Up the creek without a Paddles

Let’s be honest (I can be now; I am no longer in politics or advertising), nobody likes whingers. Even whingers whinge about whingers. Whingers are the people who incessantly moan and complain about almost everything their, usually narrow, view of the world cannot comprehend.
In New Zealand they were, in past times, most commonly the “whinging poms” who came here  and complained about most everything and did it most vociferously to the point that New Zealanders of my parents’ generation—New Zealand born—questioned why Poms came here in the first place and, more aptly, why they just didn’t go home. In fact, some did go home. The others? Well, they just stayed and ran the Union movement and New Zealand Soccer. After both failed eventually, Poms settled down and with the support of some New Zealanders were content to whinge about the arrival of bludey (sic) South Africans and how stuck-up “Maories” were.
To be fair to the Poms it was then mostly pakeha New Zealanders who were more vociferous in those complaints. Me? I couldn’t care. Don’t care. Maybe, I wonder why we pakeha always get a lower case whereas Maori get a capital, but who cares—the League season is resuming soon. The Warriors are mostly “Maori”—see what I did there?
So, what has the new election result produced for us? In the eternal battle of them and us, the Us has won. The problem is the Us—the self-styled downtrodden and victims—the delusionals, have no idea what do now that they are in power. They never expected to be there and didn’t train for it. Even worse, they no longer have someone else to blame for it. They are it. They have to take the hit. New Zealand’s former opposition parties, now governing parties, are floundering.
And, you see, that is where the problem is. Labour, Greens, NZ First are whingers. Perpetual whingers. And like most whingers they do it best from the sideline, where they feel safe. From my time dealing with them in local politics I know that the last thing whingers want to do is actually go onto the field and get roughed up in the scrum. Same with national politics. Put simply, this nation’s whingers—and there are a lot of them—don’t have the guts or the acumen to do something about what they are complaining about. And when they are forced into having that real power, as Labour et al are, they are terrified by it.
They will be the first to nurture the birth of the Bring Back Bill movement.
Which brings me to Gareth Morgan.
Gareth Morgan is not a whinger. But he is a complainer. A complainer about cats. I don’t like cats. I am a dog person. Some say you can be both. I don’t believe that. You are either a Laphroig drinker or a Lagavulin drinker; a Holden fan or a Ford fan. You cannot be both. Gareth and I are not cat fans.
But Gareth Morgan’s capitalising on the death of the Prime Minister’s Paddles is unnecessary, immature and insensitive. Also unimportant and unworthy of comment by Fryday. Except that it illustrates another aspect of New Zealand that is unsavoury—our willingness, our hunger, to get entangled in minutiae. Gareth is what he is, and I am not quite sure what that is. But why the media give him any air-time and why we suck it in also defy explanation or definition. In this Kadashian world of ours is this the definition of news? Is Seven Sharp our benchmark for current affairs? Is this week’s “Good Sort” as good as it gets?
If it is, God help us.
Not that I’m whinging, you understand.

The Shooting Season

We seem to be going through two omnipresent trends, or news cycles as they are now called. The first is the deaths of much-loved artists, and the second historical sex abuse allegations against celebrities. Fats Domino is the most recent of the first; Dustin Hoffman the latest of the last. Of course, there is nothing we can do about the deaths, other than acknowledge the variable depth of sadness that ensues. For example, and meaning no disrespect to Mr Domino, I am less saddened by his death (at his age) than I am of Tom Petty’s. I still feel the rawness of the loss of three of my heroes: Alan Rickman, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Roy Orbison. Hoffman’s could have been prevented (perhaps), but not the others nor indeed most other deaths. They are what they are.

But what of the sexual allegations? And here I know I am treading on thin ice. Are the allegations not, perhaps, perchance, just slightly, just teeny-weeny, just a smidgen, getting out of hand? Of course, I am not saying that what is being alleged didn’t happen and I am certainly not condoning it, but I can’t help thinking that the sudden rush of them is something akin to the duck shooting season. Everybody, it seems, is fair game. And there is another thing:  earlier allegations—some proven in court, others yet to be—against Rolf Harris, Jimmy Saville and Bill Cosby point to vile and monstrous behaviour, with long-term traumatic effect on some of the victims. But this latest round of allegations against Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman seem trivial by comparison. Not only are the alleged abuses decades old, they are, as acts, minor relative to those of, particularly, Saville. However, my main question relates to timing. Why now? Why choose to now evoke events that happened decades ago? Yes, I know there is the Me Too movement and Weinstein is still not in jail. But I can’t help thinking that the sheer flood of stars saying, “Me Too” is almost as if they don’t want to be left out of the club. Again, I am not saying it didn’t happen to them, but I find it slightly disquieting and disconcerting that some seem to be wearing it as a badge of honour.

What is to be achieved by these continuing revelations of historical abuse? Is it cathartic? If it is, why couldn’t they have been brought to the fore years ago? What worries me most, though, is that they divert attention from what may be happening now. It was the same with the Roman Catholic Church scandals—all those awful allegations about what happened years ago; yet, as far as I know, there was no serious investigation into whether such practices permeate the Church today.

So, what I would like to feel would be more helpful in dealing with the sexual abuse issue is for the media to move on from reporting historical events, which—like death—are what they are, and focus on investigating and bringing to the fore what is happening now. They have gone some way in doing that with Weinstein, but I assume there are others out there. Go after them. Stop them.  Dealing with Spacey and Hoffman is retrograde—literally and figuratively.