Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: Fluency, ease of manner - and…, in reply to WH,
. You have to wonder whether a guy who thinks that New Zealanders’ views about fish are a trump card in a debate about constitutional rights really has the temperament for this kind of responsibility.
No better and no worse, I'd suggest, than the Prime Minister and Parliament that was totally OK with the Electoral Act being retroactively amended - under extreme urgency, no less - simply to avoid a politically inconvenient by-election. Not exactly my idea of a compelling justification for fucking around with electoral law, but you know what? I seem to be in the tiny minority of citizens who gave a shit about that too. If it's true we get the politicians we deserve (and elect) perhaps we need to ask who is really at fault.
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Legal Beagle: Gordon Campbell…, in reply to Yoza,
I’m guessing you haven’t read Gordon Campbell’s defense of his article, to which Rob Stowell has already linked.
You're guessing wrong. That's how the internet in the hands of grown ups work, and Gordon actually engaging with criticism (not entirely convincingly, IMO, but that's another kete of kai moana) is significantly more useful than coming onto Graeme's blog and telling him to STFU and be a good team player. When does that ever end well?
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Hard News: Fluency, ease of manner - and…, in reply to Russell Brown,
The “I’ll get back to that” technique in interviews is also practised very successfully by Steven Joyce. It lets the subject rattle out a bunch of assertions of which the interviewer will end up being able to query at most one or two.
Running out the clock? It's a classic, and a not-at-all-surprisingly effective one -- especially when you've got an interviewer who thinks they're going to be able to browbeat a subject into giving an answer they've no intention of giving. Like much else, that only works regularly on TV dramas. :)
But Campbell was trying to trap Key too. It becomes an arms race.
Quite - and it can lead to the interviewer missing that much-underrated (and difficult) tool in the journalist's arsenal -- the lethally pointed follow-up when you've been paying attention to what's being said rather than just waiting for your turn to speak.
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Hard News: Fluency, ease of manner - and…, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I would suspect that Crosby Textor are still on the National Party payroll and Key’s office having complete control of the questions being put was probably a big part of how he was groomed to respond.
*sigh* First, perhaps if John Campbell or anyone on the production side of Campbell Live they might like to respond to that directly. But, FFS... I know Crosby Textor is the fashionable bogeyman of the left but it's more than a little naive to pretend 'perception management' isn't indulged in by the left. (At the moment, I doubt Kevin Rudd would fart without running it by a focus group first.) Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor could have taken masterclasses in message discipline from Clark and the advisors she started surrounding herself with from the day she became opposition leader.
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Legal Beagle: Gordon Campbell…, in reply to Mick Rose,
You’re missing the point: I’ve got no reason to doubt Graeme’s critique of the examples given by Gordon, and it’s a useful critique, but it’s also snide, pedantic and grandiose.
Fucking hell, so it’s now “snide, pedantic and grandiose” to publicly critique a journalist being well… somewhat careless on basic matters of fact? Too right: Graeme pull your fucking head in, and stop acting like journalists and politicians actually have some kind of obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth and not just the bits they find convenient.
BTW, guys: Here's a modest proposal. Think about how incredibly dangerous it is to give "our side" a pass for playing fast and loose with the facts. If you're on the side of the angels, isn't it all the more important that you don't undermine your own credibility? This isn't the first time folks around PAS have been willing to cut Campbell slack they not only wouldn't give anyone else, but which nobody deserves.
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Hard News: Fluency, ease of manner - and…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
And this makes me so angry. How does the NZHerald call Key the winner when he comes out and calls these people liars.
What bemuses me about this is that Key could irrefutably say that Governments receive reams (or would that be Terrabytes?) of advice and opinions every day of the week. They're under no obligation to take a blind bit of notice of it all (however foolish that may be), and fairly often they don't.
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I expect to get shat on for saying this, but it looks like someone sat Key down with a stack of videos of Clark “on the front foot” (as she was fond of putting it) and told him to take notes. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if Campbell was having Corngate flashbacks today.
But that totally misses the point that John Key was defending an amoral position.
No, I don’t think anyone is “missing” that point – presuming, of course, you actually find his position any such thing. Whether you agree with him or not, it’s hard to argue that he did a much better job of defending (or at least asserting) his position than Campbell did of refuting or challenging it.
And it’s not a game at all when Campbell was a geyser of Churchillian eloquence compared to the sodding leader of the Parliamentary opposition. It’s all very nice for Labour to preach to the choir that already thinks Key is Rosemary’s Baby, and the peasants are eventually going to come to their senses, but that’s not good enough. It’s not only being a ratshit Opposition, but a basic failure of the Opposition’s fundamental duty to act as a check and balance on the Government of the day and the Executive.
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Test
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Muse: How (Not) To Be Incredibly Racist…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Surgeon General’s Warning: The following link may be hazardous to your productivity.
I would like to emphasise that some of my best friends are brain-damaged goldfish. MUSE supports tolerance for the goldfish community, and wishes to apologise for any offence caused.
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Muse: How (Not) To Be Incredibly Racist…, in reply to Seamus Harris,
OK, seriously. I wish someone could explain to me why (as far as I can tell) the American market is the only territory where this film's home media release required the four female leads to be Smurfed-out.
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