Brainwave! If Brash isn't racist (against Chinese) because he married a China-doll, nor sexist (anymore) because he's raised a daughter, he will start relating to Māori as people not problems if we send in a femme fatale Māori secretary to have his Māori baby through a torrid Māori Affair!
Do we have a volunteer for such a task?
No?
What about for Gerry Brownlee?
A little disappointed I missed Brownlee being asked on Campbell Live (as I ranted about yesterday) what he'd do with the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, in the name of consistency. Did he really say it could be absorbed into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? What - so Pacific Islanders in New Zealand are... foreigners??? Is Manukau City our French Concession? For god's sake man, get it together.
There's something rather limiting about only being able to relate to groups of people with different life-perspectives from you because you've been lumbered with them through familial ties. People should be smarter than that, shouldn't they? There is a theory that lack of empathy for Others and therefore the inability to do justice by them is symptomatic of a profound lack of imagination. Arendt says of forming ethical opinions, "one trains one’s imagination to go visiting." If your imagination can't get as far down the road as GI from Remuera, well... no wonder Foreign Policy isn't shaping up to be your strong point either.
But what's this? Hmm, a familiar feeling of wanting to throw up and leave the country, not necessarily in that order... hey, it's 2004 Orewa-retro season! Since we're all indulging in the rehash, here's a quick quote from what I wrote for Landfall, post-Orewa, post-Hikoi:
Our high-profile migrant politicians exhibit no noticeable drive for political partnerships with Maori. But here on the ground, we can't fool ourselves into thinking that we can dabble in horse-trading when we are the horses.
Leading to the Pansy Wong update: Still no answer to my request for an appointment. I know she google-searches herself every morning, so she knows I'm monitoring her ignoring me. Hi Pansy!
Missed Brownlee's astounding performance last night for the media-screening of Unleashed, the new Jet Li movie directed by Luc Besson which, sadly, sucked ass. It supersucked. I don't just say that as a part of the 'Asian empowerment' school of objecting politically to the sight of China's greatest living wushu action hero infantilised and humiliated, as well as not get any action-if-you-know-what-I-mean. I say that from the 'me watch big fight good' school of film and television. Apart from some good-big-fight material at the beginning and end, the slow flabby cheesy middle section may as well have been a miscast Brendan Fraser teen-out-of-place movie. With our Li Chenlong not 'becoming a dragon' [edit: why on earth did I confuse Jet Li's Chinese name with Jackie Chan's Chinese name? I think because Jackie would have been a far better clown for this role] but becoming some kind of dorky Chinese Classical-piano-loving language-student learning the ways of the West. La-aaame.
Imagination is in short supply of late.