Random Play by Graham Reid

Well, Europe beckons and after the weekend we leave for two months traipsing around France and Italy. And it can’t come soon enough. If I hear Winston Peters tell me one more time just what bad shape this country is in I‘ll go spare.

He used the word “tragedy” about a dozen times with Linda Clark yesterday. It sounded like a Shakespeare lecture.

There is nothing like a bit of distance to put this country in perspective: by being overseas from time to time I have missed major shifts in public opinion and illuminating political events such as Dover Samuels pissing in a hotel hallway.

And when I come back things seem pretty much the same: every woman on Queen St is wearing black, Dave Dobbyn is winning awards and some opposition politician is telling me how shitty things are.

Well, maybe.

Things here are difficult for thousands of people, but frankly I wouldn’t trust the Nats and whoever wants to get into bed with them (with the inevitable consequences) of being the ones to put things to right.

So we will vote before we go, but I’m glad we held off long enough to hear Winston’s post-election position. I really, really wanted to know that one . . . before I laughed aloud.

That Peter Dunne seems like a nice chap though, doesn’t he? Like a cat, he’s loyal to whomever feeds him. Or offers him a cup of tea before 270 journalists and photographers.

Dr Brash’s inability to articulate his own policies -- or even know what they are -- would seem to be a liability (if he was medical doctor would you trust the prescriptions he wrote?) but apparently not for a significant number of people.

And now we have the mysterious Stepford Seven!

Bah, humbug -- and bullshit most of it.

Maybe when we are in London we’ll see a report about the result but I won’t be looking for it. I figure I’ll know soon enough, and maybe by the time we get home in November the jostling for position will be done. And we won’t have had to know anything about the cat fighting.

You can go off people, and I’ve gone off pretty much the whole lot of them. The lolly scramble and profligacy with promises from Labour made me depressed. I need to escape to Bordeaux and beyond.

So this might be the last blog for a while, although if I am caught in a bombing in London, an apartment fire in Paris or an election riot in Berlin I’ll be sure to find an internet café and report on the doings.

So in signing off I’d just like to reply to some of the comments re. the Alternative Nation series of satires. First, for satire to work I think it needs to be grounded in some recognisable reality -- and then that reality to be stretched.

I seem to have been too good at the reality part: many people wrote in utter disbelief that Helen Clark would say that lying to Parliament was a minor matter, and that Don Brash would publish the names of bureaucrats whose jobs he was going to axe in order to cut public expenditure.

Some people believed there was a Grievance Industry Council and that Linda “I mean” Clark had actually interviewed its head (AltNation5)

I was told off after AltNation7 -- the parody of Joanne Black’s Listener column. Someone said that just because I had obtained an early copy of it was no reason to run such shit. Others from within that very magazine said it was better than the one they were running that week.

Oh, and there is no separatist party (AltNation8) pushing for Auckland to secede from the rest of the country. The Auckland Region Separate Economic Zone? Think about it.

Some things seem to have hit the mark.

On a Monday I posted AltNation4 about Gerry Brownlee being missing in action -- and the following Saturday Michelle Hewitson’s interview with him appeared following up that very point.

And the day after Altnation10 in which I had Winston Peters railing against the wilful misrepresentation of his position by the media the man did that very rant. But better.

In that one I also linked the braying of the studio audience for the leaders’ “debate” (the disgrace with Mark Sainsbury as circus master) with New Zealand Idol. I was pleased to hear one of National Radio’s “resident wits” making the same analogy. Small minds think alike.

What genuinely worried me was how many people believed the outrageous, racist, and downright stupid statement I put into politicians mouths. Isn’t that just a little scary? That so many people thought they were plausible?

There is no virtue in being first sometimes: I wrote a satirical piece for the Herald which ran with the headline “Leaders debate a revealing train wreck of a discussion”. That was in July 2002.

After the one about God (AltNation11) someone wrote and asked, “Is this shit meant to be funny?”

I replied, “others have found it so” and left it at that.

Many of you did so I thank you sincerely for taking the time to write (I have tried to reply to you all), and also those who appreciated the last post about New Orleans, a tragedy of such immensity I think we still don’t get it.

So that’s me for a bit. I’m off to pick up travel stories as and where I can, maybe for a follow-up to my modestly priced, highly readable collection Postcards From Elsewhere which has had some very generous reviews -- and is available through publicaddress.net (watch the ad top right of the homepage) along with the Great New Zealand Argument and fellow blogger David Slack’s excellent book Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions.

I was going to do a satirical piece about polls, but I can’t be arsed. The papers are doing a fine job of reporting that nonsense anyway. And I did like what Peter Dunne (I think it was him, some minor leader anyway) said about their poor showing the other day: “That doesn’t tally with our polling.”

That figures.

And what’s up with sports broadcaster Tony Veitch? Hasn’t that yappy boy got a problem, and is no one prepared to say what it is? And Martin Devlin on the survivors in New Orleans saying “send them to Iraq”?

It’s enough to make you run screaming to an airport.

Righto, outta here. It’s a long way to London. I hope they don’t show any movies with that god awful Goldie Hawn.

Here is a piece I wrote recently. I offered it to the Herald but haven't heard back. It may have dated a little but . . .

The first time I went to New Orleans I stayed in a small hotel a couple of blocks north of the French Quarter.

After I had checked in the gentleman at the desk with a French surname and a treacle-slow southern accent gave me some advice which I guessed he offered all his guests: “When you leave the hotel, sir, be sure to always turn to your left. That will take you to Bourbon Street and the French Quarter. You don’t want to turn right, that can be a dangerous area -- even by day.”

So after I had showered and unpacked, I went downstairs -- and turned right.

Within half a block it was as if the colour had been drained out the world. On the footpath outside 7-11s and liquor stores were the broken and abused, some holding out containers for spare change, some just sleeping on the ground. Further on I could see the graffiti-covered apartments with their broken windows and abandoned vehicles.

I swear the temperature dropped a few degrees. I turned on my heel and made my way back to the relative safety of the clubs, bars and restaurants in the crowded French Quarter.

I say relative safety because at regular points in side-roads off Bourbon Street were signs warning of the potential for being robbed if you strayed down them.

New Orleans struck me then, as it has on subsequent visits, as a pretty dangerous place. So the lawlessness in the wake of Hurricane Katrina came as no surprise.

One third of people in New Orleans -- a city with a population about that of Auckland -- live below the poverty line. Crime is endemic, drugs a serious problem, homelessness a way of life for many. Many are condemned to generational poverty.

So when the flooding came and some took to looting, grabbing guns and generally spinning out because they couldn’t make a connection with their dealer I was reminded of what Bob Dylan once sang: “When you ain’t got nothing’ you got nothing to lose.”

A significant portion of those who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave New Orleans had nothing to lose.

The comments now about New Orleans now being like some Third World dump in a First World economy could just have easily applied to some sections of this wonderful city two weeks, two months and 20 years ago.

But people don’t go to New Orleans to deal with that.

They go to party along Bourbon Street, buy beads and beer, dance in clubs to blues and cajun bands (it is getting harder to hear decent jazz), and generally take advantage of a town where morality takes a sabbatical for the duration of your stay. Especially if you are a white, northern college students down for a few days.

The first time I went was to go to the famous New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival held at the fairground just a short bus-ride from the t-shirt shops and open bars on Bourbon Street.

It was everything I had hoped for -- music by Dr John, gospel choirs, the great Irma Thomas -- and more. The “more” however was torrential rain which arrived on second morning and which had, by lunchtime, reduced the festival site to knee-deep mud in front of the stages.

I took photographs of the lakes growing before my eyes.

And that was because in New Orleans, a city below sea level, water has nowhere to go. It just sits.

In this city of cemeteries dating back centuries the graves are constructed above the ground, because flooding lifts buried bodies. God knows what is coming up out of the ground right now.

Floods have been common in southern Louisiana: Bessie Smith sentimentalised them in Muddy Water, and Blind Lemon Jefferson wrote Rising High Water Blues about the devesting floods of 1927.

More recently Randy Newman wrote of them and the chorus of his song, about political indifference from Washington, was, “Louisiana, they’re tryin’ to wash us away . . .“

There were floods in 1993 and 95. But nothing like what has happened this past week.

As the rescue operation finally starts to swing in the questions are being asked why there was such a delay.

Among those for whom poverty is a way of life you know what they will be saying: it is because we are poor, because we are black, because we are southern.

They will say, and they would be right, that it was always this way.

The social divide in parts of the south can be shocking. Drive just minutes from the business centre of many major cities and you will see it. It is there in the small towns and subsistence farms.

And it was always there in New Orleans, that magical city in which once free blacks owned slaves, and where a former mayor prepared a place for Napoleon to stay after he would be rescued from St Helena.

Now Americans and international tourists to New Orleans are having to confront an uncomfortable truth about this marvellous city, the voodoo queen which gave the world jazz and its own brand of funk. It is a unique crucible of the arts, food and culture. It proudly sang while other cities spoke in a hushed voice, it bragged and seduced with its architecture, literature, gambling, nightlife, and the evocative pull of the powerful Mississippi River.

But that was then . .

The other night I heard the desperate voice of an unnamed police officer talking to CNN. It was a few days after the hurricane hit when lawlessness was at a peak and the extend of the damage was becoming apparent.

He looked at his hometown drowned in the flood and sobbed, “it’s gone, it’s gone.”

He may be right but -- flawed and socially divided as New Orleans is -- every part of me prays it isn’t so.

Destiny NZ’s political campaign was thrown into disarray yesterday when, at a sometimes heated press conference, God denied the party’s claims that the Bible was to be taken literally.

At the hastily called press conference God -- who appeared as a shining white ball of gas and was “comfortable with either Sir or Ms, depending on your preference” -- said that “it has been brought to My attention that various religious groups, this new Destiny one included, have been somewhat overplaying the literalness of the Bible -- and some I won’t mention seem to think I have been having a quiet word in their ear.”

To a packed hall in Favona near Mangere Bridge God insisted He/She could not recall ever having personally spoken to leader of Destiny New Zealand “although things have been pretty hectic around here since people started turning off the Krishnas, Guru Maharaji, Suzanne Paul, Pilates and Catholicism after the media kerfuffle over John Paul II‘s death.”

Turning attention to the literal interpretations of the Bible an increasingly angry God fielded questions from Destiny Chuch members, a contingent from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and a columnist from the New Zealand Herald.

“Look, let’s get this clear. The Bible is a collection of metaphorical, apocryphal and sometimes quite amusing anecdotes gathered by various writers over a long period of time, and not all of those people were particularly well educated or intelligent.

"In that regard it would be most unwise to interpret it literally.”

In a speech which appeared tightly scripted but then became increasingly wide-ranging God said, “Generally I keep right out of politics and in My experience politicians would be wise to keep out of religion. There’s been a pretty bad track record in Ireland, the American South and large tracts of the Middle East and Asia where the lines between politics and religion have been very badly blurred.

“And let’s be frank, it doesn’t seem to have worked out all that well, least of all for those volatile types in the Middle East.

“I concede that this Destiny NZ outfit might look small beer in that context, but they are of considerable concern. They are introducing a very narrow-minded brand of faith into a country which prides itself on tolerance -- or simply prefers to pretend that differences between people just don’t exist.

“Either way, it’s worked out well for you jokers and you don’t want these door-knockers coming round with a phoney-baloney message.

“I’d like to have a word with someone up top in that organisation, but experience tells Me that once you do that they tend to spin off in all directions and the next thing you know they want everyone in horse-drawn buggies and are tossing out their televisions.

“So I’ll be going at this one cautiously -- although tripping them up through pride or smiting someone down do remain options.”

The head of the Destiny Church, Professor-Bishop Sir Brian Tamaki said last night he was surprised that the media had taken God’s claims seriously.

“I have a deep and personal relationship with God and I could have told you this fellow was just a big ball of gas. We are not going to let this interfere with our fund-raising,” said Tamaki, whose coronation today will see him adopt the title His Most High Royal Highness in addition to the other titles given him by his followers and his wife.

At the press conference an increasingly irritated God departed from speech notes and in off-the-cuff comments railed against a number of targets.

“Look, I don’t do this sort of thing that often so here are some other things that are pissing Me right off at the moment.

“You might want to tell Peter Dunne and his posse that they are overplaying the ‘family’ thing. You know, families aren’t the be-all and end-all, and anyway there’s lots of different types of families. Tell him to get over it, it’s just a buzz word and we all know it.

“And tell the Maori Party that if most people don’t know how to pronounce the word Maori -- Jeez, I don’t. Is it ‘maaree’ or ‘mow-ree‘? -- then there’s not much chance they are going to get tinoranga-whats-its-name.

“And if National want to keep banging on about ‘one law for all‘ you might want to ask Dr Brash if that applies to rich bastards? Let’s hear him get is chops around that one, because believe me that would go down like a lead wonton with his masters in the Business Roundtable.

“And tell Helen I’ve got My eye on her. And not in a good way. Ask her for Me what ‘hubris’ is.

“Incidentally tell Winston to watch his back, if I so choose I could say something. If you know what I mean.

“And hey, what’s with this flattened vowel I keep hearing. It’s Marc EL-lis not Marc Alice, it’s Well-ington not Wall-ington. Jeez, that bloody annoys me.

“And another thing, who decided that everyone on radio now had to start sentences with ‘I mean‘? And aren’t you sick of those Warehouse ads, and that Sally Ridge? I mean, I’m just soooo over reality television.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to move in mysterious ways -- and sort these damn Sunnis out.”

As a cloud descended and God was preparing to depart there was one final comment which came booming into the room.

“Oh, and by the way, Donna did it -- and is getting what she deserves. She’s a lying, thieving shitbag. And that’s the fact, Jack.”

The recording of the final programmes in this year’s New Zealand Idyll -- in which leaders of political parties outline their vision for the country -- was disrupted this week when the invited audience constantly shouted down the contestants, and a leader previously dumped from the competition gate-crashed the studio.

The interim leader of Act, Mr Rodney Hide, burst into the filming and noisily demanded he be reinstated. Before he could be ejected however he was felled by what one witness described as “a handy straight right” from National Party deputy leader Gerry Brownlee.

Order was quickly restored although one of the Idyll judges Jackie Clark said Hide’s interruption had been the most interesting part of a very long and boring day.

“We have had to endure the most banal and patronising babble from people who seemed determined to sing any song they thought would be popular. We have also had the finalists change their tune many times so I couldn’t tell you how good any of them were -- or might be in the future.”

What became clear during the film -- hosted by Dominic Bowden and with the drunken audience egged on by Mark Sainsbury -- was that even the most boorish, braying and rude members of the public are still allowed to vote, even if they have no interest in hearing what any politician has to say.

What audience members agreed on however was that they all wanted to be paid and were prepared to vote for whichever party would give them the most money. Some demanded cash in hand before going in to the ballot box.

In the Idyll programme Labour’s Helen Clark apparently promised -- at the top of her voice -- a safer, more multicultural New Zealand where everyone enjoyed hiking, and a smokefree environment. There was also something about “kiddies” (it is believed she was referring to children although her press secretary has yet to confirm this) and “a pie in every sky“.

Don Brash of National said his vision of the perfect New Zealand could be summed up succinctly, “1953, when good manners counted for something“.

Although he has been consistently voted back on the programme by the judges, the future for Winston Peters of New Zealand First is uncertain.

He has rarely made an impact in the final rounds in the public vote, despite making promises such as putting immigrants on remote island for a few years to check them out, and throwing young offenders into the army where they could get some training on real weapons. These ideas do not seem to have wooed voters.

Yesterday Mr Peters said was no longer prepared to discuss any policy his party might adopt because the news media would wilfully misinterpret it, and "fat cat lawyers in Auckland and Wellington and left-leaning ivory tower academics" had no right to know what he would say.

“These are not people who should be holding any position of responsibility in the future and believe me, a country under New Zealand First would be exactly that. It would put New Zealanders first.”

When asked if people in Auckland and Wellington were not part of New Zealand Mr Peters angrily denounced the media and the Idyll judges saying this was “exactly the kind of wilful misrepresentation” of his position he expected from “a bunch of latte-sipping types making programmes under the Charter which only appealed to a small minority of New Zealanders“.

Mr Peters said he was about to storm the studio himself this week when Mr Hide ran in and upstaged him.

It is expected the programme will edit out the ugly scenes which followed Mr Hide's arrival before being broadcast tonight. However there has been the suggestion from one television critic it might be wise to leave it in to spice up what as been a very dull series with declining public interest. Most members of the public have only turned on the programme to hear how much money the top prize will be worth to them.

Idyll judge Paul Ellis said last night that the judges had been disappointed by the low standard of the contestants this time round.

“Frankly I’d have voted the whole bloody lot out, but that’s not how this works. Unfortunately someone has to be a winner, although remember last year’s winner has been less successful than the guy who came runner-up, so that might be a pointer.

“Soon however we will be down to the finals and at that point it’s over to the voting public. Our advice is they get out there and vote vindictively.”

Good evening, I’m Judy Bailey, you’re on One. And here is your news... It’s funny, it’s historic, and it’s backward looking -- but it will take us all into a happy future. That’s what the National Party is saying about its new marketing campaign for the forthcoming election.

The party today announced a new round of campaign events designed to appeal to what leader Don Brash says are “mainstream ordinary New Zealanders who remember what this country used to be like, and want to get back to those core values”.

At the Auckland Zoo today Dr Brash cut the ribbon on the first of a series of chimpanzee tea parties to be taken around the country, but already the event has outraged animal rights activists and drawn fire from Labour for its alleged mistreatment of animals and being condescending towards voters.

At the tea party one chimpanzee is dressed like Helen Clark and another like Michael Cullen.

Ingrid Petrie has the full story:

“Yes and good evening Judy and today, as you can see behind me, the National Party brought the media to the Auckland Zoo for a chimpanzee tea party designed to appeal to mainstream, ordinary New Zealanders who remember what this country used to be like, and, in the words of Dr Brash ‘want to get back to those core values‘.

The idea is for a travelling roadshow of chimpanzee tea parties which will be taken to public parks, rest homes, schools and sports matches over the next three weeks to capitalise on the momentum the party has gained out of what have now become known as its South Park-ads on television.

Dr Brash told his audience today that keeping the issues clear was very important and so in the South Park campaign the party had concentrated on personalities and kept the issues to a minimum, if not ignoring them entirely. The tea parties are another step in the road to simplification, and with added humour to appeal to simpletons.

As you can see behind me the chimpanzees dressed as Helen Clark and Michael Cullen are pouring tea all over the table and each other, and the audience is laughing at their stupidity. Dr Brash acknowledged there was danger that some people, adults who are allowed to vote for example, might think the animals are just being cute -- so professional veterinarians have put laxative in the tea they drink. And I have to tell you Judy, the outcome was quite off-putting.

After the tea party a keeper dressed as John Key comes in and restores order while another dressed as Dr Brash clears up the mess, and at that point the party’s message is quite clear: something about National being in the shit I think.

Back to you Judy.”

Thank you Ingrid. Ingrid Petrie at the Auckland Zoo.

But as we mentioned at the outset, this new campaign has drawn fire from animal rights groups. David Ratler has the story:

“Yes and thank you Judy. Now, animal rights groups are objecting to this type of archaic treatment of animals and calling it a throwback to the dark days of bear-baiting and the Holyoake Years. Now, activist leader Jeremy Watt told me today that his group intend rescuing the chimps from these tea parties and if that means confrontation with National Party campaign managers then so be it. Now, he said if that meant stealing the chimps and setting them free in the wilds of Cornwallis, or somewhere near St Luke’s shopping centre, then that what they were prepared to do. Back to you Judy.”

Thank you David. David Ratler there, standing in a street outside our studio so it looked like he was on location.

Despite the criticisms of the National Party campaign there has been a favourable response to the tea party idea from media commentators, this from Stephen Bainbury.

“Yes, thank you Judy, and while the idea of chimpanzee tea parties sounds unusual if not slightly bizarre, media experts spoken to today said this was a courageous technique by National which is finding new ways of talking down to people. It is keeping things simple for morons, while at the same time appealing to the nostalgia many feel for the old days.

Susan Waterhouse of IPMD Media says the tea party idea cleverly appeals to dribbling geriatrics who remember such things from their youth, and young people -- especially students and people in rock bands -- who are embracing such nostalgic concepts as 8oz glasses of beer at bowling clubs and wearing boho-chic clothing from op shops in a homage to the late 60s.

Stephen Bainbury, One News.”

Stephen Bainbury there. Telling you what someone else said, but rather more succinctly.

And in other news, police were called when a Labour Party-sponsored Punch and Judy Show created chaos in a shopping mall in Auckland today.

The traditional show with what Labour campaign manager Barry Leech called “clever subtexts” portrayed Labour leader Helen Clark being beaten around the head by a Punch dressed as Maori party leader Tariana Turia. The idea was to engender sympathy for the Labour leader, especially when a character dressed as Uncle Sam is invited on stage by a puppet dressed like Don Brash. Uncle Sam then detonates a bomb which vaporised the characters.

However parents and children at the mall screamed and fled in panic when the bomb went off, and later in the day Labour issued a statement saying that it had perhaps been rather too subtle in its message.

From now it, like all the other parties, would be keeping its message simple, relevant and quietly condescending.

And -- after the break, sport with that guy who has huge teeth, weather from someone who will talk about it for far too long, and something about the recent spate of car bombs in Iraq, the riots in Bangladesh, a devastating earthquake in Japan, and then a lengthy story with lots of pictures from two months ago about a dolphin that can swim backwards through treacle.

Right here on One, your news channel.

*See previous disclaimers, and please believe me. I am making this shit up! It isn’t true. It, unfortunately, just looks that way.