Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Up Front: The Missing Stair and the…, in reply to Emma Hart,
Devil’s Advocate is supposed to be a way of testing an argument for flaws, not deliberately pissing someone off.
Also, it really helps to take a look around when you’re tempted to play the Devil’s Advocate. Pro-tip: If there’s a pervasive smell of brimstone in the air, Satan’s probably not the one who needs the help. God know I don’t really need to hear one more time the arguments for why I’m morally equivalent to a child-molesting animal-shagger. Really. Don’t.
Folks who get twitchy about "feminist jargon" might want to look away for a moment, but Melissa McEwan really nails the essential bullshit-osity of Devil's Advocacy in social justice discussions:
The first is that what gets called Devil's Advocacy in social justice discussions tends to be a privileged person, ahh, challenging a marginalized person's perception of their own lived experiences. And that's not actually Devil's Advocacy; that's emotional auditing. Um, because it implicitly suggests that a marginalized person's perception of their own lived experiences may somehow not be valid, um, or may be compromised by virtue of their very marginalization. That someone with privilege is more, um, objective. And that is not accurate. Someone with privilege is merely, um—merely has a different perspective on oppression; they are not more objective about it.
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to Rich Lock,
But….but….Democracy! Under! Attack!
Oh, I'll happily defend Rudman's right to talk out of both sides of his two faces at the same time, but geez... is there a Zoolander-style Cognitive Dissonance walk-off going on we should be told about?
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to Russell Brown,
Be that as it may, I still think the results of a free, fair and credible election trump the work product of The Herald’s pet pollsters. Every damn time. Sorry if Mr Orsman et. al. don't much like democracy, but that's their problem not mine.
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Oh, and I missed this Rudman gem from yesterday:
Frankly, I've never liked the idea of a panel of unknown "experts", appointed by the unelected chief executive, sitting in judgment on the conduct of an elected official.
What checks on the panel's ethics, or political views are undertaken before their appointment?
This is a political stoush. We don't need a kangaroo court sitting in judgment on the mayor's morals. We need a council getting down to business on the issues we elected them on.
Does Rudman file his copy from an alternate universe where irony and hypocrisy don't exist?
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And today in NZ Herald fails both maths and civics, Brown speaks to Bernard Orsman and idiocy ensues.
The Herald-DigiPoll survey found 51% of Aucklanders think you should stay on as mayor, but still 39% think you should resign. Is that a sufficient mandate to stay on?
I don’t think this is about mandates. We had a recent election and there was a reasonably high element that thought I did a good job in the last three years and wanted to carry on that good job. Aucklanders generally feel we are going in the right direction. That is the thing they are most interested in.
Quite right, Mister Mayor. Again: Who elected The Herald to anything?
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to TracyMac,
If you can’t think of ways to satirise or point out someone’s stupidities other than making fun of their name or how they look, perhaps you need to think about exactly what it is you’re trying to mock.
Thanks, TracyMac - couldn't have put it better myself. It's also a useful exercise in imaginative multiculturalism to remind yourself of all the places in this big old world where you're the weirdo. If you wouldn't like people sniggering about your name to your face in Mumbai, Bejing or Pretoria, probably shouldn't be doing it to anyone else.
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The cognitive dissonance. It is strong with this one.
There's cognitive dissonance, and there's something that bears a disturbing resemblance to a permanent psychotic break.
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to Russell Brown,
But Chuang claims that after being shortlisted for the position, the art gallery manager rang Brown to ask whether she was a suitable candidate for the job.
Brown said she was, and off the back of that endorsement she was given the job.
First, I’d treat any assertion Slater makes about what Chuang has said with extreme scepticism. (Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me the other several hundred times? Shame on me, with knobs on.)
Second, I don’t know what planet Cameron lives on but I’ve applied for jobs in the public sector where every referee and former employer cited in my CV were contacted. I would not be surprised if this was the case here, as the public sector has (quite properly) become more cautious after a string of cases of staff exposed as having engaged in serious *cough* resume inflation.
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to martinb,
It’s ok to snigger at a name privately-
With all due respect, Martin, it isn't. I can understand my weird "foreign" surname doesn't exactly trip off every tongue, but I do appreciate it when people at least make a good faith effort to pronounce it correctly and avoid turning my name into an occasion for a smutty little sneer.
Ooh, Slater’s put up a comment already saying Harman’s got it completely wrong. Now who would I believe?…
Neither of them. I wouldn't trust Slater if he told me fire was hot and water was wet, but I'm not sure Harman isn't being a wee bit over credulous.
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to martinb,
I think this is a lesser crime than that of Nick Smith pressuring ACC over Bronwyn Pullar.
Well, that's frightfully generous of you, considering neither Brown nor Smith have been convicted of a damn thing anywhere that has standing as a judicial body. I understand it's a distinction the media have largely given up making, but do we have to follow suit?
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