Hard News: Friday Gold: An email exchange with Michael Laws
327 Responses
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Perhaps by appealing to a fear that many conservatives share: that there really is a PC conspiracy.
Should we start one, just to mock them?
(And obviously, it would have to have Templars in it. You can't have a proper conspiracy without them.)
Laws is the Comte Saint Germain. That much is obvious. Sue Bradford is an instrument for measuring the Earth's telluric currents. And the anti-smacking legislation was necessary because all that good parental discipline was causing the planet to oscillate too much on its axis. With that quelled, the PC brigade can use Sue B efficiently enough to ... locate the earth's spiritual pole ... and create a doomsday device devastating enough to ... put an "h" in "Whanganui". Permanently.
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Doesn't he have a comms manager? Or a PR advisor?
Not so as you'd notice.
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Well, I can't disagree with you there, Giovanni, but Laws has still got to be held responsible for his behaviour.
Yes, but how? Saying that he's stupid and that his supporters are stupid doesn't seem a solution to me. I routinely remind myself and anybody who'll listen that one of the most reliably conservative districts in the country gave us Georgina Beyer first as mayor, than as MP, so clearly there is a way for progressives of connecting with a conservative electorate (and let's face it, NZ on the whole *is* pretty conservative).
I think the answer to people like Laws is to put up better candidates, or did what those kids did by sending letters that engaged with him at a level where he didn't want to engage. These emails confront him on his own ground and there he is *always* going to win and make hay with his supporters. There is nothing remotely embarrassing or detrimental to him in the material that Russell posted. It just makes his opponents seem like wankers, like his correspondent.
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Is there such a thing as a Turing test for satire?
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Scott Hamilton has a useful post on the H thing today.
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Is there such a thing as a Turing test for satire?
Not sure, but you did remind me of someone's argument that sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
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Yes, but how? Saying that he's stupid and that his supporters are stupid doesn't seem a solution to me
I wasn't suggesting saying he was stupid, Gio. I was suggesting saying that he is unprofessional and demostrably unfit to hold public office.
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I don't entirely agree with you Giovanni.
The first email raised a valid point and Law's response was "Maybe you should grow a brain..."
And his second response was "jerk, jerk, jerk".
Had you been the correspondent, at what point would you have determined that Laws had lost his grip (if he ever had any) on rational debate ?
Satire seems as good a response as any, and I don't think it actually has an impact on the content of Law's verbal diarrhoea.
Should we start one, just to mock them?
Yes, lets. I'll put about that there's a secret PAS forum where the secret cabal of Politically Correct meet to plan our agenda...by consensus, of course ;)
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I was suggesting saying that he is unprofessional and demostrably unfit to hold public office.
It's an unwinnable argument. It's not as if he's being revealed to be somebody whom we didn't know he was - everybody has always known that side of him, you just have to turn on the radio to hear it every weekday. By making that statement all you're saying is that his supporters were wrong to vote him in.
And that serves only to alienate them from your side and make them keener to cling to his. -
Satire seems as good a response as any, and I don't think it actually has an impact on the content of Law's verbal diarrhoea.
Seems like people have been using the word a lot in this thread. We agree that there was nothing whatsoever that was satirical in those email sent to Mr. Laws, correct?
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As usual, that's a very good piece by Scott Hamilton.
For evidence of this point
For her part, Turia claims that only a few 'rednecks' will be riled by the junking of Wanganui in favour of Whanganui. Such a view grossly underestimates the level of Pakeha anxiety about Maori attempts to right the injustices of the past.
He need look no further than this excerpt from a newspaper column by Chris Trotter, from April:
For a start, I am more than a little disturbed to learn that the Geographic Board is legally obliged to replace English with Maori place-names wherever possible.
This suggests to me that the New Zealand State will not be content until all evidence of its colonial history has been, quite literally, wiped off the map.
Who is responsible for this extraordinary policy? Did anyone seek the endorsement of the New Zealand electorate before embarking on what can only be called a campaign of historical ethnic cleansing?
Are the achievements of our pioneering ancestors worth so little that all trace of their presence and contribution is to be expunged? -
What I want is his e-mail address. Might drop him a line.
To his credit, michael.laws@wanganui.govt.nz is public domain on www.wanganui.govt.nz
Back in the day, the rule was, answer the nice /. neutral people ASAP. On the other hand, nutters / trolls / those who obviously will never agree, wait 12 hours and send a polite one-liner saying, Thanks for your viewpoint.
That was so much better for the blood presure. -
Is there such a thing as a Turing test for satire?
Wouldn't it be a Poe Test? I'm assuming the law holds for subjects other than fundamentalism.
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Seems like people have been using the word a lot in this thread. We agree that there was nothing whatsoever that was satirical in those email sent to Mr. Laws, correct?
So, how do you classify the comment about red necks and banjos ?
Seems to fit this definition:
A literary technique of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change
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Speaking of literary devices, this bit ..
On 17/09/2009, at 5:54 PM, "Michael Laws" wrote:
Piss off dickhead & stop wasting the time of grown-ups
was a nice little study in irony.
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So, how do you classify the comment about red necks and banjos ?
Had I been working for Laws (hypothetically speaking), I would have regarded the first email as full of vigour but clean enough. And obviously from someone who would never agree with the boss. The reply to send at about 11am Thursday would have been, Thanks for your email. The Mayor stands by his comments.
And then any followup would have been deleted.
Remember banjos only turned up after jerk jerk jerk.
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So, how do you classify the comment about red necks and banjos ?
It seemed to me that he was just riling him. If that's satire, boy, are we lowering the bar or what? Lyndon will be most displeased.
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I formally declare this "Lets Talk About Dickheads Week". I'd like a formal ranking to be voted on - who are the biggest dickheads?
1. Undie 500 tools
2. Scientologists
3. Michael LhawsI personally rank them 2, 3, 1.
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Blackberries and mobile broadband have a lot to answer for in allowing some people too much access to teh interwebs.
OTOH, these devices allow a lot of MPs to be very responsive to emails (if the email is not in the abusive you're-a-total-loser vein.) -
He’s pretty free with the word fascism, isn’t he?
Actually Redbaiter?
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I'd rank them 2, 1, 3, but Laws would be sharing his dishonorable third with Trevor Loudon.
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I wonder if he sits around in Council meetings saying “jerk jerk jerk”
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I wonder he sits around in Council meetings saying “jerk jerk jerk”
Probably not, but that's what we're all hearing, right?
Hands above the table, Your Worship.
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Hands above the table, young man.
Now that's satire. Can you see the difference?
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Heh, even stupider voters.
Yeah, the same ones that voted for legalised child abuse recently. Not to mention voting for "change" last year.
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