Justice Forrest Miller’s decision in the abortion case brought by Christchurch-based group Right to Life seems to confirm what has been blindingly obvious for decades – namely, that the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act, or more specifically the application of it, is a travesty.
When Parliament passed the Act in 1977 after a long and agonised debate, the intention was that the rights of the mother would be balanced against those of the unborn child. MPs opposed to abortion didn’t want abortion on request and were satisfied they had achieved that goal.
But the legislation was quickly subverted. The counselling and certifying process that women were required to undergo before having an abortion became, in effect, a rubber stamp. Meanwhile the Abortion Supervisory Committee, created to ensure the Act worked as intended, looked the other way. The committee even admitted, in a breathtaking admission of its own failure, that thousands of women obtained abortions on “pseudo-legal” grounds – a reference to the ease with which women qualify on the grounds of risk to their mental health.
Under the sham certifying and counselling procedure, the abortion rate steadily increased year after year. From 2094 abortions in 1978, the first year after the Act was passed, the number rose inexorably and now stands at about 18,000.
Now Justice Miller, in the High Court, has said the statistics “give rise to powerful misgivings about the lawfulness of many abortions”. He notes that 98 percent of abortions are carried out on mental health grounds (actually 98.9 percent, according to the Abortion Supervisory Committee’s 2007 report) and that some certifying consultants approve every request – hardly what Parliament envisaged 30 years ago.
The painful irony here is that the Professor David Ferguson’s Christchurch Health and Development Study, which has tracked 1265 children born in Christchurch from 1977, found that at age 25, 42 percent of the post-abortive women in the study had experienced major depression in the past four years. The study, carried out by a respected academic who says he’s “pro-choice”, concluded that abortion might actually lead to a higher risk of mental illness among younger women.
Justice Miller’s judgment is a very significant victory for the anti-abortion movement, though at this stage it’s hard to know where it will lead. The judge seems to be proceeding cautiously – not surprisingly, given that it’s political dynamite – and has called for further submissions before he makes any declaration.
Anti- and pro-abortion groups agree on at least one thing. Both say the law, as it has been applied, is a farce, though their reasoning is very different. Pro-abortion groups say it’s absurd that women should have to jump through a series of legal hoops to get what they believe is their right. Anti-abortion activists say it’s farcical that Parliament should pass a law aimed at protecting the unborn child and then allow it to be flagrantly disregarded. I’m in the latter camp.
Both groups would like Parliament to revisit the abortion law, but with diametrically opposed aims in mind. And both probably agree on one other point: that few if any politicians will want this ugly, no-win issue to rear up again, least of all in election year. Like the Abortion Supervisory Committee, MPs have been looking the other way – even though it’s Parliament that is being mocked.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Gang-up on Media 7
I have just belatedly caught up, thanks to TVNZ ondemand, with last week’s edition of Media 7, the media programme hosted by Russell Brown. It consisted of a gang-up against Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst over the Dom Post’s coverage of a paper by Massey University economist Dr Greg Clydesdale.
Clydesdale’s paper, prepared for an employment conference in Brazil, controversially posited that Pacific Island immigrants are a drain on the economy and an underclass. The Dom Post not only broke the story but later published an editorial climbing into Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres, who took it upon himself to initiate an investigation into Clydesdale’s paper on the basis that it had caused significant hurt to Pacific communities and “fuelled the venting of prejudice on the Internet and talkback radio”.
The Dom Post’s editorial noted that de Bres seemed irritated by the newspaper’s reporting of the issue and suggested, in essence, that he pull his head in. It pointed out that the Bill of Rights Act guaranteed freedom of expression and information, and that newspapers had a right to report academic critiques.
Pankhurst’s fellow panellists on Media 7 – Brown, TVNZ Pacific affairs correspondent Barbara Dreaver and Samoan-born writer and actor Oscar Kightley (nicely introduced as a “recovering journalist”) – didn’t seem impressed by these arguments. Dreaver criticised the Dom Post for not checking Clydesdale’s academic credibility. (Her own employer is, of course, noted for its tireless journalistic rigour). Kightley asked Pankhurst whether he had acted responsibly in publishing an inflammatory and damning attack on Pacific Island culture. Brown demanded to know why the paper had given Clydesdale front-page treatment.
Pankhurst’s perfectly reasonable answer to this last question was that when an academic sticks his head up and risks getting it kicked, it’s news. “We’re not going to decide it’s too contentious and we shouldn’t run it. If we did that, the news pages would be empty.” Quite so.
What worried me about this debate was that it was so obviously loaded. It was, as I said at the start of this piece, a gang-up. Pankhurst is perfectly capable of looking after himself, but three onto one – and on publicly funded TV – isn’t a good look.
The tone was set at the start with a replay of the National Party’s infamous 1975 election ads exploiting fears about Pacific immigration, though the relevance of something that happened 33 years ago wasn’t immediately clear. And though newspaper coverage of the Clydesdale paper was certainly a valid subject for a media programme, I don’t think Dreaver and Kightley were invited onto the show for their professional detachment and impartiality on the issue.
What it all seemed to come down to was that Brown, Dreaver and Kightley didn’t like what Clydesdale said in his paper, so didn’t think the Dom Post should have publicised it. Pankhurst, on the other hand, took the line that facilitating debate on touchy issues was part of the media’s role.
I know which position I support in a robust, open democracy. And it worries me that a professional journalist like Dreaver should argue, in effect, that a story should be suppressed. Her thrust was that Clydesdale’s paper didn’t deserve to be publicised because his credentials didn’t stack up, and that the Dom Post should have made inquiries before running the story. Well, perhaps in an ideal world an eager-beaver researcher would be assigned to assess the credibility of every academic paper submitted for publication, but that’s not how things work in the real world – including, I suspect, TVNZ.
The news media frequently publish what many might consider arrant nonsense by highly qualified academics; it’s a routine part of the news mix, and no one objects – that is, unless the subject matter happens to offend prevailing political sensitivities. I doubt that anyone would have tut-tutted at the failure to check Clydesdale’s history were it not for the crucial fact that he expressed a politically unfashionable view. In any case, a call to Massey University would have confirmed his legitimacy. (The university has publicly stood by him.)
Dreaver, incidentally, was responsible last year for one of the most embarrassingly bad pieces of news reporting I’ve seen on New Zealand television. I’m not sure I regard her as an arbiter of good journalism.
At one point on Media 7 Dreaver, whose mother is from Kiribati, made the comment that “He [Clydesdale] is telling us to stay home”. This to me illustrates the dangers that can arise when identity politics collides with journalistic imperatives. When a journalist identifies so personally with the issues she’s paid to report on, can she be relied on to report news relating to those issues with professional detachment and objectivity?
The current push among journalism academics for greater representation of minorities in newsrooms makes me slightly wary for exactly this reason. It could result in activist journalists whose primary role, as they see it, is to act as advocates for their minority group rather than to “report and interpret the news with scrupulous honesty by striving to disclose all essential facts and by not suppressing relevant, available facts or distorting by wrong or improper emphasis”, as the journalists’ code of ethics rather clumsily puts it.
But back to the Clydesdale paper. As last week rolled on, and government departments found obliging academics who were happy to furnish peer reviews faulting his research, it became clear that his paper was dodgy. By Saturday he was being clinically taken apart on National Radio by Kim Hill, whose questions he answered – or failed to answer – with an almost endearing lack of guile.
I would argue that this is exactly the way the media should work in a robust democracy. A controversial report is published, people challenge its findings, there is a vigorous public debate and eventually a consensus of sorts is reached. In this case the consensus was that Clydesdale’s report lacked academic weight and was suspect in its use of statistics.
Does this mean the Dom Post shouldn’t have publicised the paper in the first place? No. Better to have marginal views exposed in the public domain, where they can be challenged and disproved if wonky, than to stifle them for fear of upsetting someone. If that were to happen, marginal ideas that are good might be stifled along with those that are bad.
Freedom of speech means the right to upset people and the right to get things wrong. It also means the right to attack faulty scholarship, which is exactly what happened here. Ultimately it all comes out in the wash. I like John Milton’s ringing declaration back in 1644: “Let truth and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”
Problem is, there’s always someone who wants to suppress unpalatable ideas under the guise of protecting the public – a fundamentally undemocratic notion, since it means they don’t think the public can be trusted to sensibly make up its own mind. A few centuries ago it was religious enforcers who silenced heretics; these days it’s the New Puritans of political correctness.
One last point about Media 7. I’ve only seen a couple of programmes so far but the potential is there. The content is topical, the format is sharp and Brown is capable of being a good presenter. It would be a shame if the programme blew all credibility by following a tedious ideological line – but then TVNZ must have thought of that when they chose Brown, an unabashed leftie and Labour cheerleader, to front it.
Clydesdale’s paper, prepared for an employment conference in Brazil, controversially posited that Pacific Island immigrants are a drain on the economy and an underclass. The Dom Post not only broke the story but later published an editorial climbing into Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres, who took it upon himself to initiate an investigation into Clydesdale’s paper on the basis that it had caused significant hurt to Pacific communities and “fuelled the venting of prejudice on the Internet and talkback radio”.
The Dom Post’s editorial noted that de Bres seemed irritated by the newspaper’s reporting of the issue and suggested, in essence, that he pull his head in. It pointed out that the Bill of Rights Act guaranteed freedom of expression and information, and that newspapers had a right to report academic critiques.
Pankhurst’s fellow panellists on Media 7 – Brown, TVNZ Pacific affairs correspondent Barbara Dreaver and Samoan-born writer and actor Oscar Kightley (nicely introduced as a “recovering journalist”) – didn’t seem impressed by these arguments. Dreaver criticised the Dom Post for not checking Clydesdale’s academic credibility. (Her own employer is, of course, noted for its tireless journalistic rigour). Kightley asked Pankhurst whether he had acted responsibly in publishing an inflammatory and damning attack on Pacific Island culture. Brown demanded to know why the paper had given Clydesdale front-page treatment.
Pankhurst’s perfectly reasonable answer to this last question was that when an academic sticks his head up and risks getting it kicked, it’s news. “We’re not going to decide it’s too contentious and we shouldn’t run it. If we did that, the news pages would be empty.” Quite so.
What worried me about this debate was that it was so obviously loaded. It was, as I said at the start of this piece, a gang-up. Pankhurst is perfectly capable of looking after himself, but three onto one – and on publicly funded TV – isn’t a good look.
The tone was set at the start with a replay of the National Party’s infamous 1975 election ads exploiting fears about Pacific immigration, though the relevance of something that happened 33 years ago wasn’t immediately clear. And though newspaper coverage of the Clydesdale paper was certainly a valid subject for a media programme, I don’t think Dreaver and Kightley were invited onto the show for their professional detachment and impartiality on the issue.
What it all seemed to come down to was that Brown, Dreaver and Kightley didn’t like what Clydesdale said in his paper, so didn’t think the Dom Post should have publicised it. Pankhurst, on the other hand, took the line that facilitating debate on touchy issues was part of the media’s role.
I know which position I support in a robust, open democracy. And it worries me that a professional journalist like Dreaver should argue, in effect, that a story should be suppressed. Her thrust was that Clydesdale’s paper didn’t deserve to be publicised because his credentials didn’t stack up, and that the Dom Post should have made inquiries before running the story. Well, perhaps in an ideal world an eager-beaver researcher would be assigned to assess the credibility of every academic paper submitted for publication, but that’s not how things work in the real world – including, I suspect, TVNZ.
The news media frequently publish what many might consider arrant nonsense by highly qualified academics; it’s a routine part of the news mix, and no one objects – that is, unless the subject matter happens to offend prevailing political sensitivities. I doubt that anyone would have tut-tutted at the failure to check Clydesdale’s history were it not for the crucial fact that he expressed a politically unfashionable view. In any case, a call to Massey University would have confirmed his legitimacy. (The university has publicly stood by him.)
Dreaver, incidentally, was responsible last year for one of the most embarrassingly bad pieces of news reporting I’ve seen on New Zealand television. I’m not sure I regard her as an arbiter of good journalism.
At one point on Media 7 Dreaver, whose mother is from Kiribati, made the comment that “He [Clydesdale] is telling us to stay home”. This to me illustrates the dangers that can arise when identity politics collides with journalistic imperatives. When a journalist identifies so personally with the issues she’s paid to report on, can she be relied on to report news relating to those issues with professional detachment and objectivity?
The current push among journalism academics for greater representation of minorities in newsrooms makes me slightly wary for exactly this reason. It could result in activist journalists whose primary role, as they see it, is to act as advocates for their minority group rather than to “report and interpret the news with scrupulous honesty by striving to disclose all essential facts and by not suppressing relevant, available facts or distorting by wrong or improper emphasis”, as the journalists’ code of ethics rather clumsily puts it.
But back to the Clydesdale paper. As last week rolled on, and government departments found obliging academics who were happy to furnish peer reviews faulting his research, it became clear that his paper was dodgy. By Saturday he was being clinically taken apart on National Radio by Kim Hill, whose questions he answered – or failed to answer – with an almost endearing lack of guile.
I would argue that this is exactly the way the media should work in a robust democracy. A controversial report is published, people challenge its findings, there is a vigorous public debate and eventually a consensus of sorts is reached. In this case the consensus was that Clydesdale’s report lacked academic weight and was suspect in its use of statistics.
Does this mean the Dom Post shouldn’t have publicised the paper in the first place? No. Better to have marginal views exposed in the public domain, where they can be challenged and disproved if wonky, than to stifle them for fear of upsetting someone. If that were to happen, marginal ideas that are good might be stifled along with those that are bad.
Freedom of speech means the right to upset people and the right to get things wrong. It also means the right to attack faulty scholarship, which is exactly what happened here. Ultimately it all comes out in the wash. I like John Milton’s ringing declaration back in 1644: “Let truth and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”
Problem is, there’s always someone who wants to suppress unpalatable ideas under the guise of protecting the public – a fundamentally undemocratic notion, since it means they don’t think the public can be trusted to sensibly make up its own mind. A few centuries ago it was religious enforcers who silenced heretics; these days it’s the New Puritans of political correctness.
One last point about Media 7. I’ve only seen a couple of programmes so far but the potential is there. The content is topical, the format is sharp and Brown is capable of being a good presenter. It would be a shame if the programme blew all credibility by following a tedious ideological line – but then TVNZ must have thought of that when they chose Brown, an unabashed leftie and Labour cheerleader, to front it.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
The politics of language
You probably thought, like me, that the correct use of apostrophes was an aid to writing clearly and unambiguously. But no. According to my fellow Dom Post columnist Janet Holmes, who teaches something called socio-linguistics at Victoria University, it’s a means of enforcing an oppressive class structure.
In her language column this week, Holmes made a case for the abolition of the apostrophe. Fair enough. But what was interesting was the novel justification she gave: “In my opinion apostrophes are largely redundant punctuational paraphernalia, supported by those who have learned how to use them in order to keep those who haven’t in their subordinate place.”
So there. You may have thought you were simply following the rules of good grammar in using apostrophes, but it turns out they are just another instrument used by an exploitative ruling class to keep the proletariat in its place.
Further on she writes: “The truth is that people who have learned how to use apostrophes have a vested interest in maintaining them … This is basically a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Its [sic] a means some employers use to decide who they will employ and who they wont [sic].”
This a strikingly clear illustration of the neo-Marxist nonsense that infests New Zealand universities and sees everything in terms of an imaginary class struggle.
The same academic recently took a shot at me for defending the use of words like “actress” and “waitress”, which I argued were perfectly legitimate, non-discriminatory grammatical devices for distinguishing women from men. The rigid feminist view is that any word with the suffix “ess” can only be a means of oppressing women. So language is now politicised to the extent that ideologically driven reformers even insist on denying biological reality.
Language provides fertile ground for the ideologues. They seem to regard the rules of grammar not as sensible ways of ensuring precision and clarity – which is how most of us see them – but as the tools of an oppressive, anachronistic hierarchical system.
The rules of pronunciation are viewed similarly. Clear pronunciation – and I don’t mean exaggeratedly “proper” BBC newsreader English – is an aid to understanding, just as good grammar is. But it now seems to be viewed as elitist, which helps explain why we have a generation of radio and TV reporters whose speech is as euphonious as the noise made by fighting cats.
In her language column this week, Holmes made a case for the abolition of the apostrophe. Fair enough. But what was interesting was the novel justification she gave: “In my opinion apostrophes are largely redundant punctuational paraphernalia, supported by those who have learned how to use them in order to keep those who haven’t in their subordinate place.”
So there. You may have thought you were simply following the rules of good grammar in using apostrophes, but it turns out they are just another instrument used by an exploitative ruling class to keep the proletariat in its place.
Further on she writes: “The truth is that people who have learned how to use apostrophes have a vested interest in maintaining them … This is basically a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Its [sic] a means some employers use to decide who they will employ and who they wont [sic].”
This a strikingly clear illustration of the neo-Marxist nonsense that infests New Zealand universities and sees everything in terms of an imaginary class struggle.
The same academic recently took a shot at me for defending the use of words like “actress” and “waitress”, which I argued were perfectly legitimate, non-discriminatory grammatical devices for distinguishing women from men. The rigid feminist view is that any word with the suffix “ess” can only be a means of oppressing women. So language is now politicised to the extent that ideologically driven reformers even insist on denying biological reality.
Language provides fertile ground for the ideologues. They seem to regard the rules of grammar not as sensible ways of ensuring precision and clarity – which is how most of us see them – but as the tools of an oppressive, anachronistic hierarchical system.
The rules of pronunciation are viewed similarly. Clear pronunciation – and I don’t mean exaggeratedly “proper” BBC newsreader English – is an aid to understanding, just as good grammar is. But it now seems to be viewed as elitist, which helps explain why we have a generation of radio and TV reporters whose speech is as euphonious as the noise made by fighting cats.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
For heaven's sake, haven't they got lawns to mow and cars to wash?
Today’s Dom Post reports that the mayor of Kapiti, Jenny Rowan, received 60 emails from residents saying they were highly offended at a community board member who wore a fake Ku Klux Klan outfit to a council meeting.
This merely confirms what we already suspected: that taking offence is one of our favourite national pastimes. In fact a recent UMR Research survey of the recreational interests of Kapiti Coasters shows that feeling highly offended ranks ahead of mowing lawns and washing cars, with bowls a close fourth. (Alright, I made that up; but I’ve saved UMR Research the trouble and expense of confirming what was already obvious.)
A few points worth noting here. Dale Evans, the deputy chairman of the Paraparaumu-Raumati Community Board, is a clown and attention-seeker from way back. In the 1970s, when he owned a retail business in Wellington, he was constantly in the public eye with a variety of outlandish stunts, often with the aim of promoting Wellington rugby.
His exploits haven’t always been staged simply to draw attention to himself, although he certainly seems to enjoy that aspect of it. Often he has had a serious or at least a semi-serious motive, even if it wasn’t always readily apparent.
In the case of the KKK outfit, he was evidently trying to make a satirical point about the absurd, state-subsidised Hoodie Day. Though Jenny Rowan tut-tutted (quite unnecessarily) over Evans’ behaviour on National Radio this morning and (even more unnecessarily) wants a formal apology from him, no doubt to humour all those Mother Grundy complainers, she said she didn’t want him to step down because he was committed to the community and made a valuable contribution. Which is probably more than can be said for many of those who complained about him.
Here’s another thing to keep in mind. It was a stunt, a prank, a joke. That’s J-O-K-E, for the benefit of Kapiti Coast residents whose sense of humour, if they ever had one, has atrophied. Must be something to do with the salt spray.
If Evans had tried to set up a local chapter of the KKK, there would have been grounds to protest. But he didn’t, and he wouldn’t. There were no flaming crosses and to the best of my knowledge Mr Evans didn’t lynch anyone. It may not have been the most effective stunt – but for heaven’s sake, it was harmless.
Those who took offence made a conscious decision to feel offended. But it’s not much fun taking offence without grizzling to someone, so they took it a step further by wasting the time of a mayor who would be better employed grappling with the Kapiti Coast’s multiple infrastructural problems.
New Zealand is gripped by an epidemic of preciousness. A grievance culture has evolved in which people go out of their way to find reasons to feel outraged. That in turn has spawned a plethora of interfering public agencies and tribunals which spend inordinate amounts of money and time humouring them. (Another dispiriting example of the grievance culture from today’s paper: Wellington city councillor Iona Pannett, a Green Party champion of political correctness, bleating that a new police strategy against taggers – making them wear pink jackets labelled “Tagger” while they scrub the walls they have defaced – would reinforce prejudice against gay and lesbian people. Good grief.)
Most of us accept that being offended is one of the prices we pay for living in a free society in which other people are going to say and do things that we don’t like or approve. I’m positively bombarded with offensiveness every day. I deal with it mostly by impotently harrumphing to my put-upon wife, who reacts in the only sensible way – by ignoring me. Jenny Rowan should do the same with her cranky constituents.
This merely confirms what we already suspected: that taking offence is one of our favourite national pastimes. In fact a recent UMR Research survey of the recreational interests of Kapiti Coasters shows that feeling highly offended ranks ahead of mowing lawns and washing cars, with bowls a close fourth. (Alright, I made that up; but I’ve saved UMR Research the trouble and expense of confirming what was already obvious.)
A few points worth noting here. Dale Evans, the deputy chairman of the Paraparaumu-Raumati Community Board, is a clown and attention-seeker from way back. In the 1970s, when he owned a retail business in Wellington, he was constantly in the public eye with a variety of outlandish stunts, often with the aim of promoting Wellington rugby.
His exploits haven’t always been staged simply to draw attention to himself, although he certainly seems to enjoy that aspect of it. Often he has had a serious or at least a semi-serious motive, even if it wasn’t always readily apparent.
In the case of the KKK outfit, he was evidently trying to make a satirical point about the absurd, state-subsidised Hoodie Day. Though Jenny Rowan tut-tutted (quite unnecessarily) over Evans’ behaviour on National Radio this morning and (even more unnecessarily) wants a formal apology from him, no doubt to humour all those Mother Grundy complainers, she said she didn’t want him to step down because he was committed to the community and made a valuable contribution. Which is probably more than can be said for many of those who complained about him.
Here’s another thing to keep in mind. It was a stunt, a prank, a joke. That’s J-O-K-E, for the benefit of Kapiti Coast residents whose sense of humour, if they ever had one, has atrophied. Must be something to do with the salt spray.
If Evans had tried to set up a local chapter of the KKK, there would have been grounds to protest. But he didn’t, and he wouldn’t. There were no flaming crosses and to the best of my knowledge Mr Evans didn’t lynch anyone. It may not have been the most effective stunt – but for heaven’s sake, it was harmless.
Those who took offence made a conscious decision to feel offended. But it’s not much fun taking offence without grizzling to someone, so they took it a step further by wasting the time of a mayor who would be better employed grappling with the Kapiti Coast’s multiple infrastructural problems.
New Zealand is gripped by an epidemic of preciousness. A grievance culture has evolved in which people go out of their way to find reasons to feel outraged. That in turn has spawned a plethora of interfering public agencies and tribunals which spend inordinate amounts of money and time humouring them. (Another dispiriting example of the grievance culture from today’s paper: Wellington city councillor Iona Pannett, a Green Party champion of political correctness, bleating that a new police strategy against taggers – making them wear pink jackets labelled “Tagger” while they scrub the walls they have defaced – would reinforce prejudice against gay and lesbian people. Good grief.)
Most of us accept that being offended is one of the prices we pay for living in a free society in which other people are going to say and do things that we don’t like or approve. I’m positively bombarded with offensiveness every day. I deal with it mostly by impotently harrumphing to my put-upon wife, who reacts in the only sensible way – by ignoring me. Jenny Rowan should do the same with her cranky constituents.
Monday, June 2, 2008
JOURNALISTS HONOURED
One tends to be cynical about honours lists. They are a handy means of rewarding political favourites, of honouring paid-up members of the establishment – many of whom have done no more than their job, for which they are generously remunerated anyway – and of currying favour with constituent groups whose support the incumbent government is eager to secure. The list often reflects the fashionable political values of the moment. But even honours committees can’t help but get it right from time to time.
Today’s list recognised Sue Carty, a former editor of Wellington’s Evening Post. Her appointment as a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit was richly deserved by a journalist whose career, if not exactly cut short, was severely constrained by multiple sclerosis.
As an editor, Sue was ferociously energetic, capable and dedicated to her paper. Though physically small and by no means extroverted by nature, she could be formidably tough and resolute. I think she trained herself to be, because that was what the job demanded.
She was determined that the Evening Post would defy for as long as possible the curse that had seen metropolitan evening newspapers wither and die the world over. It was largely due to her commitment that when the paper eventually ceased to exist in 2002, a year after she stood down, it was still in a position of such strength that it was able to merge with The Dominion as an equal partner.
Sue fought MS for several years before bowing to the inevitable and resigning her editorship. For much of that time no one knew of her illness, nor suspected anything. It’s typical of her spirit that, more than 10 years after the diagnosis was made, she continues to work at the paper several days a week, editing letters and writing editorials. She was also a long-serving member of the Press Council.
By a remarkable coincidence, today’s honours list also recognised another distinguished journalist whose career was foreshortened, like Sue’s, by a progressive neurological disorder.
As founding editor of Metro in 1981, Warwick Roger effectively re-invented magazine journalism in New Zealand, demonstrating that there was a market for the long feature story (some of Metro’s articles ran to 10 pages at a time when even the Listener, which was then overwhelmingly dominant in the market, rarely gave any subject more than two). And as well as being a highly accomplished writer himself, he was an astute spotter and nurturer of new talent (including his future wife Robyn Langwell).
Warwick had the self-assurance to stamp a provocative, assertive personality on Metro from Day One and refused to be thrown off course despite the carping criticism of former colleagues, some of whom resented his success. (A prickly personality, highly sensitive to criticism, Warwick cared little for the opinions of some fellow journalists and sometimes gave the impression he relished public feuds with his detractors.)
Warwick was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1996 – about the same time Sue Carty got the news about her illness – and again, like Sue, is still tapping away at his keyboard, though not as prolifically as he once did.
The old Metro feature-writing formula, which was subsequently picked up by the magazine’s stablemate North & South, now seems rather jaded and formulaic. But that doesn’t detract from Warwick’s achievement in taking New Zealand journalism in a bold new direction. He has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
THIS HAS nothing to do with journalism, but I spent yesterday in the company of another Parkinson’s sufferer: the redoubtable Brian Lambert of Masterton.
I wrote an article about Brian for the Dom Post recently and called it The Unstoppable Brian Lambert. He is a phenomenon; a prodigy.
Brian, who runs a bike shop in Masterton, holds the record for riding a bike from Auckland to Wellington. It took him 19 hours, 59 minutes and 27 seconds.
That was in 1984. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1999 but at 56, still has extraordinary stamina. He not only rides long distances but organises group rides like the one I took part in yesterday, a 55km mountain bike trek on a rugged and remote part of the Wairarapa coast.
Several times in the course of the ride, Brian left me in his wake. I finished ahead of him only because he dropped back to look after some slower riders.
It was a great ride on a raw, spectacular part of the coast that is succumbing, in the few accessible places such as Tora, to small-scale development. Fortunately it’s unlikely ever to be another Coromandel: the coast is rocky and the weather gets pretty wild, as is evident from the big steel fishing trawler that still sits eerily upright on the coast near White Rock. I understand it was dumped there 40 years ago after it got caught in a violent storm only hours out of Wellington on a delivery voyage to Samoa. The force of the storm can scarcely be imagined, since the shelf of land the trawler sits on is at least four metres above the high tide line.
It was a tiring ride and I arrived home feeling like a wrung-out rag, but Brian was still at it. Having ensured everyone finished the ride safely and got transport back home, Brian sent an email at 9.30 pm with photos of the trip. Tomorrow he’ll probably be planning the next excursion. Unstoppable indeed.
Today’s list recognised Sue Carty, a former editor of Wellington’s Evening Post. Her appointment as a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit was richly deserved by a journalist whose career, if not exactly cut short, was severely constrained by multiple sclerosis.
As an editor, Sue was ferociously energetic, capable and dedicated to her paper. Though physically small and by no means extroverted by nature, she could be formidably tough and resolute. I think she trained herself to be, because that was what the job demanded.
She was determined that the Evening Post would defy for as long as possible the curse that had seen metropolitan evening newspapers wither and die the world over. It was largely due to her commitment that when the paper eventually ceased to exist in 2002, a year after she stood down, it was still in a position of such strength that it was able to merge with The Dominion as an equal partner.
Sue fought MS for several years before bowing to the inevitable and resigning her editorship. For much of that time no one knew of her illness, nor suspected anything. It’s typical of her spirit that, more than 10 years after the diagnosis was made, she continues to work at the paper several days a week, editing letters and writing editorials. She was also a long-serving member of the Press Council.
By a remarkable coincidence, today’s honours list also recognised another distinguished journalist whose career was foreshortened, like Sue’s, by a progressive neurological disorder.
As founding editor of Metro in 1981, Warwick Roger effectively re-invented magazine journalism in New Zealand, demonstrating that there was a market for the long feature story (some of Metro’s articles ran to 10 pages at a time when even the Listener, which was then overwhelmingly dominant in the market, rarely gave any subject more than two). And as well as being a highly accomplished writer himself, he was an astute spotter and nurturer of new talent (including his future wife Robyn Langwell).
Warwick had the self-assurance to stamp a provocative, assertive personality on Metro from Day One and refused to be thrown off course despite the carping criticism of former colleagues, some of whom resented his success. (A prickly personality, highly sensitive to criticism, Warwick cared little for the opinions of some fellow journalists and sometimes gave the impression he relished public feuds with his detractors.)
Warwick was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1996 – about the same time Sue Carty got the news about her illness – and again, like Sue, is still tapping away at his keyboard, though not as prolifically as he once did.
The old Metro feature-writing formula, which was subsequently picked up by the magazine’s stablemate North & South, now seems rather jaded and formulaic. But that doesn’t detract from Warwick’s achievement in taking New Zealand journalism in a bold new direction. He has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
THIS HAS nothing to do with journalism, but I spent yesterday in the company of another Parkinson’s sufferer: the redoubtable Brian Lambert of Masterton.
I wrote an article about Brian for the Dom Post recently and called it The Unstoppable Brian Lambert. He is a phenomenon; a prodigy.
Brian, who runs a bike shop in Masterton, holds the record for riding a bike from Auckland to Wellington. It took him 19 hours, 59 minutes and 27 seconds.
That was in 1984. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1999 but at 56, still has extraordinary stamina. He not only rides long distances but organises group rides like the one I took part in yesterday, a 55km mountain bike trek on a rugged and remote part of the Wairarapa coast.
Several times in the course of the ride, Brian left me in his wake. I finished ahead of him only because he dropped back to look after some slower riders.
It was a great ride on a raw, spectacular part of the coast that is succumbing, in the few accessible places such as Tora, to small-scale development. Fortunately it’s unlikely ever to be another Coromandel: the coast is rocky and the weather gets pretty wild, as is evident from the big steel fishing trawler that still sits eerily upright on the coast near White Rock. I understand it was dumped there 40 years ago after it got caught in a violent storm only hours out of Wellington on a delivery voyage to Samoa. The force of the storm can scarcely be imagined, since the shelf of land the trawler sits on is at least four metres above the high tide line.
It was a tiring ride and I arrived home feeling like a wrung-out rag, but Brian was still at it. Having ensured everyone finished the ride safely and got transport back home, Brian sent an email at 9.30 pm with photos of the trip. Tomorrow he’ll probably be planning the next excursion. Unstoppable indeed.
CATHOLIC MISCHIEF - WHY WE DOOLANS WERE VIEWED WITH SUSPICION
Published Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, May 28
The Dominion Post recently published a story of the sort that used to be described as heart-warming. It told of a couple in their 80s who had been teenage sweethearts in Masterton but had been forced to part because of religious differences.
Joan Dean’s father wouldn’t allow her to marry Phil O’Neill because Phil was Catholic. In disgust and anger, he threw away the ring he had bought her and went off to the Second World War. Now, nearly 70 years later, they have rediscovered each other and plan to marry.
To anyone born in the past 40 years, the existence of such religious prejudice in a supposedly liberal, tolerant country like New Zealand, and in relatively recent times, must seem inconceivable.
New Zealand in the 21st century is one of the world’s most secular societies, where only those of very pronounced religious beliefs – say, Muslim, observant Jew or fundamentalist Christian – would allow religious differences to stand in the way of two people who loved each other.
But we forget very quickly what this country used to be like. I grew up Catholic in a small provincial town during the 1950s and 60s, when to be Catholic defined one’s sense of identity and relationships with others.
The local Catholic community was our world. My siblings and I went to a convent primary school and would exchange taunts, usually from the other side of the street, with Protestant kids from the public school.
Our friends, and those of our parents, were almost exclusively Catholic. Such social life as we enjoyed tended to revolve around the Church. Sunday Mass was the central event of the week, socially as well as spiritually, and the parish priest was a figure of unquestioned authority (except in my redoubtable mother’s eyes, but that’s another story).
Add into the mix our strange rituals – First Holy Communions, incense and Latin, confessions, Stations of the Cross and processions around the church grounds – and we must have seemed, to non-Catholics, as mysterious and forbidding as the Exclusive Brethren look to many people today.
What is mysterious is often also threatening, so it was no surprise that we were viewed with suspicion and antipathy by some of the Protestant majority in the town. While Catholics generally enjoyed congenial business and workplace relations with non-Catholics, there was a distance between the two sections of the community – and looking back, I think it was there by mutual consent.
Of course there were other reasons, besides our peculiar Catholic rituals, why Protestants looked askance at us. Politics had been dogged by bitter and bloodthirsty sectarianism since the Reformation, and the Catholic track record was hardly one to be proud of. Guy Fawkes Night, after all, commemorates an attempt by Catholic plotters to blow up the English Parliament – and that was one of the more benign attempts to impose papal authority.
Even in far more recent times, and closer to home, Catholics have been associated with sabotage, subversion and general mischief. In the late 19th century the heavily Catholic West Coast was a hotbed of Irish republicanism. The editor of the Irish Catholic Party’s newspaper, the Hokitika-based New Zealand Celt, was imprisoned for seditious libel.
The Catholic bishop of Auckland, Thomas Liston, in a fiery St Patrick’s Night speech in 1922, outraged the conservative government of William Massey (an Ulster-born Freemason) by praising the fallen republican heroes of the 1916 Dublin Uprising. Liston too was tried for sedition and was acquitted – ironically, by an all-Protestant jury.
Liston got into trouble again later that same year when he gave thanks for the emerging Labour Party’s success in the general election, stirring up suspicion that the Catholic Church was meddling in politics. This was a cause of lingering distrust among Protestants, and one not entirely without foundation.
In Australia, Archbishop Daniel Patrick Mannix of Melbourne – a campaigner against conscription in World War One – wielded huge political influence and played a key hand in the famous Labour Party split of 1955 that saw Catholic MPs peel off into the staunchly anti-communist Democratic Labour Party.
The combative Irish bishop Patrick Moran of Dunedin, founder of the once-influential Catholic paper The Tablet, was another Catholic cleric who rarely hesitated to express himself forcefully on political issues. The Tablet’s editor from 1967 to 1989 was the equally combative John Kennedy, who told me when I interviewed him in the late 1970s that there was still a feeling in New Zealand that the Catholics “had to be watched”.
Kennedy contributed to this in no small way himself, often taking a controversial stand – such as urging readers to vote Labour in 1972 – that was widely, if mistakenly, interpreted as the Church giving instructions to Catholic voters.
It is remarkable how quickly all this has receded into the past. The Second Vatican Council of the 1960s helped break down antagonism toward the Catholic Church by opening up the windows and letting the fresh air of change blow through, and also by making a determined effort to foster reconciliation with other religions. But more significantly, the baby-boomer generation of the 60s and 70s, many of whom rejected organised religion, surfed a tsunami of social and political change that swept away much of the lingering religious bigotry.
It would be wrong to pretend that suspicion of Catholics (of whom I no longer count myself one) has been eliminated entirely. The massive success of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code suggested there are millions of people still ready to believe that Catholicism hides dark, sinister secrets.
But at least Joan Dean and Phil O’Neill are able to tie the knot at last. Congratulations to them.
The Dominion Post recently published a story of the sort that used to be described as heart-warming. It told of a couple in their 80s who had been teenage sweethearts in Masterton but had been forced to part because of religious differences.
Joan Dean’s father wouldn’t allow her to marry Phil O’Neill because Phil was Catholic. In disgust and anger, he threw away the ring he had bought her and went off to the Second World War. Now, nearly 70 years later, they have rediscovered each other and plan to marry.
To anyone born in the past 40 years, the existence of such religious prejudice in a supposedly liberal, tolerant country like New Zealand, and in relatively recent times, must seem inconceivable.
New Zealand in the 21st century is one of the world’s most secular societies, where only those of very pronounced religious beliefs – say, Muslim, observant Jew or fundamentalist Christian – would allow religious differences to stand in the way of two people who loved each other.
But we forget very quickly what this country used to be like. I grew up Catholic in a small provincial town during the 1950s and 60s, when to be Catholic defined one’s sense of identity and relationships with others.
The local Catholic community was our world. My siblings and I went to a convent primary school and would exchange taunts, usually from the other side of the street, with Protestant kids from the public school.
Our friends, and those of our parents, were almost exclusively Catholic. Such social life as we enjoyed tended to revolve around the Church. Sunday Mass was the central event of the week, socially as well as spiritually, and the parish priest was a figure of unquestioned authority (except in my redoubtable mother’s eyes, but that’s another story).
Add into the mix our strange rituals – First Holy Communions, incense and Latin, confessions, Stations of the Cross and processions around the church grounds – and we must have seemed, to non-Catholics, as mysterious and forbidding as the Exclusive Brethren look to many people today.
What is mysterious is often also threatening, so it was no surprise that we were viewed with suspicion and antipathy by some of the Protestant majority in the town. While Catholics generally enjoyed congenial business and workplace relations with non-Catholics, there was a distance between the two sections of the community – and looking back, I think it was there by mutual consent.
Of course there were other reasons, besides our peculiar Catholic rituals, why Protestants looked askance at us. Politics had been dogged by bitter and bloodthirsty sectarianism since the Reformation, and the Catholic track record was hardly one to be proud of. Guy Fawkes Night, after all, commemorates an attempt by Catholic plotters to blow up the English Parliament – and that was one of the more benign attempts to impose papal authority.
Even in far more recent times, and closer to home, Catholics have been associated with sabotage, subversion and general mischief. In the late 19th century the heavily Catholic West Coast was a hotbed of Irish republicanism. The editor of the Irish Catholic Party’s newspaper, the Hokitika-based New Zealand Celt, was imprisoned for seditious libel.
The Catholic bishop of Auckland, Thomas Liston, in a fiery St Patrick’s Night speech in 1922, outraged the conservative government of William Massey (an Ulster-born Freemason) by praising the fallen republican heroes of the 1916 Dublin Uprising. Liston too was tried for sedition and was acquitted – ironically, by an all-Protestant jury.
Liston got into trouble again later that same year when he gave thanks for the emerging Labour Party’s success in the general election, stirring up suspicion that the Catholic Church was meddling in politics. This was a cause of lingering distrust among Protestants, and one not entirely without foundation.
In Australia, Archbishop Daniel Patrick Mannix of Melbourne – a campaigner against conscription in World War One – wielded huge political influence and played a key hand in the famous Labour Party split of 1955 that saw Catholic MPs peel off into the staunchly anti-communist Democratic Labour Party.
The combative Irish bishop Patrick Moran of Dunedin, founder of the once-influential Catholic paper The Tablet, was another Catholic cleric who rarely hesitated to express himself forcefully on political issues. The Tablet’s editor from 1967 to 1989 was the equally combative John Kennedy, who told me when I interviewed him in the late 1970s that there was still a feeling in New Zealand that the Catholics “had to be watched”.
Kennedy contributed to this in no small way himself, often taking a controversial stand – such as urging readers to vote Labour in 1972 – that was widely, if mistakenly, interpreted as the Church giving instructions to Catholic voters.
It is remarkable how quickly all this has receded into the past. The Second Vatican Council of the 1960s helped break down antagonism toward the Catholic Church by opening up the windows and letting the fresh air of change blow through, and also by making a determined effort to foster reconciliation with other religions. But more significantly, the baby-boomer generation of the 60s and 70s, many of whom rejected organised religion, surfed a tsunami of social and political change that swept away much of the lingering religious bigotry.
It would be wrong to pretend that suspicion of Catholics (of whom I no longer count myself one) has been eliminated entirely. The massive success of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code suggested there are millions of people still ready to believe that Catholicism hides dark, sinister secrets.
But at least Joan Dean and Phil O’Neill are able to tie the knot at last. Congratulations to them.
FAIR GO - A FORM OF BULLYING; GREENS SHOW TRUE COLOURS; WHAT'S REALLY INFURIATING ABOUT TELEMARKETERS
Curmudgeon column - first published Dom Post and ChCh Press, May 27
FAIR GO is one of TVNZ’s longest-running and highest-rating programmes. Its host, Kevin Milne, was included in last year’s Queen’s Birthday honours list. It’s the sort of show TVNZ’s publicity department would doubtless call iconic.
To suggest Fair Go is anything less than sainted is about as unpatriotic as calling for an open season on the little spotted kiwi. Yet whenever I watch it, I feel uneasy.
Over the years it has acquired a tone of smug self-righteousness. It panders to the public appetite for clearcut heroes and villains to the extent that you can sense the viewers at home booing and hissing on cue – as in an old-fashioned music hall pantomime – whenever the bad guy is mentioned.
Not content with exposing greedy business people and heartless bureaucrats, the show demands that they undergo a purifying confession in front of the nation.
The format seems to demand an admission of guilt, a grovelling apology and an offer of reparations. “Be a good boy, make an offer of compensation, and we’ll let you off with a friendly warning,” is the usual message. It’s a form of bullying that takes advantage of television’s enormous power.
Well okay, you might say; of course a consumer rights programme is going to expose bad business practices. That’s its purpose. But I get the feeling, watching Fair Go, that virtually every story matches a pre-ordained template.
There seems a built-in bias in favour of the complainant; an underlying supposition that the underdog is always right. The presumed wrongdoer is on a hiding to nothing.
The weekly moral fable is completed by the ritual capitulation of the “guilty” party, at which point Milne and his team pat themselves on the backs for having righted another wrong.
Of course whomever Fair Go has lined up in its sights can refuse to go on the programme, but these are the people for whom a special punishment is reserved. Their names and pictures go on “the wall”, where they may be named and shamed repeatedly in successive weeks.
Refusing to play Fair Go’s game is considered the greatest sin of all. Not only is it taken as a tacit admission of guilt, but it deprives Fair Go of its moment of triumph – the denouement when the black-hearted villain recants and promises to be nicer in future.
What concerns me is the possibility that some recant not because they believe they have done anything wrong, but because they daren’t risk vilification on a top-rating TV show in which the dice are overwhelmingly loaded against them.
THE brouhaha over the attempted reshuffling of the Green Party list is a perfect example of how, under MMP, politicians treat the public – even their own supporters – with contempt.
The plan was for sitting MP Nandor Tanczos to resign from Parliament, which would have cleared the way for co-leader Russel Norman to become an MP and thus become eligible for a parliamentary salary and associated perks such as free travel. All very cosy and convenient for the party leadership, and uncontaminated by anything so untidy as giving the voters a say.
Trouble was, Mr Norman was ranked only tenth on the Greens’ list at the last election, before he became co-leader. Two Green stalwarts, Mike Ward and Catherine Delahunty, were above him. And while Ms Delahunty (at number nine) reportedly agreed to stand aside so that Mr Norman could be fast-tracked into Parliament, Mr Ward – ranked eighth on the list in 2005 – deliciously dug his toes in and refused to relinquish his place.
I am no cheerleader for Mr Ward. He’s not exactly one of the Greens’ hard grafters and by some accounts led a splendidly cruisy life when he was an MP from 2002 to 2005, being noted for the frequency with which he was seen grazing in the fashionable cafés of Lambton Quay.
In refusing to make way for Mr Norman he might be motivated by hubris or sheer cussedness, but the inescapable fact is that he has principle on his side. Green supporters voted for a list that placed him ahead of Mr Norman, and if the Greens had any respect for the voters’ wishes they wouldn’t have tried to tinker with the rankings.
The irony here is that a party that likes to claim the moral high ground has been caught out attempting to subvert the election result for its own convenience.
I HAVE realised lately that what offends me most about telemarketers is not that they interrupt my dinner or mispronounce my name.
No, what sends the needle right off the irritation meter is the way they try to soften you up by feigning interest in your wellbeing. “How’s your day going?” they ask with contrived bonhomie, or “How are you today, Karl?” As if they cared a toss.
They would get a more civil response if they came straight out and said: “I’m sorry to interrupt whatever you’re doing, but I’m desperate to sell you something that you’re not remotely interested in.” That would command my attention because at least it’s honest.
FAIR GO is one of TVNZ’s longest-running and highest-rating programmes. Its host, Kevin Milne, was included in last year’s Queen’s Birthday honours list. It’s the sort of show TVNZ’s publicity department would doubtless call iconic.
To suggest Fair Go is anything less than sainted is about as unpatriotic as calling for an open season on the little spotted kiwi. Yet whenever I watch it, I feel uneasy.
Over the years it has acquired a tone of smug self-righteousness. It panders to the public appetite for clearcut heroes and villains to the extent that you can sense the viewers at home booing and hissing on cue – as in an old-fashioned music hall pantomime – whenever the bad guy is mentioned.
Not content with exposing greedy business people and heartless bureaucrats, the show demands that they undergo a purifying confession in front of the nation.
The format seems to demand an admission of guilt, a grovelling apology and an offer of reparations. “Be a good boy, make an offer of compensation, and we’ll let you off with a friendly warning,” is the usual message. It’s a form of bullying that takes advantage of television’s enormous power.
Well okay, you might say; of course a consumer rights programme is going to expose bad business practices. That’s its purpose. But I get the feeling, watching Fair Go, that virtually every story matches a pre-ordained template.
There seems a built-in bias in favour of the complainant; an underlying supposition that the underdog is always right. The presumed wrongdoer is on a hiding to nothing.
The weekly moral fable is completed by the ritual capitulation of the “guilty” party, at which point Milne and his team pat themselves on the backs for having righted another wrong.
Of course whomever Fair Go has lined up in its sights can refuse to go on the programme, but these are the people for whom a special punishment is reserved. Their names and pictures go on “the wall”, where they may be named and shamed repeatedly in successive weeks.
Refusing to play Fair Go’s game is considered the greatest sin of all. Not only is it taken as a tacit admission of guilt, but it deprives Fair Go of its moment of triumph – the denouement when the black-hearted villain recants and promises to be nicer in future.
What concerns me is the possibility that some recant not because they believe they have done anything wrong, but because they daren’t risk vilification on a top-rating TV show in which the dice are overwhelmingly loaded against them.
THE brouhaha over the attempted reshuffling of the Green Party list is a perfect example of how, under MMP, politicians treat the public – even their own supporters – with contempt.
The plan was for sitting MP Nandor Tanczos to resign from Parliament, which would have cleared the way for co-leader Russel Norman to become an MP and thus become eligible for a parliamentary salary and associated perks such as free travel. All very cosy and convenient for the party leadership, and uncontaminated by anything so untidy as giving the voters a say.
Trouble was, Mr Norman was ranked only tenth on the Greens’ list at the last election, before he became co-leader. Two Green stalwarts, Mike Ward and Catherine Delahunty, were above him. And while Ms Delahunty (at number nine) reportedly agreed to stand aside so that Mr Norman could be fast-tracked into Parliament, Mr Ward – ranked eighth on the list in 2005 – deliciously dug his toes in and refused to relinquish his place.
I am no cheerleader for Mr Ward. He’s not exactly one of the Greens’ hard grafters and by some accounts led a splendidly cruisy life when he was an MP from 2002 to 2005, being noted for the frequency with which he was seen grazing in the fashionable cafés of Lambton Quay.
In refusing to make way for Mr Norman he might be motivated by hubris or sheer cussedness, but the inescapable fact is that he has principle on his side. Green supporters voted for a list that placed him ahead of Mr Norman, and if the Greens had any respect for the voters’ wishes they wouldn’t have tried to tinker with the rankings.
The irony here is that a party that likes to claim the moral high ground has been caught out attempting to subvert the election result for its own convenience.
I HAVE realised lately that what offends me most about telemarketers is not that they interrupt my dinner or mispronounce my name.
No, what sends the needle right off the irritation meter is the way they try to soften you up by feigning interest in your wellbeing. “How’s your day going?” they ask with contrived bonhomie, or “How are you today, Karl?” As if they cared a toss.
They would get a more civil response if they came straight out and said: “I’m sorry to interrupt whatever you’re doing, but I’m desperate to sell you something that you’re not remotely interested in.” That would command my attention because at least it’s honest.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)