Posts by Russell Brown
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don't agree, Russell, that the little girls at venues like The Big Day Out aren't chasing after boys like they used to. Of course they are, they're just less open about it.
Sheesh. I'm not going to get far if you're just going to tell me I'm wrong every time I make an observation, am I?
(a) I've been to every Big Day Out and I have seen the culture change. Girls used to have to have a boy to follow round. Now they organise their own fun. And they're great.
(b) Yes, they are going to chase after boys. Like boys chase after girls.
I don't have daughters, but I do have alot of nieces and I teach a lot of little girls. My niece is 9, and gets changed under a towel. That might not seem much, but isn't that the start of body shame? Like I said, the same old shit, it seems to me.
Have you asked her why? Kids go through phases of modesty. Maybe that's the way they do things in her house. It's drawing a really, really long bow to declare that "the start of body shame".
daleaway:
Competent and experienced female journalists are dumped because they lack the "shag factor" - don't take my word for it, Granny Herald reported it last week. And it's bloody offensive. So when you lose the ability to raise a male TV executive's wan willy, your job expertise counts for nothing and you're out on your ear or relegated to backroom duties.
True, but what you're describing impacts nearly as much on male TV journalists (although, oddly, has never been the case on American television). Especially in presenting roles, television is the domain of the relatively attractive. Which is why almost everyone with a major onscreen role becomes appearance-obsessed, and why my career has extended only so far as radio ...
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Ian Wishart |is discussing the reviews over at his blog (which is unmissable, btw).
Ian's response to Ryan Sproull busting him on his patching together of three different quotes into something Marx never said is classic Wishart.
He just ignores the problem, sighs that people are such fools, and launches into another lecture. Unless you're just doing it because you're bored, he's not actually worth arguing with, because when confronted with his own fabrication or foolishness, he simply convinces himself of the next thing. He sleeps the sleep of the genuinely deluded.
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Ah, but perhaps they were enjoying themselves _ironically__. It's so hard to tell these days.
No, they just seemed to be enjoying it for what it was. It's when it's all ironic and stuff that it tends to bug me. Like when MTV, after emitting lots of fine words about fostering local culture, put on pole dancers for its NZ launch. Eew. Tacky.
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The sexualised presentation of very young girls is a particularly new and distressing trend.
I think we've discussed this before here, but the state of the pop videos that get played on TV -- in the mornings, even -- does my head in. I'm sure I'd feel even worse about it if I had young daughters, instead of sons who don't watch that stuff anyway.
But I'm not sure about a blanket diagnosis of despair about young women. Girls do better in education than they ever have (and better than boys) and I really do think young women are more confident than they were 30 years ago. A "Girls can do anything" ad campaign (remember that?) would seem odd these days. They just do.
At every year's new intake at Auckl;and Uni you see the Paris Hilton girls tottering across the quad in their heels. But there are plenty of others who think that's just wack. The teenage girls I know are into the MinChicks and learnning to play the drums.
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My friend's wife insists that if he's going to go to the strips, then he has to give the dancers a LOT of money. Otherwise it's exploitation. Don't know whether it's the soundest argument, but he doesn't complain.
I recall back when a smart confident young woman of my acquaintance went through an experimental, transgressive period of going to Showgirls with her student girlfriends, she explained to me that you had to buy a lapdance, because that was how the girls got paid.
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What bothers me about this argument is that it rapidly becomes women telling other women how women are supposed to dress and behave. That doesn't seem like the opposite of repression to me.
Sandra Coney is the expert at this. She periodically bemoans the behaviour and dress sense of young women these days, and it's as if she's disapproving because they don't think, act and dress exactly as she would like.
And fussing about sexual display or whatever can miss the point. If you go the the Big Day Out, you will see hordes of teenage popsies with bared midriffs or whatever. But they're getting around in girl gangs and having a great time, instead of schlepping around after their boyfriends the way they used to. I think that's better.
During the single visit to Mermaids that constitutes the whole of my research into the topic, I was fascinated by the young, slighty alternative couple sitting opposite us at the catwalk. They were having a whale of time; grinning, cheering, applauding. It was surprisingly unsleazy.
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OK, am I the only person who feels a little uncomfortable with a law firm that does extensive work for the government and government departments on the one hand, acting as lobbyists for special interest groups on the other? Just a little too 'K Street' cosy for my blood.
I think the major bulk of their work is in public law for non-government clients -- including some (like the gaming industry) that might be deemed distasteful, so this is pretty much in line with what they do. Matt Bowden used them to get the original approval for Ease.
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Perhaps I'm just not an uppers kind of guy. Or perhaps I'm too critical to let a placebo effect work on me.
Did E do anything for you?
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Helen Clark wasn't in government when NZ got involved in Vietnam. In fact, I think she was a university student protesting against it.
IIRC, our involvement in Vietnam was sold to the public as a "policing operation", which it quite clearly wasn't.
And yes, Clark marched in the streets, as she likes to remind people.
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To rearm is to rearm. That Helen rearmed NZ is the same as Chavez rearming his nation.
No it isn't. Handing out guns to your friendly militias has tended to end badly in other countries.
All peace keeping operations is simantics for they're not coming over the top YET.
No they're not. By definition, a peacekeeping operation exists to support a peace treaty, and cannot exist until such a treaty has been struck between warring parties. It clearly doesn't always work, but are you seriously saying it's equivalent to armed invasion?
Kyle, come now. Foreshore and Seabed legislation is racist law to stop Maori testing rights in a court of law.
No it doesn't. It provides for claimants to take a case to the High Court (but not the Maori Land Court) and for the court's finding to be presented to government in expectation of redress.
Yes, it would have been better and fairer to stick with existing due process, and in a less poisonous political environment that might have happened. It might also have wound up demonstrating to most of the people who took to shouting "we have always owned the foreshore and seabed" that they in fact did not.
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