Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Michael J. Parry,
Yeah I like that bit of her character too.
Knowing shit is hot. Spread the word. :)
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Emma Hart,
I don’t know the show well enough to make a call on whether they’re doing “kinky = goth”.
NCIS doesn't really do "kinky" full stop - Abby's look may be pretty Loli-Goth but she's also a rather sweet, insanely smart, fiercely loyal to her team young woman with a hint of a "will they/won't they" vibe going on with another member of the core cast.
Still super plus point for having a young woman who is a total science geek, equally totally dedicated to her job, and still socially functional. That's pretty kinky for US network television. :)
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Starbuck, in BSG, the gods love her, is a good example. Wo-man to the soul. Is she a strong female character? Not really. The subtext here is, to be strong you have to be a man.
If you want to mount the “chicks with dicks” argument, Battlestar Galactica is epically shitty ground to make your argument on – unless you really think it’s “feminist” to argue that women in positions of political and military authority (like Laura Roslin & Helen Cain) only get there by being she-male tools of patriarchy.
One of the more pointed subtexts in the original mini-series is that when Roslin show up at the head of a convoy of civilian ships, nobody is at all surprised by (or hostile to) the idea of a female President. That six hours before she was the Education Secretary and 47th in the line of succession? Another matter. (Looks like public education can't get no respect anywhere.)
Oh, and if you watch the first episode of the series proper (__33__) you might be surpised who issues the order to destroy a hijacked ship making a suicide run on the Galactica with over a thousand civilians aboard. Hint: It’s not the solider-dude. One really interesting dynamic in the show was how often Roslin (the politician-schoolteacher) is more pragmatic and hard-nosed than the career solider Adama.
Have you seen the Maggie Thatcher movie?
Yes – and it’s fucking awful. How the hell could the grotesquely over-rated Abi Morgan write a script about the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and not take the actual politics at all seriously? Plenty of time spent on a gaga, semi-permanently pissed psychotic old broad though – that’s that old bitch put in her place!
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to papango,
Without wanting to sound facetious, you could always just ask.
Oh, the faeces count was undetectable - fair points and pertinent anecdotes, well put. :) I don’t really care, because Opposition party research units on the trawl are an entitled to give ministerial staffers migraines as anyone else. The Chief Ombudsman used to do a bit of low level naming and shaming of particularly tardy Ministerial offices, and Steve Maharey had this hissy fit-cum-concern troll
Mr Maharey, the former Social Development Minister, says the sheer volume of requests coming into that office was not acceptable when he was minister.
“I’m not going to have my staff worked to ill health just to satisfy the Opposition’s research unit."
As Idiot Savant notes with some asperity, if civil servants are being “worked to ill health” then the solution isn’t to ignore the law. Instead, you’d think Ministers have a basic responsibility to ensure staff and resources in their offices are properly allocated to meet fundamental statutory obligations.
I’m certain the current Vice-Chancellor of Massey University would heartily concur if the Tertiary Education Minister was using OSH concerns as an excuse for dragging his feet. :)
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to izogi,
Public servants are people too and they can feel annoyed and prevented from doing their actual job like everyone else, especially if it becomes clear that many of the requests they’re receiving are just massive fishing expeditions from journalists
Oh widdums, Izogi. Obeying the law is the “actual job” of public servants and if they don’t grasp that then they should find a more congenial line of work. Sorry if that’s harsh, but the idea that the civil service and Ministers of the Crown get to treat their basic legal obligations as a buffet table is incredibly dangerous.
And just as a matter of interest, I’d like to see a breakdown of how many of these so-called “fishing expeditions” don’t come from journalists at all but opposition party research units. Funny how attitudes among politicians to the free and timely flow of public information wax and wane depending on which side of the Chamber you sit. #justsayin
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to Sacha,
I appreciate both Fran and John joining the conversation. Good on you.
Ditto - and if Fran and John are still around, I think I can speak for a few people around here in saying this:
I'm tough on you guys because neither of you are irredeemably stupid. (Certain Herald columnists I wouldn't be so generous towards.) You also have one hell of a platform simply by carrying by-lined columns in not only the biggest newspaper in the country, but effectively the monopoly player in New Zealand's largest market.
To quote Spiderman's Uncle Ben: With great power comes great responsibility. It would be really nice if Auckland was London or New York (or even Sydney), but that's never going to happen - so you guys are it, and we should all expect a lot.
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to John Holley,
I had that argument with the ATA with the SuperCity where they thought “Draft” meant you didn’t have to release it.
Yeah, there’s a fascinating (and infuriating) tendency for some quarters of local and central government to come up with grounds for refusing OIA/LGOIMA requests that don’t pass the sniff test – mainly because they’ve been freshly pulled out of someone’s arse. I'll be promptly corrected if I'm wrong, but don't refusals to release information HAVE TO include the specific grounds with a full citation and text?
Ditto invocations of the Privacy Act. Contrary to what too many think, "protecting politicians and civil servants from political embarrassment and public criticism" is not one of the purposes of the act.
This clip from The Princess Bride should be played to civil servants on a loop. :)
“You keep using these words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.”
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to john Drinnan,
But Craig – getting personal does Public Address no credit. You should play the ball and not the man.
You know what, Mr. Drinnan, I'd be willing to accept a morals lecture from you if you hadn't greeted the commission of Media7 with a rather shitty passive-aggressive insinuation that the host (and my friend) was some Labour Party apparatchik.
It will be presented by veteran commentator Russell Brown, whose Hard News blog on the Public Address website frequently defends the Government and is a counter to David Farrar's National-friendly Kiwiblog.
In particular, Hard News has been a strong supporter of the Government approach to the Electoral Finance Act. But it is understood that the new Media 7 show will have a number of participants.
But I guess that's another case of political interference that's neither "here nor there", right John? And as Russell noted at the time, it wasn't even an accurate characterization of his views on the EFA. (Might have been useful context to note Public Address is a group blog that doesn't have a Borg-like editorial line on anything.) Never mind.
I'm not well disposed to people who (in my view unfairly) attack the personal and professional integrity of my friends, and it was only fair to acknowledge that colours my view of your column.
But, to take one example among many, I didn't really think the front-page attack on Ladyhawke as some kind of celebrity corporate welfare queen that appeared under your by-line was *cough* somewhat misleading.
As I said, you and your paper are perfectly entitled to have editorialize against public funding of television, music and the arts in general to your hearts content. Just be honest about it. Insinuating a member of the NZoA board is guilty of direct political interference in funding decision, then airily saying it don't really really signify? Not playing the game with a straight bat (to use another sporting metaphor), and if you take it personally the solution is yours. Don't play those games under your by-line.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to merc,
The numbers determine advertising revenue, this is of the utmost importance to Mr Dr Coleman. If he misrepresents the viewer numbers he is also misrepresenting the revenue.
Point of fact, Merc: Unless I'm seriously confused, TVNZ7 has no advertising revenue to misrepresent because it don't carry any ads other than internal promos. In this discussion, it would be wise to be more than usually careful about avoiding the very sin Coleman's being accused of.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
. For example, the Nielsen ratings are based on self-reported measurements of presence in a room where a TV set is on, which might be something very different from watching television
Sure - and they also don't reflect how people's consumption has fundamentally altered. Take Media7, for example, I very rarely watch the show "live" as opposed to a time-shifted viewing of the PVR recording, or catching a repeat over the weekend. Other people I know watch it On Demand.
Accurate or not, the media can also be very size queen-y about ratings (or movie grosses) without fairly reflecting that bigger isn't always better. One obvious commercial example: HBO shows routinely attract ratings that would be an automatic death sentence the "mainstream" networks. A subscription-based business model changes the game to a considerable degree.
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