Posts by Craig Ranapia
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I recently rewatched one of his anti-MMP TV spots, and was annoyed all over again at the uber-manipulative insults to my intelligence contained within it.
Indeed, Danielle. I wasn't a fan of MMP then, but I was sure tempted to make Rod Donald a very happy man. It's what I call the Telecom effect -- the company has spent huge amounts of money on advertising over the years, some of which even deserves that much abused label 'iconic'. But those horrible 'Clever Toys' ads aren't going to make me forget some very bad memories of excremental service and piss poor products, and little evidence that much has changed. And I know those 'BK Girls' ads aren't a pitch for the pink dollar, but really... do they stimulate anything other than the gonads of twelve year old boys?
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But more interesting -- and potentially more the target of the act -- is stuff like Maxim's shonky "NZVotes" project, which purported to be a educational initiative but was yer basic covert campaign.
But even there, Russell, isn't the problem with the Maxim Institute period more that they were putting stuff out that just wasn't true - and I'm not talking about 'a point of view open to debate' but 'contains more horseshit that all the stud farms in Cambridge put together'. You can't really accuse them of not being pretty up front about where they were coming from ideologically.
While muttering about 'plutocrats buying elections' is a nice scary dog-whsitle, I just wish a little more of nervous energy would go toward our ever-so-sophisticated cynical acceptance of just being lied to. Political parties and lobby groups who cynically deceive voters scare me a lot more.Liars don't become any more savory by being fully EFB compliant.
And here's something else to think about: In the age of YouTube and partisan hit blogs, not only can a lie go around the world before the truth has its boots on, but can be cheap as chips to produce and distribute, and very hard to track back to its origins. Really want to proved wrong on this, but if you think the local political blogisphere got ugly back in '05, it's going to get worse. A lot worse.
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Fair points, Keith, but oddly enough it's not ""people don't care so shut up" that I find really cynical, but the rhetorically hyperinflated sneer that opponents of the EFB just want to leave their rich buddies free to "buy elections".
OK, what does that mean? AFAIK, the only way you can really 'buy' an election is to go out and bribe a couple of hundred thousand people to vote for the party of your choice. Not only extremely difficult, one might think, but already a corrupt practice under the Electoral Act and has been since the year dot.
Now if what folks are really saying is that there's some causal relationship between dollars spend on an election campaign and votes received, I'm reasonably sure ACT's caucus would be significantly larger. Or ACT wouldn't exist at all, because the 1993 electoral referrendum would have been a landslide in favour of the status quo and the political landscape would be rather different.
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Sigh... Preview is my friend.
Should have read (additions bolded):
Sure, you can always do better and pushing back against the huge amount of disinformation and anti-immunisation rhetoric doing the rounds was a massive job in itself. And I still wonder if some of the really in your face 'shock and awe' tactics designed to motivate parents didn't end up have some unintended consequences. Even with the best of intentions, there's part of me that doesn't like public health campaigns designed to scare the shit out of already anxious parents. But I can sure understand any parent or doctor who's seen a child die of meningococcal disease would say the end more than justifies the means.
Hope that's a little less surreal.
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And, Don, I don't mean to bitch off at you. Bloody good job that you take the health and safety of your kids seriously, and ended up feeling confident enough that you had enough sound information to make a good decision. Can't fault anyone for that.
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I think sneering at peoples fears when they are keep in the dark is a pretty weak position.
Don, once more, where the hell was I doing that? I thought I was sneering at some pretty shoddy reporting, and flat out dodgy misinformation being put about by pressure groups (and uncritically repeated by lazy hacks) which richly deserves to be sneered at.
And good on you for being able to track down and meaningfully analyse peer-reviewed research. Not everyone can; and folks like me are even more dependent on MSM hacks to do their damn jobs, rather than slap a shock horror headline on a lightly-edited piece of scaremongering. No disrespect to our host, but its pretty embarrasing when one of the pyjamahadeen appears to put more effort - and basic reporting - into a story than the combined forces of the MSM.
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And in all that they forgot to deal with the public concern. I think they could have done better but I don't think for a second they were doing anything other than what they believed was the best they could do for NZ.
And don't forget that there's 'public concern' and 'utter hysterics you're never, ever going to be able to reason with'. Not a precise analogy, but it was a lot like the MeNZB vaccine - do I think the MoH could have done a better job of informing parents and addressing reasonable concerns. Sure, you can always do better and pushing and still wonder if some of the 'show and awe' tactics designed to motivate parents didn't end up have some unintended consequences.
But there was a lot of misinformation, junk science and outright paranoid bugshit (like the MoH pumping kids full of ineffective and dangerous vaccines to line the pockets of BigPharma) out there that was less than helpful.
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I'm in no position to know what to make of the case of Sally Lewis, as reported in the Herald today. She does appear to have suffered very serious health effects, which she believes stem from the day she stood out under the spray, breathed it and let it fall on her skin.
OK, am I a bad person for saying my bullshit detector started twitching too? I'm hardly able to out geek Maggie Barry on the garden front, but even I can wrap my head around the concept that exposing yourself to any kind of insecticide or herbicide spray drift is a really, really dumb idea no matter how minimal the risk.
And a pretty basic question Keith Perry should have asked Sally Lewis: Who the hell told her that the spray was "entirely safe" so emphatically that any reasonable person would let it fall on their bare skin? I'm open to correction here, but that's stretching credibility a little too far.
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Tell me that wasn't intentional, Craig.
I could but that would be an not-so-little off-white lie. I noticed it, but then thought "forget it, good taste has already run screaming from the building".
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If one of them were to sue the other....
Ouch... Thankfully (or not, depending on your POV) it looks like her attitude is 'who give a shit what this arse says about me anymore, I've got a life to get on with', and surely someone has to sit him down and write out the mother of all reality checks? If he doesn't STFU soon, he's going to lash out at a few people who can hit back. And I don't think his payout was that big he can fight multiple court cases.
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