could see a party of unapologetic racists in the box seat again. And I've next to no confidence either Key or Shearer would have the spine to say they have no place in any government.
I have the enormous privilege of not having to give a shit about anything Prosser and NZ First say or do. I suspect most PASers are too.
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Hard News: The Wogistan form book, in reply to Andre Alessi,
Not news, but Wishart was foaming-at-the-mouth insane on the radio this morning.
No, Andre, Wishart was a vile bigot, a mendacious hack and a spectacularly disingenuous concern-troll. (I'm sure Helen Clark will be delighted to know Wishart now loathes faith-based misogyny and homophobia.)
He wasn't insane, or any other euphemism for mental illness. I know I do it too, a lot, but perhaps we could all be a hell of lot more careful about using mental illness as a put down?
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Hard News: The Wogistan form book, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
This really is a distraction from more pressing and serious matters.
No, Geoff.
1) We can actually think and care about more than one thing at a time.
2) Folks like you and me actually have the privilege of not caring about a party of unapologetic racists potentially deciding who’ll form the next government. How about the people who don't?
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Hard News: The Wogistan form book, in reply to Paul Campbell,
Which, while cute, is completely inaccurate, old white guys do far more embezzling by several orders of magnitude than anyone does terrorism
Once could also note that white Catholic men have killed more people than "Muslim-looking" one in terrorist outrages in London by an order of magnitude.
I actually sympathised with him for having his knife confiscated. I had to hand over a nice little Leatherman on my key ring when leaving Sydney last year .
Boo-fucking-hoo. Over six weeks last year, I removed my shoes, belt and emptied my laptop bag in enough airports to feel a cordial loathing for airport security. But none of those places were anything less that clear and explicit about what you could and couldn't carry onto your flight -- and, yes, knives were very much on the no-fly list. I'm really sorry if Prosser's white male entitlement gland got well and truly stroked by that indignity, but putting several billion people on a racist no-fly list is really missing the point to a scary degree.
I'd also respectfully suggest Prosser flashes a pen knife and has a racist temper tantrum at Hong Kong International. I'm sure the discretely but visibly armed employees of the Chinese government will be happy to discuss his inalienable human right to ignore international civil aviation regulations New Zealand is a signatory to.
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Went to Mt Zion – the story was utterly predictable, the script structurally a bit messy largely redeemed by an utterly charming cast, and the first time in over twenty years I’ve heard an annoying person called a “doongy”.
Extra points: At 93 minutes it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Otherwise, spent four hours staring at a blank page and wanting to put my head through a wall.
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Hard News: The Next Act, in reply to Steve Barnes,
I was rather surprised to find Helen Clark pushing for an honour for this guy after the remarkable arrogance shown to Kofi Annan a well respected and much honoured colleague of hers.
Surprised? I’m rather shocked Clark would pick up the phone and call the Prime Minister to lobby for an honour full stop and end of line. I don’t want to go over the top here, but it doesn’t strike me as a terribly good look for a senior UN official who is supposed to be above and beyond any nation’s domestic politics (and seen to be so) getting involved in something so petty.
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Hard News: The Next Act, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Sofie:
Wouldn’t disagree with that at all – plenty of demanding occupations are well beyond my skills and/or temperament. (I’d also prefer to suck ground glass out of an abscess that spend one more day commercial cleaning. I can’t afford any more bad karma.)
That said, my point was I sure couldn’t conduct a coherent, well-prepared live interview regarding a breaking story with anyone before 8am, but Geoff Robinson (and folks in equivalent slots all over the planet) manage without calling anyone a “confused tub of lard” or prank calling a hospital.
Scott:
Even if it’s consensual, and the supposed victim is (mostly) aware of the wider context
Well, I’ll grant “bullying” is perhaps too strong in this specific context, but is the following idea really that challenging: Just because you can (or at least get away with), it doesn’t mean you should. Frankly, I’m also really over hearing variations on “but it’s what the market demands”. That’s nose to tail bullshit. ‘The market’ doesn’t decide what’s going above the front page fold in tomorrow’s Herald, or leads the prime time TV news.
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Hard News: The Next Act, in reply to Russell Brown,
It’s not quite that simple. I think it’s true that there is a personality type that often succeeds in talk radio and it’s an edge one. It’s actually not a very normal thing to do every damn day.
That’s true, up to a point. Most of us wouldn’t find it terribly “normal” to get up at 4am to start doing prep to go on air at six, and basically stay sharp for three hours, five days a week, forty-odd weeks a year. But Geoff Robinson been doing it for 35 of the last 38 years without turning into a dribbling arsebag. Not that I’m putting Geoff up for sainthood, but I can’t help but wonder what Holmes’ legacy would have been if the worse of the man (and the boradcaster) hadn’t been indulged over and over again with a "that's just Paul being Paul" shrug.
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On the other hand, there was his dreadful, fulminating Waitangi Day column in the Herald, the low point of a second round as a newspaper columnist that didn’t have many highs.
And there was the unedifying spectacle of his puff-piece interview with “close friend” Tony Veitch in the Herald on Sunday, which doesn’t strike me as a particularly obscure or debatable conflict of interest. (IIRC, Holmes was also *cough* less than entirely candid about giving media advice to his pal, which IMO is a whole other ethical can of worms. If my memory is correct, that should have been disclosed at the very least.) I know Auckland’s a small town, but it’s not THAT small.
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