Posts by Craig Ranapia
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It's a bit late to get into this show now but if you haven't already done so, it's worth trying to catch Shameless on UKTV on Wednesday night.
Jeez... is there some law that James McAvoy has to be in everything? Not that I mind, but there has to be some other adorably scruffy British actor under the age of 90 needing work.
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Mark Easterbrook wrote:
With 900,000 people watch the final of Dancing With the Stars, that's 1.8 million eyeballs to turn.Hey, Dancing With The Stars is just the latest iteration of mind-crushingly dumb light entertainment - a genre with a long and honourable pedigree in broadcasting. That I can (just about live with), as long as the shameless monkeys draw the line at marketing it as a 'Charter programming' rather than news and current affairs.
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Bart, many of us might like to see more worthy news, less 'trivia', more analysis, more world events etc etc etc, but I have to ask, in a fully commercial model, where is this imperative of which you speak?
This is an entirely rhetorical question, Damien, but I suspect TVNZ expends a great deal of time and effort telling advertisers what awfully affluent people are watching? I'd respectfully suggest to Bart that if he turned his eyeballs elsewhere - and, say, tens of thousands of others did so - someone might get the hint sooner rather than later? The marketplace isn't a one way street.
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It occurs to me that I'm more likely to know someone who has a drug problem than someone who's been in a plane crash.
You're infinitely more likely to know someone who has gotten drunk and been an obnoxious arse in public, or (even worse) gotten behind the wheel of a car. Unless you're an All Black, or some other micro-celebrity, there would have to be a corpse, a wonderfully bizarre wrinkle and/or nothing else happening anywhere on Earth for them to hit page A1 or lead a TV or radio bulletin.
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Oh come on - the comparison with Paris is flawed in that as far a I am aware Paris' father is not a sanctamonious, opinionated buffoon who as much as anyone else imaginable has been involved in the trivialisation of current affairs reporting in a given country at great personal profit.
Well, you're right up to a point - as far as I can tell, Rick Hilton's major achievement in life has been to parlay his share of gand-daddy's hotel fortune into some sucess as a glitterarti L.J. Hooker/property developer.
But let me put something to you: regular viewers may have come to suspect I'm not really a fan of the incumbent Prime Minister - who I regard as a sanctimonious etc, who as much as anyone has been involved in the dumbing-down of political discourse in this country, and reached the top of the greasy pole in doing so. If you want to play shake the family tree and see what rotten fruit falls out, it's a game you can't lose at. I just don't think it's one worth playing, without bringing a pretty offensive level of hypocrisy to bear. Or were you in any way comfortable with the 'public interest' rationale for the sleazy tittle-tattle about the (alleged) sex-capades of Clark, her husband and Don Brash. Myself, I just felt slimed.
Can you see the media wetting their pants with that much excitement if the accused was, for example, Cameron Bennett's kid? (I've no idea if he's got teenage kids, he's just the first name that came to mind).
Certainly not, Grant - but I've been reliably informed that Kim Hill will answer any questions you like about her fictitious lesbian affair with Ruth Pretty :), but her daughter (and Hill's relationship with her father) is all the way out of bounds.
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I also find it unbelievable that the media has such a fascination with Paris Hilton, and any other american star that comes before the courts. Our media is so lazy that they are incapable of applying a decent New Zealand filter to the predominantly American newsfeeds that they reproduce here as news.
Indeed. As Ratshit Glaucoma - or whatever the hell or name is - and her fellow panty-sniffers have amply proved, we've got plenty of no-talent, pathological exhibitionists of our own.
But speaking of of Parlis Hilton, Christopher Hitchens has a rather interesting take over at Slate about 'creepy populism', Paris Hilton and Scooter Libby.
Not content with seeing her undressed and variously penetrated, it seems to be assumed that we need to watch her being punished and humiliated as well. The supposedly "broad-minded" culture turns out to be as prurient and salacious as the elders in The Scarlet Letter. Hilton is legally an adult but the treatment she is receiving stinks—indeed it reeks—of whatever horrible, buried, vicarious impulse underlies kiddie porn and child abuse.
Ouch... don't hold back, Christopher. But I have to wonder whether there's a point in there - how many of the folks who pushed those stories up the Herald's hit parade were just getting off on seeing Holmes - and presumably his spoilt rich-bitch daughter - get thoroughly humiliated in public? And not for the first time, I'd note that journalism isn't exactly known as a trade that attracts paragons of sobriety, chastity and various other social graces.
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I hope you are right & I've over cooked it.
I read The Press everyday and despair a little.Oh, I look at the De-Press and despair a lot - though admittedly it doesn't take much. :) I think Mediawatch has been on a bit of a roll lately, doing some measured and thoughtful pieces on this, the 'Murder Energy'/Muliaga media circus and the flat out bizarre love-in of David Bain. This might sound like a back-handed compliment, but the world would be a much better (and better informed) place if the Mediawatch crew decided it was time to close up shop.
IMO, I don't think the item in general, or Thomson in particular, were letting Coddington off the hook or beating up on Keith. (As I've said way up thread, if Keith and Russell come to anything with a 'hidden agenda' they really suck at it. And I don't blame them, or Ms. Mok, for getting a little fraked off at being accused by Coddington, basically, of deceptive character assassination.)
Craig, do you know that "Japanese housewives" are a long-standing and not inaccurate shorthand for Japanese retail investors? It's not Yellow Peril at all.
I do now... but sweet Bubby Jeebus, I could have done without the image of Mrs Suzuki getting Lady Snowblood on Bollard's ass, before tottering off to a love hotel with the Kiwi. (Then again, putting a Belgian dentist into that scenario isn't a pretty thought either.)
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Stephen:
While the thought of Doctor Bollard getting stomped by a fiscal Lady Snowblood, before she wandered off for a love hotel tryst with the Kiwi, was mildly titillating you were much more informative. :)
And I think you made a fair point: Sure, I don't think James Weir was motivated by any kind of 'racist animus', but t doesn't hurt to remember The Dominion Post isn't a specialist business publication, and a little more context to the jargon/shorthand is always useful. Especially on a subject as intensely political - and heated - as this. I'm mildly disturbed, to be honest, at some causual links being drawn by various parties between immigration and 'housing affordability' in recent days - which is a legitimate, if highly debatable, area to explore. But not superficially, as seems to be happening.
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Hey, blame those slitty-eyed hausfraus in Japland - again! Serious question: Do these currency-speculating Japanese housewives actually exist, or is it more Asian Angst where there's a lot less to the story than meets the eye?
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And here's one for the are Fairfax paying their journalists with drugs? file:
Kiwi seduces Japanese housewives
By JAMES WEIR - The Dominion Post | Tuesday, 19 June 2007
Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard is trying to take the top off the Kiwi dollar again, but Japanese housewives are standing in his way.
Damn those slitty-eyed hausfraus, and their fiscal-harassment of poor Doctor Bollard! Sorry, but even on the level of headline-ese, this is a really bizarre spin on the Yellow Peril.
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