Hard News: Veitch
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Islander, that's the nature of stories... as Roberto Calasso wrote in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony , mortals have only one fate, but immortals in the retelling of their tales have many fates and origins.
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Kracklite, I'd suggest that mortals make the tales and the retellings thereof - but if you mean that mortals have only one fate (true:death)
but immortalise themselves (for a while, for the while their languages last) in the tales which have many origins & and divarications & random fates...hoowee! count me in, to that scenario, and who could really disagree?(rubs middlefinger ring, goes back to writing stories.)
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Indeed.
The dirty little secret of immortality (which we should not tell anyone) is that it depends on mortals and their persistence across the generations through their tongues.
Mind you, I would still prefer the 'not dying' strategy: it seem so much simpler in theory, but I can't figure out the technical details of actually practicing it!
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Sue,
As for intention, there's a basic rule of thumb in mental health circles that if someone is talking positively about plans for the future
totally disagree
some people with dpression build up an excelent ability to mask and lie.and some of those basic rules of thumb decisions have lead to people slipping through the system
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If you ever discover them Kracklite....(not holding that quintessential mortal thing here)-
Sue- I think, with severe depressive illness - in my limited experence (given that I also have trained medical people in my family)- there are *no rule-of-thumb*s-
except as a kind of initial triage-
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Just in passing, call me cynical but I agree with phillipmatthews - timing is everything in PR.
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some people with dpression build up an excelent ability to mask and lie.
Totally agree. It's my experience that a decent number of those dealing with depression find life easier if they can deal with their depression in private, and not have it make the rest of their life any more complicated.
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And if the GP say something like " have you considered reading the bible" go to another GP and say "I am going to kill myself if I don't get help" and keep on going and going and going...
And report the other prick for malpractice.
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WH,
This too shall pass
I have always loved that expression but didn't know where it came from until you prompted me to google it.
Then I'd refer you to what Paul said - it's simply not up to us to make that kind of speculation. There are aspects of this story that are compelling and rightly invite analysis and discussion, chiefly on how such a case can become a media spectacle and what it says about societal views and debates on crime, on celebrity and what is and isn't okay. But underneath all that there are private lives and private pain and we shouldn't presume to go there I think, except insofar as one has to wonder of much of that privacy and of that pain is being sacrificed to the spectacle.
That's really well said Giovanni.
The public relations campaign seems misguided in that Veitch seems to be inviting us to believe that this behaviour was not typical, that he was provoked, and that he has paid a heavy price for what he has done. That might all be true, but perhaps we are more interested in the impact of his actions on his victim, an acknowledgement of guilt, his completion of an appropriately severe sentence, seeing a sense of genuine regret and a commitment to change. Things we would look for in any offender.
One hopes that: people are flawed, people do terrible things, people are made to see what they have done, people try to make things right, people try to change.
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The Herald on Sunday breathlessly reveals that a distressed Tony Veitch called none other than ......... the Herald on Sunday!
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This is all like some horribly bleak, sub- Private Eye satire. Media celeb organises media blitz to slam media for media coverage and/or lack of same.
Veitch's wife, Zoe, in various newspapers online today:
"It has now reached a level where it is intolerable and now I am begging that both the media and the public back off.
Oh please, please do.
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"It has now reached a level where it is intolerable and now I am begging that both the media and the public back off."
- Zoe Veitch
Cue the 'Sorcerors Apprentice' scene from Fantasia.
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Presumably comment on the 2006 email is free as it's now public in the HoS?
That type of behaviour was not "us" ... not even close... we are much better people than that... I know that in my heart that certainly was not me...
... Actually I'm struggling to put this into words, so perhaps y'all can just ruminate on its various shades of meaning. Speaks for itself IMO.
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DPF has a handy roundup of today's coverage, which is of course followed by the usual range of demented responses.
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Oh, one more post lest I start to look obsessed with all this - Kerre Woodham's magnificently irony-free take on the affair. Or perhaps it was just written before time?
Some media organisations must be wondering what on earth they'll do to fill their pages and their airtime now that Tony Veitch has pleaded guilty to kicking his ex-girlfriend.
Editors around the country would have been rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation at the prospect of juicy details of Tony and Kristin's tumultuous relationship being exposed in court as the prosecution and defence fought for months for the favours of the jury.
And now all that's been denied with both the prosecution and defence agreeing to drop six charges of assault and Veitch pleading guilty to injuring his girlfriend with careless disregard for her safety.
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This too shall pass
I always understood that the king had asked his sages for a saying that would be true in all circumstances...
... I certainly hope it is in this one.
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The Herald:
A sobbing Tony Veitch rang the Herald on Sunday.... Zoe Veitch... 'I am begging that both media and public back off'.
Then Stuff:
Just two hours before police took Tony Veitch back to Hamilton's central police station for treatment yesterday after his latest suicide bid, the shamed broadcaster sent a desperate text message to Sunday News.
Um. Can no one who cares perhaps confiscate the man's cellphone? The only people he appears to be contacting are journalists.
This is all like some horribly bleak, sub- Private Eye satire. Media celeb organises media blitz to slam media for media coverage and/or lack of same.
Heh. Well put. I must say, these past few days have been something else.
This from Stuff is, I assume, more from the Veitch PR team:
Kristin Dunne-Powell inquired about a TVNZ job which would have involved promoting Tony Veitch at a time she said she was living in fear of him.
The whole article is foul, because its underlying implications are all 'she was trying to stay with him and still loved him, so the abuse clearly wasn't that bad'. Y'see, abused people often *do* still love their abusers. They often *do* still try to reconcile with them. That's partially why domestic abuse is really fucking horrible.
Also: he still fractured her back. Dance around it all you want, question her motivations in the newspapers all you want, but he still did that. End of.
Oh, and the Herald characterises his farewell email to her in November 2006 as 'gentle but firm'. Does anyone have a bucket?
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Cue the 'Sorcerors Apprentice' scene from Fantasia
Gold. The entitled whining about being hoist by their own expensive petard is sickening.
The world is indeed a strange place when Michael Lhaws makes some sense:
I wrote a little less than a year ago that I empathised with Veitch because my resignation from parliament 13 years ago had similar trappings of over-reaching ego and rampant denial. But I also noted that his "mea culpa" of the time was crafted and insincere a ruse to shift responsibility.
I'm not convinced that anything has changed, particularly given his post-sentencing performance on the steps of the Auckland District Court. This was an act of anger, not some concession of contrition.
Certainly more self-aware than celeb shrink Sara Chatwin, who the SST used to add some respectability to their trawl through the latest smears from Veitch's cronies.
Chatwin said it was human nature for someone to justify or quash public allegations. "Maybe one of them should put their hand up and say `I don't want to comment. Take your swipe but I'm not going to be responding'. To-ing and fro-ing is not good."
Uh, one of them has been keeping quiet throughout, you silly woman.
By contrast, the other SST story about the courting of the press shows the professional reflective journalism that has largely been absent:
It feels uncomfortable being told by someone who has just been convicted of kicking a woman in the back that nudge, nudge, wink, wink we've got heaps more on her and if it had gone to trial, she would have been "incredibly adversely affected".
...Veitch lets slip: "If it wasn't for Glenda, we wouldn't have been able to control the media."
...Veitch says several times throughout the interview that it is unacceptable to hit women and that what he did was wrong, but it is always accompanied by a spiel about how he has suffered.
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If it wasn't for Glenda, we wouldn't have been able to control the media
That'd be why his wife is begging the newspapers to leave her husband alone - because Hughes has such awesome control of the media.
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Sunday News is Tony's special friend today: it gets this preposterous story implying that Dunne-Powell couldn't have been so hurt if she was prepared to take a job at TVNZ, and filled out with various personal texts and emails between the pair, doubtless supplied by Team Veitch.
Tony Wall in the Star Times seems somewhat appalled by his interview with Veitch:
Veitch has spent a good part of the past nine months digging for dirt on his former partner, and it is made explicitly clear that a "goldmine" was discovered but cannot be revealed for legal reasons. It feels uncomfortable being told by someone who has just been convicted of kicking a woman in the back that nudge, nudge, wink, wink we've got heaps more on her and if it had gone to trial, she would have been "incredibly adversely affected".
Indeed. And:
He talks of his "momentary lapse" and how it was unacceptable, but seems incapable of making such a comment without once again emphasising how much he has suffered.
As everyone by Tony Veitch and Glenda Hughes seems to realise, the past few days could have been very different for Veitch. He could have acknowledged what he'd done, without qualification or begging for pity, and begun to get on with the rest of his life.
What has happened instead is a disaster, and I really think that there should have been people around him who could stop him doing it to himself.
To say this has damaged the reputation of his media advisor, Glenda Hughes, is putting it mildly.
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Uh, one of them has been keeping quiet throughout, you silly woman.
I can't help but think they had Chatwin on the line to comment on their silly story about whether Westies are happy, and thought they'd get a Veitch quote too. It's that lame.
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This morning's media circus is quite astonishing, a veritable tragi-comedy (qualifier - not downplaying suicide attempts) and thankfully provides fertile ground for some person doing a doctoral thesis involving self-absorbed people, media, law, sports, living by and dying by the 'media', and other things all mixed in with a spot of Deleuzian thought.
Still, the best of a bad bunch in this 'drama', Tony Wall, sums it up - Veitch cannot, at the end of the day, appear to actually say sorry, without recourse to minimisation/justification/contexualisation of his actions.
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<i>one of them has been keeping quiet throughout</i>
You're kidding yourself if you think Dunne-Powell hasn't been extensively leaking to the media and been professionally groomed and coached before doing her media interviews.
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Regardless of concerns about "Team" Veitch's behaviour, the man clearly needs help and I hope he and his enablers just shut up now and let him focus on getting well.
Documents presented to the Auckland District Court when Veitch appeared on Thursday gave a stark picture of his fragile mental state.
A letter from psychologist Traude Leibbrand, written a few days before the hearing, said that Veitch had undergone 17 one-hour sessions since September last year after being referred for help by the local mental health crisis team.
"Tony continues to struggle with feelings of shame, guilt and grief relating to the incident of assault of his previous partner and the resulting legal proceedings," read Leibbrand's report.
"During the entire time of my involvement with Tony a close co-operation with the crisis team has been necessary as Tony's safety has been (and continues to be) compromised. He has been diagnosed with and continues to show symptoms of clinical depression and anxiety."
Another letter from psychiatrist Dr Trish van Kralingen, who works for Auckland District Health Board, said Veitch had "a diagnosis of a major depressive episode which has resulted in him experiencing low mood, poor sleep, impaired concentration, lowered energy, loss of enjoyment of life, anxiety, suicidal ideation (thoughts) and at times suicidal behaviour".
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You're kidding yourself if you think Dunne-Powell hasn't been extensively leaking to the media
I admit that I have no evidence other than my assessment of her character in the interviews I have seen, incuding her denial of that accusation. She didn't seem as stage managed, but that may just mean she's better at it than Veitch is.
Mind you, wouldn't you expect either the hungry media or his advisors to have provided evidence of any leaking by Dunne-Powell? I have to agree with Russell that their reputation must have suffered through this fiasco. Defamation proceedings wouldn't help much with that. Beyond resuscitation.
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