The advertising industry's suspiciously sudden embrace of diversity

Noticed anything different about TV commercials lately?

Take a look at the people in them. They used to be overwhelmingly white – in fact almost blindingly so. Not anymore.

From being virtually invisible in TV advertising, ethnic minorities – Maori, Pasifika, Indian, Chinese, African – are now highly conspicuous.

We’re seeing other types of diversity too, with hints that some of the characters in our TV commercials are gay and lesbian. Nothing too overt, mind you.

This is not, in itself, a bad thing. We’re now seeing commercials that more accurately reflect New Zealand as it is.

We live in one of the world’s most diverse societies. In the last Census (2018), 1.2 million of us - that's 25 per cent - were born overseas. New Zealand is home to people of more than 200 ethnicities. 

The number of New Zealanders who see themselves as European is in steady decline – down from 74 per cent in 2013 to 70 percent in 2018. It seems ad agencies have only recently woken up to these facts.

If anything, the ad industry has swung from one misrepresentation to another. Ethnic minorities that were previously ignored are now centre-stage, but they're still minorities - so the society we see reflected in TV commercials in 2021 is probably no more an accurate mirror of reality than the one we saw when white faces predominated. It’s the old, familiar pendulum effect.

What’s driven this change? Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a simple case of ad agencies belatedly realising that the people shown in TV commercials no longer reflect New Zealand as it really is.

If that were the case, the worst they could be accused of is being slow off the mark, and perhaps trying to atone by over-correcting. But I think there’s something else going on here.

I suspect that ethnic minorities are suddenly being showcased not so much because it’s the right thing to do, but because the advertising industry is terrified of being labelled as racist, white supremacist and insufficiently inclusive. In other words, the change is probably driven by fear of the aggressive ideological phenomenon we know as wokery.

What gives the game away is the speed with which this has happened. It’s not as if the transformation of New Zealand society, from overwhelmingly European to vibrantly multicultural, happened suddenly; it’s been going on for years, if not decades, under the industry’s noses.

What has suddenly changed is the slavish, craven and witless embrace of identity politics that has swept through government, academia, the media, the arts, the corporate sector and even sport. In effectively signing up to this woke agenda, the advertising industry is playing it safe by going with the crowd.

This should surprise no one. The advertising business likes to celebrate itself as edgy, idiosyncratic and anarchic, but it strikes me as deeply conformist, risk-averse and prone to groupthink. Its suspiciously abrupt, across-the-board conversion to the virtues of diversity suggests much the same level of fearlessly independent thought as you’d find in a mob of romney ewes.

 

What I've been watching (and not watching)

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and on Stuff.co.nz, March 4.)

There’s a dismal daily ritual in our house. I glance at The Listener to see what’s on TV and gloomily pronounce to my wife, “Nothing to see tonight”.

It’s so utterly predictable that I don’t know why I bother.

Here’s a typical example, chosen at random from one night’s programmes: on TVNZ1, or whatever it calls itself this week, Location, Location, Location, followed by Living with the Boss; on TVNZ2, The Bachelorette NZ; on Three, Married at First Sight Australia; on Prime, Traffic Cops followed by Ambulance.

That was a Wednesday. On other nights in prime time we could have watched Dog Squad Puppy School, My Dream Home, Escape to the Chateau – DIY, Booze Patrol, Zumbo’s Just Desserts, Shipping Wars, The Undateables and Restoration Home. 

Oh, and I shouldn’t forget Survivor in its many endless permutations, MasterChef (ditto), The Bachelor, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Project Runway, America’s Next Top Model, The Great British Bake Off, Say Yes to the Dress, Embarrassing Bodies, Wife Swap and of course Big Brother, which started the whole wretched ball rolling.

Most are described as reality shows. Yeah, right: they put people in contrived and stressful situations, point cameras at them and expect us to accept that their consequent behaviour represents something called reality.

Some such shows are openly voyeuristic. Others revel in the humiliation of their subjects or exploit their psychological, emotional and even physical vulnerability. John Logie Baird would probably want to throw himself off a tall building if he were alive to see the debasement of the medium he invented. 

Needless to say, most of the above-mentioned shows are from overseas and tell us nothing about New Zealand.

I’m proud to say I’ve never wasted 30 minutes of my life watching any of them. And to those who ask how I can condemn shows I haven’t watched, my answer is that I know enough about them to regard them with utter contempt.

True, there are a few “reality” shows that can claim some authenticity. Piha Rescue, Life Flight, Border Patrol and RPA (for Melbourne’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital) at least show people in real-life situations, although we can never be entirely sure that what’s happening on screen isn’t influenced by the presence of a film crew. Neither do we know what might have been left out for one reason or another.

But hang on; things are not as dire as they might seem, because one benefit of the multi-headed monster we call digital technology is that we have other options besides old-fashioned, steam-powered, free-to-air TV.

You may have to burrow through piles of dross to find them, but there are gems lurking on the streaming platforms Netflix, Lightbox and Freeview. There are three in particular that I’ve enjoyed recently, and oddly enough they all have religious themes.

The quirky Shtisel, on Netflix, takes some getting used to but rewards patience. It’s an Israeli drama series (the dialogue is all in Hebrew, with subtitles) that revolves around the affairs of a strict Orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem. 

It’s a soap opera, essentially, but superbly done – and like all good soap operas, it draws you into the lives of its flawed but very human characters. As a bonus, you get a fascinating insight into a religion and lifestyle alien to New Zealanders.

Then there’s Ramy, which you can find on Freeview (though I see it’s now also on TVNZ1). The likeable title character in this often wickedly irreverent American series is a young Muslim man living in New Jersey and trying valiantly, but not always successfully, to live according to his religion’s moral code.

What’s amazing about Ramy is that it was made at all, given the sensitivity surrounding the Islamic faith and the deference shown to it by most Western media. Many of the Muslims in Ramy are greedy, selfish, hypocritical and profane. They take drugs and indulge in illicit sex. In other words, they display the same weaknesses as the rest of us.

My third religious-themed series is more conventional but packs an immensely powerful emotional wallop. In Broken (Freeview), Sean Bean plays a Catholic priest wrestling with his own problems while conscientiously trying his best to serve a troubled working-class parish in a city in the north of England.

Created by Jimmy McGovern, who gave us the memorable Cracker in the 1990s, it’s an ineffably sad series in parts and more than once left me feeling like a wrung-out rag. Bean is outstanding, giving a pitch-perfect performance that convinced me he must have had a Catholic upbringing himself (he didn’t).

Three drama series, three very different religions; but the common factor is the flawed humanity of the characters, who somehow manage to defy the bizarre religious strictures governing their daily lives.

I’m not going to urge readers to watch these shows, because it’s a big mistake to assume that everyone shares common tastes. I can only say that Shtisel, Broken and Ramy tell us a good deal more about the human condition than Married at First Sight Australia. 

When TV drama is used to promote messages of diversity and inclusivity

(First published in Stuff regional papers and on Stuff.co.nz, November 14.)

In the opening episode of Bodyguard, a BBC drama series screening on Netflix, an off-duty police terrorism specialist (a man) confronts a female suicide bomber on a crowded train.

It’s convincingly tense, but there’s not a lot to distinguish it from other post-9/11 plotlines – that is, except for one thing.

The commander of a police anti-terrorism squad that boards the train is a cool and efficient black woman. Nothing remarkable about that, in itself. But then we see a police sniper waiting to get a clean shot at the suicide bomber, and the sniper is a woman too.

The next cop on the scene is an officer who has the perilous job of defusing the bomb. Wow, another woman. There seemed to be a pattern here.

Fast-forward now to when the crisis is over and the cop is back at the office telling his boss all about it. And waddya know, she’s a woman too.

She has some news for the cop: he’s been assigned to protect a high-profile politician. It will probably come as no surprise to learn that she, too, is a woman.

By this time it was clear that Bodyguard wasn’t just a well-made drama series; it was also making a statement about gender equality.

The message was that women can be just as tough and fearless as blokes. And actually, I’m okay with that. The days when granite-jawed men got all the good parts and women were in subservient roles are far behind us.

It makes perfect sense, for example, that the new Doctor Who is female. What took them so long, for heaven’s sake? In the 21^st century, no man should baulk at seeing women calling the shots.

In fact, when I think about it, I realise that many of the TV dramas I’ve enjoyed most in recent years have had women in central roles. There was the grim but outstanding Happy Valley, starring Sarah Lancashire, and The Fall, starring Gillian Anderson of The X-Files fame.

There were two series, River and Unforgettable, which featured the wonderful Nicola Walker, and a swag of Scandi-noir crime series, whose names I can’t recall because they all seemed pretty much the same, in which the main characters were female. And I shouldn't omit the dark but stylish Killing Eve, starring the great Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer.

I also recently enjoyed repeats of some early episodes of Prime Suspect, which is credited with being one of the first TV dramas to put a woman front and centre, and which derived much of its drama from her struggle against the sexism of her police colleagues.

On reflection, I wondered whether Prime Suspect was really such a big deal, because even in the 1960s and 70s there were shows in which women had the star billing.

There was Diahann Carroll in Julia, which first screened in 1968. Not only was she female, but she was black too, and a solo mother to boot. And even before that, Lucille Ball had her own long-running comedy show.

Later came The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Policewoman and the first female take on the “buddy” cop show, Cagney and Lacey. Perhaps this was one area in which Hollywood was ahead of the Brits.

No one made a big fuss of these programmes, and why should they? What could be more unremarkable than making TV shows in which the sex that represents 50 percent of humankind takes centre-stage? But the preponderance of women in Bodyguard seemed a bit over the top. 

I had read in the British media about the BBC’s slavish commitment to policies of inclusivity and diversity. Was that what it was all about? Did Bodyguard reflect the world the way the scriptwriters think it ought to be?

It wouldn’t be the first time TV programme-makers have bowed to identity politics. In 2011 the co-creator and producer of ITV’s Midsomer Murders was forced to stand down because he objected to being told to include ethnic minorities in the series.

He wasn’t being racist. He just thought it would be inconsistent with the tone of the programme, which was set in a mythical, timeless and quintessentially English village. And I think he was right.

We watch TV dramas for entertainment, not to be morally improved or have our cultural sensitivity enhanced. When a TV show is used as a means of ideological virtue-signalling, as I suspect has happened with Bodyguard, it rankles.

At worst it conveys a faint but unsettling whiff of Stalinist-style totalitarianism, which used art to enforce ideological orthodoxy and ruthlessly suppressed anything that didn’t conform.

How sad it would be if the BBC, which was once greatly admired for boldly pushing the boundaries and defying the establishment, had meekly fallen into line with the “progressive” political agenda. But I suspect that’s what it has come to.

Cultural stereotyping: a licence to sneer

(First published in the Manawatu Standard, the Nelson Mail and Stuff.co.nz on October 3.)

A fellow columnist – one whose work I usually enjoy – recently wrote: “Americans are not like us. They don’t get irony, for one thing.”

Whoa, I thought – let’s hold it right there. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard it said that Americans don’t understand irony, I could have retired by now.

The statement is usually made in relation to humour. Somehow, it has become accepted wisdom that American humour is irony-free whereas English humour is rich with it.

But hang on. Think of a comedy series such as M*A*S*H, which ran for 11 seasons and became one of the highest-rating TV shows in history.

M*A*S*H was drenched in irony. Hawkeye Pierce probably delivered more ironic lines than any other character in television history.

That’s not surprising, given that the series was created by Larry Gelbart. Gelbart was Jewish. Jewish humour oozes irony; that’s its signature. And Jewish writers and performers are the beating heart of American humour – think Mel Brooks, Roseanne Barr, Lenny Bruce, Judd Apatow, Jerry Seinfeld, Bette Midler, Woody Allen, Ben Stiller, George Burns and Joan Rivers, to mention a few.

Seinfeld (nine seasons) and The Simpsons (29 seasons)? All about irony. Most of the talent behind both shows was Jewish.

Join the dots. Jewish humour depends heavily on irony and much American humour is Jewish. Ergo, the argument that Americans don’t “get” irony just doesn’t wash. 

But it persists because it plays to a sense of cultural superiority. Americans are supposedly loud, brash, boorish and unsubtle.

Donald Trump fits this stereotype perfectly. One of the tragedies of his presidency is that he reinforces the prejudices of people who think all Americans are stupid. These prigs look at Trump and say: “See – there’s a typical American for you.”

It’s a theme that fuels countless dinner-party conversations in New Zealand. “Look at what Trump’s done now,” someone will say. “Oh God, those ghastly Yanks.” And off they go, sniggering at what a godforsaken country America is and pausing only for gulps of Central Otago pinot noir.

In my experience, such people usually have minimal experience, if any at all, of America. It’s a country they fly over to get to supposedly more sophisticated places like Britain, France and Italy – although sharing horror stories about the supposed ordeal of a stopover in LA is always good parlour-game material too.

The reason they don’t want to spend time in the United States – unless it’s in New York or San Francisco or a tiny handful of other American cities that the cultural priesthood deems cool – is that they have convinced themselves America has no redeeming virtues.

Anyway, why spoil their fun? As long as they remain ignorant of America, they give themselves licence to go on sniggering at Americans and congratulating themselves on their infinitely greater sophistication.

Another manifestation of anti-American priggishness, besides the “Americans don’t get irony” myth, is the prejudice often shown toward country music – again, usually by people who condemn it from a standpoint of ignorance.

Because some country music is crass (which can’t be denied), they dismiss it all as tawdry and mawkishly sentimental. Essentially it’s the same mistake made by people who assume Trump is representative of all Americans.

Where does this sense of cultural superiority come from? I suspect it’s basically a British thing.

The Brits never entirely forgave the Americans for breaking away and going it alone. But they console themselves that while America might now be infinitely wealthier and more powerful, the Mother Country is distinguished by its rich history, the refinement of its educated classes, its monarchy, its glorious imperial past and its … well, its sheer Britishness.

New Zealand, having drawn most of its cultural inspiration from Britain, seems to have inherited that sense of inherent British supremacy. You might say it’s in our genes.

I’m not blind to American failings. I cringe at American excess and brashness and I’m repelled by the religious and political extremes of American society.

But while these traits confront us daily in the media, they don’t represent the totality of American society. Spend time in the United States and you quickly realise that most Americans are not brash, loud, ignorant or extreme.

Try listening to America’s National Public Radio. NPR leans to the left politically, as public broadcasters invariably do, but it’s the flip side to the America of Donald Trump: rational, civilised, low-key, informed and articulate.

And I shouldn’t have to point out that America is the source of much of the popular culture and technology that New Zealanders enjoy: the music we listen to, the films and TV we watch, the clothing we wear, the books we read and the digital devices we depend on.

So let’s ease off on the conceited and hypocritical anti-Americanism that flourishes in some New Zealand circles. And while we’re about it, let’s bury the myth that Americans don’t “get” irony.

Is Sky TV's golden era coming to an end?

(A slightly abbreviated version of this column was first published in the Manawatu Standard and Nelson Mail on June 28.)

I’m feeling very on-trend at the moment, to use a fashionable expression.

I recently watched series one of the TV drama Twin Peaks for the first time. It originally screened on American television in 1990.

Okay, so it took me a while to get around to seeing it. Geoffrey Palmer was prime minister when it was made and Mikhail Gorbachev was in charge of the Soviet Union. But hey, you can’t rush into these things.

I now feel I’ve eliminated an embarrassing deficit in my cultural education, because Twin Peaks is one of those programmes that everyone who professes to be even vaguely hip has seen so many times that they can mouth the script in sync with the actors.

It’s commonly described as a cult series, which is usually a polite way of saying that a handful of arty critics raved but it was a commercial flop.

In fact series one was a ratings success. According to Wikipedia, it’s commonly ranked – in America, anyway – as one of the 50 greatest TV dramas of all time. It was only when the producers tried to stretch an already thin plot into a second series that it failed.

Twin Peaks is ostensibly a murder mystery, but to use that description is like saying Moby-Dick is a story about a fishing trip. The programme’s appeal hinges not on its storyline but on deliciously quirky characters and surreal situations.

For the 50-minute running time of each episode, you basically enter an alternative universe – the fictional logging town of Twin Peaks in Washington State – where almost everyone is seriously weird and nothing makes much sense.

The hunt for a sex killer soon becomes almost incidental as the series veers into a soap opera-style exploration of the convoluted lives and relationships of the town’s inhabitants. For all that, it’s strangely – you might almost say hypnotically – riveting.

Alas for the producers, quirky characters and surreal situations can get you only so far. By series two the weaknesses in the meandering plot were becoming all too obvious. I gave it away after just two episodes.

I see that a third series recently premiered in the United States, 27 years after the first. It includes several of the original cast members. One critic described it as “weird and creepy and slow”. So… not much has changed, then.

Why am I writing about Twin Peaks? Simply because the fact that I was able to watch it on demand, streaming it on my “smart” TV nearly three decades after it was first screened, illustrates the revolutionary changes in our TV viewing patterns.

Historically, television viewing in New Zealand can be roughly divided into three phases.

For the first 15 years, from 1960-1975, we watched one state-owned channel. Television then was a great social unifier, because everyone watched the same programmes – Peyton Place, Bonanza, Coronation Street, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Studio One, Star Trek – and talked about them the next day.   

Even when a second channel was introduced, it was still state-owned. There was more choice but the diet remained essentially the same.

It wasn’t until broadcasting was deregulated by the Labour government in 1989 that a private competitor, TV3, entered the market. But the real game-changer was the arrival of pay television with the launch in 1990 of Sky TV.

Sky TV was a perfect example of what is now known as a disrupter, using technology and a new business model to lure viewers away from the traditional free-to-air channels.

Its arrival heralded the end of television as an agent of social cohesion, because viewers were now presented with a wide range of viewing options. The days when virtually the entire population watched the same programmes were gone.

Crucial to Sky’s strategy was the acquisition of monopoly rights to screen major sporting events – a licence to print money in a sports-mad country. In this Sky was spectacularly successful, enabling it to become a dominant player in television – this, despite the company making virtually no contribution to the production of domestic programmes other than live sport.

Sky’s control of sport signalled the death of the egalitarian ethos by which all New Zealanders could share in the triumphs and disappointments of the country’s major teams.

There were now two New Zealands – the one that paid to watch the All Blacks or the Black Caps on Sky, and the rest.  People without Sky no longer feel the same engagement with national teams because they don’t get to see them play. I could trip over Sam Cane or Ryan Crotty in the street tomorrow and not recognise them.

But perhaps Sky’s golden run is coming to an end, because an even more potent disrupter has entered the market. I watched Twin Peaks on Lightbox and immediately before that I enjoyed Fargo – the TV series, not the movie – on Netflix.

I can stream television programmes using these services at whatever time of day I like and there are no commercial interruptions. Streaming elevates freedom of choice to a whole new level, and suddenly Sky TV is looking very much like yesterday’s technology. How very sad.

Sky still controls major sport, of course, and showed its arrogance and greed on Saturday night by broadcasting a commercial when we should have heard the British national anthem before the Eden Park rugby test.

I will dance on Sky’s grave, metaphorically speaking, if and when it loses its stranglehold.  It would be poetic justice if it was brought down by the same process of technological disruption that enabled it to thrive in the first place.

FOOTNOTE: Alert readers will notice an error in this column. I was wrong about Sky playing a commercial over the "British national anthem" before Saturday night's rugby test. A moment's thought would have told me they couldn't play God Save the Queen with Irishmen in the Lions side. Several commenters on Stuff certainly let me know about my mistake. I've left it in as a lesson to myself to be more careful in future.

The dubbed laughter says it all

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, October 21.)

I found myself watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory the other night. It was the first time I’d seen it in years.

I enjoyed this show when it was fresh, innovative and smart. It was a clever but gentle spoof of nerd culture (or should that be geek culture? I’ve never been entirely sure of the difference).

The characters were appealingly quirky, the personal dynamics between them were rich with comedic possibilities and the dialogue was rapier-sharp.

But that was seven or eight years ago. Now the show is tired and predictable, and the dubbed laughter seems to have to grown steadily louder and more intrusive as if to compensate for the laboured script and lack of humour.

Wikipedia says The Big Bang Theory is filmed in front of a live audience, but I don’t believe it. The laugh track not only sounds dubbed, but crudely dubbed at that.

The four central characters were once believable as academically brilliant but socially dysfunctional bachelors with neurotic family backgrounds. Now they’re in their 40s and it stretches credulity that Leonard and Sheldon are still flatting together and obsessing over childish science-fiction and fantasy movies and TV programmes.

I watched for only 10 minutes or so, which was long enough to confirm that The Big Bang Theory in 2015 is running on empty.

This is an all-too familiar trajectory with American TV comedies. They start out witty and exhilarating and deservedly attract a big audience. But the viewers don’t seem to notice when the show ceases to be witty and exhilarating, so the host network keeps it going – and going, and going. Eventually it becomes a sad parody of itself.

This doesn’t always happen, mind you. The Simpsons, which made its debut in 1989, has lasted better than most and still displays occasional traces of the wickedly subversive humour that made it such a ground-breaker. It has become the longest-running prime-time show in American television history.

But we’ve seen the pattern with other programmes. M*A*S*H, Happy Days and Cheers all kept wheezing on long after their glory years were behind them.

You learn to recognise the warning signs when a show starts to lose momentum. Big-name guest stars begin turning up. There are flashbacks to previous episodes and excursions out of the studio to exotic locations for visual interest – anything to keep the viewers interested once the scriptwriters start running out of ideas.  

In the recent Big Bang Theory episode that I watched, the four characters were on a road trip to Mexico. Par for the course.

I also note from Wikipedia that the frequency of cameo appearances by guest stars, from physicist Stephen Hawking to astronaut Buzz Aldrin, seems to have increased as the show has aged. Even The Simpsons has frequently resorted to celebrity guests.

Another warning sign is that shows eventually lose their sharp edge and lapse into sentimental schlock. This was tragically true of M*A*S*H, which in its heyday broke barriers with its mordant satirical dialogue.

In the case of Happy Days, the desperate quest for novel story lines led to the coining of a phrase – “jumping the shark” – that captures the moment when a programme loses whatever credibility it might still have enjoyed.    

It happened in the premiere of the show’s fifth series, in which the character Fonzie jumped over a shark on water skis. Significantly, that episode contained another telltale sign of a programme in decline: the characters were on a trip to Los Angeles, far from the usual setting of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

To be fair, Happy Days continued for another six seasons. But “jumping the shark” entered the language as a metaphor for any gimmick that stretches credibility to breaking point.

The Americans could learn something from the British here: quit while you’re ahead. Or to use another old showbiz cliché, keep ’em wanting more.

Fawlty Towers, a series so popular that snatches of dialogue (“Don’t mention the war”) have entered popular usage, ran for only 12 episodes – just two series of six programmes.

The scriptwriters, John Cleese and his then wife (and co-star) Connie Booth, resisted pressure to extend the show to a third series. They realised there was a point at which the idea would wear thin.

As a result, viewers never got a chance to grow tired of the programme. Quite the opposite: people are still enjoying it 40 years later.

The producers of The Office followed the example of Fawlty Towers by making only two six-episode series. Both shows now enjoy a status similar to that of a rare vintage wine.

What’s mystifying is why people keep watching American shows long after they have lost their spark.

I can only speculate that there’s a segment of the population that’s comfortable with whatever’s familiar and predictable, and that can’t be bothered making the effort to get their heads around something new and challenging. They’re probably the same people who enjoy eating at McDonald’s because they always know exactly what they’re going to be served.

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.

Socialism, Bob Harvey-style

(First published in the Dominion Post, August 8.)

I WAS INTRIGUED to hear Sir Bob Harvey, the personable former Waitakere mayor and tireless champion of West Auckland, describe himself on TVNZ’s Q+A programme recently as a socialist.

Obviously the meaning of the word has changed. The classical definition of a socialist is someone who believes in state control of the economy, but no intelligent person – and Harvey is an intelligent man – could seriously argue that the heavy hand of the state creates happy, prosperous societies.

I mean, what shining examples are there? The Soviet Union? North Korea? Chaotic, wretched Venezuela, perhaps?

The truth is that wherever it has been tried, socialism has been synonymous with economic failure, misery and repression.  That’s why it’s almost extinct. People aren’t stupid.

I can only conclude, therefore, that when people like Harvey describe themselves as socialists, they actually mean something else – perhaps a gentler, kinder socialism that hasn’t yet been revealed to the rest of us.

Here’s my theory. I suspect that to call yourself a socialist these days is to announce to the world that you have a social conscience, and are therefore on a higher moral plane than all those heartless people who are interested only in their own wellbeing.

In addition to that, I suspect that “socialist” has become a code word for someone who feels guilty about enjoying the trappings of capitalism – the stylish clothes, the overseas holidays, the restored villas in fashionable inner-city suburbs.

Most of the people I know who think of themselves as socialists enjoy pretty sweet lives. Capitalism has been very kind to them. I bet Harvey (who made his name in advertising, possibly the least socialist business imaginable) isn’t exactly short of a buck.

But we’re talking about a generation that lived through the heady era of the protest movement, when capitalism was the enemy, and part of them has never moved on.

Even when they’ve grown sleek and prosperous, in their minds they’re still marching down Willis or Queen St protesting against apartheid or the Vietnam War. Calling themselves socialist is a convenient way of resolving the contradiction between their romantic ideals and the reality of their very comfortable capitalist lives.

True socialists like the founders of the Labour Party wouldn’t recognise these people.

Being a socialist in those days meant getting your head bashed in by a special constable on horseback. Now it means sitting around a Kelburn dinner table tut-tutting about income disparity while someone opens a bottle of 2003 Felton Road pinot noir and wonders whether to go to Morocco or France for their next holiday.

* * *

IT’S DECADES since newspapers decided they would no longer accept letters written under pseudonyms. Most require that the writer supply a full name, home address and phone number. It’s not foolproof, but it weeds out most of the mischief-makers who don’t have the guts to put their names to their opinions.

Predictably, the quality of letters improved almost overnight when the rules were changed.

Contrast this with the approach of the Sunday political TV programmes Q+A and The Nation, which seem happy to accept anonymous texts and emails commenting – often scurrilously – on the issues under discussion and the credibility of the politicians interviewed.

Some contributors provide a first name, but the viewer has no way of knowing whether it’s genuine. Occasionally the commenter is identified in full, but most are anonymous.

Given that the comments are displayed on screen almost instantaneously, there’s no way the producers can vet them in the hope of weeding out propagandists and barrow-pushers.

How many of the snide messages running across the bottom of the screen are from party members and activists? There’s no way of knowing. In effect, they’re no better than the cowardly trolls who infest the Internet.

* * *

I WONDER, is there a club for people who can’t stand Te Radar? If not, I might have to start one.

I admit I’m out of step with public opinion here. Clearly, lots of people love him. Why else would TVNZ (or to be precise, the taxpayer through New Zealand on Air) keep paying him to jaunt around the Pacific making prime-time documentaries?

But something about Te Radar irritates me, and I can’t figure out exactly what   it is. The frizzy hair? Those nerdy glasses? That nasal Kiwi voice? The contrived Peter Pan quirkiness? All of the above?

What bothers me most is that the people he encounters in faraway places might make the mistake of thinking he’s representative of the rest of us. Now there’s a scary thought.

 

The ubiquitous idiot Dad - a television stereotype

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, June 19.)

ANYONE who watches much television is familiar with that stereotypical character, the idiot Dad.

It’s hard to pinpoint his exact origins, but the chief suspect would have to be Archie Bunker from All in the Family.

Think back for a moment. Prior to AITF, television fathers were generally presented sympathetically.

In The Andy Griffith Show, the title character was a caring, eminently sensible widower doing his best to bring up his only son while keeping the peace in small-town Mayberry.

Ditto My Three Sons, in which Fred MacMurray played a wise, kindly father serenely coping with the chaos of raising three teenage boys.

In Gentle Ben, Dad was a wildlife ranger who always seemed in control of things. In The Waltons, John Walton was honest, courageous and hard-working.  In The Brady Bunch, Mike Brady was a respected architect and a man of integrity. In The Beverly Hillbillies, Jed Clampett was loyal and affable. And so on, and so on.

Those popular  series idealised fatherhood and family life, just as they idealised most things about America. Fathers rose to whatever challenge the scriptwriters threw at them and everything was neatly resolved by the closing credits.

Even when the main male character was flawed, as in the case of Darrin in Bewitched or Herman Munster in The Munsters, they were portrayed affectionately. Darrin was anxious and gullible; Herman was a loveable buffoon.

In virtually all the above programmes, the wife and mother – if there was one – was sensible and kind-hearted. A rare exception was I Love Lucy, in which the title character, played by Lucille Ball, was ditzy and accident-prone.

But All in the Family shattered the old template. Archie, the central character, was ignorant, bigoted, abusive and selfish.

The scriptwriters highlighted these unappealing characteristics by playing him off against his wife Edith, who was everything Archie wasn’t: patient, loyal, kind, non-judgmental and wise, in her own way.

Television husbands and fathers would never be quite the same again. Thereafter, the idiot Dad became something of a cliché.

One of the few exceptions was Cliff Huxtable in The Cosby Show, who represented a return to the norm of the 1960s. Huxtable, played by black comedian Bill Cosby, was eccentric but kind, well-respected and a dedicated father. I suspect the producers didn’t dare portray him in an unsympathetic light because to have done so would have been to invite accusations of racism.

The Cosby Show aside, leading male figures in domestic comedies in the post-Archie Bunker era generally seemed to be presented as objects of ridicule.

This was in marked contrast to a slew of programmes, starting with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, featuring leading female characters who were invariably smart, resourceful and courageously making their way in an often unsympathetic world. (Later examples included One Day at a Time and Alice.)

Think about it. How many domestic comedies can you think of in which the central male figure was not vain, stupid, vulgar or hopeless?

Homer Simpson, of course, is the gold standard. Homer is lazy, dishonest, reckless, greedy and self-centred. And what’s particularly interesting about The Simpsons is that the gender stereotyping extends to other members of the Simpson family.

Marge Simpson is patient, kindly, loyal and eager to do the right thing – a little like Edith Bunker, in other words. Her daughter Lisa is the smartest, most clear-eyed character in Springfield. But Bart Simpson is a little horror: rebellious, mischievous and calculating (not for nothing was he given a name that’s an anagram for “brat”).

Let’s look at a few other examples. In Home Improvement, Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor, while harmless enough, was accident-prone and a know-all. His wife Jill, of course, was a voice of reason.

In Everybody Loves Raymond, the family patriarch was crude, stubborn, abusive and downright contrary – in other words, a little like Archie Bunker, even down to his armchair. A redeeming feature is that his manipulative wife wasn’t much more likeable.

In Married … With Children, Al Bundy was a loser and a slob who worked in a down-market shoe store and was perpetually in debt. There was a running gag about him smelling bad and spending a lot of time in the toilet.

A somewhat balancing factor in this show, too, was the fact that his lazy, scornful wife wasn’t much better.

A similarly dysfunctional family featured in Malcolm in the Middle. Again, the husband and father was a no-hoper – inept, cowardly and usually looking for the easy way out. The wife and mother, though crazy like everyone else, was the strong one in the family.

Then there’s Alan Harper in Two and a Half Men: spineless, neurotic and a generally pathetic father to his slob of a son.

Don’t get me wrong. I watched all these shows and enjoyed them, at least until they suffered the inevitable American fate of carrying on long after they had passed their use-by date.

After all, they are comedies that depend on absurdity for their humour. No one expects them to mirror real life.

Yet you can’t help but wonder why, for several decades now, there has been a consistent pattern of fathers and husbands being portrayed as no-hopers while their wives, almost invariably, are generally shown as  noble and virtuous. This is as much a misrepresentation of the real world as those idealistic 1960s shows were.

We probably all know families in which the husband doesn’t pull his weight and it’s left to the wife to ensure that the household functions smoothly. Certainly that’s far more often the case than the reverse.

But I also frequently see conscientious, caring husbands and fathers of the current generation sharing the burdens of parenthood – cooking, doing the washing, carting the kids around – in ways that most men of my age would have considered beneath their dignity. It’s neither accurate nor fair to suggest that the male of the household is a waste of space.

Certainly the British parenting organisation Netmums isn’t happy with the way Dads and husbands are portrayed on television.  In a recent online poll, Netmums found that 90 per cent of parents objected to the “casual contempt” with which fathers are depicted.

It’s not an issue that keeps me awake at night, but I can’t help wondering whether TV producers would get away with portraying wives and mothers so negatively. I suspect not.

 

 

 

 

Sport: one melodrama after another

(First published in The Dominion Post, March 8.)

SPORT has morphed into pure soap opera.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this happened; perhaps somewhere between David Beckham and Tiger Woods.

There have always been occasional instances of sportsmen whose lives became tabloid newspaper fodder (the footballers George Best and Diego Maradona come to mind), but these days it’s constant.

Just think back over the past few months. It’s been one melodrama after another.

There was Lance Armstrong fessing up as a drugs cheat on Oprah’s TV show, a spectacle watched by millions.  

Before that, there was the overwrought weeping and wailing over Black Caps captain Ross Taylor’s sacking by new coach Mike Hesson (a man I can’t see without being reminded of the character Brains from Thunderbirds).

There was the slow, painful unravelling, week by week, of the Wellington Phoenix – a saga that came complete with a textbook villain (Gareth Morgan) and a stoical hero (Ricki Herbert), nobly sacrificing himself for the greater good.

There was the pantomime surrounding media darling Sonny Boy Williams’ boxing match with the “lumbering oaf” (Sir Bob Jones’ description) Francois Botha – a fight that was supposed to go for 12 rounds but was suddenly and inexplicably reduced to 10 when it seemed Botha was getting the upper hand.

So many allegations and counter-allegations flew around in the aftermath of that encounter that the media hardly knew which way to turn – not that it mattered, since boxing is now so irredeemably sleazy that you have to wonder who still takes it seriously.

But wait, there’s more. There was the international media frenzy over the death of Oscar “Bladerunner” Pistorius’s glamorous girlfriend.

There was the sensational case of talented young English cricketer Tom Maynard, fatally hit by a train while on drink and drugs and fleeing from police. Even the Coro Street scriptwriters would have been hard-pressed to come up with a more dramatic storyline.

And what about Australian rugby league glamour boy Ben Barba, very publicly heading for a private clinic to deal with his personal “issues” while his managers wrung their hands and solemnly vowed to stand by their wayward idol? It all seems tediously familiar.

Former All Black Zac Guildford, too, was back in the headlines as he prepared to face disciplinary proceedings over an alleged assault, although nothing so dramatic as the famous Rarotonga incident in which he got drunk, took his clothes off and started hitting people.

Now he has been joined in the naughty corner by cricketer Jeetan Patel – injured, we are told, in an “alcohol-fuelled” (aren’t they always?) altercation with a pub bouncer. Explanation: he was struggling to cope with the death of his mother. Pure soap.

In the circumstances, it seemed almost anti-climactic to watch this week’s prissy tut-tutting over the behaviour of Black Cap Doug Bracewell, whose only offence was having a few rowdy mates around to watch the rugby. For goodness sake, couldn’t he have managed a drunken brawl or drug overdose? At least that might have justified all the fuss.

To think that sporting heroes such as Brian Lochore, Peter Snell and Bob Charles lived their lives in the public spotlight without a whiff of scandal or notoriety. What a dull lot they must have been.

* * *

AS SOMEONE brought up in Hawke’s Bay, I wince when I hear people refer to it as the Hawke’s Bay.

It was never described thus when I lived there. It was simply Hawke’s Bay, as it should be.

The only explanation for the use of the definite article is that it’s a convention applied to some other regions. For example, we talk about the Waikato, the Manawatu and the Wairarapa.

But there’s no logical consistency here. We don’t refer to the Otago or the Taranaki, still less to the Northland or the Southland. Why the definite article attaches itself to some regional names but not others is a mystery.

What we need is a statutory body empowered to impose some consistency and slap heavy fines on non-compliers. In fact I would like to nominate myself as chief executive, with a salary of – oh, $250,000 sounds about right, with a performance bonus thrown in, which would of course be paid regardless of how poorly I did the job.

* * *

THE LATE Phillip Leishman personified a species of broadcaster fast approaching extinction.

He wasn’t flamboyant and he didn’t have a big ego. He had a style New Zealanders related to easily: not flashy, but relaxed and personable.

It was probably just as well that Leishman carved himself a niche in the last 15 years of his life with his golf programme, HSBC Golf Club, because mainstream television programmers have long since lost interest in broadcasters like Leishman. Wrong age, wrong sex.

The sole survivor of that breed is Peter Williams, another consummate professional. I hope I’m not putting a hex on him by pointing this out.

 

The madness gripping the media

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

IT’S HARD to remember a new television programme that has been more relentlessly savaged than TV One’s Seven Sharp, but people should give it credit for achieving something no other programme has accomplished: it’s so bad it has forced the massive bloc of habitual, dyed-in-the-wool One viewers to change channels at 7 o’clock. This is a seismic shift.

I watched the very first Seven Sharp and was aghast. If that was the best they could do with weeks to prepare, and with an expectant audience primed by a promotional blitzkrieg, then the outlook was surely dire.

But it seemed only fair to give the programme time to settle down, so I left it for a couple of weeks and then tuned in again. And what was the first thing I saw? Several minutes of trite, self-indulgent banter between the three gibbering hosts and youthful New York correspondent Jack Tame, TVNZ’s boy wonder, who had purportedly been named in a Valentine’s Day survey – about which I would be deeply sceptical – as New Zealand’s sexiest male media personality.

Only people employed in the self-absorbed world of television could assume anyone else shared their delighted fascination with this morsel of non-information.

I can only conclude everyone associated with this show has a death wish. Seven Sharp is so lightweight it threatens to float away.

Its attempt to woo a young audience, as evidenced by the quirky graphics and links with online social media, is symptomatic of a strange madness gripping the entire media industry.

Everyone in the media and the associated advertising business is obsessed with the cult of youth. It doesn’t seem to matter that TV One’s traditional, core audience consists of older viewers, or that the youth market actually isn’t all that interested in watching free-to-air television at 7pm.

The state-owned TV network (and please remind me why the taxpayers still own an organisation that has long since abandoned any sense of public obligation) seems determined to drive off its loyal, long-term viewers in the hope of securing a younger, “cooler” audience.

It’s well on the way to achieving the first of those objectives, but the second may not be so easy.

* * *

ONE intriguing aspect of the Novopay fiasco is that the government has gifted the teachers’ unions with a significant propaganda victory.

For years governments have fought the PPTA and NZEI for control of the education sector. It’s a battle that shouldn’t be necessary, of course, because we elect governments, not unions, to decide education policy; but a combination of weak politicians and arrogant unions meant the teachers often had the upper hand, defying and even sabotaging attempts at reform for reasons that usually had more to do with self-interest than with the quality of education.

Since 2008, however, there have been signs that the balance of power in education is shifting back where it belongs. Under a less teacher-friendly government, the unions have struggled harder to get traction.

Then along came Novopay, and suddenly public sympathy swung back the teachers’ way.

Whatever else might be said about teachers, they are entitled to be paid. Yet far from throwing tantrums over the disruption and inconvenience of recent weeks, they have behaved with admirable restraint – and no doubt earned brownie points from the public along the way. Unions have gone on strike with far less provocation.

No government could defend the chaos over teachers’ pay, still less the incompetence of the company to which the payroll contract was awarded, apparently in the face of pointed warnings about Novopay’s shortcomings.

The upshot is that the National-led government has surrendered the moral high ground to the teachers just when it seemed on the verge of subduing them. Nice work, chaps.

* * *

IT’S A PHRASE you see all the time in advertisements and newspaper articles, but there are few words in the English language more meaningless than “award-winning”.

Whether it’s an award-winning house, restaurant, book, wine or film, all the phrase tells you is that someone has at some stage decided it was the best of a bunch.

But often we don’t know who that “someone” was and who the other contenders were (or how many). So we lack the vital context in which to make an informed judgment about the award’s merit. An extreme example would be an award given to the best kosher restaurant in Woodville.

Anyway, all such decisions are ultimately subjective. And who knows what personal prejudices the judge or judges may have brought to bear?

I have been a judge in various awards myself and know how flawed the judging process can be, even when the organisers go to great lengths to make it as fair and objective as possible. Suffice it to say that, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t want to win any competition in which I had been a judge.

A few thoughts on Paul Holmes

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, February 13.)

I NEVER met Paul Holmes, but we had a few things in common. We were only three months apart in age and grew up within 50 kilometres of each other: he at Haumoana on the Hawke’s Bay coast, I in the Central Hawke’s Bay farming town of Waipukurau.

We both spent our working lives in the media, although he with infinitely greater fame and impact. Reading friends’ and colleagues comments’ about him following his death, I think we would probably have got on well. He was obviously loved by many of those who knew him.

I was not a habitual viewer of Holmes’ TV show and didn’t hear a lot of him on the radio, but it was impossible to live in New Zealand during his years at the top and not be aware of his influence in national life.

I did read his newspaper columns, which I thought were very good. In fact I preferred his writing to his on-air persona.

I wrote in Holmes’ defence on at least two occasions when the po-faced enemies of free speech wanted him silenced. The first was over his reference to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan as a “cheeky darkie” – an attempt at ironic humour that went down the wrong way – and the second was over his angry column about Waitangi Day protesters, as a result of which the Press Council (wrongly, in my view) upheld complaints against him.

My defence of Holmes had little to do with whether the opinions he expressed were correct. It was all about his right to say what he thought – a fundamental principle in a free society that we undermine at our peril.

All that unavoidable exposure to the ubiquitous Holmes led me to form a few conclusions about him. And while convention decrees that we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, enough time has elapsed since his death to allow a more balanced assessment of him than has been evident during the past two weeks.

The first point to be made is that he was clearly a very talented broadcaster with his own idiosyncratic style and the confidence – audacity, if you like – to follow his instincts. Regardless of whether you liked that style, and I was mostly indifferent to it, his immense popularity attests to that.

But his contribution to New Zealand broadcasting appears to have been exaggerated in some of the tributes paid to him, often by people too young to know the relevant history.

To hear some of his associates talk, it’s as if no one had conducted tough, incisive television interviews before Holmes came along. People forget that the real trail-blazer was Brian Edwards in the late 1960s, followed by people like the upstart Simon Walker, who gamely refused to be intimidated by the great bully Robert Muldoon.

Holmes’ youthful former boss on Newstalk ZB even credited him with pioneering talkback radio, perhaps not realising that stations such as Wellington’s Radio Windy and Auckland’s Radio Pacific and Radio i were running talkback formats back in the 1970s (remember Gordon Dryden, Geoff Sinclair and Tim “Punch a Pom a day” Bickerstaff?). The old NZBC had experimented with talkback even earlier.

People also overlook the fact that Holmes was gifted with a large, ready-made audience when his TV show made its debut in 1989. A substantial proportion of the population were habitual viewers of TV One and tuned in nightly to the news at 6pm. Whichever programme followed the news was bound to inherit that large group of passive viewers who, to this day, show an extraordinary reluctance to change channels.

The importance of that TV One viewing habit was underscored when Holmes, in a blaze of publicity, defected to the rival Prime network in 2005. He clearly expected his fans to follow him, but they didn’t; they stuck with One. It turned out to be the channel, not the host, that commanded their loyalty. Holmes’ Prime show was an ignominious failure.

That misjudgement on Holmes’ part suggested that he over-estimated his own pulling power. Big egos come with the territory in broadcasting – you could almost say they are a pre-requisite – and Holmes was no exception.

I always felt, rightly or wrongly, that he was trapped by his ego. He seemed addicted to the limelight and the trappings of celebrity, living much of his life in public. His marriage to Hine Elder was a media event attended by a dazzling array of notables, including the country’s leading politicians.

Even in his last weeks, when he was plainly dying, he seemed unable to resist the siren song of television. Some people I know felt distinctly queasy watching that last interview with him on the Sunday programme. They said it felt intrusive.

I wonder whether it was ego that drove him to work such long hours – mornings on the radio, evenings on television. There’s a price to be paid for all that compulsive exposure, and Holmes recently admitted he wasn’t there for his children when he could have been. Who knows whether that was a factor in his adopted daughter Millie going off the rails?

He also revelled in his friendships with powerful and important people. Call me old-fashioned, but I get uneasy when someone in the field of journalism becomes too chummy with politicians and power-brokers. They should keep a respectful distance from each other.

Big egos are often also fragile egos, and there was evidence of that too.  Interviewed by the New Zealand Herald when he quit his breakfast radio show in 2008, Holmes anxiously inquired of the reporter, Carroll du Chateau, whether she thought people liked him. She concluded that at heart, he was a little kid wanting to be liked.

Big egos can be precious, too, and even vindictive. When journalist Wendyl Nissen wrote a critical review of that very first Holmes show in 1989, the one in which American yachtsman Dennis Conner stormed out, Holmes took the highly unusual step of complaining to her editor at the Herald. He was angry that she had accused him of sensationalism, and apparently put it to her boss that she might have been motivated by malice.  

Nissen feared for her job, yet Holmes recently admitted what had been obvious even then: that he had set out to goad Conner into walking out because it would be great publicity. Nissen’s review was more accurate than she knew – yet Holmes had her carpeted by her editor.

I am genuinely sorry that Holmes has died and I feel sympathy for his grieving family, friends and colleagues. But no purpose is served by whitewashing his memory. A man who thrived on controversy in life could hardly expect unquestioning adulation in death.