Hard News: The Honours
265 Responses
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3410,
I suppose many see Myers' "honour" as an indicitive of New Zealand's wacky moral compass; problem drunks are bad, drunk-drivers practically evil, but the dealer just an honest businessman (except for illegal drug dealers, which are even worse than those in the first two categories.)
It's all in how you look at it, really. If you take a "personal responsibility" approach, then Myers has not contributed to untold societal pain and cost. Rather, thousands and thousands of people have merely failed to exercise good personal responsibility in their use of his product.
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I wouldn't give Peter Jackson a silver tea spoon on the basis of the miserably over-rated (but massively successful) LoTR trilogy, but obviously someone begs to differ.
I'd give it to him for establishing the best post-production and effects facilities in the southern hemisphere, and being clever enough to keep them busy and profitable -- but not too busy to find time for little independent producers, and public-good work.
I think sometimes people forget how remarkable that all is.
When you factor in the way the Middle-Earth thing delivered for NZ tourism, Jackson has delivered richly to his country of birth. Much more than Myers, Owen Glenn or the others.
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I'd give it to him for establishing the best post-production and effects facilities in the southern hemisphere, and being clever enough to keep them busy and profitable -- but not too busy to find time for little independent producers, and public-good work.
And so would I, also I'm not merely being perverse in saying Heavenly Creatures is not only the best New Zealand film ever, but wins PJ slack on the artistic front he's still to exhaust. (Seriously, The Lovely Bones wasn't great but it wasn't that bad either. Saoirse Ronan in an incredibly young actress who owned a surprising hammy Susan Sarandon.)
Anyway, my point was that when comes to people in the arts you can bitch and carp your face off. I'd personally like someone to go round to Witi Ihimaera's house and confiscate his NZOM. British threatre/film director Nicholas Hytner richly deserves his knighthood this year, but can't miss the little irony that his latest collaboration with Alan Bennett, The Habit of Art, opened to surprisingly cool reviews and audiences. And Sir Jean-Luc Picard raised some rather graceless sniggers, and charges of cronyism given that Stewart is a very high profile supporter of the British Labour Party.
But what the hell. As I said way up thread, I tend to treat honours like Oscar nominations -- you're inevitably going to get some "who did he blow to get that?" moments along with the wholly expected names and irritation at the inexplicable absences. It's fun to snark, but not really worth getting too bent out of shape about.
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When you factor in the way the Middle-Earth thing delivered for NZ tourism, Jackson has delivered richly to his country of birth. Much more than Myers, Owen Glenn or the others.
Is it safe to have liked the LTOR franchise round here? I mean there were periods, long periods, where my yawn was in serious danger of swallowing my head, but overall, I found it highly entertaining.
Peter Jackson; yes worthy, IMhO. And for all the reasons Russell said as well.
I'm becoming increasingly disinclined to mention the smug recipients of honours we have extensively covered in this thread, and yes I acknowledge my guilt in this. They must be laughing their self-satisfied, ingratiated heads off.
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Now a Baptist theologian in the Herald tells us Myers may have helped deliver the valued sense of danger that young women have been missing due to PC parenting. Bless.
Many of these young women come from middle-class homes where they were brought up on a diet of safety.
...For many of these young women, binge-drinking is not about alcohol or simply getting "pissed". Rather, it is about creating dangerous situations where they don't know what will happen next.
Drinking sessions are for them a high-wire act, full of exhilarating fear and unanswered questions. Will they survive the night? What will happen to them? Where will they be in the morning and who with?
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Danielle, if by moral you mean a responsibility to other people in society not to squander precious resources on binge drinking, then yes, moral.
Woah, Dyan. Would you deliver the same sermon to, say, HIV victims? They cost heaps. Fact is, people don't always make good choices.
Russell, I'm still waiting on a reply to this. This is a pretty big leap, don't you think? How do we get from me saying individuals have a moral responsibility not to squander precious health resources on binge drinking to me sermonising to either HIV+ or AIDS patients who need medical assistance?
I'm still defending my position that it is morally reprehensible to waste precious resources - whether this means health budgets, very limited supplies of clean donor organs or police time and resources.
To sell the pastime of binge drinking to young people in general, and women in particular and try to make the very excesses and the expensive problems that ensue part of the identity of young people themselves is nothing short of insane. And it is increasingly a strain on an already stretched public health service.
@Steven -
Are you not talking about the higher rates of alcohol related male suicides, imprisonments and undiagnosed depression than women?
I was referring specifically to the cohort of alcoholics - and in that group, more women alcoholics have a mental illness than do alcoholic men.
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"cotton-wool kids"
Being a father of three of these young women who will, it seems, inevitably chose binge drinking as a chosen rights of passage, this makes me want to throw things at mirrors.
Yes at times our protectionist approach borders on obsession, and perhaps if this really is the unavoidable future, we may have to reassess. But who the hell is this guy telling us to change the way we parent our kids?
'Yes, you can go play in the park unsupervised. That paedophile hasn't been seen in this area for a while, and those kids drinking and setting fire to beer boxes under their car, you just go right ahead and ignore them'.
Oh yeah, the world has changed. Damn, I was wondering what century we were in. Or should that be what millennium?
Note to self. Don't write angry posts when your heart rate is still over 120 after reading mind-numbing Herald Opinions.
PS Or don't read Herald Opinions. Sacha, can you include NSFMCFOOC (Not Safe for Middle Class Fathers of Over-protected Children) as a warning next time please ;-)
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Dyan, I'm still waiting for a response to my crticism that you confounded binge drinking and alcoholism. Or my comment that people should comment with some compassion for the groups they're talking about and not be quite so judgy-pants.
And it boggles me why you can't see what Russell is saying. Your criticism about them (binge drinkers and/or alcoholics) taking livers away from Decent People can be applied to any health problem that is the result of something people have done voluntarily. Hence people who have contracted AIDS through risky sexual behaviours. Wouldn't there also be a 'moral responsibility' to not 'squander' health resources on people who indulge in unhealthy sexual, sporting or eating practices, or is it only people who indulge in unhealthy drinking practices you find "morally reprehensible"? I genuinely can't see the difference you can see.
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I was referring specifically to the cohort of alcoholics
A cohort which is still three-quarters men.
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3410,
Rites of passage, as in "ritual".
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This is a pretty big leap, don't you think? How do we get from me saying individuals have a moral responsibility not to squander precious health resources on binge drinking to me sermonising to either HIV+ or AIDS patients who need medical assistance?
OK, if he can be bothered Russell is quite capable of explaining/defending himself. But I know HIV-positive people, and Russell's right: Living with HIV "squanders precious health resources" at a rate of knots. On one end, effective specialised palliative care or ongoing counselling/advice doesn't get done on the cheap. Anti-retroviral drugs aren't M&Ms either, though when we're going through expensive wee fistfuls every day you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
And to be honest, I've stayed away from this argument because I'm really grateful that that the counselling and on-going support that helped get me sober and stay there, didn't come with a load of moralistic bullshit attached. Might also have been more cost effective to just let me bleed to death when I attempted suicide twenty three years back.
It's really far too early in the year to get my grumpy on, so I'd like to thank all you taxpayers out there for "squandering precious resources" on keeping this alkie nutter alive, and a productive and (more or less)functional contributor to the tax base.
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Aghh, damn it. Told you I shouldn't post in anger, or when multi-tasking. My editorial board (that is board not bored aye?) is on annual leave, which is what I will be, after this...
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Apropos of businessman and knighthoods, here's ARD Fairburn:
Once a jolly fishmonger, sitting on a heap of guts,
Said to his wife, 'Oh my dear wife,' said he,
'We've made lots of money, now it's time to make the Honours List —
Who'll come a-hunting a knighthood with me?' -
Dyan, I'm still waiting for a response to my crticism that you confounded binge drinking and alcoholism.
Sorry Emma, I did conflate binge drinkers with alcoholics in the quote of mine you selected, which you are right to correct.
Not all binge drinkers become alcoholics - but they are 500% more likely to become alcoholics.
The point I was trying to make was that every episode of binge drinking costs us in terms of health dollars, police resources.
In the case of alcohol induced liver disease now taking up 25% of all donor livers (this is UK data - but changes in demographics in drinking are global and being tracked with great interest by epidemiologists) this is a huge strain on limited resources than can't simply be bought with money.
Nowhere did I suggest addicts, alcoholics or HIV+ / AIDS patients should be denied medical assistance or organ transplants. (The exception where I do think medical assistance should be denied is to HIV+ and women with AIDS who want IVF treatment funded.)
Or my comment that people should comment with some compassion for the groups they're talking about and not be quite so judgy-pants.
Why is is a lack of compassion to say that people in society have a responsibility not to waste precious health resources and police time binge drinking?
And it boggles me why you can't see what Russell is saying. Your criticism about them (binge drinkers and/or alcoholics) taking livers away from Decent People can be applied to any health problem that is the result of something people have done voluntarily. Hence people who have contracted AIDS through risky sexual behaviours.
Someone who is HIV+ or has AIDS is already sick, so I don't see how their situation is comparable to someone who is in perfectly good health who drinks to the point that they require an ambulance, the attention of clinicians, often an ICU bed and the care of an ICU specialist - often they later need the attention of a gastroenterologist - not to mention the things the poor orderlies and janitors have to do. This is expensive and irresponsible.
I didn't say we should refuse these people medical care - and I do believe we should try to understand what motivates a big chunk of society to suddenly behave differently than that demographic did a generation earlier.
Danielle's introduction of the word "moral" was initially just to observe an emerging "moral panic" angle in the media, involving the huge jump in alcohol consumption by young women. And I answered that I did believe if we make a choice to behave irresponsibly in society and the consequences of that behaviour cost other members of society, then yes we can certainly frame those choices in a moral context.
Wouldn't there also be a 'moral responsibility' to not 'squander' health resources on people who indulge in unhealthy sexual, sporting or eating practices, or is it only people who indulge in unhealthy drinking practices you find "morally reprehensible"? I genuinely can't see the difference you can see.
Not all HIV/AIDS patients become infected because of reckless behaviour - though there is no moral judgement applied when they do. Rather there is a specific branch of psychiatric care that is extended to individuals (and yes, they exist) who deliberately infect themselves with HIV, and once HIV+ try to re-infect themselves with as many strains of HIV as possible. This isn't good, but no moral judgement is made of their behaviour - rather it points to a cluster of psychological problems that have to be treated along with the physical.
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Apropos of businessman and knighthoods, here's ARD Fairburn:
This would be the same ARD Fairburn who greeted the creation of the State Literary Fund with this:
When I was but a young boy,
I learnt at my father's knee:
The mushroom grows in the open,
The toadstool under the tree.I think you could save a lot of space in a literary history of New Zealand by listing the people Fairburn didn't sink his teeth into, sooner or later. (Though the rupture of his once close friendship with Frank Sargeson is not pretty to behold.)
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It's really far too early in the year to get my grumpy on, so I'd like to thank all you taxpayers out there for "squandering precious resources" on keeping this alkie nutter alive, and a productive and (more or less)functional contributor to the tax base.
Craig, I'm also very grateful you were kept alive (if only to keep me on my toes on PAS in both literary and sociological forums!) and in no way is this kind of treatment you describe "squandering precious resources".
I used the phrase "squandering precious resources" when referring to perfectly well young people who drink to the point of requiring medical attention without any concept that this might be wasteful or that their care is a frustrating and ultimately useless way to spend the time and money NZ allocates to health spending.
In the case of alcoholics who need liver transplants - while I do think they should certainly qualify for organ transplants - I am horrified to think how much longer the list of those waiting for organs is than those who will get them. And I am even more horrified to see that the demand has increased because of alcohol consumption more than any other thing.
But in the case of alcoholics who are given transplants, but are unable to stop drinking and progress on to further alcohol related disease and organ failure - yes, I think it would be squandering precious resources to give them a 2nd healthy donor liver.
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Well, I'm sure the Fat Police don't think anyone in the dairy sector is honour-worthy due to their trafficing in obesity and death.
Well I don't know that raising cows and milking them quite rates an honour, but from a nutritional point of view most dairy products are just fine. Wonderful even.
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But in the case of alcoholics who are given transplants, but are unable to stop drinking and progress on to further alcohol related disease and organ failure - yes, I think it would be squandering precious resources to give them a 2nd healthy donor liver.
Which is setting up something of a straw organ argument, because I'm not aware of any place where George Best wannabes are going to find themselves at the top of a transplant waiting list in this or any other life time.
Look, there's always going to be arguments around allocation of scarce resources in health. But even if you don't want to start dividing folks into the deserving and undeserving unwell, and rationing health care accordingly, plenty of people do.
And it takes no time at all before that starts going places that I hope no society with any pretensions to civilization will ever follow.
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Which is setting up something of a straw organ argument, because I'm not aware of any place where George Best wannabes are going to find themselves at the top of a transplant waiting list in this or any other life time.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by George Best Wannabes - but liver transplants are given to anyone who needs them - including alcoholics and addicts.
I have not participated in any bioethics or medical ethics committees here in NZ, but certainly in Canada and most developed countries, organs go to all physically suitable candidates.
There are ethical issues posed by the danger of relapse into alcoholism though, and there are limits as to how effective a transplant is going to be in someone who is gravely ill.
In the case of anyone who is not likely to survive with their new organ, they are not going to be given that organ.
The disease of alcoholism is very hard to overcome, even after hepatic failure and a transplant, which is why specific ethical guidelines must be met to qualify as a candidate for a donated organ. In other words, the alcoholic is assessed for how likely they will be able to give up alcohol (partly judged on how well they abstain in the months prior to their transplant) and partly on how messed up the rest of their health is.
From the following quote you will see the problem ethics committees have with alcoholics getting livers is not so much do they deserve them, but will they survive if they get them. If they are so sick they are not likely to survive or if they have been unable to stop drinking while waiting on a transplant list, then there is no other way to see a healthy liver transplanted into their bodies as anything but a waste of precious resources.
Liver Transplantation for Alcoholic Liver Disease
Alcohol affects many organ systems in addition to the liver. For example, as described alcohol abuse can lead to:
Damage of the heart muscles (i.e., cardiomyopathy) and skeletal muscles (i.e., skeletal myopathy).
Inflammation of the pancreas (i.e., pancreatitis).
Malnutrition.
Central and peripheral nervous system dysfunction.
“Soft” bones that lack minerals for stability (i.e., osteopenia/osteoporosis).
Cancers of the airways and digestive tract.
These conditions, particularly if they are severe, can complicate the management of patients with ALD (alcoholic liver disease) both before and after OLT (orthoptic liver transplantation) and some may even be contraindications for OLT (Keeffe 1997).
However, some of these alcohol–induced conditions (e.g., cardiomyopathy and acute pancreatitis) can be reversed by abstinence, and when such a reversal occurs, these conditions do not affect the decision on a patient’s suitability for a transplant.
This is in the USA I believe, but you will find comparable guidelines in most western countries. You'll note the fear of wasting a good liver is not so much a judgement of whether the candidate "deserves" it, but whether they will actually survive as a result of the transplant.
But even if you don't want to start dividing folks into the deserving and undeserving unwell, and rationing health care accordingly, plenty of people do.
This debate began not over the deserving and undeserving unwell, but over the well who make themselves unwell.
There are very few people in medical circles who would like to see medical care withheld from individuals who set fire to themselves because of something they saw on Jackass or who get so sick from recreational drinking they wind up in a medically induced coma, requiring incredibly expensive ICU care. But there are equally few who would see this as something that is not wasteful.
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To sell the pastime of binge drinking to young people in general, and women in particular and try to make the very excesses and the expensive problems that ensue part of the identity of young people themselves is nothing short of insane.
I'm all for banning advertising of alcohol, but can I just say that binge drinking predates advertising by a couple of millennia, give or take, and that maybe - just maybe - in its current incarnation it's actually the byproduct of something healthy and positive, from a societal standpoint? Smoking and drinking used to be less acceptable in women than men, because being deputised to protect the morality of the whole of society was part of the place that women had to be kept in. Now young women are increasingly being told that they have the same options as their penis-endowed counterparts, and guess what, that includes getting hammered. It's part of the price that society pays for equality, and also for its near-pathological desire for orderliness. You may wish for every citizen to be well-adjusted, productive and health-conscious, but it's just not how it works I'm afraid. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want it that way, either.
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over the well who make themselves unwell.
For the categories we were discussing before (AIDS, sporting injuries, diet-related illnesses, smoking) ALL those people were well before they made themselves unwell.
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Apart from the woman who got AIDS via a transfusion in Philadelphia, helpfully inserted in the film to show what a guiltless person with AIDS looks like.
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Someone who is HIV+ or has AIDS is already sick, so I don't see how their situation is comparable to someone who is in perfectly good health who drinks to the point that they require an ambulance, the attention of clinicians, often an ICU bed and the care of an ICU specialist - often they later need the attention of a gastroenterologist - not to mention the things the poor orderlies and janitors have to do. This is expensive and irresponsible.
But before they were HIV+, that person almost certainly made a choice -- IV drug use or unprotected sex -- that left them needing lifetime care. Their judgement may have been compromised when they made that choice -- but exactly the same is true of the inexperienced teen drinker who lost the plot and needed her stomach pumped.
I completely accept what you say, that in aggregate, the public health problems of excessive alcohol consumption are alarming. But to some extent that's a function of scale. If young people were charging around infecting each other with HIV at the rate at which they binge-drink, it'd be way worse. (In a sense, we've already seen a small version of it, in the baby-boomer Hep C epidemic. That's costing a lot and putting people on the liver transplant list.)
I made the comparison because I know you're a deeply compassionate person, and have worked with HIV+ and AIDS people. You wouldn't go all fiscal on them, and I'm not sure it's the right thing to do to other young people who make shitty choices.
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Hmmm... I think it's perfectly possible to make a moral judgement that someone is negligent, or wasteful, and at the same time give that person the same access to medical care as everyone who is not negligent, or wasteful. It's just very, very difficult to do.
By analogy, you see some kid on hir skateboard, doing risky stuff, and zie falls off, injuring hirself badly. I'm quite capable of saying to myself, "Bloody stupid thing to do, kid", and at the same time racing over to give whatever help I can. My guess is that most people have very much the same reaction. I think that Dyan is asking us to extend that type of reaction to the slow-motion crashes of binge-drinking and the like. Of course it's a damn-fool thing to do, and now that you have made a damn fool of yourself, what can we do to help?
It could be helpful to think in terms of "stupid thing to do" rather than "stupid person".
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I made the comparison because I know you're a deeply compassionate person, and have worked with HIV+ and AIDS people. You wouldn't go all fiscal on them, and I'm not sure it's the right thing to do to other young people who make shitty choices.
But however compassionate I may or may not be Russell, I am acutely aware of how tired people with small budgets and busy emergency rooms resent the growing abdication of personal responsibility for health and safety. And while I am sympathetic to the dumb kids who drink to the point of risking their lives, I don't see any problem with addressing them directly with the information that their decisions have costs. Fiscal costs, personal costs, physical costs. Actually I don't think alcohol advertising should be banned, but I do think we should bring the role of the liquor industry lobby into the discussion we have with young people.
Nowhere have I suggested medical care should be withheld, nor do I believe it. But I have a hard time equating someone who needs skin grafts because they jumped over a burning sofa with someone who has contracted a disease. And I am horrified to see how quickly this sort of drinking is rising around the world, but fascinated to see the scrambling response by health agencies internationally. They haven't got a lot of money but there is a huge, concerted international effort by health agencies to tackle the alcohol lobby head on.
It's interesting, and it is a version of what went down between tobacco industries and society in the 60s and 70s.
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