I wonder if the woke-friendly executives at Kiwibank ran due diligence on Shaneel Lal before naming him their Young New Zealander of the Year.
If they had, they must have seen the stream of obscene invective he has unleashed on Twitter against anyone who isn’t on board with his polarising agenda.
“Go f**k yourself you stupid asshole” was a typical example – this in January last year in response to a tweeter who mildly rebuked him and his supporters for their aggression toward anyone who disagrees with them. Lal obligingly confirmed her point.
Perhaps Kiwibank did see it and decided to give him the award anyway. Nothing would surprise me.
By conferring the honour on him, the government-owned bank is presenting this divisive figure as a model to young New Zealanders. That’s the extent to which corporate New Zealand has been captured by identity politics cultists.
Lal is fond of the phrase “F**k you”. He has directed it at capitalists (all capitalists, by implication – so including Kiwibank), the New Zealand Herald, cis men and apparently anyone with a police officer in the family.
He seems incapable of civil dialogue. I think he’s seriously disturbed.
He has described the Herald as a “racist, homophobic, classist piece of shit”. That was in 2021, after the paper published something he didn’t like.
Bizarrely, the Herald has rewarded him for his abuse by publishing his almost incoherent columns, including one in which he whipped up hysteria against Posie Parker.
Call it corporate masochism – a phenomenon of wokery in which companies debase themselves by pandering to extremists who hate them. I wonder, did the Herald think before publishing Lal’s rant on the morning of Parker’s abandoned Albert Park rally? It was a call to arms that came close to incitement.
Lal says he doesn’t want to be tolerated or accepted. We are left to conclude that he's happier seeing himself as an oppressed outsider.
He says he doesn’t want to be hated either, yet he seems to revel in identifying himself as hated. It’s how he defines himself. If he were genuinely concerned about countering hate, he wouldn't be so busy stoking the fires of the culture wars.
In any case, do people really hate him? I doubt that most New Zealanders give him a thought. They have more pressing things to worry about.
That must be Lal’s worst nightmare, because I suspect that what he wants above all else is attention. And the way to ensure that is by constantly and noisily playing the victim card.
Lal is obsessed with his sexual identity and the special status he thinks that confers on him – an impression the media reinforce by acting as his promotion agents.
He seems to assume the world shares his fascination, but he’s wrong. Probably 99.9 percent of New Zealanders regard Lal’s sexuality as entirely his own business and are happy for him to live as he chooses.
They don’t hate him or want to do him harm. They just wish he’d shut up.
Companies like Kiwibank and Vodafone - or One as it is called from today (it says much about Jason Paris' ego) are run by marketers. Marketers don't occupy the same moral universe as the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just these attention seeking intellectually deficient wannabes that need to shut up, it's the virtue signalling posers who rally around them to bask in their reflected glory that need to shut up as well.
ReplyDeletePeople, it's not glory that they are getting, it's derision and embarrased laughter at their pathetic ramblings.
Call it corporate masochism – a phenomenon of wokery in which companies debase themselves by pandering to extremists who hate them.
ReplyDeleteIn this case it's less the modern phenomena of "wokery" than the age-old corporate need to pander to whatever public wave they see passing, especially consumer-facing companies.
Look back at the 1960's: staid, boring, white-shirt-black-tie companies of the first half of the decade suddenly jumped on the "groovy" bandwagon of Baby Boomer teenagers. If you've watched the TV series Madmen, which runs through that entire period, you get to see all the people in run that path, including the star, Draper. He's still the same cool, calculating, ruthless Korean War vet who wore JFK suits and hairstyles at the start of the series that he is at the end - but by then the hair is longer and the suits garish.
But underneath nothing has changed, it's all about money, and about always changing with the times - and hoping you haven't miscalculated by being too early, too late or just tone deaf. I'd argue the latter on this issue for corporates, who really are just this frigging clueless about their own consumers a lot of the time. Kiwibank will dump all this crap the moment the money pain of closed accounts hits them.
Sadly I can't say the same for the MSM; I've often pointed out to Leftists screaming about Capitalist Control of the media, that if that was the case there wouldn't be all the traditional media fighting for Lefty eyeballs by appealing to their prejudices while Fox News scoops up the other half of the nation. Apparently the former group are willing to ride Woke into their own graves.
Oh BTW, thought you might enjoy this review of a new book, Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People.
ReplyDeleteEmpty vessels make the most noise.
ReplyDeleteI resolved this morning to close my Kiwibank managed funds account, then remembered I already had - quite some time ago. Doh.
ReplyDeleteI remember watching an interview with Douglas Murray when he was touring with 'The Madness of Crowds' where he talks about the need for some people to always be 'a little bit more special.'
ReplyDeleteSL clearly is the winner at the moment.
Ken Maclaren
A few years ago the Herald and Stuff ran articles about ''no more NZ" hello Aotearoa or similar. It was about Vodafone rebranding with Aotearoa rather than NZ ...seems that was just something for the home page on mobile phones. The chief exec then was waxing woke about being on board , as they are these days, with cultural change etc. How come it is not One Aotearoa?
ReplyDeleteSL is the ultimate victim ....race, gender, blah blah
I knew someone about 46 years ago who ticked all the ''wrong'' boxes of the day and just got on with it. With a laugh. His name was Les Taylor, English, trade union official, communist and member of the Socialist Unity Party, gay and liked soccer...as one journalist colleague said at the time.... ''The poor bastard hasn't got anything going for him''. Which was the worst of the above crimes?
He stood for the SUP in the old Stratford electorate in 1975 and got 12 votes...he took his ute and loud-hailer up into the hills of Whanga, Te Wera and beyond where ''commies'' were almost shot on sight. He actually earned praise from some of them for his courage.
_ Paul Peters
I'd knowingly never heard of Lal until comments of the Parker disgrace were published.
ReplyDeleteI then forgot the name until this column reminded me (although I fleetingly recognised the name when Kiwibank announced something based on the imaginary place AO...what-tf-ever, dismissed Kiwibank as woke losers and promptly removed the whole thing from my memory).
Tomorrow morning no doubt this column and it's subject will go the same way.
Phil Blackwell
What is going through the minds of Kiwibank ?
ReplyDeleteIs this the kind of role model they are proposing for young New Zealanders ?
This foulmouthed sexually deviant rebellious clown?
They/them certainly passes the Green fruit cake test with flying colours. Which electorate in 2023?
ReplyDeleteI notice a couple of carefully constructed ''news'' pieces, one on Stuff last week, one today on the Herald, where academics, ''researchers'' and experts with the correct views are spoken to, leading to a pre-determined outcome of the articles.
ReplyDeleteStuff's was speaking to several academics who all agreed surprisingly that Marama D's claims about CIS white men were bang on.
The second, today, in the Herald, is a wideranging attack on everyone said to be anti-trans. I am sure there is abuse out there but that does not mean Rowling and others can't defend women's rights which,until recently seemed paramount. Apparently taking that view, however moderate, is hate because it fuels the abuse . Race et al gets added to the mix. The Herald becomes more like Stuff by the day.
Presumably I am ''anti-trans'' which is not so. I live and let live if folk do not ''bother'' me.
Working in Asia for 14 years based out of Bangkok for Post Publishing, which at its peak had 1,000 staff in Thailand and abroad, we all had colleagues, Thai and foreign, who were this way or that and we mixed socially.
I saw two Thai male staff undergo gender transformations over two years . They disappeared for a few months and came back looking slightly different. The process went on until it was complete.
That led to one amusing moment when a UK business visitor dropped by to see the editor. He came out of the office and saw a tall ''woman'' walking up the atrium stairs and remarked to the editor: You have some stunning women working here.'' The editor did not let on and changed the subject.
But he was correct ' it was quite a transformation!
Paul Peters
Karl,
ReplyDeleteI don't think it fair to tarnish Kiwibank for the joke that these 'awards' have become. They're the principal sponsor, so it's the judging panel and associated administrators that need to be held accountable for the embarrassing decisions made.
Lal is a vile and disgusting example of humanity as his many public statements have shown, whether through traditional media or his puerile, divisive, disgusting and unacceptable social media outbursts. That he was even nominated, let alone won, is a stain on these awards. The man should not have got past the first round of vetting.
Certainly Kiwibank should be giving serious consideration to their sponsorship of the awards as a result of this, as I can hardly understand how any organisation would want any association, no matter how loose, with someone like Lal. The man is a stain on New Zealand and anyone associated with him. The NZ Herald should immediately take action to revoke his authorship or association with any further articles published in their properties.
I find it a bit tedious and pretentious that trans people use the personal pronoun "they and their" instead of him or her.
ReplyDeleteIf these people really want an appropriate pronoun, I would suggest the simple, non sexist word "IT"