Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to linger,
Maybe Craig’s objecting to the implication that National couldn’t possibly be causing offense to anyone :-)
Not at all – if you get through life without grievously offending someone, you’re just not trying. But if you bother reading Ira Levin’s novel (which I warmly recommend) the “Stepford wives” are gynoids created by a misogynistic ex-Disney employee. The women they replace – uppity Ms.-reading castrating femi-Nazis one and all – are killed, of course. I know there’s no evil Stephen Joyce is incapable of, but really…
As a sidebar, it’s worth asking if the whole ‘Stepford wife’ sneer isn’t actually low-grade sexism itself. Wow, so women who don’t act in a manner you deep appropriate are someone less than human, even on the level of a pop culture allusion? Wonderful.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Kumara Republic,
The Stepford gloss was going to start flaking off eventually.
Just as a matter of interest, have you ever read The Stepford Wives? It's not about what you seem to think it is.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Getting back to the theme of Labour and the media for a moment, this seems well-done to me.
Until you note the trivial factoid that the same people who clean John Key's office also clean Phil Goff's, and there's not actually anything preventing Parliamentary Services (who I believe are their legal employer) paying them above the minimum wage.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s totally self justifying. They only need to have done something useful, and they can point to that and go “Hey look! I made a difference! Vote for me!”.
OK, first a little full disclosure is in order. I used to work for an MP, and when a woman walked into the office looking for advice on how to make her abusive ex- stay the fuck away from her and her children I can't say "lookit, potential voter" was upmost in anyone's mind. OK, nobody changed the world that day but perhaps - just perhaps - we made three people's lives a little better. However "random" that may be in your book, it does matter.
FFS, Ben, I'd be the last person to say the political classes don't bring a hell of a lot of disdain down on their own heads but there does come a point where healthy scepticism turns into corrosive - and horribly unfair - cynicism.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Russell Brown,
The idea that that’s not worth the bother, or that Green MPs should only represent a narrow community of interest leaves me cold. The job of representing an actual community, regardless of the various politics of the individuals in it, is something to aspire to.
Quite - and to do some cold hard electoral math, never underestimate the power of good old school "kiss every hand, shake every baby, crash the opening of every envelope" campaigning in attracting party votes. As I've said before, if National loses North Shore and Labour loses the Dunedin seats the Apocalypse is pretty fraking nigh. But I'm pretty sure Michael Woodhouse is perfectly well aware that while he was never expected to win Dunedin North the 9,692 party votes he received went a very long way to securing his place in Parliament from a marginal ranking.
ETA: Or for that matter, I don't think I was the only person surprised (pleasantly in my case, though YMMV) in 2005 when Jo Goodhew defeated Jim Sutton in Aoraki. I have whanau who'd never voted National in their lives, but meeting Goodhew made a difference.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Is anyone else confused about how few National hoardings there are? In Mt Roskill, I’ve seen one (at my dog park, how rude). In Mangere, there appears to be none.
Not really. Rank speculation here, but it could just be there’s been a decision made not to get them up until after the RWC is over. And when I was working Wellington Central you just knew that hoardings were going to be vandalised so quickly (often with abusive graffiti you really wouldn’t want exposed to public view for any longer than strictly necessary) you wanted to leave yourself with coverage for the last week.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to BenWilson,
Local body candidates have more genuine influence and interest in what happens to my local area, and the public interest in them is a joke. You’ve got to be some kind of wonk to actually make an informed decision about them.
Not so sure about that – constituency work is unglamorous but there are still people out there who have this uncynical belief that their local Member of Parliament (and their electorate agents) know shit and can help. And you know what: The overwhelming majority do, and can more often than not.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
what happens when political parties try to get down with the kids.
In case you were wondering, "nothing pretty (with the possibility of costly litigation for your copywrong sins)" is a sound general principle.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Russell Brown,
Good grief. It is possible to close down websites, isn’t it?
That one shouldn’t have been opened in the first place. To give credit where credit’s due, I’ve been told off the record that quite a few front-bottoms, haters and wreckers and gaggling gays were far from amused and said so. But really, that hot mess was the Ebola of viral marketing but an interesting case study in what happens when political parties try to get down with the kids.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Russell Brown,
Well, labour.org.nz has been defaulting to www.ownourfuture.co.nz for a while now, and that message dominates the home page there. I think they’ve put quite a lot into that pitch, to be honest.
And thankfully no mention of this load of tosh pants. Perhaps someone at Labour HQ could kill that judgementfail with fire.
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