I wrote a book about wine, so I must be a drunk; or at least a paid shill for the liquor czars

I’ve been meaning to revisit the subject of my column in last week’s Dominion Post, which was reproduced here. It was about Nigel Latta’s TV documentary on alcohol and it prompted a prickly response from him on his Facebook page.

Latta accused me of resorting to name-calling and said I ignored the science that shows the harm done by alcohol. Obviously he felt I should have showed more deference towards the worthy professors he interviewed on the programme, whose statements he appeared to accept without question (in marked contrast to the open scepticism he displayed with the one liquor industry representative who appeared).

Actually, I’ve never denied that alcohol causes harm. It would be pointless to try. All I have done, consistently, is point out that the majority of New Zealand drinkers consume alcohol responsibly and without doing themselves or those around them any harm, and that they would be unfairly penalised if the anti-liquor crusaders, with their demands for swingeing restrictions, got their way.

We didn’t hear from, or about, these responsible drinkers. You never do from people like professors Doug Sellman and Sally Casswell. That was the main point of my column – one that Latta didn’t answer.

As for science – well, it’s all about which statistics you choose to cite. The academics who appeared in Latta’s programme are highly selective about which statistics they present. They highlight dodgy figures that purport to show how many of us are “problem” drinkers and studiously ignore all the evidence that shows consumption is declining and that, in any case, New Zealanders are moderate drinkers by world standards. None of this was mentioned in Latta’s relentlessly alarmist documentary.

Ultimately, the case against alcohol as articulated by Sellman, Casswell and Co. has more to do with ideology than science. They use their taxpayer-funded posts in academia to push for laws that would restrict the freedom and choices of the mugs who pay their salaries.

I was going to put this response on Latta’s Facebook page, but when I saw the tone of the comments from his legion of doting supporters, I realised I’d be wasting my time (he got 3,302 “likes”). So I made do with a brief statement pointing out that when someone puts himself forward in prime time on a publicly owned television channel, and takes highly contestable positions on contentious issues, he becomes fair game for criticism.

It’s possible this is a new experience for Latta, since his parenting programmes were very popular. (My own wife and daughter were fans.) But he’d better get used to it.

I also pointed out that $750,000 of taxpayers’ money had been spent on the current series of six programmes made by Latta. There’s a very important question to be asked here: is it right that public money is used to fund a series of highly politicised documentaries on controversial social issues, and even more provocatively to screen them immediately before an election?  

It’s not the subject matter of the programmes that I object to, nor even the fact that they put forward views I heartily disagree with. What’s intolerable is that publicly funded “factual” programmes are so relentlessly partisan, with no attempt at balance. (I admit I saw only two of them, on alcohol and inequality, but both adopted simplistic, partisan positions on complex, politically sensitive issues. People who have seen other programmes in the series came to much the same conclusion.)

Before I leave this subject, I feel compelled to refer to some of the comments made on Facebook by Latta’s fans. I think they show the futility of trying to engage in any sort of useful dialogue.

● Someone wrote that if the Dominion Post endorsed my column then perhaps it was time the paper reviewed its editorial policy. What you have here, then, is lamentable ignorance combined with intolerance of dissent  – a lethal mix. (A New Zealand Party voter, perhaps?) That got 111 “likes”.

● Another commenter said that if I had to spend one weekend in an emergency ward, I’d soon change my tune. (There were several comments along similar lines.) This is a glorious non-sequitur. So because some people behave foolishly or badly when they drink, as they unquestionably do (and probably would even if alcohol was made harder to get), the rest of us must be penalised?

● Someone else said I’m a global warming denier – ergo, a heretic. Gasp. What a shame they no longer burn people at the stake. (For the record, I’ve never “denied” global warming; I’m in no position to. But I am a sceptic, because people who know a lot more about climate science than I do keep coming up with good reasons to be sceptical.)

● Someone triumphantly pounced on the fact that several years ago I wrote a book about wine. Ah, a smoking gun! Clearly, I’m just another shill for the unscrupulous booze barons Latta talked about. (Inconvenient fact: hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders drink wine regularly without ending up in police cells or emergency wards. Who’d have thought?)

● In response to this highly incriminating disclosure, someone else wrote: “Haha awesome, Karl is a drunk then. That’s why he didn’t like the programme.” And later, from another commenter: “Forgive him, he was probably rotten drunk when he wrote it.” Latta must be proud to have such sophisticated followers. (For the record again, I have four adult children. They have never seen me drunk.)

● It was pointed out that the academics on Latta’s programme all said they liked a drink themselves. I noted the same thing – they seemed to make a point of it. This is part of the cloak of piety they drape around themselves. It not only presents them as ordinary pleasure-loving Kiwis, but also demonstrates how grave the problem must be if they’re prepared to deny themselves the wicked pleasure of a cheap bottle of chardonnay from Pak ’n’ Save just to save the rest of us. It’s a variation of the old line from the parent or schoolteacher about to administer corporal punishment: “This hurts me as much it hurts you.”

There was much more in similar vein, but I didn’t go any further. Reading comments on Facebook takes through you a cycle of emotions from depression to hilarity to despair. Nigel’s welcome to them.

 

Nigel, meet Te Radar. I hope you get along.

(First published in The Dominion Post, August 22.)

Nigel Latta is one of those phenomena that happen when you’re not looking. One day, no one had heard of him; the next, it seemed you couldn’t turn on your TV set without seeing him.

His quirky method of presentation – walking backwards, making exaggerated gestures and pulling funny faces for the camera – obviously appealed to viewers. His shows on parenting not only rated well but spun off into live performances and national tours.

The clinical psychologist became a certified celebrity. Now he’s been further transmogrified into what is loosely termed a guru – no longer just an authority on parenting, but an oracle on the great issues of our time.

His latest series (curiously timed to coincide with the election campaign, as was Bryan Bruce’s overwrought 2011 documentary Inside Child Poverty) examines hot-button concerns such as inequality, education and alcohol.

I made a point of watching the programme about alcohol because it’s an issue on which New Zealanders have historically been subjected to misinformation and dishonest propaganda from both sides.

Was Latta going to present a clear-eyed, non-partisan perspective? The publicity blurb for the series led us to expect he would, promising that he would “sort fact from spin”.

In the event, he did nothing of the sort. The show turned out to be a wearily predictable litany of neo-wowser laments from the usual academic finger-waggers.

Professor Doug Sellman? Check. Professor Sally Casswell? Check. Professor Jennie Connor? Check. Dr Paul Quigley? Check. (Dr Quigley works in the emergency department at Wellington Hospital, which gives him an aura of coalface cred – but it also means that he sees the very worst side of alcohol abuse, so may not be the most objective judge.)

As the po-faced professors droned, the picture became ever gloomier. There’s no such thing as a safe level of consumption, we were told (that was Connor). Supermarkets are the country’s biggest drug dealers (Sellman). Alcohol is a neurotoxin that prevents us thinking logically. (I think that was Connor again; perhaps they edited out the important proviso that this happens only if you drink too much.)

And of course Latta parroted the hoary old canard that we’re at the mercy of shadowy liquor czars – foreign ones at that – who have our venal politicians in their pockets.

It was disappointing to see Sir Geoffrey Palmer buying into this doom-laden nonsense, but Palmer is a man whose earnest desire to do the right thing has taken him to some strange places. Perhaps he’s feeling guilty about having presided over the liberalisation of the liquor laws (which he no doubt thought was the right thing to do then) in 1989.

Between interview sequences, we were shown familiar stock footage of drunk teenagers in places like Courtenay Place, the implication being that they represent the typical New Zealand drinker. Latta seemed appalled that some kids had to pass liquor outlets on their way to school, as if such places emanated some sort of lethal miasma.

We met a woman who has terminal cancer at 32. She had been a drinker and now wished someone had told her that alcohol could cause cancer. Who wouldn’t feel sorry for her? But to imply that her cancer must have been caused by drinking was disgraceful, even cruel.

If everyone who drank got cancer, most of us would have been dead years ago. It would have been more valid to talk to women in their 80s who have been moderate drinkers all their lives and remain healthy and mentally alert.

Latta claimed to have invited liquor industry interests to take part, but they declined. They should have accepted, because refusal made it look as if they had something to be ashamed of.

But perhaps they sensed the cards would be stacked against them. The one industry person who agreed to talk to Latta, a hapless spokeswoman for the industry-funded Tomorrow Project, was subjected to an aggressively sceptical line of questioning that was completely at variance with his sycophantic acceptance of the Sellman-Casswell-Connor propaganda.

Throughout the programme, I had a nagging feeling that something was missing. Then it came to me.

We had heard nothing from the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who enjoy alcohol in moderation, without any adverse effect on their health or their family life.

These ordinary, responsible New Zealanders had no voice. Latta framed the issue as a struggle between noble anti-liquor crusaders and wicked booze barons, with no one in between.

He overlooked the fact that New Zealand alcohol consumption has declined over the past 30 years and that it’s moderate by world standards (less, for example, than Germany, Australia, Britain and the Netherlands).

Neither did he mention that drink-drive convictions are in steady decline. These are inconvenient statistics. Nothing must be allowed to detract from the message that we’re a nation of helpless drunks.

The lack of balance was so egregiously blatant that I had to pour myself a stiff drink to calm down. But at least it meant I was mentally prepared when I watched Latta’s subsequent programme on inequality, which turned out to be equally selective and melodramatic in its approach.

I’ve now decided a little Latta goes a very long way. I hope he and Te Radar get along, because I’ve filed them both under Overexposed Hosts Who Get On My Nerves.