Posts by Craig Ranapia
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How does the Manic Street Preachers song go, "if you tolerate this, then your children will be next"
Well, at the moment I'm thinking more of the Two Nice Girl's lesbo-Tex country anthem 'I Spent My Last $10 00 (On Birth Control And Beer)' 'cause kids sound like an utter waste of time and money.
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Kowhai:
Hum... lots of crunchy material for thought. Thanks for the linky love.
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But I'm also troubled by how many are defending English on the basis that his son's comments were 'homophobic' ie it doesn't count as a real 'foul'.
I take your point, and hope I didn't leave that impression. But in the great scheme of things, after reading chapter and verse on what a delusional, murderous homophobe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is, I'm trying to keep the response proportional.
Personally, I'm more troubled that we're squinting past murderous state homophobia (because, after all, there's no homosexuality when all the fags and dykes are dead) as long as the regimes involved keep buying plenty of good Kiwi butter and lamb. That's worth a little more righteous indignation than Bill English's son's crass and offensive Bebo page.
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Well I think if your kid is saying bigotted stuff online it's perfectly OK to publically say you don't believe what he says is true - I don't think that humiliating - I wouldn't use inflammatory language to do it - but I wouldn't say 'no comment' either
Paul, we're obviously going to have to agree to disagree on this but I wouldn't make any public comment or respond to media inquiries about my children, full stop.
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what you don't do as a parent is keep your mouth shut
No, and you don't ritually humiliate your children in public as part of a media damage control strategy either. At the risk of sounding way OTT, a certain ad campaign our host is involved in contains the useful reminder that abuse is no less damaging when it's psychological or verbal instead of a good kicking.
And some folks in the media might like to consider what kind of role models they're providing - because I'll certainly be looking at the next MSM story tut-tutting about 'on-line bullying' or 'text harassment' with an even more jaundiced eye than usual. When teenagers do it on Bebo, its evil; post it on Stuff under a by-line, and it's journalism in the 'public interest'. Meh...
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Seems like GayNZ did enough to alert English of the issue and held back from rushing to press, for all the reasons given already on this thread.
Meh... if you're going to buy that justification from GayNZ, then don't you have to start doing the same for Wishart, or the (IMO) equally flimsy rationale MSM outlets that should have known better than to legitimise sleazy innuendo about Don Brash & Dianne Foreman's alleged affair, or Peter Davis & Ian Scott's not terribly downlow make out session that wasn't? [Sorry, forgotten the emoticon for eye-rolling exasperation.] Frankly, that was a perfect storm of raw media/political sewage I'd rather forget.
Anyway, my blood pressure is a little low this morning. I'd go cruising Beebo looking for some idiotic teen male drivel to be outraged by, but that might attract all the wrong kind of attention. You know, being a near-middle aged poof and all.
Or better, I should go and do some useful work that's going to plump up the bank account. And I promise if Rory ever starts showing up to National Party conferences, I'll give him a handbagging of Thatcherite proportions. :)
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And as for the angle of parental responsibility, I'm coparent of a fifteen year old daughter. If she ever pulled a stunt like this, I'd impose disciplinary sanctions, acknowledge what had happened, and
apologise to the community attacked.On my own account, I don't accept third-party apologies full stop - and when it comes to being a good role model in an extended family (Big Gay Eccentric 'Uncle' Division) I'd rather see children and teenagers show a genuine sense of moral reasoning and growth that most people would call 'growing up'. In my book, blurting a superficial and insincere 'sorry' doesn't count, especially when it's prompted by me giving them industrial-strength stink eye.
For once, I agree with TomS. I wouldn't go out of my way to annoy Bill or Mary, and I'm pretty confident that wee Rory has been read the riot act in full Dolby stereo - in private. Don't really see anything worthwhile being achieved by his ritual public humiliation - unless it's his father you're really after.
And, Craig, with all due respect when you're citing Insinuate Magazine and the Society for the Promotion of Cretinous Puritanism to defend the story, then you've just shown how worthless it is. Playing Ian Wishart's game by his rules is no way to claim the moral high ground.
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Ugh. Writing crap on your Bebo page is so gay.
Heh... I can just see you as the Mother from Hell. :)
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Gilmor's view was that we're all going to become a lot more forgiving.
And I can only hope we're going to see a few less biarro gotcha stories like this:
The daughter of Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani has signalled her backing for Democrat Barack Obama, US media reports say.
According to her profile on social networking site Facebook, Giuliani's daughter Caroline, 17, was a "liberal", online magazine Slate reported.
In the listing, which was removed on Monday, she said she was a member of a Facebook group supporting Mr Obama.
Um, OK. So, Slate's Lucy Morrow Caldwell came up with the stunning revelation that children often have different political views from their parents. Oh, and when your parents go through a very public and ugly divorce relations with your father and now-stepmother may be less than cordial. Stop the presses...
I don't know what's more disturbing - that there are journalists out there who are spending way too much time cruising Beebo and Facebook, or that there's a really nasty media double standard when it comes to using politician's families as offensive weapons.
I can't help but wonder if GayNZ would draw the line at outing the son of someone they consider to be an 'anti-gay' politician, if they were pointed to a profile on a gay site. After all, isn't the whole rationale of outing that it exposes hypocrisy etc.?
I hope Gilmor is right and "we're all going to become a lot more forgiving". I just wonder if we're going to become just as ugly as we ever were, just in new ways to reflect new technology.
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Any favour a Greater Auckland Council?
I'm agnostic when it comes to a further round of local body amalgamations, because there are serious arguments on both sides worthy of careful consideration. I just wish 'megacity' advocates would start making them, instead of coming across like a pack of dizzy size queens.
What must not happen again is a group of mayors getting together behind closed doors, with no electoral mandate, and coming up with a fait accompli so badly designed it was hard to read as anything more than a ram-raid on the ARC's assets. (And believe you me, the number of times I agree with Mike Lee can be counted on a clenched fist.)
Blumsky, did he jump or was he bashed up by street kids while perfectly sober & polite?
Classy, Michael. I understand he's just not a particularly good fit for Parliament and decided to move on - wish a few more on all sides of the House (and in local government, for that matter) would do the same.
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