Posts by Craig Ranapia
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"Why? In the name of all the Gods, why?"
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Hard News: Angry and thrilled about Arie, in reply to izogi,
They might occasionally make bad assumptions and things won't always work out perfectly in-the-moment. But if the Police could just come out, acknowledge and clearly explain how Arie turned up in court looking as if he'd been pushed down a flight of stairs, I'd be much more satisfied.
Quite - we all fuck up, but real strength is having the maturity to own your errors of judgement and make good as far as you can. And apart from the needless humiliation (and alleged assault) of Arie, I've got to ask how much time, public money and goodwill has been squandered on what looks a lot like the infantile intransigence of a handful of Police officers?
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After watching that story on Sunday, I have one question: Can the Christchurch Police be charged with wasting their own time?
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Field Theory: 65 bottles of beer on the wall..., in reply to Danielle,
How about this: I once had a fantastic evening watching – gasp! – boxing with a bunch of drunk/high and delightfully hilarious dudes in a double-wide trailer.
Which actually puts you in some rather highbrow company – William Hazlitt, A.J. Liebling, James Baldwin, Joyce Carol Oates and others. And I don’t know about you, but I do really enjoy good sports writing, despite my relative lack of interest, for much the same reason I do like reading good science writing. Always nice seeing passion, intelligence and style getting some exercise. Pushing back the frontiers of my ignorance a few inches is just gravy.
(And honestly. someone who has scary amounts of sci-fi, literary and movie trivia clogging up the meat drive doesn't have a lot of standing to bitch anyone who takes a sporting code very very seriously.)
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Hard News: A nation bullied, in reply to Russell Brown,
Many others were simply cowed into silence. Which makes Tom Watson’s campaign all the more admirable.
Yes, but I think it would be fair to say Watson also showed an admirable amount of bottom in calling out his own party leadership on their addiction to flat-out character assassination via tabloid. (Which wasn't exactly peculiarly New Labour. I rather doubt Bernard Ingham -- who honed the off the record lobby briefing into a remarkably offensive weapon -- is on Geoffrey Howe's Christmas card list.)
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Hard News: A nation bullied, in reply to Russell Brown,
But there has been something particularly troubling about the Murdoch era. Other publishers have had their political preferences, but Murdoch’s role as kingmaker has been something else. It has been like bullying a nation.
Hearing those MPs finally feeling able to criticise NI really brought that home to me.
Perhaps it says more about me, but I'm a little more jaundiced and cynical. Labour and the Conservatives were happy to court Murdoch, and let tabloid scum like Alastair Campbell and Andy Coulson in the front door of Number 10. I do hope the Screws of the World gets all the karmic payback it so richly deserves, I also think politicians have to held to account for their part in creating, enabling and cynically exploiting this toxic media culture.
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Hard News: A nation bullied, in reply to Robert Fox,
The Elephant in the room of course Murdoch’s takeover bid for BSkyB, which has been opposed by pretty much every media outlet whatever their political bias.
And their own commercial self-interest? I’m sure this is going to wound Murdoch’s ego tremendously, but England was quite happily breeding squalid press barons and media outlets with the moral probity of pox-ridden whores long before Keith Murdoch got his first tabloid in the colonies. I know Rupert Murdoch is a trendy bogeyman (and not entirely without reason), but anyone who thinks Fleet Street was a fragrant bower before that ghastly Ocker vulgarian slithered above the salt is guilty of nostalgia of the most fatuous kind.
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Hard News: A nation bullied, in reply to Matthew Poole,
The act I found most despicable, though I certainly haven't addressed myself to the whole litany of ills, was breaking into the cell account of a missing (and later found murdered) 13-year-old girl, deleting messages in order to free up space so that more messages could be left; and listened to. Including a subsequent message from her parents, who'd been told by the police that the activity suggested their daughter was still alive.
I'd totally agree with you, but frankly watching other sections of the British media engaging in moral high horse dressage has been distasteful. I'm sure Murdoch's competitors are having a lot of fun right now, but I don't know how much of their own behaviour will bear exposure to the light of day.
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Speaker: John and Phil meet Bob, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
That explains the heavy DPS presence then.
Heavy? As far as I’m aware, Key has exactly the same DPS “presence” as Helen Clark – not exactly someone you’d say suffered from small cock syndrome. And by international standards, the DPS is low-key and lightweight which is really kind of cool. Really, I know Key is going to get pissed on no matter what but this is getting downright Kiwibogian.
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Speaker: John and Phil meet Bob, in reply to Kracklite,
well, for more disturbance, Gary Oldman as George Smiley?
Oooh… that’s looks fun. Oldman is justly renown for reducing the hardiest scenery to splinters in nano-seconds, but he can also underplay most effectively. Would love to see Oldman playing George Smiley in films of A Murder of Quality and Call for The Dead – which Le Carre wrote before he started believing his own hype.
(Sidebar: Is there some law I haven't heard of that Benedict Cumberbatch has to be cast in everything? Either that boy never sleeps, or human cloning is a reality.)
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