Random Play by Graham Reid

Earlier this year when I was driving around somewhere in Australia I tuned in to talkback radio which, whether we bloggers like it or nor, is still a good way to get the pulse of what many people are saying and thinking.

Or saying but not really thinking about.

Kevin Rudd still hadn’t reached his 100 days as the new PM as I recall and yet there were the airwaves cluttered with naysayers whinging about the price of petrol and bread, thugs on the streets, teenage pregnancy rates and whatever else people blather on about on talkback.

Of course they were being whipped up by the “host” (as in the carrier of a parasite?) until someone finally came on and pointed out the bleedin’ obvious.

I had a similar experience last Friday -- beautiful day it was in Auckland -- when I tuned in to Willie Jackson and JT, whatever station they are on. (They were just the next up or down the dial I think from the increasingly dreary afternoons with Jim Mora on National Radio).

Anyway, along came Mary to whinge and moan about John Key not being here and saying something about the terrible events in Mumbai.

My guess is that at the time Key was somewhere in mid-air coming back from London so actually wasn’t in a position to say much at all. Just like Helen Clark -- and the rest of us -- was caught on the hop when the tsunami hit.
I wonder if Mary had much to say to Willie and JT about that at the time? I doubt it.

I know that it must be dreadful to be now on the outside of the tent given how the electorate has spoken, but there are times when some commentators -- and I take Mary’s voice to be as valid as any -- need to breathe through their nose a little.

I don’t know Matt McCarten (heard him speak a few times) but I read his Herald on Sunday column and was reminded immediately of those shoving the knife into Rudd when the guy had barely had time to get his furniture into the office.

McCarten opened by saying John Key had spent half his time as Prime Minister out of the country (I’m guess is Helen Clark might have gone to Apec too, if not London?) and made that increasingly spurious comparison with Barack Obama in the “change” stakes.

The opening gambit seemed to be that Key should have been here rather than picking up an Apec poncho and chatting with the Queen -- although a short way in McCarten said that unless Obama and his people get it right it wouldn’t matter what Bill English and John Key did.

American turbo capitalism is over (a corrupt sham) according to McCarten -- although the evidence around me suggests this might be somewhat of an exaggeration, or wishful thinking.

Anyway McCarten seemed especially aggrieved that Key wasn’t at the rudder but was shaking hands with the Queen to assure her that this little part of the Pacific was going to stay loyal, ma’am. Emblematic of him not being a real change leader, apparently.
(His did also meet UK PM Gordon Brown, but that seemed to not be worth mentioning in McCarten‘s column.)

Given that Key said a republic here was inevitable but wasn’t a priority right now (or words to that effect), I would have thought we might have simply taken that at face value. Imagine if he’d started banging on about a republic.

Mary and Matt might have told him to stop wasting his time and concentrate on the economy, right?

People I speak with -- predominantly Left beyond a doubt -- are watching and waiting but right now are moderately impressed at what Key has done by way of talking to the Maori Party (conspiracy theorists here is your chance. . .) and we concede that these are early days. Bloody early days.

No one I know was remotely worried that Key put on a silly poncho or went to London. They seem the kinds of things a new PM (and minister of tourism!) should do. No one thought it was a betrayal of their left-leaning inclinations to say as much either.

And nobody was unduly concerned that he was unavailable for comment on Mumbai, the Air New Zealand tragedy and so on. When he was available he spoke well enough.

What I’m thinking is that this default position which some people have to adopt must be very wearying, because right now they have nowhere to go with it -- other than to make themselves look pretty silly as straw-grabbers.

Even Mary gave up after a quick whinge and McCarten dropped the Key angle for a whole thing about Wall Street and Obama. The whining about Key just couldn’t last the distance -- because there has been no distance yet.

Anyway, life goes on.

We went for a wee train ride yesterday: we watch the damn things rumble by, empty carriage after empty carriage on most journeys, so thought we’d have a trip past other people’s back gardens.

The train arrived three minutes late.
I blame the government.

NB: Much more new music and more at Elsewhere right now.

It was many years ago now and so my memory might not be exact, but it went something like this. Back then the Herald had a wonderfully witty, slightly eccentric, scholarly and rather marvellous senior writer called Ted Reynolds.

One day a theatre reviewer -- it might even have been Peter Calder -- was, at the last minute, unable to make the performance of one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies and asked Ted if he could deputise, just this once.

Ted’s reply was along the lines: “Shakespeare? Oh good, I always want to see how it ends . . . ”

This wry wit -- whence comes Ted’s like again? -- came back to me on the weekend: how often we simply observe the action unfolding to an inevitable end. And it sometimes involves a body being carried from the stage.

Yes, it occurred to me this past weekend because . . . well, actually because I’m reading a biography of John Lennon to review for the Listener. It’s pretty good, but it’s not like the end is a surprise.

I didn’t sit upright and say to my wife, “Shit! Suddenly this guy comes in and kills him! Jeez. Who knew, huh?”

But prior knowledge of the outcome didn’t stop me following the action to that point, of course. As with Shakespeare, it is all in the detail of the telling.

And so it was as The Results rolled in: which happened about a third the way through The Three Amigos, incidentally.
By the gift of MySky and live pause/fast forward/live record we felt a pattern was emerging so changed channels for the duration, doing the FF through the ads and some of the “media commentators“ dragged out . . . and hey, it wasn’t like we didn’t know how The Three Amigos ended either.

So along with most of the nation we observed the inevitable and -- as with a Shakespeare tragedy or the life of someone who was shot almost three decades ago -- it was the getting there that made it . . . interesting?

Was this election interesting? I don’t think so.

The campaign was full of stumbles by Labour and some downright stupid stuff. A politician saying the defining issue was “trust“? You gotta be kidding!

Mr Key seemed determined to follow Kevin Rudd’s proven path (“me too”) but mostly tried to avoid saying anything that might be less than a bland platitude. Even if they were sometimes delivered with what I take to be his version of “forcefully”.

Mr Peters ended his own career, despite how much he might subsequently spin it -- and he took a few down with him when he went, much in the manner of a Shakespearean tragedy come to think of it. Bodies were carried from the stage.

Some might say the Labour Party was among the collateral damage, and no matter what you thought of Clark’s handling of Peters (in case she needed him later), the talk on the street was she should have cut him loose a long time ago. The street is powerful and street songs kill the quickest. This one was over for Labour a long time ago. We were just observing the inevitable.

I’m not one who is sad to see Mr Peters go. I was weary of the Comeback Kid Cliché around the time Ted stopped going to Shakespeare and I always felt the man’s arrogance -- not to mention his racist and expedient politics -- were abhorrent.

I liked the Maori Party’s smiling cop/smiling cop routine and on the night (if the crosses on Maori TV were to be believed) it looked they were going to have the best time of it, regardless of the outcome.

Others will tell you how the various television channels performed on the night, frankly I couldn’t care less who was good/better/best -- or what the blogosphere was saying. (Like, you were sooo totally sitting in front of your laptop? Really?)

During this campaign we got to witness some of the worst and witless from our media: how can any editor let a journalist ask -- and then have printed! -- a street-stop question to Helen Clark’s husband which is, “do you like sex?”

That is crass, insulting, stupid and just plain irrelevant. The editor who let that go should have to stand in the corner with that pathetic journalist. It told us nothing -- other than how base “journalism” could be.

And Charlotte Investigates on the small screen? Asking politicians if they were a piece of stationery what would they be? (An eraser to rub you out?)

I guess it gets a laugh when Charlotte’s friends chat about her on Bebo. But that stuff insults our intelligence . . . not to mention wit.

I suppose that was just kid journalists having their fun at their first election. I thought it bloody awful and puts those two people off the Serious List forever for me.

Because the big stuff was mostly bland maybe that was why that small stuff which got my grumpy attention.

But as the results came in the other night and we observed the inevitable, we farewelled some layabouts in Labour we were glad to be shot of, shook our heads at the thought of Roger Douglas having anyone’s ear at all who is close to the new government, and wondered aloud once more about this new look/familiar faces National Party. I find them worrying, and I’m not alone in that. They have to prove themselves to many people, not just those who gave them their handsome mandate.

I genuinely wish all these politicians -- new, departed -- well: the new ones because they have a big responsibility to the people of this beautiful country, and the departed because I am sure somewhere deep down most of them genuinely did what they thought was right.

So now we have a new government. I’ll be watching.

Because -- as with Shakespeare, any biography of John Lennon, or the leadership of Helen Clark -- I always want to see how it ends.
And what bodies will be borne from the stage.

Life goes on: Meanwhile over at Elsewhere life goes on as usual and there is more new music posted (Ryan Adams, a strange percussion outfit, some Mexican hip-hop, cool jazz, Pasifika poetry and more), a recipe for a fierce cocktail to get you through summer daze, Kraftwerk on DVD, the life story of a classic animator (with a clip) and much more.
I don’t know that if I’ve ever mentioned this at Public Address, but subscribers to Elsewhere (it’s free) are in line for the weekly giveaways which includes CDs, DVDs, books, concert tickets and the like. This week subscribers have the chance to win the Lou Reed Berlin live CD , the new Lucinda Williams album, CDs by the Mamaku Project (and a double pass to their album launch in Auckland on Friday) and much more.

I like giving stuff away and subscribers seem to like winning it too.

Righto, if you want to subscribe and be in to win via my weekly newsletter then just send me an e-mail via the website. ("Contact" link, bottom left of the contents menu on the homepage)

After months of she said/he said and “me too” in New Zealand politics, it was welcome today to get my eye off the microscope and onto a telescope to look further afield than our own small patch.
And no, I don’t mean to the US election.

Today as a guest of the Asia New Zealand Foundation I attended a media seminar Foreign Policy in Asia which had some excellent speakers looking at what is happening -- and what may happen -- with our neighbours to the north and north-left: China, the Koreas, India, Thailand, Indonesia and so on.

It was, as these seminars always are, fascinating -- and three of the speakers will appear on Media 7 this week. Tune in or pod-it.

The introductory remarks today were by former longtime NZPA correspondent David Barber who referred to Nick Davies’ new book Flat Earth News, a dispiriting read if you have any interest in how news is reported. Or not reported, as Davies argues.*

With what we used to call quaintly “foreign desks” closing all over the planet, and newspapers disinclined to pay even freelancers their modest rates to cover stories because readers apparently aren’t interested in “overseas news“, the present situation as regards the paucity of international coverage is bad enough without us entertaining how woeful it might be in the future.

Yet for us in New Zealand -- dependent on reliable, astute, informed (and to some extent insider) information about crucial trading partners and geo-political power brokers -- the time for thorough foreign coverage has never been more important.

Because they wanted to talk informally and frankly, none of the speakers may be quoted directly -- but some threads in their talks were readily apparent, not the least being the subtext that sent a frisson of recognition through the room: just how poorly we are being served by our mainstream media when it comes to international coverage.

The economic downturn which is just starting will be a catalyst for rapid political change across the Asia region: a hungry man is an angry man, said Bob Marley. But it is more nuanced than that.

The first speaker was Sidney Jones from the International Crisis Group who is based in Jakarta and was alarmingly knowledgeable about separatist movements in the region: she spoke about which Islamist groups were doing what (and, refreshingly, which weren’t doing what); how some countries were performing better as democratic states than we might think (who would have thought Indonesia?); why we should be watching the elections next year in the Philippines closely, and their insurgency issues; and how the violence in southern Thailand is at present Muslim Malay v the Bangkok Buddhist government but that we should know there were jihadists in the region, although they don’t seem to be getting much traction on the ground amongst locals. Yet.

Given our close ties with Thailand -- whether it be through marriage, friendships or simply holidaying in the region -- that is a part of the world which New Zealand media seems to overlook far too often. But don’t get me started on that again.

Dr Sudha Ramachandran, an independent journalist based in Bangalore, raised India’s relationships with Pakistan and China -- and about this time you realised that very big pieces are always being moved on a very volatile chessboard: the social and economic rise of India has been perceived as a threat by some countries in the region (notably those two mentioned) but who could know what was going on inside Pakistan? Is the military in charge and pulling strings to escalate a conflict on the reasonably quiet border with India so it can pull out of the western provinces near Afghanistan where the jihadists are?

And China is viewing India with deep suspicion despite increased trade: with a 9% growth rate India is an increasingly powerful economy (and taking steps into space, leap-frogging off the back of its massive IT industry) but maybe China is using a pincer movement through Myanmar and Pakistan to contain it?

This is big -- and worrying -- stuff. Especially for trade, if not stability, in the region. I came away no wiser but more informed, and more worried.

Believe me, the coffee and lunch breaks to allow for a deep intake of breath were necessary.

Anna Fifield who was the Seoul correspondent for the Financial Times in 2004-2008 (she’s now in Beirut) spoke of how the economy of South Korea has taken a massive hit in the past few months (I guess that means the end of this Big Idea I wrote about for Idealog's last issue) and just how they might cope given the astonishingly rapid growth they went through in the past three decades.

She had observed a complacency in Korean businesses towards the rapid growth of China, but the economic crisis may provoke an attitude change.

Of the mysterious and reclusive North, it is dangerous to speculate because we just don’t know.
Certainly Kim Jong Il -- who may be sick, may be dead, may be neither -- has, unlike how he got the job from his dad, groomed no successor.

That could mean a power vacuum, the military taking over and if that happens (and anyone who has watched the North cannot conceive this) things could get even more repressive up there.

They don’t have much in the North -- no computers, no information about the outside world, little food -- but they do have the fifth largest standing army in the world. It would be a pity of it got bored because they had time on their hands. The new US president might want to think seriously about this one.

But because North Korea is so desperately behind China and the South which are its neighbours, it is in both country’s interests to keep it contained. Hell, no one wants millions of refugees ill-equipped to handle the 21st century, let alone power points and electric lights. This won’t be like the Berlin Wall coming down. That was a different scenario.

And so the day went: Dr Jian Yang from Auckland University illustrated China’s rapid growth and emphasised just how much it had changed over the decades although outsiders might want more rapid moves to “democracy” -- a word its top guns aren’t afraid of using these days.

Jamil Anderlini, the Beijing deputy bureau chief of the Financial Times noted how the geo-political balance was shifting towards China because of its cheap labour, good ports and roads -- and perhaps its state control of citizens.

In an interesting aside he spoke from personal experience about how many educated and quite worldy Chinese responded to criticisms of China: they take them personally. This was something we saw on our streets in the weeks before the Olympics when the regime’s human rights’ record and annexation of Tibet had protestors out, and drew counter-protest from Chinese students who said these were lies/misreporting/anti-China rhetoric and so on.

Anderlini noted that in China for a generation, perhaps two, the party and the nation had become indistinguishable to its citizens. That‘s a mind-set we might have to factor in to our relations.

Dr Jian Yang went further: that during “the century of humiliation” (1840-1945) China had been battered by foreigners so today its people still cannot tolerate foreign intervention in its affairs.

These were all provocative ideas -- and there were many more -- and that is what made it such an interesting, and I think, important day. That was a view shared by the couple of dozen people there -- among them, I was pleased to note, half a dozen journalism students.

But where was the media in all this discussion?

In one way or another a few of the speakers rephrased this idea: Western journalists in liberal democracies enjoy a rare freedom, but what are we doing with it? Are we supporting or even just sympathetic to the struggles of journalists and people in places who want the freedoms we take for granted?

The international media in Asian countries -- not prone to the propaganda pressures weighted onto local journalists in many Asian countries, notably China -- has a responsibility to raise the uncomfortable issues (albeit sensitively) and to report back to us about what is going on.

But . . . what if nobody out here is listening?

* “All those interested in the truth -- outsiders and insiders -- should read it”, said John Pilger of Flat Earth News. When I‘ve finished reading it I‘ll give you the bad news in a posting.

Because there is life after politics - and beyond it, even now - I thought some of you might like to know the full line-up for next year’s Womad in New Plymouth. I have posted it here with links to music and video clips. Looks like a good one, again.

There is also more new music - and some other articles/interviews - at Elsewhere.

And Leonard Cohen at the Vector Arena? Who knew he was quite that big!

Keep the bitchiness and bile going at
this posting, it helps to get it out of your system.

After my last posting in which I mentioned a very funny British book of grumpiness, gripes and satirical pokes at tossers - Is It Me Or Is Everything Shit? -- it occurred to me that we should have our own collection of bitches, moans, skewerings and smart-arse comments about how everything just seems to be getting worse.

Of course it would be very easy to fill with political swipes, but let’s not go there, huh?

There are plenty of other things to be irritated by -- and the politicos get theirs anyway. So here are some starters to get us going: There could be a Public Address book in this, huh?

Books of Lists: Anything with 101 Things/Places/Songs . . . (or worse 1001 . . .) in the title. Enough with the lists. There’s only one good one: it is Reasons To Be Cheerful: 101 Things That Make Life Worth Living -- but I’ve only written the first 27 (title and concept © Graham Reid)
All other books of lists are tripe.

If you want to get to the 1001 Places to See Before You Die which is on your coffee table you are hardly going to sit around reading about them.
Could this genre get any worse? Is someone going to write 100 Things To Do When You’re Dead?
Oh, someone called Rob Bailey has? Jeez, enough with the lists.

“Which tele-blonde. . . “: My thinking is that these women who appear regularly in the Guess Who Don’t Sue or other gossip tattle columns are actually the same woman who is a sexual athlete with the morals of a goat -- or else she maybe just doesn’t exist and it was a slow week for gossip? Whatever, let’s have no more of these anonymous blondes, huh?

Fatties on Television Losing Weight: If you want to lose weight just do it. Don’t bore us with your tears, struggle and the validation you need by doing it on television just because some tosser from a production company seduces you with money and promises. People, they don’t care about you!. These bastards would film cats vomiting if they thought they could get it on screen! Have some dignity and self-respect, cut out the fizzies, get thee to a gym -- and get off the screen.

The Weather Ambassador: Okay, Spain and Japan have ambassadors, that seems to make sense. But the weather? It’s not like Bob McDavitt works for “The Weather“, is it? It’s the weather, stupid. Get out a dictionary. Bob doesn’t represent a state or sovereign in a foreign country, he heads no mission. People giving themselves such titles are just plain dopey. More dopey though are those who indulge them. This one should have been scotched a long time ago. You don’t see heads of independent churches calling themselves “Bishop” do you? Oh, you do?

Will Ferrell: Averaging three films a year so some are bound to be bad. But quite so many? Step Brothers? Nah, you’re shit mate, it’s over. Don’t ever call again.

Okay, there’s the idea. Run with it folks. And let’s see how far we can get before someone puts in something political.
(An entry right there: Knobheads Who Shove Politics into Every Otherwise Interesting Discussion>)
Go!

Lots more of everything - music, interviews, reviews, anecdotes etc - at Elsewhere. And tomorrow night I'll have the announcement about acts at next year's Womad. Get on that RSS Music From Elsewhere feed.