Craig Ranapia muses on The Tragical Farce of Phil Goff and That Interview" and concludes that "solid reporting takes time, effort and often just isn’t ‘sexy’. Certainly not as sexy as goading a politician into a sin-sational soundbite, or an unguarded thought you can later sneer at as a ‘flip-flop’ or ‘u-turn’" ...

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Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York

If Ian McKellen is heading back to Wellywood, I wonder if he could be convinced to forget about Gandalf and enter politics. His performance as an art deco fascist, in the 1995 adaptation of Richard the Third certainly had its serpentine charms.

But I don’t think even an actor of Sir Ian’s prodigious skills could bring off The Tragical Farce of Phil Goff and That Interview. For me, the only feature of interest is that the interviewer, Alt TV’s Oliver Driver, mercifully chose not to extend Naked News into Naked Current Affairs.

The usual suspects on the right are seeing Lady Macbeth in drag, who’s forgotten you've got to get the blood on your hands before you can bewail that the damn spot won’t come out. Elsewhere, we’re seeing poor Phil recast as Mr and Mrs Othello undone by the all too clearly motivated malignancy of the Iagos of the Press Gallery. (Who in their spare time are stirring up toil and trouble on behalf of the National Party and their associated hollow men, naturally.)

I can’t really work up the required level of outrage. Goff answered a rather silly hypothetical question, with the kind of candour (however carefully qualified) that I don’t think he would have shown on Morning Report or Close Up. There is, according to Goff, the possibility that Labour will lose the election. Helen Clark probably isn’t planning to die in office, and when she departs he might want to enter the leadership race.

One can say that all of the above is a statement of the blindingly obvious. Which it is. In Clark’s position, I’d rather have my frontbench focused on the election rather than the succession, I doubt she’s seeing some Shakespearian bloodbath in the offing. She shouldn't. After all, both Helen and Will know the best kind of coup is the one your victim doesn’t see coming until it’s all over.

But pardon my cynicism if it’s a little hard to feel any sympathy for Goff being on the end of the kind of pathetic ‘gotcha’ he’s been quite happy to leap on when the Tories are on the receiving end. I cordially loathe departing Rakaia MP Brian Connell, but don’t believe I was the only one who cheered when he told One News’ Chris Faafoi to “piss off”, after being chased around Parliament — and into toilet — while having the same question barked at him seventeen time. I don’t understand why that was considered a lead story, or why Faafoi was on air with the self-satisfied smirk of someone who'd just broken Watergate.

Here’s the dirty little secret. Solid reporting takes time, effort and often just isn’t ‘sexy’. Certainly not as sexy as goading a politician into a sin-sational soundbite, or an unguarded thought you can later sneer at as a ‘flip-flop’ or ‘u-turn’. And if we’re going to be honest, don’t we just love seeing people made to look stupid? Then, to make it even better, when politicians become guarded and evasive we write them off as lying toe-rags with a secret agenda.

McKellen’s Richard III is well worth tracking down, but as you watch it remember that Richard’s victims are the victors in a long and brutal civil war. Nobody’s hands are entirely clean.

I can smile, and murder while I smile,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.