Island Life by David Slack

In terms of the war on terror, who do you think should be the next country to invade? Saudi Arabia? Somebody in the Middle East? Perhaps you're thinking Italy. If you are, you're not alone according to the intrepid reporters of CNNNN who took their microphones to the people of America and reported back the perturbing results.

One person nominated Korea. Why? "They're trouble." What's trouble about them? "Their attitude."

And as if a gathering threat along the Flu Danube isn't trouble enough, now the people of France can factor in the worrying news that certain Americans see their country as the next likely invasion target. Why? "Because there seems to be some friction between the United States and France." Perhaps they'll start by dropping the Statue of Liberty on them from a great height.

You can see the whole sorry spectacle by clicking here.

The clip comes from the ABC's excellent Chaser Non-Stop News Network, and I'm putting it up along with a couple of other links I'll be mentioning on this morning's Chewing the Fat spot on Nine to Noon because it's easier to direct people here than to spell out the links.

We'll also be covering the belligerent Smurfs video, which you can see here, and Kevin Roberts' personal contribution to the war on terror, which is here. The broad topic we're exploring is whether advertising can stop people killing one another. I'm something of a skeptic.

1 Now these are the names of the children of Decision 05, which came unto the living rooms of New Zealand; unto their televisions did they come, unto their radios, their newspapers too, and unto their blogs did they come also.

2 Winston, Helen, Rodney and Peter,

3 Donald and Tariana,

4 Rod and Jeanette, Jon and Pita.

5 And the voters were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the booths were soon to be filled with them.

6 Now there arose up a new kind of voter, which knew not registration, and Exclusive was his name.

7 And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Godzone are more and mightier than we, and they fancy the woman Clark, and the woman Fitzsimons:

8 Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply and it come to pass that there be engineering of a social kind, whereby verily they should make our Brethren to be less Exclusive and perhaps go even unto raves and the parties known as "dance", and even the Dawson known as "Charlotte" may yet return to our television screens.

9 Therefore they did cast amongst the voters pamphlets to set fear amongst them and they did alert the very aged Don to their game and with much notice did they alert him,

10 And yet the aged Don did lose all memory of their meeting, and it did not come back to him for a week, and neither for two weeks.

11 And fully four weeks passed before it came back to him when Noelle did place her fair Irish hand upon his memory gland and coax it yet back unto life.

12 But the more the Brethren did cast amongst the voters pamphlets, the more the questions from the reporters of the left did grow.

13 And they were grieved and did hold a conference of the press.

14 And lo the Brethren of the Exclusive were all dressed in shirts of business and the colour of those shirts was indeed white and they did all present a countenance plump and also dour and of the many thousands of viewers who did see them they could be told apart by only their mother.

15 And they did declare that it would be not for them to vote, but for God to ordain who should win the election: all their service, wherein they did make pamphlets, was in His name.

16 And the King of Radio spake to the leaders of the right, of which the name of the one was Don, and the name of the other Rodney:

17 And he said, When ye do the office of a Prime Minister and these jokers should come unto your front office; I put it to you that it will be unto their bidding that you will govern.

18 But the leaders of the right feared the voters, and said to the King of Radio: let me be perfectly clear about this Paul, we will listen to everyone, and their best did they do to assure the King of Radio that they would be not any person's bitch.

19 And the voters did gather and place their mark upon paper and spoiled were the papers of only a few and fast was the counting of the papers and verily faster yet was the placing of these numbers upon the site of the Interweb

20 And these numbers were not read by the expert from Massey who yet declared: verily the Brethren who did not make a vote shall rejoice tonight for there is coming a mighty victory for the parties led by Men, and there shall be a Prime Minister and his name shall be Don.

21 And the Brethren said unto one another: we can go to bed, for it is 8.15 and that is the hour of the Devil.

22 Yet in the morning, the Brethren did open their Sunday Star Times and did sorely choke upon the spectacle, for the wicked voters of Auckland of the South, where the Brethren did themselves dwell, had recorded their votes for the lot known as "the other."

23 And verily the Brethren did take their ration cards from their wallets and they did see that they were indeed ripped, and asunder were they torn. And they did wail and rend their garments, and the business shirts of white became strewn all about.

24 Therefore God dealt well with the Brethren, and yet they knew it not and fell to their knees crying "What in the name of You is all this carry-on? How in Your name are we supposed to work with this?"

25 And it came to pass that a working group was formed and its number was seven and this was the seven who had become comfortable with the gaze of the media, and all of them were Men, for there was work by Men to be done.

26 And the work of Men was to watch the television to see what did come to pass. And the Men were sore frustrated because the leaders of the parties did meet and go away and talk no more.

27 And the woman known as Helen, and also as caretaker was she known, did go away and even unto Invercargill did she go to watch a motion picture about an Indian who was fast.

28 And even when the motion picture had ended did she say not a word about the formation of a government. And yet the working group did dry to deduce meaning from her words and still they could find no clue, for there was little to be known from the words: "He didn't seem to be going all that fast to me"

29 And the working group did gnash and wail, and it did fidget also as it watched the television for news of negotiations. And even did it yield to temptation, for it did cast its eyes upon the high-rating and critically acclaimed Unauthorised History of New Zealand (Tuesdays at 10.00pm on 2) and often did the arms of the working group rise in indignation and yet neither could the working group bring itself to change the channel.

30 Many days passed in this fashion, and in this fashion did many more days pass, until upon the very moment at which the working group was poised to abandon its struggle, a message was passed to the group by telephone.

31 And the message was good, for it declared: 'The woman Clark has cast a dummy from her mouth, for the woman Turia has required that she arrive for discussions in a limousine and verily she must travel in this limousine lying prone in the rear set, and lying prone in this seat, she must expose herself to the full gaze of the television cameras of TV1 and TV3 and also the TV known as Maori.

32 And the message did continue: "I think you jokers are in. You'd better give Don a ring."

Some weeks, you just get so busy, the news simply rushes by.

From the snatches I've caught, I understand they've announced a bloody good line-up for the Big Day Out including P Diddy who's going to be covered in rock snot. Or was that something else? It's all such a blur.

Even if he's not in the schedule, that's a good looking list. I will be employing my usual Can-You-Let-Me-Through-Right-Now-I'm-Looking-For-My-Daughter line to get a parting of the crowds to get myself front and centre for the White Stripes. Russell can pull off the still-down-with-the kids thing; I see more utility in masquerading at such moments as one of Sir Humphrey's ageing misanthropes.

Meanwhile, if I have it right, our glorious leader is due to announce a new government, although Desperate Don might be making a late bid.

I just place that on record to get things rolling along swiftly towards closure because as soon as you write something like that, they go and announce something that dates it. Full credit, for keeping the game interesting, to your friend and mine, the man who got beaten by a builder with one testicle, Winston Peters.

Look, it's a thin chance, but who knows? He might yet get his tilt at the crown and deliver on the 500 to 1 shot I wrote about in the early days of the election. After that happened, the odds went out to 1000 to 1 and then they stopped taking your money on that bet altogether.

I mention this only because I'm warming up to apologise to anyone who took my investment advice seriously. I was at a function the other night when George Andrews breezed past and muttered something about me owing him 500 dollars. I take it he put a dollar on. George, sorry to have given you a bum steer, and if anyone else is out a dollar, let me know and I'll see if I can't do something to make amends.

Elsewhere in the betting world, I learned to my surprise this morning that there's been an interesting shift on the odds at optimisticpredictions.com. I know this because I was giving a talk about the book of that name, and the nice man who gave the word of thanks ran through some of the odds that were being offered on the site.

Last time I had looked, about two months ago, the odds on "Oil shortage precipitates worldwide depression" were still longer for a "Yes" bet than a "No" bet.

Not any more.

The odds for a $100 bet are now:

YES: $127.46
NO: $464.10

What can have happened?

Again, such a blur in the newspapers. And yet not such a blur that somehow I haven't been made aware of virtually every facet of the ill-fated journey of Birgit Brauer.

I add my support to the protestations of Stephen Judd:

Note to editors: if this nosey parkering is on my behalf, please stop. There's no public interest here that isn't wholly prurient.

I understand this is what sells newspapers, but I wish it didn't.

Americans are reeling this evening at the news that they have, for the last five years, been the unwitting participants in the most elaborate Reality TV show ever produced.

News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch intervened this morning to suspend the show's production, which had successfully installed a bogus President in the White House in 2001. Although the stunt had only been approved by President Gore to run for seven days, its unexpected success had emboldened the show's producers at Fox Television to extend its run fully five years longer.

"A joke's a joke, but stone the crows, the whole thing was getting bloody ridiculous," Murdoch said. "It's one thing to make a bit of money dicking people around, but there was some real suffering on the cards if we let this thing keep going much longer. We might have got offside with the Chinese, and I don't have to draw you a map to tell you what that would have done to our revenues."

The installation of "President" Bush rates as a quantum leap in the degree of malevolence employed by a reality TV show, even by the rapidly deteriorating standards of the genre.

Murdoch conceded that with the benefit of hindsight, he might have stepped in sooner to end the production as it spiralled out of control, however he vigorously defended the initial decision to stage such an elaborate deception of the American people.

"We could see that the game was on as soon as the Fox News numbers started to lift. Anyone who could swallow that stuff was clearly not the full quid. The obvious next question was: what else might they fall for?"

"The Big Brother crap was working well in the dimwit teenage demographic, but we couldn't see any reason why you couldn't get a much wider chunk of the audience sucked in with the right story. What we didn't count on was that people would stay clueless for so long."

Despite his protestations that the corporation had done little wrong, the ageing media magnate was clearly uncomfortable at the indignation that erupted almost instantaneously at the announcement, although his hastily convened press conference was punctuated with occasional hilarity as Murdoch recounted the catalogue of failures that punctuated the bogus presidency.

"The bloke was obviously miles out of his depth from the very beginning. Talk about your idiot son. He manages to tank one perfectly good business after another, he only ever gets out of trouble by getting the family to pull strings, and he somehow never manages to strike oil in Texas. There was no way he wasn't going to make a colossal balls-up of the job if you were stupid enough to put him in the White House."

Brandishing a popular item of viral internet humour, Murdoch recited from a list of major disasters of the Bush administration, noting those which had been ticked and those which were yet to come.

"I don't know how they got hold of copyright material from the Fox Studios, but as you can see, they thought the whole thing was a joke. Well it wasn't. That's the script, and as you can see, they'd worked all the way down from Abu Graib to Katrina."

"If you thought the flood was bad, you should see what was coming with the locusts. Full credit to the production people - they really pulled out all of the stops, but locusts, I mean, really. Have you seen what those things can do? Shame we won't be able to make a buck off the Osama-Jenna tape, but."

Murdoch said that the constitutional and legal ramifications were "nothing to get too excited about".

"We've got the same team that sorts out our broadcasting licences working on it. They reckon everything can be put back to where it was before the show started by the close of business on Friday, and Al Gore can start his first term on Monday."

Media commentators say they doubt that any outrage will harm the long-term prospects for News Corporation.

"What this tells you is that Murdoch has everyone's nuts in a much tighter vice than we ever thought," said Wall Street Journal commentator Hiram Firam. "Do you have any idea how many organs of government had to look the other way to let this happen? This guy has serious influence for a man who only became a US citizen in late middle age."

Firam projected a sharp upturn in business confidence. "Bush was starting to look real tricky. People are just relieved that someone else finally has the football."

In a day of remarkable revelations, however, one surprising element of the sensational disclosure caught everyone by surprise. Responding to questions about the future of "Ann Coulter", Murdoch disclosed that the "world's scariest neocon" was not in fact a fabrication of the Fox network. "Wouldn't have a clue where she came from, mate," Murdoch said. "All I can tell you is that even for Fox, making up a person like that would have been a bridge too far."

If you were to take all the old 1-inch tape at TVNZ and spool it out, they say there’d be enough to get you to Australia and back. Maybe much further, in fact.

On that tape, you’ll find images of a younger New Zealand: possibly less groovy and dangerous, but appealing nonetheless, in its own innocent way. In fashion terms, the footage will take you all the way from mullet to mutton chop, shoulder pads to walk shorts. You’ll see Billy T James, probably, and perhaps Phil Warren. Yards of Muldoon and Lange, no doubt. Richard and Judy’s first news broadcast, would be in there somewhere, I daresay.

If you’ve been enjoying The Unauthorised History of New Zealand, you’ll be only too aware how much fun it can be to rummage amongst the archival footage and find everything from the Shah of Iran to Angela d’Audney’s breasts.

So how much value would you put on preserving this stuff? How much would you be willing to pay to keep those golden memories in a safe place, ready for hauling out whenever you wanted to look at them?

Well, according to a slightly concerned source I spoke to last night, that is a question we might want to answer quite soon. Apparently TVNZ has miles of footage on one inch tape that is about to fall victim to technological obsolescence. The tape’s in fine condition, but before long, there won’t be any compatible equipment left to play it. How long is “before long”? A year or so, possibly.

It would be, to put it mildly, unfortunate to miss the chance to transfer it to a new medium. My source guesses that it might cost you a million or so to do the job, when you tot up the cost of equipment and the person hours it would be likely to require.

So: how to fund it? Well, they’ve just freed up 800,000.

Alternatively, though, why not pitch this as an opportunity to a savvy advertising agency? They could get one of their clients to come charging in as the cavalry and put up the money to save the archival footage. In return, they could get first dibs on the material for their ad campaigns.

This, of course, is not thinking like an ad man. If I were thinking like an ad man I’d be saying “let’s offer to buy the stuff from TVNZ”. But that would be wrong in so many ways, I can scarcely believe I’ve put the idea into circulation.