Bored With Bush

I feel fully justified in calling this a shit of a day. It has rained incessantly and with dyke-hardness for most of the night. Rain has been the predominant show-pony in this inclement weather but wind has striven manfully to match it. In the middle of the meteoric metrological battle has been me—unable to sleep, wrought with civil defence guilt (though in practice it is nothing like a civil defence emergency) and musing on…life without George Bush. I am not concerned for Fryday; there plenty of other targets and to be honest I am bored with Bush. The world is bored with Bush. The danger of the depraved which gave certain edginess to his presidency is long gone. To call President Bush’s run-down (literally) to the next election as a lame-duck presidency is to do an injustice to both the disabled and the ducks—he is less than both. There is nothing left, or is there? I remember thinking at the height of the Watergate scandal, when we had all long-since ceased to take a prurient interest and all hoped it would end, that President Nixon might go out in a blaze of inglory in a vain desire to leave us more of a legacy than a scandal-wracked presidency. He didn’t, though the shot of him about to board the helicopter, with two arms outstretched, was probably the biggest “finger” to the world we have yet seen. I know another politician who will likely do the same soon, but with subtlety and characteristic servitude. President Bush is not that politician, but will he make a grand statement, as I feared Nixon would? No. President Bush hasn’t got it within him. In my opinion and based on his recent disappearance he is a shell without power. His cabinet is gone, his senate is gone, his congress has gone, his credibility—well, that was never there. He is still Commander in Chief but the heart has I think been taken out the military—they will no longer fight the President’s and, obliquely, God’s crusades. So, fear not: there is nothing to fear from Bush in these last years—he is no Muldoon or Clark—he is man without legacy other than to be the most forgotten President since Cleveland. And like Cleveland and Nixon and all other unassisinated presidents before him, Bush will quietly retire and found his presidential library. The difference with Bush is that for all its power and status a Bible makes for a very small library indeed.

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Let's Do A Little Smack

Helen Clark made an interesting observation (honest) the other day in relation to Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking bill. She said that those whom police were already arresting for assaults on children would continue to be arrested. Given that, why then do we need a law that seemingly embraces everybody else? Furthermore, when we have a plethora of laws covering assaults on any person, regardless of age, where is the gap that needs to be filled by the Bradford bill? Where is the problem this bill is meant to solve? Where is the evidence that suggests smacking of children has a lasting traumatic effect on those children? Or that society is somehow indicted and diminished because a child is smacked in the home or class-room? Where is the evidence to suggest that outlawing spanking will deliver a better society with more stable contributory young people—indeed, there appears to a body of anecdotal evidence that the reverse is true. And finally, where is the police force or other body with the resources and the zeal to enforce such a law?

I ask these questions because if one takes this anti-smacking bill at face value it becomes very unsettling. The bill is not aimed at those who do great mental and physical harm to children (they according to the Prime Minister are already being arrested under existing laws), nor is it aimed at curbing acts of great or even minor brutality—again, those are covered by existing laws. Technically, even a mild-smacking is covered by those same laws.

So, I am driven to the conclusion that this proposed and already redundant law has no purpose other than to issue a series of statements. They are:

• Sue Bradford has little else to do.
• A bill such as this taxes, but just squeaks into, the limits of the Greens’ collective IQ.
• The Kahui twins unfairly focussed on Maori.
• The white middle-class hasn’t been picked on for awhile.
• Regardless of how often it is humiliated, Political Correctness refuses to give up the ghost.
• Somebody somewhere always knows what’s best for us.
  
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Dressed to Kill

Have you seen Helen Clark lately? Nobody else has either. The face that once launched a thousand shits among the National Party and its supporters has been mysteriously absent these days. When she does pop up it is in a much muted fashion indeed, without fire, ideas, or venom. The other half of the erstwhile dynamic duo, Dr Michael Cullen, is also absent without leave. In fact, he has become the Paul Holmes of politics: yesterday’s man and largely irrelevant.

Why the change? Can it be put down entirely to John Key and his emergence as a credible alternative? Many may think so. I do not. I believe it is that Fryday is finally having an effect. After successfully reshaping Hamilton and sending Christchurch into hiding. After earning George W. Bush an admonishment from God. And after years of unremitting due diligence on our present Prime Minister and her alternate, Fryday has successfully brought the Clark of the House to her knees, though I hasten to add in no unseemly way.

Was it the “Dear Michelle” letters to her therapist that did it? Again, many may think so. Again, I do not. Hardman and I know it was Fryday’s attacks on Clark’s fashion sense that drove her to ground. They were unrelenting, unremitting and entirely justified. She once dressed, as we remember from a very famous photo and a subsequent Fryday, like an aluminium can. There were other horrors, and the more she wore them and the more Fryday commented on them, the more Fryday wore her down. The woman who was never into fashion went out of fashion. Fryday killed her political career.

Sad, really: not for the country but for Clark. And for Fryday. Fryday is running out of targets.

Still, there are local body elections this year.

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Career Openings

Last night I dreamt I attended an opening. I cannot now recall what was being opened, but I do remember the Prime minister being there and remonstrating with me about the Dear Michelle series; she wanted to know who was “leaking” the information.

That I should have such a dream is not unusual. As a council functionary I am inclined as they say to attend the opening of an envelope, and earlier last night I had in reality attended the successful opening of the Estuary Arts Centre in Orewa. My role on such occasions is minor; usually it is to look after the press corp., which in Orewa consists of one reporter. Last night, without even that reporter to look after and seeking solace because Maggie was in Sydney and I would be returning to an empty house I made it my mission to look after the mayor and the sole attending cabinet minister Judith Tizard.

And what does that entail? Not a lot. Both are highly capable politicians (yes, I know, an oxymoron) highly capable of looking after themselves. Apart from an odd drink—a very odd drink: Rodney’s own avocado juice or some such—delivered to the minister, I did nothing for her. The mayor was a little more challenging: he too had drinks (more practically and I am sure enjoyably, red wine), but I had on top of that to look after the mayoral chains.

You’ll of course remember the embarrassment caused Waitakere City when its then mayor, Tim Shadbolt, lost the mayoral chains? Well, “my mayor” has a habit of giving ours away. At occasions such as last night he usually finds some kid to be pictured wearing the chains—the mayor says the chains are not the symbol of office, they are the symbol of the future, as is the kid, and it is right and proper that he, the mayor, passes the chains to the next generation. Well and good: the chosen kid is invariably and inevitably thrilled, but let’s consider this—I am the one charged with looking after those chains, and when, as last night, said kid goes for a wander among a throng of some three hundred people I get sincerely worried.

My job is not dissimilar to the American Secret Service protecting the president. I may not speak into my cufflinks but I do wear dark sunglasses. And when something goes wrong I can go into a mild panic (though giving of course the facade of calm) and activate a full security alert, which last night consisted of my asking everybody there I know: “have you seen that bloody Kid.”

I found the kid; I could see him across the crowded room. What I couldn’t see was the chains; he no longer had them! The mayor was in the middle of a television interview. The press was there, how had I missed that? I interrupted.

“Have you got the chains back?” I asked

“No. I thought you had,” replied the mayor.

“Shit!”

What?”

“Nothing. I’ll fix it.”

And fix it I fully intended to do but right at the moment I felt like a Secret Service agents who has just taken a bullet for the President.

Now, let me tell you something about Mayor John Law: last night without a plaque to unveil or a ribbon to cut he opened Orewa’s Estuary Arts Centre with “a cuddle with the Minister (Tizard).” The guy has style and substance. He also has a wicked, if somewhat malicious sense of humour, which last night manifested itself by waiting fully five minutes before pulling the chains out of his pocket and yelling across the room, “I've found them Mike.”

I took the chains. I looked at him. He saw the look. Fortunately for him he was spared the thought. The thought was: “Well, at least you’re not George Bush, but right now you come close.”

Last night I returned to my empty home. But now I was at least not on my own—I had my thoughts to accompany me. And, unlike my absent wife, they were not pretty.

Dear MichelleV

Dear Michelle,

Had to jot off to one of those ghastly boring dinners at Prem House last night. You know the type (or perhaps you don’t) the type where a lot of men with inflated egos and women with deflated esteem sit around making talk of such insignificant consequences one is taken back to one’s worst Hamilton nightmare.

How this isle of mediocrity can exist within the vibrancy, vivaciousness and—yes—sexual diversity of Wellington is beyond me. But it does and I am ashamed to call myself its host.

This one was for Little John. As men go he is just as patronising as the rest. But, surprisingly for an Australian, he carries off that and his general demeanour with tact and consideration. Of course that may be entirely due to his diminutive stature. I have heard from members of my security detail who heard from members of his that the appellation “Little John” has little to do with his lack of height. Oh well, I doubt I shall ever be in a position to confirm that J.

And you do make me smile. Our sessions, though infrequent, ground me. They provide me with an oasis of calm in a turbulent maelstrom of male chauvinism. When I lie on your couch with you beside me my mind wanders freely without sexual shackle, reaching deep down with me and gently coaxing my body to come along for the journey.

I know that Heather gets jealous, but she was also, at one point, jealous of Peter, so that is of no consequence. The point here, I think, is that nobody but you fully understands my needs. They think they do. But I allow nobody, even Heather, to see all of me. You have found my hidden places, and have opened them up.

Yes, I know: I came to you as a client and you a therapist. I was reticent in that I repudiated the effectiveness and even the need for your programme. But you won me over, you little vixen you. Was it that you treated me as a woman? Did that give you that rare quality? Perhaps. And what are you now? My therapist still, yes. My friend, certainly. A gentle but timely admonishment here, to me as well as to you: ambition is best left to politics.

And in politics, and in the darkest parts of it such as last night’s dinner, I console myself with the thought that had it not been for politics and for who I am I would have missed out on much that stimulates me, tantalises me, enlivens me. And I am not talking here of “Little John”. J There you go again, making me smile.

See you at the next session.

H.

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With Respect

I spent last weekend in Christchurch, and enjoyed it.

I have to admit that Christchurch has greatly improved since my last visit there. Not that I take credit for that. But I do congratulate the residents of Christchurch for not succumbing to the humiliation of not having the courage, fortitude and street-savvy to make it in Auckland. What they have done is accept their lot as perpetual members of the Flat Earth Society and set about making their city a better place.

How they have done it, I do not know. I imagine it must have been a slow and measured process—something like those easy questions at the start of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. First we’ll begin with “we’ll be a better city than Hamilton” (easy), then “a better city than Hastings” (harder), Orewa (ambitious to the point of ridiculousness), and so on.

How does this bettering manifest itself? Well, for a start Christchurch is cleaner than Auckland and, thus far, mercifully devoid of tagging; Christchurch’s notorious one-way system is now somehow more submissive; and the shopping and restaurant selection is probably the best in New Zealand.

But it is the people. It is the people of Christchurch who have most improved. On this visit I found them less insular than in the past, less focussed on the Crusaders, and less inclined to indulge themselves in fatuous criticism of Auckland. Instead we have shop-assistants and restaurant staff who are pleasant without being intrusive, and who really know their stuff when it comes to product knowledge. We have courtesy and consideration in the shops and on the streets. Even an arrest I observed was expedited with a modicum of decorum and the tacit acceptance that it was “a fair cop”.

Yeah, you are doing well Christchurch. Auckland, for once, could learn from you. Thanks for the experience.



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The Silence of the Lambs

This week I helped kill six sheep, none of whom had knowingly done me harm, and all of whom showed appreciative enthusiasm when I chatted to them the previous night.

To say the lot of a farmer is a hard one has a somewhat obscene quality about it if compared to the lot of the sheep. Nevertheless, it is difficult for the sensitive mind to cope with abrupt juxtaposition of those most durable and adroit of bedfellows—Life and Death.

At least while sober.

Yes, I am a farmer—a writer/farmer, with the prospect this year of becoming writer farmer and politician. In a practical and emotional sense I owe it all to Maggie, whom I met less than 18 months ago and married last October—I think you know about that (if you don’t, let me know).

What you may not know is that Maggie and I live on an oh-so quaint cottage on a beautiful farm owned by Maggie’s sister and brother-in-law. We work the farm together, though much of it is left to my (new) brother-in-law Colin, who knows about such things. The closest I get to livestock is my computer mouse.

But on occasions, such as this week, I need to step in to help out.

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It's all Greek to me.

The ethnic brawling between the Serbs and the Croats at the Australian Tennis Open has a surreal quality about it but will come as no surprise to anybody who knows the history of the relationship between the two peoples. Even as a united nation (Yugoslavia) they were at each others throats and of course it got even worse when Yugoslavia disintegrated.

The brawling itself is unusual and has been stated so by Croat and Serbian tennis players and officials. This ethnic violence at sporting events apparently occurs nowhere else in the world, and the players themselves get on pretty well together—on and off the court.

So what is different about Melbourne, where the Tennis Open is being held?

I blame the Greeks.

I read that the Greek spectators have been egging on the Serbs while remaining just that—spectators. Which says to me one thing: the Greeks are the new Italians. No that’s unfair: the Italians at least went to war—didn’t win any, but at least they were there. The Australian Greeks on the other hand are cowardly content to stand on the side-line and watch others go for it.

How the mighty have fallen. Greece was once a proud nation comprising great military states such as Sparta and Athens that produced the mightiest army and navy of the known world. A near neighbour, Macedonia, produced arguably the greatest general of all time, Alexander. Now it has all come to this: standing back and watching someone else trade blows outside a tennis match in Australia.

Yet, when I think about it, it should come as no surprise. What has Greece offered of late? A police force that wears frocks and a musical starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. Even its contribution to international cuisine says something. In fact, to me, it’s the greatest indictment of all. While its neighbour Turkey offers us great meat dishes full of succulent mutton spiced with fabulous though mysterious tastes—great, solid fare a man can use, what does Greece offer?

A salad.

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Going Bush

“They invented the perfect tool for the New Dumb. They can now flourish in a land of serious stupidity and greed. They can infest the planet with every sick arsehole you can dream of and make him sound sane. Now, any cheap, lying fuck can become President of the United States and sound good.”

-- Hunter S. Thompson on the invention of computers to his friend Ralph Steadman, circa 1980, quoted in Steadman’s memoir The Joke’s Over (William Heinemann: London). In February 2005, four months after George W. Bush’s re-election, Thompson put a gun to his head and shot himself.

New Year's Resolutions

I think most of us at least contemplate making New Year’s Resolutions--something we resolve to do from the moment we wake on New Year’s Day; anything we are doing that night before we wake, such as the hardy-annual “I shall not drink again”, counts as the year before. In fact, most of us save up our resolutions for that moment, defying common sense and sometimes propriety for the simple expedient of creating an anniversary we can remember. How embarrassing and self-emasculating therefore that most resolutions don’t last beyond January, something we’d rather forget.

I made several resolutions this year, but will follow propriety and not reveal what they are; two are already consigned to history, anyway.

The history of the New Year’s Resolutions itself is quite interesting: the tradition goes all the way back to 153 BC. Janus, a mythical king of early Rome, was placed at the head of the calendar and the populace was required to make promises in homage. The fact that Janus was known to be “two-faced” says something for the credibility of most resolutions.

This brings us to George W. Bush.

I asked George if he had made any New Year’s resolutions. “Many,” he replied, among them his intent to finally read War and Peace, once it comes out in books on tape format and when, as he said, he can get his head around “this peace thing”. The President is also committed to having an exit strategy from Iraq—he got the idea from the Donald Rumsfeld affair: it involves getting rid of one war and replacing it with another.

Helen Clark was too busy to receive my calls when I wanted to ask her what her New Year’s resolutions were and her husband Doctor Peter Davis was unable to tell me what his were either—apparently he is still waiting for Helen to tell him and she is yet to return his calls. John Key quipped that his resolution was to get “the key to the door” and then the cheerful cherub displayed his mischievous nature by admitting that was last year’s! This year, he says, is to make editors making plays on his name in headlines—assuming John of course that there are any headlines for you to make.

Tony Blair and Richard Branson have eerily similar resolutions: they intend to swap jobs with each other. John Howard says he would think about it but would get back to me when he finished watching Australia obliterate England in the Ashes Series, the Australian cricket team said the would get back to me as soon as they had obliterated England in the Ashes Series, and the English cricket team said they hadn’t yet had a resolution but, like last year, one could be expected within three days. The New Zealand cricket team said they would be rotating theirs, but didn’t expect to be making many.

Graham Henry says he won’t be making any resolutions, predictions, explanations or comments, and how the hell did I get his number anyway.

Many other politicians, world figures and sportspeople refused, like Helen Clark, to return my call. But one did. To give Saddam Hussein his due (as one does), his simple and brief reply to my questions as to whether he intended to make any New Year’s resolutions was: “You’re kidding, right?”

New Year’s Resolutions? It’s all in the execution, I guess.

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Suicide: The Final Word

When the great British comedian, Tony Hancock, alone in Sydney and befuddled by booze and barbiturates, committed suicide in 1968 he left behind two suicide notes--he was, after all, a perfectionist.

The first note--by far the more concise--is a classic of poignancy and pertinence; it reads simply, 'Things seemed to go wrong too many times.' There is art in that note. In the end, it succeeds in doing what many of Hancock's other final performances did not: it shows what an artist and premature loss Tony Hancock (at the age of 44) was.

However, Hancock is not alone. Many of the world's greatest artists have saved their greatest work for their suicides--whether in the manner of the act or in their note explaining it. Hemingway did it spectacularly though rather prosaically with a shotgun in his Ketchum (Idaho) kitchen; Brutus, after sticking the knife into Caesar, then did it to himself; Sylvia Path characteristically took the artistic route with her 'Dying is an art like everything else. I do it exceptionally well'; and Curt Cobain certainly gave credence to the claim that suicide is the ultimate expression of self-criticism when he wrote, "I hate myself, and I want to die."

But, where is all this heading? Well, a friend and I were the other day discussing the idea of irony. Irony, being in part: 'the use of language with one meaning for the privileged few and another for those addressed or concerned' (Oxford Dictionary of Current English), is of course a Fryday fundamental. However, my friend drew my attention to an article in New Yorker magazine that celebrates irony better than I have yet managed to do. The article, by Tad Friend, discusses the propensity of people to use San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge as a jumping off place.

It seems that this stately structure has literally and figuratively been a bridge to another world for all of its 66 years. On average, somebody jumps off the Golden Gate every fortnight and it is the world's leading suicide location. The first jumper did it three months after it opened in 1936, 1200 others have done it since. Where the irony comes in is the care that is often taken. For example, the Golden Gate has a sister bridge, the Bay Bridge, but nobody has jumped off that--it is too ugly, apparently.

But the far-from-final irony is that not everybody succeeds. The incidences of surviving a leap from the bridge are quite high (forgive the irony in that statement).Numbers are not exact, because some survivors have simply swum away, but many have jumped, survived, recovered, and then recorded what they then thought were their final thoughts (a leap from the bridge takes 4 seconds). One of those, Ken Baldwin, who jumped in 1985, later made the following magical statement and in doing so reinforced my belief--clung to--that there is always a better way. That he also managed to say it in such a humorous and ironic way adds to its power as a salutary lesson. As he fell, Baldwin recalls, 'I instantly realized that everything in my life I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable--except for having just jumped.'

Now, that's irony! Hancock would have liked that.


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