Posts by Craig Ranapia
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FYI, today's front page in the Waikato Times:
Rumours doing the rounds on social media yesterday suggested a group of Young Nats in Hamilton might take matters into their own hands and dispose of a large stock of the dreaded book.
It's not exactly on the same scale as the book burnings of the Nazi regime or the anti-communist McCarthy era but social media was yesterday buzzing with rumours of an imminent book burning at Waikato University.
The head of the Waikato Students' Union and a former member of the Young Nats is alleged to have bought 202 copies of Hager's book to burn.
Aaron Letcher has denied the claims, but the leader of NZ First Youth and a Waikato University source, who asked not to be named, said he did.
Perhaps Geoff can keep an eye peeled for the campus book burning, and track down the Hamilton bookstore that had one hell of a good day. Doesn't look like anyone at the Waikato Times could be arsed.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
I get that you’re hostile towards the book and its author. I think the contents are pretty important.
No, Russell, I'm hostile towards people who like to throw their hands up in horror at the entirely predictable consequences of their actions and choices. It's the same hostility I showed towards the likes of Duncan Garner pontificating about "the dirtiest campaign every" as if he and his colleagues are somehow above and beyond it all.
And how is Tweeting "I don't endorse releasing personal information" NOT distancing yourself from his acknowledged source who most definitely did? (And after he did multiple interviews saying he encouraged the release of at least some of the raw material.) As I said, I don't blame Hager for doing it -- we would have done the same --, and of course he's entitled to the presumption of good faith until evidence shows up to the contrary. But let's call a spade a spade. And if you're going to kick off a coup data (as Ian niftily put it), well coups seldom play out like tea and crumpets with the vicar's wife on the rectory lawn. Sorry about that, but that's how it is.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
Exactly. The hacker would have gone to someone else and/or dumped the material anyway.
When Hager was refused access second time around, he asked his source not to post personal material. He can’t do any more than that.
He can cut the pious hand wringing – he’s well on the record saying he got rid off all the material to avoid being sued to disclose the source, so these are the consequences. I’d bloody want to distance myself too, but let’s not be terribly surprised. As they say in Boston, politics ain’t bean bag.
It’s also worth noting that on Saturday Fran O’Sullivan was tearing into Hager for not shipping the documents to “Wikileaks or similar”.
And considering you know full well my opinion of Wikileaks’ approach to other people’s privacy, what’s your point? Fran O'Sullivan says something ill-considered isn't exactly a once in a century event.
Whaledump has apologised for posting the document with the personal conversations still in it, says he “got lazy”, didn’t read it properly, and won’t do it again.
Mistakes were made. Well, that’s alright then. I just hope if this happens again we’re all going to be a little less sang froid about it.
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Hard News: We can do better than this, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
If one reporter plays clean, stays out of people’s personal lives etc, what’s their editor going to do when every other media outlet is reporting it with abandon and getting all the sales and page views?
Well, interesting you asked that question. How’s joining the race to the bottom working out for the BBC? Not terribly well, as it turns out.
The BBC’s controversial coverage of the police raid on Sir Cliff Richard’s home was approved by the deputy news director and came amid increased pressure in its news operation to beat rivals to exclusive stories.
The decision by BBC News to film and broadcast the search of the singer’s home live from a helicopter flying above his £3.5m Berkshire residence prompted accusations of a “witch-hunt” and comparisons with the worst tabloid excesses.
Hope the scoop was worth the BBC getting raked over the coals by MPs, again.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Kumara Republic,
Safe to say there’s a lot of irrelevant noise amongst the actually useful signal. Nicky Hager has just come out and said as much. As of writing this, a number of those I follow on Twitter are attempting to filter out the woffly stuff.
Nah, I've been blocking on principle anyone posting stuff from Whaledump because I had a horrible feeling something like that would happen. And, honestly, I can't really muster much sympathy for Nicky Hager -- who I find it hard to believe is so naive he didn't see all this coming. The Law of Unintended But Entirely Predictable and Ugly Consequences is a bitch, and not just for Cameron Slater.
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Hard News: We can do better than this, in reply to andin,
No its not. But is this all we (I mean us with no influence, outside of casting a vote) can expect?
No -- but it actually requires work because cynicism is a much less painful and prolonged default than expecting better, holding people to account, and even dealing with the inevitable disappointments, failures and a full measure of straight out fuckery.
It's that moral maze, I guess: Expect nothing and you'll never be disappointed, because nothing is exactly what you'll get. But it's such a small life, isn't it?
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Hard News: We can do better than this, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I guess awards might have their uses, but I don’t think they’re a great loss if they don’t happen. In general, great work speaks for itself and doesn’t need approbation to back it up.
You're quite right -- good work is good work. But while The Booker Effect is one hell of a slippery beast to pin down, I really doubt Eleanor Catton's British publisher did a 100,000 hardback reprint of The Luminaries immediately after she won out of sentimentality, and I can't recall how it's shifted for VUP here, but I keep thinking well over a hundred thousand which is no small beer.
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Hard News: We can do better than this, in reply to llew40,
Well, putting myself into the shoes of Canon, as a corporate sponsor I think they were quite right in their initial insistence on sticking to the separation of sponsor from judge – after all, who would want to be a part of an awards process where sponsors had an influence on the judging?
Exactly -- like Russell, I'm struggling to see the rationale for giving him the damn thing but putting that on Canon makes as much sense to me as boycotting NZ Post because you're offended by this. I don't think I'm the only person who'd be severely displeased if NZ Post tried to manage the brand of the book awards they sponsor.
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[Update: For the record, I note that Farrar now denies the allegation in Dirty Politics that he organised the “Princess Party”, though he did attend. As to why writers sometimes choose to remain anonymous, such as me on this occasion, look no further than the climate of intimidation created by the Nats’ attack politics machine. Who needs that kind of filth, I don’t.]
Oh, FFS… I’m not even. Really… I read the post (stupid me) and the comments (really stupid me), and really should feel at all surprised the well being of any women just... stopped being important almost immediately. Cover your ears Myles, but that would have made me bilious with sadness and anger if it just wasn't exhaustingly predictable. Abuse victims < Men with political points to score.
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Hard News: We can do better than this, in reply to Russell Brown,
Thanks Russell, and I’ll happily grant that I don’t think Keir was being malignant either. Just somewhat careless, and it would sheer hypocrisy not to note I’ve been there myself. With bells and noddy hat on.
Which is really just a morally elevated way of saying “everyone does it”.
Oh, pish tosh. Everyone doesn’t do “it”, but yeah I’m sick of hearing “but X. is better than Whaleoil” because that’s saying little. Yeah, The Standard and Kiwiblog are better than Whaleoil because at least I didn’t have stalker bait personal information posted with the racist and homophobic abuse or the allegation that I “endorsed” a (blessedly ex-) American legislator who sent obscene texts to teenage male interns.
That’s true as far as it goes, but I’m still in no great rush to send Messers Farrar and Prentice thank you cards any time soon. Nor do I feel any need to back off my long-held position that they consistently fail to take any real responsibility for the often foul comments on their own sites and I wouldn’t feel a whit of sympathy if they ended up on the thick end of a defamation settlement.
You can still be pretty bloody bad and need to lift your game without being a total garbage monster.