Yellow Peril: My black heart bleeds
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Reliance on another for a vicarious sense of worth is bad news for both ends of the relationship.
Yeah, but can find the same sort of thing in political parties and their followers. All the political junkies feeling smugly superior will be wailling and nashing their teeth if their heros lose at the next election. Conspiracies will surface, accusations of cheating and foul play will abound - and the rugby fans will shrug.
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Oh, and I haven't written about the response that has angered me most (well, alongside Deaker) this week -- the disgraceful and persistent vandalism on Wikipedia -- because I've covered it in my Listener column, which is in the next issue.
Well, I'm thinking twice about covering lthe response that angered me most in my PA Radio piece this week, because it really comes across as... well, it's really quite unnerving what a deep and angry nerve it opened up in me.
In a weird way what really pissed me off about it, is that I don't expect any better from Murray Deaker or his audience. Ditto for arse-hat Wiki-vandals. But Anton Oliver is supposed to be quite a smart, thoughtful chap (and with quite a nice arse if that painting is accurate), and that blurt was anything but.
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Now if only we'd heard of it. The Booker Prize I've heard of, but who or what is "the Man..."?
Investment company lMan Group became the 'title sponsor' of the Prize in 2002, after Booker-McConnell pulled out but I think they decided not to rename it 'the Man Prize' because (pardon the marketing-speak) The Booker was such a strong brand.
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Something's hapenning here, catch up guys.
Nice. I'm really, really pleased for the players that they could find that when the came off the plane.
Although the radio report suggested that there were one or two tragic individuals who turned up to boo the returning players ...
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A spontaneous haka also broke out from among fans and was warmly appreciated by the 17 players
You know things are gonna be all right when there's a spontaneous haka.
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The welcome became so boisterous that a policeman had to be stationed on the shoulder of Dan Carter to ensure the All Blacks' playmaker wasn't overwhelmed.
Now I have an image of a policeman literally on Dan Carter's shoulders, perhaps unbuttoning his shirt to flash another player.
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You know things are gonna be all right when there's a spontaneous haka.
i had to laugh at that. i thought the word should have been "obligatory" haka.
blimmin new zealanders haka at the drop of a hat.
i did one this very morning, when the guy at the cart got my expresso out in double-quick time.
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Now I have an image of a policeman literally on Dan Carter's shoulders, perhaps unbuttoning his shirt to flash another player.
Is that the policeman from the Village People?
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i did one this very morning, when the guy at the cart got my expresso out in double-quick time.
How good does the coffee have to be before you'll haul out Kapa o Pango?
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merc,
Aw Russell always looking for a good copy line for the sponsors...and that may be a good one for Karajoz...I say nothing.
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How good does the coffee have to be before you'll haul out Kapa o Pango?
good point. might have to learn it.
if the crema is sweet, and the beans leave a faint aftertaste of chocolate, i just might have to improvise.
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More musing, not directed at anyone in particular. The thing is that although I do care, I am not insistent that others care. Feel free not to care, it's no skin off my nose. I am also vaguely uncomfortable with certain aspects of the 'cult' myself. And yes, of course, it's all much less important than so many other things, I know, I know. I do know all that.
But... the schadenfreude. I have plenty of friends who don't care - I'm a white upper-middle-class woman in Auckland who hangs around with twee, arts types - but only a few don't have the empathy gene, and those few are making me a little upset this week. Again, I am probably a hippy and you can all mock and scorn me, but in some ways I feel that someone who spends the time to publicly say they're 'amused' when the ABs lose is kind of indirectly being mean to my nice old Grandad. In other words, not all - or even the majority - of the fans are crazy morons to whom you can unthinkingly feel superior. (It's - possibly unconsciously - a rather classist smugness, in any case.)
Rugby has, historically, for New Zealand, signified many things for over a century. Both good things, and bad things (colonial difference, masculinity, racism, multiculturalism, professionalism...). And of course it's arguable that it's signified too much. But being horrible about the people who enjoy it doesn't help our national identity to become more well-rounded. There are other ways to do that, and I'm sure most of us are already involved in them.
(You should probably also note that I am such a fucking dork that I just got all verklempt at the New Zealand Herald story on the welcome home. So... ignore me.)
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Would you good folk who talk about "a nation in mourning" and "4 million people" bewailing our apparent loss of a small war in Europe, mind deducting from that number my household, and the Scottish and Chinese friends who visited us on Sunday (all having held New Zealand passports for forty years)?
We offered anthems of thanksgiving. New Zealand AND Australian rugby hopes having been dashed simultaneously meant that we could hold a vain hope of once again watching television (even SKY news) , turning on the radio etc without being earbashed by endless blatherskite and chestbeating about our supermen, our natural superiority, our moral stupendousness, our-god-given invincibility etc etc ad nauseam.
It's not that we hate rugby. Quite the reverse. We just despise the way it has been used as a vehicle by big business to conjure up phony jingoism, line pockets, provide pill-free Viagra for the masses, and supplant real news. We loathe the obsession with it that turns this country into a nation of bores.
There are better things we could be doing with the time. And we might even be better at them.
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speaking of Kapa o Pango - with all the talk of it being the haka for this squad, their stake in the ground of rugby history and all that, will it now be retired?
most of the fullas will be packing for their playing OEs and it's more than likely the coaching team will be replaced, so whither new haka?
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Is the policeman in the Village People?
Well it is Christchurch!
in some ways I feel that someone who spends the time to publicly say they're 'amused' when the ABs lose is kind of indirectly being mean to my nice old Grandad.
And in some ways I feel like your nice old Grandad is making presumptions on my feelings that I really don't appreciate.
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<quoteThere are better things we could be doing with the time.</quote>
and there could be worse. rugby is a better outlet for male agression and tribalism than many alternatives.
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And in some ways I feel like your nice old Grandad is making presumptions on my feelings that I really don't appreciate.
Hey, my Grandad isn't the one being presumptious. *I* am. Additionally, I'm not trying to be confrontational here *at all*. Seriously.
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Schadenfreude? Guilty as charged.
I put up with years of abuse at school for having the temerity to play an instrument, practise it, and be uninterested in sport. I am not being mean to your granddad, but to my erstwhile peers who had such a narrow conception of made a worthy human being.
I feel some sympathy, but permit me a little gloating. The sportlovers are still on top in this country and no doubt always will be.
Also, everything daleaway said. Yes indeed.
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My grandfather was just a metaphor for people in our lives who might care about something that we think is stupid - but we're still nice to them about it, because they're our family or our friends and we don't want to make them feel bad. You know? I'll just shut up about him now.
I never received any years of abuse for not liking rugby - and I actively hated it for the first 25 years of my life. But I am a woman. So perhaps my attitude to this is not as informed as it might be if I had the Y chromosome. And I think it is horrible to be tormented for difference at school - I agree that if people are being hassled for not liking rugby, of course that needs to change. That's not cool.
Trying to be really, really reasonable here. :)
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And you're doing really well, Danielle.
Does anyone else feel that the more loud and murderous the haka, the thicker the layer of egg on the face of a team which talks themselves up big before the match then subsequently loses?
I think the winning team should then have the option of delivering a post-match unanimous Nelson-style "HA-ha!"
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Trying to be really, really reasonable here.
And you are. Perhaps now isn't the best time to complain at how... oppressive rugby can feel in this country. But that's how it is. I know a more well-adjusted person wouldn't care, but I can't be that person all the time.
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I could definitely get behind the Nelson 'HA-ha'. Whom do we approach to get that written into the rules?
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There may well have been a rise in domestic violence after the All Blacks lost, but my understanding is that there was likely to have been a greater rise in the ABs had actually won. All those millions who had had their manhood affirmed, and wouldn't take no for an answer (according to my preferred interpretation).
There certainly have been studies done overseas on televised sports and violence, but it's been too many years for me to reference you anything. As for NZ statistics, I know that there are some but disappointingly few. I recall meeting a couple of years ago a woman interning(?) with Preventing Violence in the Home, Auckland, who was constructing on a basic list of all women who had been murdered in DV incidents over recent years.
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And let me vote in favour of our anthem. We may have the least nationalistic anthem ever.
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There are better things we could be doing with the time.
Please feel free to come down from the mountain, oh Emissary of The Lord, and Announce unto us peasants His Will in the Ways of Better Things and What We May Do. We are ill-educated idiots who grave your radiant wisdom.
We may have the least nationalistic anthem ever.
This would be the anthem about how blessed we are by God? Religious and nationalistic superiority in one go!
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the anthem about how blessed we are by God?
No, the New Zealand one - the one grovelling for God's favour.
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