Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: Earning Confidence, in reply to simon g,
I hereby retract all comments I made during the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, all smug and mocking, along the lines of “Only in America …”
It would be fair to point out that unlike the United States, we don't directly elect our executive branch of government. Back in the day, you might be surprised how many I know had no particular affection for Helen Clark but you know... Labour wasn't doing a terribly bad job on the whole.
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Hard News: UPDATED: Media Take: Election…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Part of it may be that there are hardly any right-wing musicians and artists and those who are aren’t currently movement to anger.
And an even bigger part of it is the Electoral Commission is there not to be "fair" but to apply the law, even if it's a bit of a flustercluck, in the world as it is. Any one seriously want to suggest there would be a different reaction if the track was called Silent T rather than Planet Key? Seriously?
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What do "tribes" have to do with it? Russell and I have been having *cough* free and frank exchanges of views for years, but even if Fiona, Jimmy and Leo weren't friends I don't take cheap shots at them to get at Russell. He repays the courtesy. It's just what you do if you're not a complete rectum on the body politic.
And no matter what you think of John Key, I don't think subjecting his daughter to violent and sexualized lyrical bullshit is acceptable. That's just abuse culture in action and this shit has to stop. Full stop. Period. No exceptions or qualification accepted.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
According to the book, Slater sees Boag as responsible for displacing his father from the National Party presidency.
Sorry for dropping by so soon, but John Slater lost the National Party presidency because it was contested and the other candidate won more votes. It’s how these things work, not least when Slater beat Geoff Thompson in '98, and I should know because I was a voting delegate to the party conference on both occasions.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
Sorry if I’ve missed it Pete, but have you at any point devoted any of your unending outrage towards the actual hideous content of that rape conversation? Or expressed sympathy for the young women being targeted by these creeps?
{ETA: Sorry, Russell. I'm replying to your comment, but none of this is specifically directed at you.}
Wonder if anyone would like to consider whether there's quite a few Young Nat women (many of whom I consider friends and colleagues) who might have got the point several days ago that Messers Lusk and Slater consider them "retards" and "filthy" and don't really need to keep being told that by anyone.
I've been having private conversations with women -- and not past or present Young Nats, but all of whom I consider friends and in many cases close colleagues -- who are really finding the way these e-mails are being talked about seriously unsafe.
Here's something I said on the Tanya Billingsley thread, which I seriously think is relevant here :--
And I don’t think I was the only person more than a little… disquieted by how sharply the victim of a crime got elbowed out of the way so media commentators could get to the “real issue” – how it affected the political interests of an awful lot of men both in New Leeland [sic] and Malaysia. IMO & YMMV, of course, but that seemed to me another symptom of how rape culture works – if you push rape victims to the margins of their own story, as it were, you don’t have to bother yourself with them. Right?
Guys (and it's mostly us chaps) please think twice how you're talking about that e-mail exchange, which could most genrously be described as casually & grotesquely misogynistic, and why. A lot of the commentary around this, and PAS is far from the worse, sure hits my ear as being less about sympathy or concerns for the safety of women in the Young Nats (or anywhere else) than scoring political points. This isn't just about Cameron Slater and Simon Lusk, or David Farrar and Nicky Hagar. There are human beings here who deserve better.
This really isn't the last comment I wanted to post here for a while; I'm going to be on holiday and mostly offline for the next three weeks and won't be replying to responses anyway. But damn, people -- we're better than this.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to Sacha,
And can we knock off the archaic christian-only prayer in our parliament. A well-crafted genuine karakia might be a good replacement.
I really don't see how invoking a different Flying Spaghetti Monster gets around that particular burden of bad faith being put on Members of Parliament who are atheists, agnostics or just think it's nobody else's damn business what, or even if, they have any religious/spiritual beliefs whatsoever. I'm a devout Catholic and Maori, but I also believe there's a time and place for everything and the beginning of Parliamentary sessions is neither where prayer is concerned.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Alfie,
In the first post-Hager poll, John Key’s popularity has noticeably dropped.
National itself, not so much -- and it looks like the Greens should be a feeling a lot happier than Labour at the moment. Still, on the whole, a poll everyone should be able to furiously spin to their satisfaction.
Party vote
National 50 (down 4.9)
Labour 25.2 (down 1.3)
Greens 13.7 (up 3.8)
NZ First 4.3 (down 0.3)
Maori Party 0.7 (up 0.2)
Mana-Internet 2.1 (down 0.1)
Act 0.6 (up 0.6)
United Future 0.4 (up 0.4)
Conservatives 2.6 (up 1.4)
Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis (down 0.1)Preferred Prime Minister
John Key Nation 64.8 (down 8.5)
David Cunliffe Labour 14.6 (up 4.1)
Winston Peters NZ First 5.1 (down 0.4)
Russel Norman 3.5 Greens (up 1.5)
David Shearer 1.5 Labour (down 0.7)
Helen Clark 1.4 former PM (up 0.9)Seats in the house
National 64
Labour 32
Greens 18
NZ First 0
Internet Mana 3
Maori Party 1
Act 1
United Future 1Based on the assumption that the Maori, Mana, United Future and Act parties keep one seat.
The poll of 750 respondents was conducted between August 14 and 20 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 per cent. On the party vote questions 12.5 per cent were undecided.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to giovanni tiso,
The entirely predictable Listener editorial: “Hager, of course, is no less guilty than Slater of trying to exert influence on the political process.”
Well, yes of course he bloody is. If anyone at The Listener is lurking hereabouts, I can state the blindingly obvious like it's a startlingly new insight into the meaning of life. And I'll lowball whoever is doing it now by at least 5%. My line is open...
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Keir Leslie,
Still, if the Nats are going to run a small target media strategy, they must get that this means there’s going to be a flood of fill-the-vacuum stories — see the pretty minor “Judith Collins names a lane after a mate” story yesterday.
Nah, that dog’s not going to hunt. Someone running a “small target media strategy” doesn’t give anyone else license to run crap stories. I’m sure Fairfax is mightily pissed Whaledump picked up the phone and called The Herald, but thems the breaks. David Fisher gets the byline on those stories, and the NZH takes the "first" bragging rights. You respond by doing better work – and, on the whole, the Waikato Times is a solid provincial paper that’s more than capable of doing exactly that.
And as I’ve said elsewhere and often, it’s better to get the story right rather than right now. The BBC is re-learning that lesson the hard way as we speak, with their Cliff Richard raid scoop sparking quite a backlash.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Keir Leslie,
Snicker. I think that story may be the product of some feverish imaginations.
Yeah -- what's really not at all funny is a newspaper running a front page story whose only on the record source is the Facebook page of some New Zealand First... person. I know everyone wants their own "dirty politics" scoop, but this is just dirty media.