New Zealand English falls prey to a linguistic pandemic

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and on Stuff.co.nz, May 27.)

I’m not sure whether this qualifies as some sort of psychological disorder, but I have become mildly obsessed with the way we use the English language. It’s reached the point where I find myself frequently jotting down newly observed quirks of linguistic usage and pronunciation.

Some of these irritate me because they’re lazy or ignorant, but just as often I’m simply curious about how they originated and fascinated by the speed with which they take hold. They are as virulent as the most rampant pandemic and as invasive as old man’s beard.

One example is the use of “surgeries” in place of “operations”. My Oxford New Zealand Dictionary, published in 2005, doesn’t define “surgery” as an operation and lists no plural form of “surgery” other than doctors’ surgeries – i.e., the premises where GPs work.

But somewhere along the line, “surgeries” has morphed into a synonym for “operations”. The takeover is now so complete that the latter word is rarely used.

How did this come about? Beats me. “She had three surgeries” conveys no more information than “she had three operations”. But someone, somewhere, decided surgeries was the preferable term, and it took off like a fire in the fern.

The pluralisation of “surgery” is consistent with the equally inexplicable fashion of putting an “s” on the end of other nouns that previously didn’t have one, such as “harm” and “behaviour”.

A British language writer perceptively noted recently that people who talk about “harms” and “behaviours” tend to be the same ones who begin statements with the word “so” – another linguistic practice with no obvious purpose.

Academics and bureaucrats are particularly prone to such usages. Linguistically they are early adopters – eager to embrace new trends, presumably to show they are ahead of the game. Language, after all, has always been a potent means of demonstrating exclusivity and superiority. That’s why so many academics take refuge in pretentious, impenetrable gibberish.

Now here’s another weird thing: “pupils” have become “students”. There has always been a sensible and commonly understood distinction between these words. Children are pupils while they’re at primary school and become students when they move on to secondary school and later to university.

But primary school pupils are now routinely referred to in the media as students, and logically it’s only a matter of time before kindergarten-aged children are similarly labelled. This may result from a misapprehension that the word “pupil” is somehow demeaning, in the same way as “actress” and “waitress” are commonly but mistakenly thought to imply inferiority.

Thus language becomes an ideological tool for putting everyone on the same level, theoretically at least. In the process, English is robbed of words that helpfully convey a precise meaning.

But if some changes in the usage of words may be explained by ideology, others can only be attributed to ignorance. Twice recently I’ve heard broadcasting journalists, one quite senior, say “exasperated” when they clearly meant “exacerbated” – a muddling of two words that sound vaguely similar but have completely unrelated meanings. 

Some journalists also confuse “formally” with “formerly” and “incredulous” with “incredible”, and mangle their tenses – for example, using rung instead of rang and shrunk when they should have said shrank. The present generation of journalists may be the most educated ever, in terms of paper qualifications, but their understanding of basic grammar is often poor.

Does it matter? I suspect some journalism tutors would say no, as long as the meaning is clear. But the rules of grammar exist for a reason. Journalism depends on precision and clarity in the way sentences are constructed and words are used. Meaning can be blurred by sloppy writing.

Speaking of grammar, another distinction in danger of being lost is the one between adjectives and adverbs. We’ve all been exhorted recently to “drive safe” and “shop local”.  Apparently that extra “ly” – safely, locally – is just too darned cumbersome.

Harmless? I suppose so. In any case, we have to accept that English is in a constant state of flux. But the puzzling question remains: how and where do these linguistic fashions start? “Bored of”, instead of “bored with”, is another. Do these usages originate in some linguistic equivalent of a Wutan wet market?

Last but not least, there’s the relentless advance of American English. Recently heard Americanisms include grocery store for supermarket, yard for garden, to-go for takeaway and the ridiculous “reached out to” for contacted.

We can expect to see more instances of the conjunction and vanishing, resulting in such phrases as “go see this movie” or “come stay with us”. American pronunciation is gaining ground too; “route” is increasingly pronounced to rhyme with “out” and the emphasis is shifting to the first syllable in “address”. This is especially noticeable among millennials.  

I have nothing against American English; it’s swell in America. But language is a key part of our culture and identity, and we should treasure it as one of the things that sets us apart.

On the other hand, perhaps we should at least be thankful that we’ve been spared some of the more exceptionally unpleasant Americanisms, such as sonofabitch, asshole and mother****er. Long may it stay that way. 

Muller could take a lesson from BoJo

A bit of free media advice to Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye (and I’d happily offer the same advice to Labour politicians): don’t allow yourself to be manipulated into playing the media’s game.

There are journalists in the parliamentary press gallery (and I’m sorry, but the name Tova O’Brien springs to mind again) whose modus operandi is to probe constantly for any sign of weakness, conflict or contradiction, and to pounce triumphantly when they uncover anything that looks remotely capable of being blown into a scandal. They then sanctimoniously editorialise about it to an audience that often can’t see what the fuss is about and probably couldn’t care less.

Their mission is to make mischief. Paddy Gower was another master of this game. As I wrote in a profile of Paddy years ago for The Listener (remember The Listener?), political journalism in the 21^st century has become essentially a form of sport.

Exposing hypocrisy, inconsistency and double standards is a legitimate function of journalism, but something’s out of kilter when catching politicians out begins to look like its raison d’etre.

O’Brien – and possibly other reporters too, although I got the impression she was the principal provocateur – sprang a trap for the new National leadership team and they obligingly walked straight into it.

If they deserve ridicule for anything, it’s not that Muller failed to include a Maori in his shadow cabinet; that’s just another confected outrage stirred up to produce a lead item for the 6 o’clock news bulletin, like the MAGA cap.  No, the reason they should feel embarrassed – and why questions should be asked about their judgment – is that Muller and Kaye (and even more astonishingly, their media advisers) apparently failed to see this coming. Did it not occur to them that in an era obsessed with identify politics and minority grievances, someone would demand to know why they had an all-white front row?

As an aside, Muller could have easily avoided this by promoting one of the party’s capable Maori MPs to the front bench; perhaps Shane Reti, who seems an impressive performer. It needn’t have been seen as tokenism, since Labour appears unembarrassed by having Kelvin Davis as its deputy leader – a status presumably acquired on the basis of his Maori roots rather than through ability and achievement.

By this morning, Muller seemed to have regained his equilibrium and was saying what he should have said yesterday: namely, that he chose his front-bench line-up on the basis of ability and merit, and with a focus on broad issues. End of story. Voters can show at the ballot box whether they agree with his choices; isn’t that how democracy is supposed to work?  

Advancing transparently absurd pleas in mitigation – such as citing Paula Bennett at No 13 in the rankings, and even more comically identifying the palpably Pakeha Paul Goldsmith as Ngati Porou – was playing the media’s game. It looked desperate and pathetic – but worse, it looked weak.

Muller should have taken a lesson from Boris Johnson, another conservative politician with his feet to the fire, and stood his ground. The public would have respected him more for it. He should at least give the impression of having faith in his own judgment even when he doesn’t.

Welcome home, Stuff

The acquisition of Stuff for $1 by CEO Sinead Boucher is arguably the best possible outcome for the company, and potentially a good one for the country. 

Crucially, it places a major media player, albeit a terribly weakened one, back in the hands of a New Zealand owner with a solid grounding in journalism – one that I hope will be reflected in a renewed commitment to traditional journalistic values.

I’ve been critical of Stuff’s strategy in dealing with the enormous challenges of the digital era. In particular I felt the company made the mistake of allowing itself to be mesmerised by the false promise of digital at the expense of its traditional print product, which generated most of its revenue. But it’s hardly the only media company to have made such mistakes.

In the process of switching its primary focus to the internet, and in the carnage that followed as papers were downsized, rationalised or closed, Stuff alienated many of its core readers and dispensed with some of its most capable and experienced staff, which I found hard to forgive.

But now we have the prospect of a fresh start, and I wish Sinead and her 700 employees, many of whom I have worked with (indeed, still do), nothing but the best. They now have a basis on which to plan for the future. Few things would give me greater pleasure than to see a revival of a vigorous and profitable New Zealand-owned print media.

One lesson to emerge from all this, as I’ve written before (and as former New Zealand Herald editor-in-chief Gavin Ellis emphasised in a recent blog post) is that we should never again allow major media outlets to fall into the hands of foreign owners with no real commitment to New Zealand and no emotional stake in our affairs. As both an expression and a reflection of national identity, with a crucial role to play in helping to shape and sustain an informed democracy, the New Zealand news media are far too important to fall under the control of outsiders interested in this country only as long as they can extract profits.

German-owned Bauer Media showed the depth of their commitment when they callously and needlessly destroyed much of the value of their long-established magazine titles by shutting them down without warning, meaning that anyone who now buys them must try to rebuild them from scratch rather than take them over as going concerns. At least Stuff’s former owners, Australia’s Nine TV network, handed over a company still in working order.

Ironically, the one foreign media owner who did right by his New Zealand interests – at least for the several decades that he controlled Independent Newspapers Limited, which Sydney-based Fairfax acquired in 2003 – was the much-reviled Rupert Murdoch. In hindsight, he looks positively benevolent.

Disclosure: I spent much of my newspaper career with what was then INL, including more than two years as a not terribly distinguished editor of The Dominion, one of the two Wellington papers that merged in 2001 to become The Dominion Post. I continue to provide regular columns to that paper and to other Stuff titles, although how long that will continue – as with everything in an industry where the ground is constantly shifting – remains to be seen.

Two more reasons why the public have lost faith in the news media

We live in the age of the media sideshow. In Britain, the press is in a state of uproar because Boris Johnson’s closest adviser, Dominic Cummings, broke the lockdown rules to drive 400 kilometres to his parents’ home, apparently so that extended family could care for his four-year-old son.

It doesn’t look good, especially when his wife was showing coronavirus symptoms and Cummings, according to Johnson, was worried that he would contract the virus himself. There were surely other ways of making sure their son was looked after.

But it’s worth noting that the story was broken by The Daily Mirror and The Guardian, two papers aligned with the left. The British left loathe Johnson, deeply resent his popularity, and will use any means they can to damage him.

Cummings makes it easier for them because he’s personally unpopular and appears to revel in his image as a master of the dark political arts. He’s also resented within the Conservative Party because of his perceived influence over the prime minister, which probably explains why some Tory MPs are demanding his head on a platter.

Yes, this is an issue for Johnson, and he’s characteristically tackling it head-on. It’s refreshing to see a political leader standing his ground rather than meekly capitulating to sanctimonious left-wing media bullies, as so many gutless centre-right politicians do.

Does Cummings deserve to be defended? I couldn’t say. But what’s clear is that a frenzied media beat-up has blown the issue out of all proportion. That was apparent from Corin Dann’s interview on Morning Report this morning with an over-excited Vincent McAviney, one of Radio NZ’s British correspondents.

McAviney signalled his bias when he made a snide remark suggesting that because Johnson has had multiple children with various partners, he’s in no position to talk about fatherly instincts. Really? Johnson has spread his seed around, so he’s a hypocrite for sympathising with Cummings’ desire to protect his son? Is that a gigantic non-sequitur, or what?

Warming to his theme, McAviney proceeded to paint Cummings as some sort of sinister Rasputin-type figure exercising “huge” control in Downing Street – more than anyone before him, he reckoned. Perhaps McAviney is too young to remember the egregious Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s all-powerful communications supremo, whose toxic behaviour supposedly inspired the character of Malcolm Tucker in the BBC political satire The Thick of It.

But the British journo well and truly blew any chance of being taken seriously - you could say he jumped the shark - when he cited angry tweets by J K Rowling and - get this - a former winner of The Great British Bake Off as conclusive proof of public outrage. The case rests, m'Lud. 

I wonder, do people like McAviney realise how absurd they sound? And does RNZ expect us to regard him in future as a sober and reliable observer of British politics?

Meanwhile, an equally ludicrous sideshow was playing out right here in New Zealand over the supposedly scandalous MAGA cap that someone spotted on a shelf in the office of new National leader Todd Muller.

In a comically hysterical piece in the New Zealand Herald, Damien Venuto argued that this was no innocent political souvenir brought home (along with a Hillary Clinton badge) by someone with a harmless interest in American politics.  No, it was apparently prima facie evidence of sympathy for white male supremacists.

Even the redoubtable, hard-core leftie Martyn Bradbury drew the line at this, pointing out that Venuto’s column was exactly the type of over-reaction that free-speech advocates seize on as proof of the left’s intolerance of differing views.

He’s right, but for me the greater tragedy is that woke journalists like Venuto – McAviney too, for that matter – are the reason the New Zealand public have almost completely lost faith in the media.

That media feeding frenzy: what's the point, exactly?

Coverage of the National Party leadership contest has taken up acres of newsprint and hours of airtime. Political scientist Bryce Edwards’ daily online compendium of political news and comment this morning listed 48 items about the challenge to Simon Bridges; yesterday there were 39, and that excludes much of the content on TV and radio. Yet most of it is utterly pointless, because by this afternoon we’ll know the outcome and all the feverish analysis, speculation and comment will be redundant.

Of course the public has an interest in knowing the majority party in Parliament has been destabilised by a leadership crisis. It’s also entitled to know more about the leadership challenger, who was a political Mr Nobody – at least in the eyes of the public – until a few days ago. But beyond that, much of the coverage has served only to fill space and excite political tragics.

All those opinion pieces in print and online, all those radio interviews with political commentators (some with their own undeclared interests), all those ambushes of National MPs by over-stimulated TV reporters demanding to be told who they’re going to back (while knowing there’s virtually zero chance of getting an honest reply) … it’s all as evanescent as a puff of smoke.

It’s hard to see what pressing public interest is served here. There’s little evidence that the public shares the media’s excitement, since the public – if they’re interested at all – realise all questions will be answered later today. There’s even less evidence to suggest the media feeding frenzy will influence the outcome of the caucus vote. So what’s the point?

The answer, of course, is that it feeds the commentariat’s need for drama and excitement. The Covid-19 pandemic, which has generated headlines almost non-stop since February, is tapering off and something needed to be found to fill the void. The Reid and Colmar opinion polls that showed Simon Bridges and National tanking came along at just the right moment.

Oh, and here’s another thing. Morning Report today had seven items on the National leadership crisis, including interviews with commentators Matthew Hooton and Ben Thomas. Later, someone emailed the programme objecting to Hooton being presented as an impartial political commentator, which he’s not. But who the hell is? Virtually all the “commentators” regularly trotted out by the media, from Hooton on the right to Chris Trotter on the left, are contaminated by their political leanings and connections. Some are actively involved in politics up to their armpits. They may all contribute their own particular insights, but few can claim to be pure and detached. Who knows what private agendas they might be running, or whose interests they might be covertly promoting?

Arguably the least dangerous are those whose political affiliations are well known, such as the two already mentioned. More worrying by far are those whose loyalties and agendas are not disclosed, yet who are presented as objective observers. I suspect this group may include some political journalists, whose relationships with the politicians they report on – and on whom they depend for information – are by their very nature opaque. I’m reminded of my late colleague Frank Haden’s useful dictum: doubt everyone with gusto.

The Covid-19 pandemic came at a good time for Winston Peters

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, May 14.)

The coronavirus crisis has been very good for Winston Peters.

He came back from his Northland lockdown firing on all cylinders. If you wanted confirmation that this is an election year, there it was.

Perhaps he needed that spell of seclusion to recuperate from the bruising effects of a court case that blew up in his face and a donations scandal that refuses to go away.

Whatever the explanation, the Great Tuatara was quick to re-assert himself on the political stage. The Covid-19 pandemic enabled him to present himself as statesmanlike in his role as Minister of Foreign Affairs and made him look good as the saviour of New Zealanders trapped overseas and desperate to come home.

It also allowed him to promote himself as a Man of the People by disclosing that health officials had been rebuffed when they advised the government to close our borders, which would have left those travellers stranded.

It was inconceivable, Peters declared, “that we [would] ever turn our backs on our own”. He was thus able to parade as a patriot who stood firm against flint-hearted bureaucrats.

Normally such advice to Cabinet is kept confidential, but Peters went public. Did he do so in the hope that his own image, as the minister whose officials had successfully argued against the health advice, would be enhanced? Perish the thought. And shame on anyone cynical enough to suspect that Peters spoke out because he was feeling aggrieved that Jacinda Ardern was sucking up all the political oxygen and leaving none for him.

The virus scare also gave Peters an opportunity to unleash his inner Muldoonist by railing against globalisation and promoting  protectionism – all of which might have sounded appealing to anyone not old enough to remember what New Zealand was like when everything from shoes to cars was shoddily made and overpriced.

He was on equally safe ground advocating a trans-Tasman bubble, calling for greater state control over Air New Zealand and championing Taiwan’s bid, over China’s objections, for observer status at the World Health Organisation. All three moves played to populist sentiment.

Not only would Peters have been confident that the public would back his support for plucky little Taiwan, since China is seen as the nasty bully standing in the Naughty Corner, but it also had the advantage of differentiating his position from that of Ardern, who appeared less keen to buy into the controversy.

No one should be surprised if Peters exploits more such opportunities between now and the September election. Remember, this is a politician with a history of going rogue whenever he perceives the need to distance himself from his coalition partners.

All this couldn’t have happened at a better time for the New Zealand First leader. He’ll be counting on the Covid-19 pandemic to help the public forget a stream of highly damaging disclosures about his party’s dodgy conduct.

Those disclosures related to big donations made to the shadowy foundation that bankrolled the party. The donations, some of them made by ultra-wealthy individuals in fishing, horse racing, property and forestry, are now being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office – a fact that should be included in every news story about New Zealand First, lest voters succumb to amnesia.

Being subject to an SFO investigation doesn’t make the donations illegal, but it’s worth recalling that party president Lester Gray felt so uneasy about the opacity of NZ First's financial affairs that he resigned.

In any case, it’s one thing to pass a legal test and quite another to pass the sniff test, which is how voters decide whether something smells “off”. Going by what's been reported so far, the public is entitled to conclude that the NZ First Foundation was a mechanism for disguising the source of donations to the party, and thus making it hard to determine whether favours were bought.

Then there’s the small matter of the court case in which Peters sued former National Party ministers and top public servants over the leaking of his superannuation overpayment. Remember that? The case he kept quiet about, thus making nonsense of claims that post-election coalition talks in 2017 took place in good faith?

Peters may be hoping the lockdown drama will erase memory of those court proceedings, during which he backed down on his claims that Paula Bennett and Anne Tolley, whom he sued for $450,000, had leaked to embarrass him.

In the end, all the theatrical huffing and puffing came to nothing. The High Court dismissed all of Peters’ claims. But the taxpayers lost too, because the bill is expected to total more than $1 million. That’s a big price to pay for one man’s quest for utu.

Manipulative men and gullible women

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and on Stuff.co.nz, May 13.)

In February this year, a Wellington man named Lewis Scott was convicted of rape and unlawful sexual connection.

It was the second time he had been found guilty of the same offences. After the first trial, in 2017, his convictions were overturned and a new trial was ordered. He was sentenced last month to six years in jail.

The victim alleged the rape happened after she went to Scott’s home in 2007 for what she thought was going to be a business meeting. The court heard that the offence involved considerable force.

Note the year: 2007. She didn’t lay a complaint at the time because she felt ashamed and embarrassed. It wasn’t until 2014, when she read that Scott had been convicted of raping another woman, that she summoned the courage to go to the police.

That’s right: Scott had previous form. His other victim had been raped in a room at the back of his shop. 

I remember that shop and I remember Scott, although I never met him. Lots of people knew about him because from the time he arrived in Wellington in the mid-1970s, he was something of a media darling.

An African-American and a Vietnam War veteran, he cut a flamboyant, exotic figure in grey, Muldoon-era Wellington. He wrote poetry and wore colourful kaftans. His shop, Kwanzaa, sold goods from African countries and became a gathering place for Wellington’s African community. In 2009 Scott organised a big party to celebrate President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

The media loved him. As recently as 2013, Scott was the subject of an admiring - you might almost say fawning - interview on Radio New Zealand.

It was perhaps small wonder that he was welcomed in Wellington’s arty, left-leaning circles. He would have been seen as a refugee from heartless capitalism.

Not only had he personally experienced the racism of the Deep South, where he grew up, but his social cachet would have been reinforced by the fact that young black men like him had been used as cannon fodder in an unpopular war. In the eyes of those who became his friends, he would have been almost as much a victim as the Vietnamese themselves.

But Scott was not the person he seemed. We now know he was a secret rapist. He would hardly have been the first charismatic male to take advantage of women – possibly impressionable women – who came within his orbit. 

Were there other victims too ashamed and embarrassed to accuse him publicly? It can’t be ruled out.

I wonder, too, what Scott’s old friends make of him now. Do they reproach themselves for not seeing through him? Or do they excuse his behaviour by blaming it on a dehumanising upbringing in a harsh, racist society?

It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case, because history is littered with manipulative men who take advantage of gullible hangers-on. In fact I was reminded of Scott while reading last week about the recent death of Ira Einhorn.

Einhorn was a hippie activist and  leading light in the American counter-culture movement of the 1960s and 70s. He campaigned against the Vietnam War and later jetted around the world commanding enormous fees as a speaker on environmental issues.

He was friendly with other key counter-culture figures, including the poet Allen Ginsberg and the radical activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. But Einhorn was also a murderer who killed his girlfriend and stuffed her body into a trunk in his apartment after she tried to leave him because she was fed up with his infidelities and controlling ways. Other former girlfriends later testified that he turned violent when they ended their relationships with him.

Einhorn, in other words, was a deeply unpleasant human being and a gold-plated hypocrite. Like many frauds and phoneys who preach a gospel of liberation, he was a supreme egotist and an exploiter. He managed to elude justice for more than two decades, living in Ireland and France and surrounding himself with admiring acolytes who helped him to stay out of reach of the law.

Sadly, there has never been a shortage of people prepared to be conned by such charlatans, and willing to make excuses for them. As an obituary in The Times noted, the help Einhorn received from influential friends highlighted the moral confusions of the hippie era.

Obviously there’s a vast difference between Ira Einhorn and Lewis Scott. For a start, the latter is not a killer.

But the two cases appear to have certain factors in common. Both show how easily people with guile, audacity and a conscience deficit can deceive those whose shiny-eyed idealism gets in the way of their ability to see beyond the charismatic façade to the person beneath.

One thing can be said with certainty. There will be more Ira Einhorns and Lewis Scotts, and there will be many more victims.