Posts by Craig Ranapia
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National's constant U-turning (on the issue of new rules for press coverage in the house, on the Foreshore and Seabed) and Key's inability to take a policy position on anything is starting to cause that most fatal of political consequences - being taken as a joke.
Tom: I find it rather ironic that when Clark does a 'U-turn', or rolls over/sidelines her front bench to 'front foot' a politically sensitive issue, it's a sign of strength; when Key does he's a flake, at best, or a two-faced arsehole with some secret agenda.
Well, sorry for sounding like scratched CD, but I thought this was exactly what MMP was meant to achieve - end to the 'elected dictatorship' duopoloy of National & Labour doing whatever the hell they wanted with no real checks and balances?
Now, I do think Russell is right (and I do hope this is a fair summary, RB) - the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill was far from flawless, but much of the opposition was either way OTT or flat out misleading, with an unhealthy garnish of gratuitous anti-Ocker paranoia thrown in. (And, yes, I do wish the Greens would at least be consistently inconsistent in their application of the hyper-precautionary principle.) It would be nice if everyone got the gloat-and-snipe out of their system in the House today, and got to work coming up with a workable alternative.
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That's why I don't resile from commenting on American controversies -- there's a sense in which I'm a stakeholder too.
Well, sure... just as I have an enormous debt to British culture, which is why I kinda feel invested in (and hellishly depressed by) folks who still think Salman Rushdie is kinda, sorta asking to be murdered after all these years because he wrote a book that offends various fundamentalist clots. Makes me want to cry when you see that coming out of a country that produced so much great literature, art, music, philosophy and politics that doesn't regard freedom as another obscene word beginning with F.
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Also, does anyone else find the food on American shows on Food TV a bit scary looking? It always looks soft focus and mucusy to me. Bluk.
Gastro-porn creeps me out, period and full stop. Anything that looks that luscious on screen - or in the pages of a glossy cookbook - has probably been 'styled' under hot lights until unfit for human consumption.
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I’d wager Stupid White Men must be one of the most popular political books coming out of the US (or English speaking area) for a decade
Ben, once upon a time, you'd have said the same thing about William F. Buckley or (a few decades later) Alan Bloom. Now, what passes for a conservative public intellectual in the United States is Ann Coulter. I don't think that says anything about the quality of her work, apart from providing another data point to feed my suspicion that there's a sucker born every minute - and hucksters in every marketplace.
And stephen walker well...
oh no, we woudn't want to criticize the US, no, no, no. I mean, it would be so...hypocritical, you know, because we're...well, we're not perfect. In fact, we're totally... f***ed up. So you just quieten down, you antipodean rabble...otherwise we might get to see the business end of an ICBM. HA!
Oh, Stephen... Like Simon Schama, I'm all for criticism and debate - I'd just like it to be a little less smug, hysterical, and reliant on mindless stereotypes. And, yeah, I do actually think we're got a few problems in our own backyard that might respond to the same amount of chattering class energy that seems to get expended on sniffing at the evil Yanquis.
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Agreed - case in point being last night's episode of Top Gear on Prime - it's a mad, mad, mad world over there.
To which my only response is to quote Simon Schama from the latest Listener, on what he's not trying to do with the series he's currently working on for broadcast just ahead of the American elections next year, called The American Future: A History:
Those programme that treat America as a collection of grotesques seem to me, in a dangerous way, very deeply lazy and condescending, and I hate that, actually.
Thanks, Professor Schama - and in my not so humble opinion, both the United Kingdom and little old New Zealand have a lot of shit to clean up in our own backyards before going anywhere else and sniffing at the natives.
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I await for the usual suspects in our own little country to start discrediting the film before they view it.
Really? Well, I'd have been quite keen to see __Manufacturing Dissent__ at the Film Fest this year, but sadly working around my work schedule isn't much of a priority for the wonderful NZFF crew.
And I'd actually give 'usual suspects" Peter Calder and a certain Mr Russell Brown kudos for actually treating Moore's work as something other than holy writ. It would be nice if some of the other superb documentarians you'll seldom if ever see if you miss 'em on the festival circuit got 1% of the publicity Moore does.
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SPOILERS AHOY! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED ETC.
Season three of Rescue Me starts on TV1, although Tommy is such an ass that it can get tedious.
Until you hit episode three, where Tommy rapes his ex-wife - which is a plot turn that's anything but tedious, just not in a good way. I've never been accused of being a paragon of feminist sensitivity - and am a huge fan of shows like The Wire, The Shield & Deadwood that aren't oversupplied with SNAGs - but enough is enough.
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Are any other bloggers finding this Gallery-blogging business creepy?
Nah... but it is damn amusing considering the amount of ink split on the op-ed pages condemning bloggers as illiterate, psychotic liars who wouldn't recognise a fact if it bit 'em on the arse and will be personally responsible for the brain-death of the universe. I recall you've even been name-checked a couple of times, Keith. :)
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Being without sin before you cast stones is a fine doctrine for Christianity but a lousy one for politics.
And with that, I call 'bullshit' right back at you. Harawira can be as full of sin as he likes - I'd just prefer that he and his party stop telling lies and pandering to xenophobic bigots right here at home. FFS, we've just seen David Cunliffe tacitly admit the last round of policy pandering (to Winston Peters) just isn't working, and has to be rolled back. What happens if NZF and the MP get their hooks into the Immigration Act review that's coming before the House next year, just ahead of the election?
But, hey, be as 'right' as you like. John Howard has precisely NO influence over immigration policy or any other legislation in this country. Harawira and the Maori Party do - and that's the kind of racist bastardry I wish just a little of the flowing moral outrage around these parts could be directed at.
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(which is a pity really, it would have been quite fun to have you out flank me from the left :) )
Heh... but I'm beginning to feel more and more sympathy with the historian Robert Conquest, who once said what was really needed on the political scene was a United Front Against Bullshit. Four decades later, and twelve thousand miles away, I don't think anything has changed.
I would imagine it was more of a high-society thing. When certain members of the community join the party it would be join or be ostracised. Peer pressure is a powerful tool.
In many cases, I'm sure you're right -- after the War, there were plenty of opportunists with party membership who paid dearly for the sin of being moral cretins who would go along to get along. Which throws into starker relief, I think, those who did show real moral courage and wouldn't have a bar of Nazis - and lost their jobs, or found their careers stalled, from academia to the arts.
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