Hard News: Icon Identities
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It all seems to point to a remarkably sulky attitude from National's cheerleaders when the news doesn't run their way.
*cough* Should I start pointing the pant-filling squeals of bias whenever a story unflattering to the Government appears, or do we both have much better things to do with our time?
Before I get fitted out for the short skirt and pom-poms, I'll stand by my position that it was a piss-weak story (not so much 'thin' as 'translucent') and someone needs to tell Messers Espiner and Garner that __Frontline__ was a not-very-affectionate satire not a training video.
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Thanks for sharing the icons - I hadn't seen those before. Having litigated/mediated in many disputes involving Chinese business people, the 'Approach to Disputes' one was inciteful...
But I had to laugh at the party one! I had totally forgotten that when I was an exchange student in Sri Lanka - most birthday parties consisted of a round circle of chairs with everyone sitting in a circle talking - until I went to a classmates birthday last month in Auckland (her entire family emigrated here a few years ago) and all the Sri Lankans and me sat around in a circle, while all her Kiwi friends sat at the side talking to each other...
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The thing that annoyed me about the (weak) climate change story was that Espiner didn't actual ask "what is your position on climate change", because then they might have to say something other than the form answer.
And didn't reporters chase Maori Labour MPs around during the seabed and foreshore debate?
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inciteful
great typo! i'm sure you meant insightful
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*cough* Should I start pointing the pant-filling squeals of bias whenever a story unflattering to the Government appears, or do we both have much better things to do with our time?
Well, quite. But given the shrieking response to this one fairly slight story, I dread to imagine what the reaction would be to months' worth of 'Democracy Under Attack" headlines.
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For any party hack, missing the point is the whole point. Spin relies on not touching, or touching as little as possible, that part of any argument or topic that damages your own case. Being accountable for what you say is something you insist on for the OTHER guys. It's the very essence of hackery.
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I get somewhat annoyed with the tribal metric placed on the politcians. Us/them...yours/ours. Collectively these people guide us and the country through to the future. I don't have a problem with anyone asking one or more of them why they are personally against something that they are also collectively in support of. I have no real problem with politicans being in such a position...it is a very real fact of being in a politcial party.
But I do like to know their positions. I do like to be able to see if they are actively undermining their Party's position.If we were to have a journalist or two who would find out why they are doing so...even better. But while we live in the time of 'gotcha' journalism,I think we will end up with spectacle before information.
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inciteful
I enjoyed a Morning report (?) interview a while back with some Fiji military type explaining that the media had to be controlled because they kept publishing insightful stories. That's what it sounded like to me, anyway.
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And didn't reporters chase Maori Labour MPs around during the seabed and foreshore debate?
Certainly did -- and I don't really think Nanaia Mahuta would have been too tearful if the Foreshore & Seabed Bill had never made it onto the order paper, and I understand she's said as much just not in front of a live microphone or on the record to journalists. Collective caucus and Cabinet responsibility is a real bitch, isn't it?
And I'll happily bet the farm that there will be a fair proportion of the Labour caucus talking up personal and business tax cuts through gritted teeth during campaign season, since DPF asked. I don't see the point of Guyon Espiner chasing them round chanting, "do you believe in tax cuts" either.
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OT - apologies - but is anyone else having trouble accessing xxx.tribe.net sites, or is it just ihug/vodaphne users?
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And I'll happily bet the farm that there will be a fair proportion of the Labour caucus talking up personal and business tax cuts through gritted teeth during campaign season, since DPF asked. I don't see the point of Guyon Espiner chasing them round chanting, "do you believe in tax cuts" either.
You're deliberately missing the point.
If the putative anti-tax-cut Labour MPs had in fact been in an official capacity addressing interest groups -- trade union meetings, perhaps -- and assuring those those audiences that they personally thought Cullen's tax cuts were a load of crap, then absolutely, journalists would be (and should be) asking them about it. Casting this as some sort of crackdown on thoughtcrime doesn't really add up.
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If the putative anti-tax-cut Labour MPs had in fact been in an official capacity addressing interest groups -- trade union meetings, perhaps -- and assuring those those audiences that they personally thought Cullen's tax cuts were a load of crap, then absolutely, journalists would be (and should be) asking them about it.
And in this hypothetical I'd also like Espiner to come up with, oh I don't know, an on the record source, perhaps some specifics of what was actually said and a marginally less evangelical tone. BTW, has anyone been claming either Williamson or Smith said National's policy was "a load of crap"? That would be newsworthy.
And perhaps this wouldn't piss me off so much if Espiner was putting an equivalent effort into reporting the select committee stage of the Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill. You know, actual legislation which is going to have a rather more significant and immediate impact on this country than chasing Maurice Williamson down a hallway trying to badger him into giving you the answer you wanted in the first place.
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DPF,
I did not use Salem Witch Trials in my first post on the issue. I just called it a big beatup.
It was in fact Colin Espiner, a non partisan Press Gallery journalist, who used that phrase in his blog post. I then blogged about his blog entry. But that fact doesn't help support the meme about so called defensiveness.
And the One News item would have been stronger if it had a single quote from so called (9th floor) sources about what Williamson and Smith are meant to have said.
It is one thing to ask an MP whether their comments reflect on their commitment to a policy or even clash with it. But to have a journalist demanding time after time "Do you believe in global warming" as if it is some sort of religion was ridicolous.
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@Phil
I can see tribe, hippies and all.
Maybe a mung beam got stuck in the connection?
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Rich
Thanks for checking. I have been trying to follow a link to tibetanbuddhism.tribe.net and at first was a little paranoid that the free trade deal meant that China was going to frighten the nz internet into censoring itself, then just became plain irritated that the site was for some reason blocked. But those mung beams, they just shine on crazy like...
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The icons are very interesting depending on how you look at them. Your hardcore ethnocentrist particularly loves these stark contrasts, but being a honky domiciled in Asia, I've come to realize that the lines are often blurred or entirely missing. Often to the dismay of the orientalist (occidentalist), that's just the way it is in this post-modern mash-up of a world.
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The icon about Asians trying to 'keep their skin white' or get it whiter through makeup etc reminded me of that issue in Korea.
I asked why Korean women go out of their way to keep their skin white and there were two main reasons given.
1) It makes them look more western (similar to why many Korean women have surgery to increase the size of the bridge of their nose and eyelid surgery to make their eyes appear more western... it is so common it's ridiculous, both my sister in laws have had it done).
2) Browner skin is associated with the farming community who are almost looked on as the peasantry. If you have brown skin its looks like you have been spending way to much time outside doing some laborious task. My wife freaks a bit once our NZ summers kick off and her skin starts to brown real fast. And there's me of course admiring how I'm tanning up.
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2) Browner skin is associated with the farming community who are almost looked on as the peasantry. If you have brown skin its looks like you have been spending way to much time outside doing some laborious task.
And what's particularly 'Asian' about that? Might be worth remembering that 'an all-over tan' is as much a product of moneyed leisure (peasants don't have a lot of time for lying on the beach making sure their tits and arse get equally baked) as grabbing your parasol before venturing forth from a shaded drawing room.
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New Zealand film stock has less blue spectrum, more yellow
I once convinced somebody (in the heyday of dialup) that their modem wouldn't work on Finland, on account of the phone system was optimised for Finno-ugric languages and passed a different set of speech tones.
This was bullshit, BTW, but it worked ;-)
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I've heard Yanis's idea before, that in a society in rural-urban transition (like modern China) having brown skin is a mark of being part of the "primitive" rural masses rather than a "sophisticated" urbanite. It would be interesting to see if this was the case in 18th Century Europe, for instance.
I do think that some of the ideas in the icons are more propaganda from governments "our people value the community over individuals and don't want human rights" than actual reality. See Chris Patten's (aka Fat Pang) writing for much on this.
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The skin discrimination is one I've encountered in every Asian country I've been to. In Japan, however, there's a trend among some teenagers to torch themselves under sunbeds to an extreme effect. These kids don't usually play by "the rules," but they're not that punk rock in my opinion.
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And what's particularly 'Asian' about that? Might be worth remembering that 'an all-over tan' is as much a product of moneyed leisure (peasants don't have a lot of time for lying on the beach making sure their tits and arse get equally baked) as grabbing your parasol before venturing forth from a shaded drawing room.
Don't know Craig, but that's what Koreans have told me on more than one occasion. And having seen a fair number of Koreans who have spent many a long hour working in the outdoors whether on building sites or in the rice fields they are several shades browner than the lasses with 'kong ju byung' (princess disease) sitting in the coffee shops.
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Essentialism starts off as being a bit twee at 1st glance but it leads to some pretty exclusive assumptions.
The "West" are a homogeneous group and black people aren't part of the group.
Oh yeah and what does that say for the native Taiwanese?
I'm sure given a 1/2 hour chat I can find a connection with most people on this forum (other than this forum).
I'm off to read some Noddy now.
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It is my understanding that in 18thC England at least the staying pale bit was indeed practiced, especially amongst the aristocracy and the rising middle classes. The fainting spells that women of the era were famously prone to was not just tight corsets, it was because they were almost certainly VitD deficient through insufficient sunlight exposure and that they were spectacularly unfit.
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The climate change issue election 2008?
The question about this issue is this,
Is climate change non belief as heavy as evolution non belief?
Are these people (lockwood and maurice) rational or are they nuts?
When do we stop listening to scientists?
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