Posts by Andre Alessi
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Poor Debs doesn't understand the difference between a conversation and a broadcast (to say nothing of most other matters). Mind you, that has been a long-standing problem with her 'columns'..
I have no doubt she'd understand the difference perfectly well if instead it had been Hone Harawira who had been fired from a broadcasting gig for saying something about white motherfuckers.
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Wikipedia entry on "Russian mats" for a slightly different take on the history gendered swear words.
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I suspect there's one or two feminists who'd be serving fresh hot "shut the fuck up" pies at their stalls in response to that notion.
If you count certain "internet feminists" in the category , you'd probably find those stalls would be serving more pies than the White Lady 24/7.
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I don't think it's reasonable that he never gets to work again, but I do question the ethics of whacking him on a much listened to spot, really.
I don't think that distinction is terribly practical, though. You could argue that sticking him in a graveyard shift would be "getting him back through the back door", etc
Like most folks on PAS, I won't be listening to him, but I acknowledge that he's been tried, judged and sentenced in a court of law, and now has the same right as everyone else to earn a living.
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Know-it-all!
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If I were a betting man, I'd put money on the Herald being fed a patsy story by blondie's PR reps, who saw a golden (sorry) opportunity to get their client a nice big wedge of free exposure off the back of the Henry saga.
Probably nothing so organised as that, but I did think that the mention that "this story has only come to light in the wake of the Paul Henry scandal" was telling. Maybe it was one of those stories that the reporters had been aware of earlier, but never bothered to run because the outrage levels weren't high enough.
Although I must admit, my first reaction on seeing the picture of the winner on the front page before I ever read the headline was "Oh, another missing white girl?" (Tongue firmly in cheek while swinging from the gallows, you understand.)
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I would have been happier still if he had been described in more pejorative terms.
How about "a mental midget with the IQ of a fencepost"?
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If you're not afraid of war ghosts entering your vagina, you can just decide to go ahead and go, right?
They should charge extra for that service.
I don't really have much time for the sorts of suspersition that are too easily foisted on others as though they were not open to debate. I think it's pretty telling that the language used, i.e. "pregnant women are precious to us, it's for their own protection" is not a million miles from the language used to defend the extreme gender seperation prohibitions seen in wahabiist Islam. Cultural sensitivity should never be a reason to discount criticism of the reasons and effects of spiritual beliefs.
However, there also needs to be room for personal reactions. If a pregnant woman wants to go see these taonga, she should never at any point be made to feel uncomfortable or disrespectful for doing so-but if she chooses not to (for whatever reason) the same rules should apply.
I remember vividly going to see the Pompeii exhibit at Te Papa-outside the section with the plaster casts of body molds was a little bowl of water with a note that "some people" felt that viewing these mortal remains required a gesture of spiritual cleansing. I went in to the room sneering slightly at this, but after five minutes inside where I was confronted with the death poses of ordinary people, I left thinking that I could understand perfectly why someone would want a ritual "cleansing" to help them deal psychologically with what they had just seen.
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How about something like Cafepress' model: default stock that has designs printed on by the content creator and is printed to order on purchase.
It has its downsides (in particular needing either relatively fancy printing equipment or rather utilitarian blanks) but it might be a direction to look into? Saves on the problem of having excess stock, too.
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There are a number of good reasons for attacking people directly, and for attacking Paul Henry in particular, but such attacks are the antithesis of the marketplace of ideas.
Eh, I'm not so sure. If Paul Henry had made a structured, well-formed argument about why Sir Anand didn't look and sound like "a New Zealander" then sure, it'd be perpendicular (at best) to the idea of free expression of ideas to simply call him a cunt. (It certainly wouldn't be "antithetical", but it would be irrelevant.)
But he didn't do that. He made a statement, based solely on his authority as Paul Henry, that Sir Anand wasn't what a New Zealander was like. As a result, attacking who Paul Henry is and what makes him believe he has the authority to make a statement like that is central to the whole issue. It's entirely in keeping with a free and frank dialogue of ideas to point out that Paul Henry's authority as to who is and is not "a New Zealander" is worthless because he is, objectively speaking, a cunt.