Reading things make me angry

I today saw both the names "Michael Laws" and "Paul Henry" in a tweet. In the interest of masochistic rigour, I clicked on the link to see if I could get my blood to boil. Why do I do this to myself?

It didn't take long - the fact that I'd already read the name "Michael Laws" helped out a lot there. The link led to his column on the Radio Live website. Apologising to the Governor-General for controversial statements seems to be in vogue at the moment, so Laws jumped the bandwagon and apologised for calling Anand Satyanand fat:

Today I have engaged in discussions with RadioLIVE regarding my comments about the Governor General and his physique.

I apologise to the Governor General for comments which were, upon reflection, uncharitable and inappropriate.

So, Laws called Satyanand fat. That's not really that offensive. Fatphobia is a bad thing and should be discouraged, but I can imagine Satyanand shrugging it off. Laws is just trying to remind everyone that he's offensive too, and that by apologising for this one act of insensitivity, he can claim that he cares and isn't all that bad.
But he is. He's a racist homophobe, and he's worse than Henry. At least Henry could hold a logical debte when he wasn't laughing at lady-moustaches. Laws is just a dick.

I can't help but [cynically] notice that he refers to him only as "the Governor General," not once does he refer to him by his name. Is the name Anand Satyanand not 'New Zealand' enough? (Sorry, that's the domain of Henry)

I reserve the right to be controversial and outspoken.

Translation: I reserve the right to be a bigoted arsehole - freedom of speech and all that!

OK, so we all know that Laws is a dick (well, we should, by now). I won't keep flogging him - I found something else to be cynical about [Emphasis mine]:

By Jane
What the hell is wrong with this country...sorry but this is seriously a case of the Emperors New Clothes, sorry to state the obvious but the Governor General, not matter how holier than thou he is, is of Indian descent and hes FAT, regardless of whether he was born in NZ or not! And if you dont want English speaking nations to say your name as Dikshit, then spell it Dixit! And if that makes me a racist, then I'm happy to wear that label

(3)   (0)

This was the first comment I saw on Laws' column. I could poke fun at 'Jane's' grammer, I could poke fun at her misplaced "Emperors New Clothes" analogy, but I won't. Firstly, at what point has Satyanand acted "holier than thou?" He's hardly said anything - it's the media and social commentators (myself included, granted) that been blustering about this.

Secondly, yes, it does make you racist, but that's not something to be proud of. Furthermore, at the time I read this post, 3 people 'agreed' with her. This is what is what "is wrong with this country." Not people being offended at offensive stuff, but the racist, bigoted sentiment that comes gushing to the surface when people like Laws and Henry get in trouble.

It's hard to think of New Zealand as being a bigoted nation, but the bigotry is there. What I can't comprehend is people defending it, and claiming it as their right to be bigots.

I should stop reading the internet, it makes me angry. Also, Jane, your grammer sucks and that "Emperors New Clothes" line makes no sense.

Do I give more face time to Paul Henry?

The ship is fast sailing on this one, but the media keep plugging it, so I will too.

[Warning: This post gets cynical quite quickly]

What I find interesting (though not at all surprising) about the whole Paul Henry thing, is the difference in reporting between the two networks. TVNZ (understandably) is only giving a minimal amount of information, focusing on his offending question surrounding whether Anand Satyanand was "even a New Zealander," and only focused on his joking about Sheila Dikshit's name once the controversy hit India. TV3, by contrast, played a sort of Paul Henry mega-mix whereby he laughed at a lady moustache and his mockery of Susan Boyle.

Both networks conspicuously leave out his comment that homosexuals are "unnatural."

There are two things that annoy me about this whole Henry debacle. First is the fact that people are defending him - some people joining ‘boycott TVNZ until Paul Henry returns’ groups on Facebook. They act (seemingly echoing TVNZ's sentiment) that it was a one-off incident, and wasn't really all that bad. The reason people are pissed off and want his blood, is because it's the latest in a long line of bigoted, arsehole statements that the veteran broadcaster has made - and, being racial, it's the one that's inflamed us all the most. He's not saying “what we're all thinking but afraid to say” (granted, TVNZ later retracted this statement). Most New Zealanders are not bigoted arseholes. Tough I would agree with the sentiment that we'd like to be able to “tell it like it is,” that has more to do with New Zealanders reprehension with complaining rather than any introverted intolerance.

Henry is a bigot and giving him free reign on Breakfast has exacerbated his bigotry. The argument that he's a good broadcaster and that he's fantastic at debating politicians, et al, does not warrant letting his offensive remarks slide.

The second thing that annoyed me about the whole thing is that TV3 interviewed radio shock-jocks John Tamihere and Willie Jackson. The pair admonished Henry's offensiveness, rightly pointing out that a government-owned network shouldn't employ openly racist presenters, while ignoring the hypocrisy of them making those comments. Jackson and (especially) Tamihere have received their fair share of complaints about their own offensive statements, but they defend their right to do it because their radio programme is privately owned, as if that makes it all OK.

Finally, I should pay lip service to the fact that many people are saying that we shouldn't be flogging this piece of non-news. While the media do have a tendency of over pushing pointless “news” items, I think people are more worried about giving Henry's words an ersatz legitimacy by talking about it.

I disagree, and think that we should be talking about it. The fact that he said it, and the fact that many people are rushing to his defense, shows that New Zealand is still a quietly bigoted country. While we have nothing of the sort we see proudly trumpeted from the parapets across America, we're not the paragon of tolerance and freedom that we tell ourselves we are. Racism, heterosexism, misogyny and other forms of discrimination all still exist in our society.

But does that mean that we need to keep harping on Paul Henry? He may be a bit of a media pariah at the moment, but he's fast becoming a patsy for bigotry in New Zealand. In stead of keeping on him, we need to honestly look at ourselves in the mirror, and actually have a conversation with ourselves to finally deal with the conservative bigotry lurking beneath our liberal façade.

[UPDATE: Paul Henry has resigned, lol]