Winston Peters. Winston Peters. Winston Peters. Like everyone else, I can't stop talking about Winston Peters! Winston Peters!
He really has been having a tough time with the media at the moment, with SST's Anthony Hubbard's explicitly putting him on trial, even. It's a great read, but although it was insightful, sharp, pointed, and applied forcefully in a downward, stabbing manner, it was like a silver sword through a vampire's chest - it went in, you saw it go in, but somehow, it just didn't do the damage it was supposed to.
I've seen - and been wowed - by Winston in front of a live audience. The Winston doesn't take form unless he is being watched, but when he is - whether it's an audience of thousands, hundreds, or a dozen - his powers grow as he feeds off the attention. My hypothesis is that Peters is only vulnerable when he transforms into The Winston, and he is hit with a massive dose of public humiliation. Or delta radiation.
Or not. He's in politics for the love, for the status, for the glory - especially the glory of being persecuted. The more he's being attacked, the more he feeds off it and grow stronger. Perhaps one more blast from the media's Why-Do-You-Keep-Lying-to-Us Ray will finish him off? No, he just soaks it up.
I thought the delta rays were finally getting to him in his interview on Agenda. Hell, he actually got flustered! Usually, whenever he is stumped for an answer, he just bellows outs "I WINSTON! MEDIA WRONG!", and by sheer force of will manages to make everyone else seem wrong. In this interview, he stumbled at even this - though it was only a temporary lapse.
To Winston's credit, though, the odds were well-stacked against him. Garth Bray was good on the attack, but he was also flanked by The Scientist (Jonathon Boston) and The Overcompensatingly-Angry Heroine (Gillian Bradford from ABC). Having the journos tag-team Winston was a bit unsporting, and to some extent counterproductive, too.
I thought that sharpest, most piercing observation came from Boston:
The issue that concerned me yesterday was the statement by his deputy leader that New Zealand First was an opposition party not a government party. Now I think this is really pushing the limits of logic.
You cannot have the leader of a party representing the country internationally as the Foreign Minister, claiming at the same time that it is an opposition party. The only way you could realistically maintain that position would be to decouple the leadership of the party from the party, that in effect would mean Mr Peters leaving his party.
Unfortunately, Bray didn't give Winston a chance to answer that, and went straight to Bradford instead. It's something I'd like answered: Is he first and foremost a Minister of the Crown or the Leader of NZ First? Does his loyalty belong to NZ First or to Helen Clark's government?
(Oh, and yay Agenda for putting up transcripts!)