Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Well, there was that lack of money thing, but oops, I forgot, money doesn't buy elections.
Actually, Don, I think that's another fatuous cop out - but if there are some people in the National Party who want keep wallowing in that particular river denial, so be it. Lots of big ticket donors sure didn't prevent the British Conservatives getting thumped at the polls in 2001 and 2005, or Congressional Republicans getting their clocks cleaned last November.
Actually Craig, I did think English got a very bad run in the media at the time, much of it unjustified.
I'd kind of agree with you there, but it's a little rich to blame the media for not ignoring the endless infighting, a piss poor campaign and a frankly incoherent policy platform. I like Bill - think he will be a excellent deputy PM and Finance Minister but I stand by my original point. I remain unconvinced that 'the media' single-handedly re-elected Helen Clark in 2002. That's moving beyond denial mode into the realms of willful psychosis.
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These kinds of rhetorical reacharounds are grossly offensive.
Really, Keith? The great abolitionist movements in the United Kingdom and the United States contained all kinds of people whose common cause was regarding human slavery as an unspeakable evil despite their political views often being dramatically opposed on every other point.
And, yes, they included some very rich people who were willing to finance magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, print books etc agitating for legislation banning slavery.
I think saying they should have fucked off and formed a political party is a pretty coarse and frankly stupid conception of what being an engaged citizen is.
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Dunne just pulled his support for the bill.
Wow... the political equivalent of the kind of chap whose idea of effective contraception is 'I promise I'll pull out before I come'. Funny how often that doesn't work either.
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Well I don't (and haven't) lived in Australia, so whatever media you might be referring to aren't my 'local' media. And if they ran an anti-government campaign as virulent as that run by the NZH over the last few weeks, please feel free to point us all in the right direction.
Oh, FFS, could it just be even marginally within the realms of possibility that:
1) New Zealand Herald readers aren't all a pack of fuckwit drones utterly incapable of independent thought?
and,
2) The Government might be slightly responsible for their own misfortunes?
Hey, as I said, if Labour wants to believe its all the fault of the media out to get them, fine. It works for me, because you can't effectively come up with a solution when you're in total denial about the nature of the problem. It would be nice if I could blame the media for the 2002 election result, when National received its lowest share of the popular vote ever - but the only problem is that it just wasn't true.
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Slightly more seriously, the last time I saw the local media turn so toxic towards an incumbent government, run free daily publicity for the opposition {yadda, yadda, yadda}...
You've opened an Australian newspaper at random this year? Just saying... Please, dc red, on the partisan tip I'm gagging for the government to consume itself in a paranoid sulk of Muldoon-esque, nay Nixonian, proportions. Not only amusing - in a blackly comic kind of way - but just feeds the perception that a long rest on the opposition benches would be the best option for everyone.
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Not an avid listner, but I have to say, his stuff on blogging was not exactly legendary, he sounded positively...Clarkish.
Think you've got Colin Peacock - who presents and produces Mediawatch - with the political editor of The Press. Admittedly, I've never seem 'em in the same room at the same time, and the media can get a wee bit incestuous but its not that bad. :)
But, yes, I do get rather bored with MSM folks sniping at the blogisphere. Partly because in an age when any journalist could use the phrase 'fake but accurate' without smirking, or folks like Cate Brett are employable, there's not a lot of moral high ground for the MSM to occupy. And largely because, IMO, the most incendiary blog post of the year was Audrey Young getting very pissed off indeed (and justifiably so) at basically being accused of fabricating quotes by John Key. Don't recall the Prime Minister being too outraged at that outburst of instapunditry. :)
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a look at the story behind the "Helen Clark attacks journalists" headlines (Mediawatch also had a useful report on that last issue)
Yes, Mediawatch was fascinating - and sorry if this wounds your ego Russell :), but Colin has done some bloody excellent work even if I totally disagree with much of it. Clark's interview was fascinating, and I was tempted to do a close textual analysis (especially her masterful sidestep when Colin pointed out that the Government is the biggest employer of journalists in the country), but you know something? I can't really be arsed picking through another politicians whinging about the media. Even when folks like Clark and Tony Blair have a point (and they do), I just think it hard to swallow folks who've been quite happy to profit from the status quo crying foul when it suits.
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...one who writes like a Spectator columnist ...
When you said that, I hope you were thinking of the glory days when Auberon Waugh, Jeffrey Bernard, Alice Thomas Ellis and Jennifer Patterson were all in the house - spilling red wine and blood on the carpet and refusing to bugger off when they got sacked. Say what you like about Conrad Black, but under his ownership he was a hands-off proprietor on the editorial front, and absorbed some pretty hefty deficits unitl the magazine became (consistently) profitable for the first time in it's 179 year history.
Anyway, should go scrub the toilet and stop being such a bumptious patriarch. :)
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Don't knock being a token, Emma. I've found it enormous fun - and mildly profitable (hint hint) - being the ethnic/sexual/political minority representation on Public Address Radio. Straight, white, left-leaning middle-class Dorkland males aren't really that bad :)
And no dis intended, but I don't really have a clue what you mean about "unconscious masculine energy" and not having a "recognisably female voice".
Perhaps I've spent too much of my life watching Battlestar Galactica, and being around old school dykes, Tory women and farmers' wives but you seem a rather typical woman to me. Less facetiously, that kind of paradigm just leaves me cold; sure it's mildly useful sociological shorthand, but that kind of reductive labeling always seems to leave our what I find most fascinating about human beings. The ragged edges and soft places that don't fit into sociological boxes or trend stories.
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Man, someone still uses Sinclair? Respect and all that, but that book was published a few years ago. There's been a wee bit of thinking about NZ's history since.
Herodotus is really crusty, and in may respects dramatically unreliable in the light of more recent scholarship and intellectual fashions (which are not necessarily the same thing) but that doesn't make his work utterly useless. I do take your point, but its a pretty big mistake to confuse historiography with science or the fashion industry.
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