Posts by Craig Ranapia
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Sacha,
RNZ notes that development. Smart leadership from one person, at least.
Jesus, give it a bloody rest. Seriously. Nice gesture from David Cunliffe, and full credit, but if you wouldn’t have had something nasty to say about the Prime Minister “snubbing” the Leader of the Opposition at an occasion that should be absolutely non-partisan plenty would have lining up. I know Key just can’t catch a break around here, but try.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Chris Waugh,
He doesn’t give a date for this incident, but it would seem to be some time in 1917, as it happened when he was being shipped off to the First World War.
Well, my father (who happened to support the Tour) didn't have to go to South Africa to experience that kind of racism. He got it in Wellington, in the fifties, when he and his (white) wife were told "we don't rent to your sort." More than once. It was a little more subtle than the 'No Dogs. No Blacks. No Irish' signs he saw in the windows of boarding houses in London a few years before, but I can understand why it was a hair he didn't want to split very far.
Dad didn't have the luxury of missing the irony of well-intentioned people who were very long sighted about institutional and casual racism on the other side of the world (be it in South Africa or below the Mason-Dixon Line) but in their own backyard? Not quite so much.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Sacha,
It’s us the guy is lying to
I defer to your superior mind-reading skills but, for the last time ever (promise) there's a time and place. Being a dick over someone else's funeral is something I lost my appetite for the day I was told I wasn't welcome at my grandmother's unless I came alone.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Russell Brown,
By the same token, I do believe Key’s 1981 amnesia is fair game for comment and mockery.
Yeah, and there’s such a thing as a time and place for all things under heaven. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that when our incumbent head of state passes beyond the veil, New Zealand may well be represented at the state funeral by a kinda-sorta-but-not-really republican Prime Minister. I’ll roll my eyes, but restrain the urge to be a total dick over a funeral.
He set up the ” Truth and Reconciliation Commission”. Not the “Nothing to See Here” Commission.
The first word was not superfluous. Forgiveness is for those who regret, not those who rewrite.
And perhaps,Simon, when it comes to Nelson Mandela in particular or the people of South Africa in general "forgiveness" of any kind is not yours to give or withhold.
-
I'm rather fond of "selfie" because it is never, ever going to stop making me giggle like a dirty-minded infant.
-
I really hope there’s a heaven in which Mandela is laughing his arse off at the spectacle of the internet playing moral bouncer at his memorial service.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to BenWilson,
if a National government would invite the most famous figurehead of our own resistance to Apartheid
I don’t think this is the time or place, but it would be interesting to tease out the irony of that “most famous figurehead” being… well, a white man, and what (if anything) that might say about the nature and biases of the media-political complex -- and whether that much has really changed since 1981.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to anth,
[Redacted due to unnecessary and unhelpful levels of snark.]
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Lorde's Mixtape, in reply to Russell Brown,
Can’t help but think how amazing it will be if she plays that show as a Grammy winner.
Jet-lagged and partied out! What could be more rawk 'n' rule than that? :)
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Hebe,
What does it say to South Africans? We’ll send to the funeral of your Gandhi those who supported the Tour, those who cannot remember whether they supported it or not, but we can’t find the space for one of the figureheads of the movement that helped tip over the regime that ruled so inhumanely.
Well, perhaps the presence of a former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, the leader of the Opposition in a stable pluralistic democracy and a Maori minister of the Crown might say a little more than you might think but I don’t know. And neither do you, when we get right down to it. But it might also serve some people to remember that this party is representing this country to pay respects to a man who personally invited his jailers to his presidential inauguration – something, to be frank, I’m not so sure I could have done at all.