A few years ago former KP colleague Lew decamped for more fertile writing territory and to attend to more important priorities. To my surprise he began posting on a word-limited social media platform of some notoriety, and I remember thinking that it was a waste of his talent to limit himself to pithy phrases and snarky asides. Whatever my opinion, he has developed a large and devoted following. and continues to inform NZ political discourse with his observations and critiques.
I held that view on social media posting because in the old days I used to have several types of writing outlets and felt that Lew could do likewise. I used scholarly books and articles for my academic research, opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines as a form of short piece public service, consultant analyses on a dedicated web site, and blog posts that were more personal or ideological than what the other formats comfortably allowed. For a while I did all of them concurrently, as I saw them as different parts of my writing personality.
Then, inevitably, life changed. I began doing some podcasting with a close colleague and slowly stopped academic writing once I left academia. I stopped media writing once editorial standards and word limits dropped along with the pay per word (and in some cases no pay or pay to play editorial approaches). I did media commentary until they stopped paying for “expert” analyses and charlatans entered the field. Think of it this way: If I was going to stop my normal “monetarized” or remunerated activities in order to take the time and make the effort to prepare and offer insights into world affairs when called upon by media outlets with no significant notice, why would I do that for free? Do we ask tradesmen to perform unscheduled specialist services for free? So why ask me to do so? To get my mug on TV? To hear my voice on the wireless? Geez, I have a face made for radio and in fact was a jazz DJ on radio for several years, so neither TV mugging or broadcast audio locution floats my boat. Best to leave that for (with a few exceptions to the rule) the attention-seeking poseurs.
As a result, nowadays I am down to blogging, sporadic consultancy writing and, as fate would have it, social media posts. I opted to do the latter basically to offer quick takes on current events rather than offer “deeper” analyses or opinions.
In that light here are a few recent snippets about NZ domestic politics. They refer to this year’s election and what is looking like Labour handing victory to the coalition of nasty rightwing incompetents in November.
From May: Is the NACT election campaign strategy based on promoting sectarian hatred of public sector workers by private sector ‘battlers?” Or to push public sector cuts so deep that they cannot easily be reversed and private interests can exploit the service delivery gaps? Just wondering.
From August: With a strong female majority workforce, who does ACT expect to use “reasonable force” on unruly middle and secondary school students, some of whom may either be large, violent or both? Does ACT propose to hire school discipline officers to deal with such students? If not, then what? (as the parent of a 13 year old boy this resonates close to home).
More in August:
Thoughts: By kicking the leadership can down the road National is making its election chances/options worse; Given certain contexts, it can be better to lose now and win later;
Labour excels at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, so why make it harder for it to do so?
And: If the opponent’s platform is all about being anti-taxes with no positive policy initiatives, then it truly is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory for Labour to be timid and status quo-ish when it comes to election promises. They must read the room better. Bold is beautiful. Positive policy! (Because they other side has nothing to offer on that score. It is all about what they oppose, not what they propose).
More (revised): Labour must understand that National’s performative pretence that they are doing something about kid’s social media use (i.e., pretending that it is doing something effective about digital harm to children when it in fact it is not), is just kicking the problem down the road while suckering Labour into supporting its political theatre. That is, it is an election neutralising ploy that will leave Labour holding the failure bag when the time comes for it to take office. The current bill is a plaster, not a panacea. It only postpones the hard choices that must be made if kids are to be made safe as effectively as is possible given the circumstances of their lives in an all-encompassing digital era.
Seen differently, National are doing a version of the hackneyed “tough on crime” and “countering terrorism” tactics employed by right-wingers everywhere by enticing Labour into either supporting their political theatrical performance staged to address digital harm against children or opposing what is framed as a common sense solution to the problem (when in actuality it just shifts the burden of responsibility onto households while offering ethereal promises of corporate accountability). After all, who in their right mind is not against crime, terrorism and digital harm to children?
Of course, Labour has taken the bait and supports the plaster bill. What is worse, the extremist Right clustered in ACT and NZ First cloak their concerns about the bill under a “infringement on privacy and parental rights” mantle that undercuts sincere opposition to the ongoing expansion of the surveillance State and its private sector adjacents. Then Labour doubles down on its attempt to cover National’s pre-election moves by supporting National’s rates increase cap without proposing other funding initiatives, in what amounts to another veiled anti-tax measure posing as fiscal relief on households. In doing so Labour is chasing a narrative framed by National at a time when National should be having its feet held to the fire over its gross across-the-board incompetence on virtually all matters of public policy (be it on e.g., health, economic growth, housing, education, welfare or agricultural-industrial-service balance).
In any event, as I wind down my other writing and commentating pursuits I will occasionally cobble together a patchwork of revised and edited social media posts and publish them here. Think of them as an epiphenomenal takes on contemporary events, or in other words, surface reflections on larger realities.
It’d be nice if you could tell us who the charlatans are, although I don’t expect it’d be worth the trouble and bullshit that’d come with it.
I have a set that includes a few at The Standard and one or two others. (I have the luxury of being permanently banned at TS after repeating something Parekura Horomia said to me directly that I obviously couldn’t provide a link to, and which if I was to provide evidence, it’d be at the expense of breaching confidentiality and identifying others who had nothing to do with the situation – as public servants )
I’m thankful the Mickey Savages and others are there – not so much the fa fa fa fa fa fa fa Ady waddies and Incognitos and Weka Weka Polly wanna cracka.
They’re an endless sauce of amusement.
(Pretty sure it was Incognito that banned me, but he/she/it’s by no means the worst although I suspect they think their farts are more redolent than the rest of us0
Paul H.
I refer to certain media commentators who will talk about anything regardless of whether they have background and experience in any given subject area (say, on intelligence operations, terrorism, comparative foreign policy, defense and security policy, including nuclear weapons and deference theory, authoritarian dynamics, including the processes of their rise and fall, and more). Many are happy do things for free in order to get exposure and academics can often cite their media appearances as public service for promotion purposes (as I used to do). But when they not only stray out of their lane and in fact jump into completely different fields of study in which they have zero training and practical records, say, from environmental law, to Islamic terrorism, to rightwing extremism, to international relations and great power competition, to NZ foreign policy–well, that is the human equivalent of conceptual stretching. They are pliable mouthpieces who read foreign media, watch the BBC and Al Jazeera and then put on their expert hats when the media comes calling. And because they are affiliated with academic institutions, that gives them credence in the eyes of the media outlets that use them for free.
There are some good exceptions to the rule. I have mentioned Robert Patman as one of them. I think that Van Jackson should get more exposure but believe that the corporate media might find him too rich for their overseers (and he might not even accept invitations from such entities). But in general the field is pretty barren when it comes to NZ-based media talking heads who have “done things,” have practical and educational experience in specific subject areas, and are willing to answer often inane questions stolen from corporate outlets in larger countries (including Fox!). When I did media IVs I often corrected and re-wrote their set-up questions because of their simplistic or downright stupid angles of “inquiry,” explaining to them that my questions would make them look smarter when dealing with someone like me who was conversant in the subjects that they wanted to talk about. And of all the interviewers, the three worst simpletons who interviewed me and insisted on reaffirming their ignorance when doing so were Paul Henry, Michael Laws and John Banks. Loathsome, every one of them.
The replacement of Sky Australia (Fox) fits into your category of incompetence and arrogance. If it was hoped that their hectoring, not engagement style of interviewing would change with most of the same people stll there, it was a pipe dream. Even with the collapse of the liberals in Aussie they still carry on with their bullying style of “we know best, ” overtalking and denigration.