Thoughts on today’s headlines:
1. Is the Rugby World Cup controversy National’s own version of the Foreshore and Seabed fiasco, albeit on a much smaller scale – a panicky and clumsily managed attempt to head off a conservative pakeha backlash that might not have eventuated?
2. Is the government colluding with teachers to deny parents and the public information on how schools are performing? That’s how the Dom Post’s front page story on the “league tables” deal reads to me. Primary teachers’ union head Frances Nelson denies a deal was made but it’s clear some sort of agreement has been reached. So we’re left to conclude that once again, the teachers have worn down an elected government with a mandate for change - just as they done repeatedly over the past 20-odd years.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Return of the killer magpies
(I wrote the following article for the Fairfax magazine Your Weekend. It was published on October 3.)
Ah, the harbingers of spring. The first delicate white blossoms on the fruit trees. The first faint flush of green on the willows. The first frisky lambs. And the first magpie attacks.
The Australian magpie, gymnorhina tibicen, is an aggressively territorial bird. For nine months of the year it will nonchalantly allow humans to pass by unchallenged. It may even charm them with its musical warbling, immortalised in the poet Denis Glover’s famous line: Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle.
But in the nesting season, which can run from July to November, the male magpie’s protective hormones kick in and it terrorises everyone who strays into its territory – no one more than cyclists, whose helmets and lycra seem to whip the birds into a frenzy (as they do some motorists, but that’s another story).
Some parts of the country – possibly those where the concentrations of magpies are greatest, leading to more possessive territorial behaviour – have a higher incidence of attacks than others. But nearly all cyclists have magpie stories.
Banks Peninsula, a popular training ground for Christchurch cyclists, is noted for the ferocity of its magpies. In September 2007, a fed-up cyclist calling himself Old Crank posted on the Internet a video showing a homicidal Banks Peninsula bird repeatedly attacking on the Summit Road. Shot from a rear-facing camera mounted on Old Crank’s cycling helmet, the video showed the magpie swooping and striking his head nine times over a distance of several hundred metres.
That same month, Gareth Holebrook crashed when a magpie hit him on the back of the head while he was cycling between Motukarara and Gebbies Pass. Holebrook broke his collarbone and injured his groin. Only a week earlier, a female cyclist touched off a series of pro-magpie letters to The Press when it was revealed she had paid a pest control specialist $600 to kill troublesome magpies in the same area.
One of the scariest magpie encounters on record occurred in Northland the previous spring, when Otago University Students’ Association president Paul Chong, cycling the length of the country to raise awareness of student debt, crashed and was knocked out.
“I was travelling at about 60km/h, which is about the top speed I can get, when out of nowhere, I felt a sharp pecking,” Chong told the Otago Daily Times. “I thought, ‘What’s that?’ The next thing the bird was scratching at my face. I tried to shake it off but I came off my bike in the process and cracked my helmet on the asphalt. I woke up in the middle of the state highway.”
The pecking started on his back. Then the bird jumped up on his helmet and attacked his face. After regaining consciousness, but still dazed, Chong rolled into the ditch at the side of the highway where he lay until a van carrying locals stopped to help.
In the Wairarapa, where I live, dive-bombing magpies are an annual hazard that local cyclists have learned to live with. On some routes, attacks occur every few hundred metres at the peak of the nesting season.
Some birds earn virtual celebrity status, attacking cyclists in the same spot year after year. There are the Millers Road bird, the Twin Bridges bird and the Riversdale Turnoff bird, to name just a few.
Last year the Riversdale Turnoff magpie took a chunk out of veteran Masterton cyclist Brian Lambert’s helmet. Even more audaciously, the notorious Twin Bridges bird once landed on the back of Masterton doctor Tony Becker, out for a leisurely ride with his son, and began pecking at his helmet. “I got the fright of my life,” Becker says.
The real danger is not the direct threat of injury from the attacking bird. Rather, it’s the risk that the rider will be distracted by the attack and crash, as in Chong’s case, or hit a vehicle.
It may be only a matter of time before a cyclist is killed as the result of a magpie attack. The risk is magnified because the nesting season coincides with the period when more than 10,000 riders, some of them relatively inexperienced, are out on the roads preparing for the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge held late in November.
Not all magpies are as pathologically determined as those mentioned above. Some are content to swoop repeatedly without actually making contact. They will often persist even when cyclists have ridden hundreds of metres beyond the birds’ nesting territory.
Some birds whack the cyclist’s helmet with a breast or wing. Some fly close and make a strange snapping sound which I mistook, the first time I heard it, for the distant crackle of a rifle.
The one thing virtually all magpie attacks have in common is that they come from behind. I have read of magpies landing in front of people then rising to attack them head-on, though I know no one who has experienced it.
Often you sense the birds rather than see them. A wingbeat immediately behind your head or an almost imperceptible rush of air will announce the bird’s presence. Some magpies emit an intimidatory squawk as they attack but others are like silent assassins, diving without a sound.
If the sun is in the right place, the bird’s approaching reflection sometimes provides warning and allows you to duck at the critical moment when the magpie’s shadow is about to merge with that of your head.
Cyclists learn to recognise the danger signs, such as the ominous alarm calls from high in roadside pines and macrocarpas as sentinel magpies warn of approaching intruders. Magpies have acute vision and see people coming from a long way off. After a while you instinctively brace for the attack on hearing the birds’ warning calls.
Cyclists also learn when not to worry about an impending assault. In my experience, magpies on the ground or perched on a fence do not pose a threat. It’s the ones in elevated positions, such as treetops and power poles, that have to be watched.
In each family group, one bird seems to have the job of sentinel and defender. It keeps a lookout from a suitable vantage point while the others get on with the humdrum business of foraging for food.
On a recent ride I disturbed a big group of magpies in a roadside paddock. As if following a pre-rehearsed drill, about 10 flew off as I approached, but one detached itself from the group and flew to the top of a power pole beside the road, from where it scrutinised me carefully as I passed. It didn’t attack, but its behaviour left no doubt that it was the guardian of the group.
Once they decide to have a go, there’s not much you can do to deter magpies. Some cyclists vouch for the efficacy of shouting and waving your arms, but I suspect it only winds them up.
One cyclist I know says magpies are cowards and will back off if you turn and face them, but this tactic carries obvious risks, such as losing control and crashing – or even worse, riding into oncoming traffic. I’d prefer to be whacked by a magpie than disappear under the front wheels of a Fonterra milk tanker.
My own response to attack, and that of most cyclists I know, is simply to pull my head in – literally, so that the vulnerable back of the neck isn’t exposed – and pedal faster. This can be difficult if you’re grinding up a steep hill in low gear. The parallel that comes to mind in these situations is that of a heavy, lumbering bomber being attacked by an agile fighter plane.
As a last resort – and I’ve done this once – you can dismount and walk until you’re beyond the danger zone. At least this enables you to turn and face your tormenter.
Protective measures? Well, there’s the helmet, of course, although an authoritative entry in the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia includes the dispiriting information that “bicycle helmets are of little value as birds attack the sides of the head and neck”.
The same entry advises: “Using a basic disguise to fool the magpie as to where a person is looking (such as painting eyes on a hat, or wearing sunglasses on the back of the head) can also prove effective.”
My wife suggested this a couple of years ago, and attached an old pair of cycling sunglasses – with fake eyes painted on the lenses for good measure – to the back of my helmet. Though the swooping and diving continued, the birds seemed less bold with the fake eyes watching them, and I haven’t been hit once since. There is some evidence that a paper face-mask attached to the back of the helmet also works.
A friend has taken to attaching a flag to the back of his bike, flying slightly above head height, and says that too seems to serve as a deterrent, though he admits he feels a bit sheepish using it.
What the heck, I say. Anything for a more peaceful ride.
Ah, the harbingers of spring. The first delicate white blossoms on the fruit trees. The first faint flush of green on the willows. The first frisky lambs. And the first magpie attacks.
The Australian magpie, gymnorhina tibicen, is an aggressively territorial bird. For nine months of the year it will nonchalantly allow humans to pass by unchallenged. It may even charm them with its musical warbling, immortalised in the poet Denis Glover’s famous line: Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle.
But in the nesting season, which can run from July to November, the male magpie’s protective hormones kick in and it terrorises everyone who strays into its territory – no one more than cyclists, whose helmets and lycra seem to whip the birds into a frenzy (as they do some motorists, but that’s another story).
Some parts of the country – possibly those where the concentrations of magpies are greatest, leading to more possessive territorial behaviour – have a higher incidence of attacks than others. But nearly all cyclists have magpie stories.
Banks Peninsula, a popular training ground for Christchurch cyclists, is noted for the ferocity of its magpies. In September 2007, a fed-up cyclist calling himself Old Crank posted on the Internet a video showing a homicidal Banks Peninsula bird repeatedly attacking on the Summit Road. Shot from a rear-facing camera mounted on Old Crank’s cycling helmet, the video showed the magpie swooping and striking his head nine times over a distance of several hundred metres.
That same month, Gareth Holebrook crashed when a magpie hit him on the back of the head while he was cycling between Motukarara and Gebbies Pass. Holebrook broke his collarbone and injured his groin. Only a week earlier, a female cyclist touched off a series of pro-magpie letters to The Press when it was revealed she had paid a pest control specialist $600 to kill troublesome magpies in the same area.
One of the scariest magpie encounters on record occurred in Northland the previous spring, when Otago University Students’ Association president Paul Chong, cycling the length of the country to raise awareness of student debt, crashed and was knocked out.
“I was travelling at about 60km/h, which is about the top speed I can get, when out of nowhere, I felt a sharp pecking,” Chong told the Otago Daily Times. “I thought, ‘What’s that?’ The next thing the bird was scratching at my face. I tried to shake it off but I came off my bike in the process and cracked my helmet on the asphalt. I woke up in the middle of the state highway.”
The pecking started on his back. Then the bird jumped up on his helmet and attacked his face. After regaining consciousness, but still dazed, Chong rolled into the ditch at the side of the highway where he lay until a van carrying locals stopped to help.
In the Wairarapa, where I live, dive-bombing magpies are an annual hazard that local cyclists have learned to live with. On some routes, attacks occur every few hundred metres at the peak of the nesting season.
Some birds earn virtual celebrity status, attacking cyclists in the same spot year after year. There are the Millers Road bird, the Twin Bridges bird and the Riversdale Turnoff bird, to name just a few.
Last year the Riversdale Turnoff magpie took a chunk out of veteran Masterton cyclist Brian Lambert’s helmet. Even more audaciously, the notorious Twin Bridges bird once landed on the back of Masterton doctor Tony Becker, out for a leisurely ride with his son, and began pecking at his helmet. “I got the fright of my life,” Becker says.
The real danger is not the direct threat of injury from the attacking bird. Rather, it’s the risk that the rider will be distracted by the attack and crash, as in Chong’s case, or hit a vehicle.
It may be only a matter of time before a cyclist is killed as the result of a magpie attack. The risk is magnified because the nesting season coincides with the period when more than 10,000 riders, some of them relatively inexperienced, are out on the roads preparing for the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge held late in November.
Not all magpies are as pathologically determined as those mentioned above. Some are content to swoop repeatedly without actually making contact. They will often persist even when cyclists have ridden hundreds of metres beyond the birds’ nesting territory.
Some birds whack the cyclist’s helmet with a breast or wing. Some fly close and make a strange snapping sound which I mistook, the first time I heard it, for the distant crackle of a rifle.
The one thing virtually all magpie attacks have in common is that they come from behind. I have read of magpies landing in front of people then rising to attack them head-on, though I know no one who has experienced it.
Often you sense the birds rather than see them. A wingbeat immediately behind your head or an almost imperceptible rush of air will announce the bird’s presence. Some magpies emit an intimidatory squawk as they attack but others are like silent assassins, diving without a sound.
If the sun is in the right place, the bird’s approaching reflection sometimes provides warning and allows you to duck at the critical moment when the magpie’s shadow is about to merge with that of your head.
Cyclists learn to recognise the danger signs, such as the ominous alarm calls from high in roadside pines and macrocarpas as sentinel magpies warn of approaching intruders. Magpies have acute vision and see people coming from a long way off. After a while you instinctively brace for the attack on hearing the birds’ warning calls.
Cyclists also learn when not to worry about an impending assault. In my experience, magpies on the ground or perched on a fence do not pose a threat. It’s the ones in elevated positions, such as treetops and power poles, that have to be watched.
In each family group, one bird seems to have the job of sentinel and defender. It keeps a lookout from a suitable vantage point while the others get on with the humdrum business of foraging for food.
On a recent ride I disturbed a big group of magpies in a roadside paddock. As if following a pre-rehearsed drill, about 10 flew off as I approached, but one detached itself from the group and flew to the top of a power pole beside the road, from where it scrutinised me carefully as I passed. It didn’t attack, but its behaviour left no doubt that it was the guardian of the group.
Once they decide to have a go, there’s not much you can do to deter magpies. Some cyclists vouch for the efficacy of shouting and waving your arms, but I suspect it only winds them up.
One cyclist I know says magpies are cowards and will back off if you turn and face them, but this tactic carries obvious risks, such as losing control and crashing – or even worse, riding into oncoming traffic. I’d prefer to be whacked by a magpie than disappear under the front wheels of a Fonterra milk tanker.
My own response to attack, and that of most cyclists I know, is simply to pull my head in – literally, so that the vulnerable back of the neck isn’t exposed – and pedal faster. This can be difficult if you’re grinding up a steep hill in low gear. The parallel that comes to mind in these situations is that of a heavy, lumbering bomber being attacked by an agile fighter plane.
As a last resort – and I’ve done this once – you can dismount and walk until you’re beyond the danger zone. At least this enables you to turn and face your tormenter.
Protective measures? Well, there’s the helmet, of course, although an authoritative entry in the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia includes the dispiriting information that “bicycle helmets are of little value as birds attack the sides of the head and neck”.
The same entry advises: “Using a basic disguise to fool the magpie as to where a person is looking (such as painting eyes on a hat, or wearing sunglasses on the back of the head) can also prove effective.”
My wife suggested this a couple of years ago, and attached an old pair of cycling sunglasses – with fake eyes painted on the lenses for good measure – to the back of my helmet. Though the swooping and diving continued, the birds seemed less bold with the fake eyes watching them, and I haven’t been hit once since. There is some evidence that a paper face-mask attached to the back of the helmet also works.
A friend has taken to attaching a flag to the back of his bike, flying slightly above head height, and says that too seems to serve as a deterrent, though he admits he feels a bit sheepish using it.
What the heck, I say. Anything for a more peaceful ride.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Capitalism needs to lift its game
(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 30.)
I read in the paper a few days ago that the American documentary maker Michael Moore had hosted a preview of his latest film, entitled Capitalism: A Love Story.
Anyone who is familiar with Moore’s work will realise that the title drips with deliberate irony. Moore is an implacable foe of the American conservative establishment and his latest film is reportedly based on the premise that greed and corruption have subverted democracy.
Moore himself was quoted as urging guests at the preview in his impoverished home state of Michigan to help overthrow an economic system that he said was beyond redemption.
Now I don’t care much for Moore as a documentary maker. He’s clever, but he's also highly manipulative and very selective in what he chooses to show and what he chooses to leave on the floor of the editing suite. In another place and time he would have been honoured for his consummate skills as a maker of political propaganda films. But could he be on to something in his latest work?
Certainly his timing couldn’t be better. Capitalism appears to have disgraced itself internationally, plunging the world into its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. People are likely to be receptive to a film that portrays capitalism as driven by selfishness and greed, which will undoubtedly be Moore’s message.
I couldn’t help but note that two pages further on, the Dominion Post had a report about the chief executives of two large New Zealand companies who, despite a substantial slump in profits, had been awarded massive pay rises. Skellerup boss Donald Stewart was paid $801,000 – up from $509,000 the previous year – while David Baldwin, the managing director of Contact Energy, made an extra $117,000, bringing his annual pay package to $1.6 million.
This is the same Contact Energy that outraged shareholders and the public last year with a proposal to double directors’ fees, a move that it admits severely damaged its reputation. You have to wonder whether the company learned anything. Mr Baldwin’s increase equates to nearly four times the median annual per capita income. Such figures are beyond the comprehension of wage-earners struggling to pay mortgages, school fees and, yes, outrageous electricity bills.
Such trends are not peculiar to New Zealand. The previous day, it was reported that the former head of Qantas banked a salary of $A10.7 million last year, despite being chief executive for only five months of that period. For the rest of the time he was retained as a “consultant”.
I turned the page again and I saw that Blue Chip founder Mark Bryers, whose dodgy property company hoovered up the life savings of many elderly New Zealanders, had lost the latest round in the ongoing legal battles that have followed Blue Chip’s collapse. Normally this would be good news, but wait; it turned out that the High Court had merely ruled that Bryers must repay a $4.3 million loan to a multimillionaire Auckland investor.
No comfort here, then, for the many superannuitants who were persuaded to place their money with Blue Chip and now face financial ruin. While wealthy men use all the legal means in their power to protect their investments, these ordinary New Zealanders – most of them unable to afford lawyers – sit fretfully at home, wondering when the bailiffs will call.
When you look at all this, it’s natural to start wondering whether Michael Moore might be right to condemn capitalism as an immoral system.
The issue of income disparity, highlighted so vividly by the salary packages of people like Contact’s Mr Baldwin, is particularly interesting.
For a long time I took the view that it didn’t really matter how much money the corporate elite made, provided ordinary workers were fairly paid and were able to share in the benefits of economic growth. The adage “a rising tide lifts all boats” seemed to make perfect sense.
The problem is that even when the tide stopped rising, corporate pay packages continued to head for the stratosphere. There have even been reports that some British and American finance institutions have resumed paying the outrageous bonuses that became a symbol of corporate greed and excess when the recession hit.
In any case, I have come around to the view that gross income inequality, such as we now see in New Zealand, does have an insidious, corrosive effect. Proportionality and fairness are important. People’s confidence in the capitalist system is undermined when they see a corporate elite being extravagantly rewarded for no obvious reason other than that “experts” say they need to be paid prodigious sums to keep them in New Zealand.
This argument conveniently serves the purposes of the corporate elite, but it has worn very thin. People have become rightly sceptical, especially when salaries appear to bear little relationship to performance.
In view of all the above, it would be reasonable to conclude that I have experienced a Road-to-Damascus conversion and am now firmly in the camp of people like Michael Moore and others like him, who can’t wait to dance on the grave of capitalism. Wrong.
Leftists the world over gleefully greeted the worldwide recession as proof of capitalism’s fatal flaws, but it’s nothing of the sort. Capitalism is a resilient and self-correcting economic system that invariably bounces back, as it is showing signs of doing now.
No one ever pretended it’s perfect. It can’t be, because human nature is imperfect. Capitalism has always been susceptible to greedy, selfish and unscrupulous behaviour. It has certainly disgraced itself over the past few years, and it won’t be the last time.
But the evidence is overwhelming that capitalism, particularly when combined with liberal democratic government that moderates its worst excesses, is the only economic system that has consistently demonstrated, over time, that it can improve the human condition. That’s why all the most humane, liberal, advanced societies in the world have capitalist economies.
Capitalism stumbles and stuffs up now and again, as it has recently done, but most of the time it functions pretty well. Contrast that with the socialism that men like Michael Moore seem to favour, which has never worked anywhere, under any circumstances. On the contrary, wherever it has been tried it has become synonymous with repression and deprivation.
The challenge, as always, is to promote a form of capitalism that balances the natural desire to improve one’s economic position – the essential driver of capitalism – against moral values such as fairness and the need for social cohesion. To quote my old school reports, a better effort is needed.
I read in the paper a few days ago that the American documentary maker Michael Moore had hosted a preview of his latest film, entitled Capitalism: A Love Story.
Anyone who is familiar with Moore’s work will realise that the title drips with deliberate irony. Moore is an implacable foe of the American conservative establishment and his latest film is reportedly based on the premise that greed and corruption have subverted democracy.
Moore himself was quoted as urging guests at the preview in his impoverished home state of Michigan to help overthrow an economic system that he said was beyond redemption.
Now I don’t care much for Moore as a documentary maker. He’s clever, but he's also highly manipulative and very selective in what he chooses to show and what he chooses to leave on the floor of the editing suite. In another place and time he would have been honoured for his consummate skills as a maker of political propaganda films. But could he be on to something in his latest work?
Certainly his timing couldn’t be better. Capitalism appears to have disgraced itself internationally, plunging the world into its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. People are likely to be receptive to a film that portrays capitalism as driven by selfishness and greed, which will undoubtedly be Moore’s message.
I couldn’t help but note that two pages further on, the Dominion Post had a report about the chief executives of two large New Zealand companies who, despite a substantial slump in profits, had been awarded massive pay rises. Skellerup boss Donald Stewart was paid $801,000 – up from $509,000 the previous year – while David Baldwin, the managing director of Contact Energy, made an extra $117,000, bringing his annual pay package to $1.6 million.
This is the same Contact Energy that outraged shareholders and the public last year with a proposal to double directors’ fees, a move that it admits severely damaged its reputation. You have to wonder whether the company learned anything. Mr Baldwin’s increase equates to nearly four times the median annual per capita income. Such figures are beyond the comprehension of wage-earners struggling to pay mortgages, school fees and, yes, outrageous electricity bills.
Such trends are not peculiar to New Zealand. The previous day, it was reported that the former head of Qantas banked a salary of $A10.7 million last year, despite being chief executive for only five months of that period. For the rest of the time he was retained as a “consultant”.
I turned the page again and I saw that Blue Chip founder Mark Bryers, whose dodgy property company hoovered up the life savings of many elderly New Zealanders, had lost the latest round in the ongoing legal battles that have followed Blue Chip’s collapse. Normally this would be good news, but wait; it turned out that the High Court had merely ruled that Bryers must repay a $4.3 million loan to a multimillionaire Auckland investor.
No comfort here, then, for the many superannuitants who were persuaded to place their money with Blue Chip and now face financial ruin. While wealthy men use all the legal means in their power to protect their investments, these ordinary New Zealanders – most of them unable to afford lawyers – sit fretfully at home, wondering when the bailiffs will call.
When you look at all this, it’s natural to start wondering whether Michael Moore might be right to condemn capitalism as an immoral system.
The issue of income disparity, highlighted so vividly by the salary packages of people like Contact’s Mr Baldwin, is particularly interesting.
For a long time I took the view that it didn’t really matter how much money the corporate elite made, provided ordinary workers were fairly paid and were able to share in the benefits of economic growth. The adage “a rising tide lifts all boats” seemed to make perfect sense.
The problem is that even when the tide stopped rising, corporate pay packages continued to head for the stratosphere. There have even been reports that some British and American finance institutions have resumed paying the outrageous bonuses that became a symbol of corporate greed and excess when the recession hit.
In any case, I have come around to the view that gross income inequality, such as we now see in New Zealand, does have an insidious, corrosive effect. Proportionality and fairness are important. People’s confidence in the capitalist system is undermined when they see a corporate elite being extravagantly rewarded for no obvious reason other than that “experts” say they need to be paid prodigious sums to keep them in New Zealand.
This argument conveniently serves the purposes of the corporate elite, but it has worn very thin. People have become rightly sceptical, especially when salaries appear to bear little relationship to performance.
In view of all the above, it would be reasonable to conclude that I have experienced a Road-to-Damascus conversion and am now firmly in the camp of people like Michael Moore and others like him, who can’t wait to dance on the grave of capitalism. Wrong.
Leftists the world over gleefully greeted the worldwide recession as proof of capitalism’s fatal flaws, but it’s nothing of the sort. Capitalism is a resilient and self-correcting economic system that invariably bounces back, as it is showing signs of doing now.
No one ever pretended it’s perfect. It can’t be, because human nature is imperfect. Capitalism has always been susceptible to greedy, selfish and unscrupulous behaviour. It has certainly disgraced itself over the past few years, and it won’t be the last time.
But the evidence is overwhelming that capitalism, particularly when combined with liberal democratic government that moderates its worst excesses, is the only economic system that has consistently demonstrated, over time, that it can improve the human condition. That’s why all the most humane, liberal, advanced societies in the world have capitalist economies.
Capitalism stumbles and stuffs up now and again, as it has recently done, but most of the time it functions pretty well. Contrast that with the socialism that men like Michael Moore seem to favour, which has never worked anywhere, under any circumstances. On the contrary, wherever it has been tried it has become synonymous with repression and deprivation.
The challenge, as always, is to promote a form of capitalism that balances the natural desire to improve one’s economic position – the essential driver of capitalism – against moral values such as fairness and the need for social cohesion. To quote my old school reports, a better effort is needed.
Friday, October 2, 2009
It's a strange old world, all right
(First published the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, September 29).
IT’S TRUE. There’s nowt so queer as folks.
An article in last week’s Listener by Michael Bain, defending his brother Robin, has re-ignited public debate about a matter that David Bain’s supporters fervently hoped was dead and buried, if that’s not a tasteless metaphor.
The ensuing hubbub has confirmed that public opinion is a wayward creature with a will of its own. Not even Joe Karam can control it.
Consider the exquisite irony of the Bain case. Initially found guilty of the murder of his family, David Bain was the subject of a dogged campaign by people who passionately believed in his innocence.
With public opinion behind them, they eventually had their way and won a retrial in which Bain was acquitted, amid much jubilation. But in a classic demonstration of the law of unintended consequences, the second trial appears to have raised nagging doubts in the minds of people who were previously convinced of Bain’s innocence.
A persuasive article by Christchurch Press journalist Martin van Beynen, who sat through the trial and reached a different conclusion from the jurors, wouldn’t have helped his case.
Bain has now gone overseas, supposedly to explore study opportunities. But I wonder if his departure had something to do with the fact that at least one opinion survey suggested many New Zealanders are more convinced of his guilt now than they were before his acquittal.
Bain won the legal fight but not necessarily the battle for the hearts and minds of his fellow New Zealanders. Who could have predicted this outcome? It’s a strange old world, all right.
* * *
WHEN Irene Van Dyk retires from netball, as she must surely do soon (she’s 37), she could do worse than set up an academy to provide media training for professional sports people.
It’s always a joy to listen to Van Dyk being interviewed. Her bubbly enthusiasm is contagious.
She can be frank and self-deprecating too, as when she acknowledged that Silver Ferns skipper Casey Williams was right to suggest she (Van Dyk) was “feeling off” when she had a success rate of only 73 percent in the fourth test against Australia. Van Dyk refused to take offence at Williams’ comment, saying: “Things happen and I had a shocker. So what?”
If all sports people had Van Dyk’s infectious charm and spontaneity, reading the sports pages and watching the sports news on TV would be a lot more fun.
It’s a requirement of professional sports people that they make themselves available to the media but you can see that most of them, the males in particular, would sooner have their teeth pulled.
When they do talk, what usually comes out is a string of wooden clichés that reveal nothing.
Judging by their reported comments, most All Blacks have the personality of a rock. If only they had an ounce of Van Dyk’s joie de vivre.
* * *
WHO SAID satire was dead?
Air New Zealand Fashion Week is over for another year and once again the media, by pretending to take it seriously, have done a brilliant job of showing what a farcical pantomime it is.
I laughed like a hyena at the way reporters feigned breathless excitement not just at the ridiculous clothing on display, but at the “celebrities” who took their places in the front row, most of whom no one has ever heard of, and the contents of the goody bags handed out to freeloaders by the various fashion labels. Outstanding work.
It was satire, wasn’t it? Please tell me it was.
* * *
SO WE’RE going to get something called TiVo – free-to-air, digital TV, on demand. “Get ready to feel the TiVo love”, the inane ads exhort us. I can barely contain my excitement.
Technological advance is mostly a double-edged sword. The big question is whether the benefit, in terms of viewing pleasure and convenience, will outweigh the cost of buying the new equipment and the frustration of trying to master it. In my experience the answer is usually no, unless you’re a tech-head or a pimply 15-year-old.
It’s the same with the software upgrades that constantly bombard computer users. The benefits rarely compensate for the hassles and I’m sure I’m not the only computer owner who, like Greta Garbo, just wants to be left alone.
With TiVo, there’s also the underlying issue of programme quality. I relinquished Sky TV after several years because all it offered was a greater choice of crap. There’s no reason to believe TiVo will be any different.
* * *
DESPITE what all the tourism cheerleaders and political commentators say, I can't see much benefit in our prime minister lining up to be made fun of by a TV talk show host, as John Key did in New York last week.
I admire Mr Key for his willingness to take chances, but bowing to the demands of the celebrity culture, and risking being demeaned in the process, is below the dignity of his office.
IT’S TRUE. There’s nowt so queer as folks.
An article in last week’s Listener by Michael Bain, defending his brother Robin, has re-ignited public debate about a matter that David Bain’s supporters fervently hoped was dead and buried, if that’s not a tasteless metaphor.
The ensuing hubbub has confirmed that public opinion is a wayward creature with a will of its own. Not even Joe Karam can control it.
Consider the exquisite irony of the Bain case. Initially found guilty of the murder of his family, David Bain was the subject of a dogged campaign by people who passionately believed in his innocence.
With public opinion behind them, they eventually had their way and won a retrial in which Bain was acquitted, amid much jubilation. But in a classic demonstration of the law of unintended consequences, the second trial appears to have raised nagging doubts in the minds of people who were previously convinced of Bain’s innocence.
A persuasive article by Christchurch Press journalist Martin van Beynen, who sat through the trial and reached a different conclusion from the jurors, wouldn’t have helped his case.
Bain has now gone overseas, supposedly to explore study opportunities. But I wonder if his departure had something to do with the fact that at least one opinion survey suggested many New Zealanders are more convinced of his guilt now than they were before his acquittal.
Bain won the legal fight but not necessarily the battle for the hearts and minds of his fellow New Zealanders. Who could have predicted this outcome? It’s a strange old world, all right.
* * *
WHEN Irene Van Dyk retires from netball, as she must surely do soon (she’s 37), she could do worse than set up an academy to provide media training for professional sports people.
It’s always a joy to listen to Van Dyk being interviewed. Her bubbly enthusiasm is contagious.
She can be frank and self-deprecating too, as when she acknowledged that Silver Ferns skipper Casey Williams was right to suggest she (Van Dyk) was “feeling off” when she had a success rate of only 73 percent in the fourth test against Australia. Van Dyk refused to take offence at Williams’ comment, saying: “Things happen and I had a shocker. So what?”
If all sports people had Van Dyk’s infectious charm and spontaneity, reading the sports pages and watching the sports news on TV would be a lot more fun.
It’s a requirement of professional sports people that they make themselves available to the media but you can see that most of them, the males in particular, would sooner have their teeth pulled.
When they do talk, what usually comes out is a string of wooden clichés that reveal nothing.
Judging by their reported comments, most All Blacks have the personality of a rock. If only they had an ounce of Van Dyk’s joie de vivre.
* * *
WHO SAID satire was dead?
Air New Zealand Fashion Week is over for another year and once again the media, by pretending to take it seriously, have done a brilliant job of showing what a farcical pantomime it is.
I laughed like a hyena at the way reporters feigned breathless excitement not just at the ridiculous clothing on display, but at the “celebrities” who took their places in the front row, most of whom no one has ever heard of, and the contents of the goody bags handed out to freeloaders by the various fashion labels. Outstanding work.
It was satire, wasn’t it? Please tell me it was.
* * *
SO WE’RE going to get something called TiVo – free-to-air, digital TV, on demand. “Get ready to feel the TiVo love”, the inane ads exhort us. I can barely contain my excitement.
Technological advance is mostly a double-edged sword. The big question is whether the benefit, in terms of viewing pleasure and convenience, will outweigh the cost of buying the new equipment and the frustration of trying to master it. In my experience the answer is usually no, unless you’re a tech-head or a pimply 15-year-old.
It’s the same with the software upgrades that constantly bombard computer users. The benefits rarely compensate for the hassles and I’m sure I’m not the only computer owner who, like Greta Garbo, just wants to be left alone.
With TiVo, there’s also the underlying issue of programme quality. I relinquished Sky TV after several years because all it offered was a greater choice of crap. There’s no reason to believe TiVo will be any different.
* * *
DESPITE what all the tourism cheerleaders and political commentators say, I can't see much benefit in our prime minister lining up to be made fun of by a TV talk show host, as John Key did in New York last week.
I admire Mr Key for his willingness to take chances, but bowing to the demands of the celebrity culture, and risking being demeaned in the process, is below the dignity of his office.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Joe Bennett and a preposterous neologism
Catching up on the papers after a couple of hectic weeks, I finally got around to reading Joe Bennett’s latest column.
I love Joe’s writing and regard him as a columnist of world class. He’s funny, eloquent and perceptive even on his off-days, which are rare.
Of course it helps that I almost invariably agree with him, particularly on matters related to the use of language – which made this particular column a little different from the norm.
After wittily skewering the pretentiousness that frequently characterises restaurant reviews in newspapers and magazines (and of which I’ve probably been guilty myself), Joe confronts the terms “waiter” and “waitress”.
He notes that the “ess” suffix has fallen out of favour, supposedly because it’s demeaning. Disappointingly, he seems to capitulate on this issue when I would have expected him to put up a fight.
Although acknowledging that he has never met a waitress who said she found the word demeaning, he nonetheless turns his attention to the quest for an acceptable, gender-neutral alternative and comes up with “waiters”.
This term, Joe writes, describes their job precisely and is by definition sexually non-specific. But alas, “it has been deemed unsatisfactory by the people who resolve such matters. It seems that usage has smeared the word permanently with testosterone.”
He then pounces with glee on the preposterous neologism coined to get around this non-problem – namely, “waitron”.
I’ve seen this term used occasionally and assumed the usage was tongue-in-cheek; a satirical poke at the political correctness that now contaminates the English language. How could it be otherwise?
But no; it appears the word is making a serious bid for acceptance. It’s not in my 2005 edition of the New Zealand Oxford Dictionary (though the hideous “waitperson”, a word that almost justifies the reintroduction of capital punishment, is). However we have seen silly, gender-neutral words infiltrate the language before, and a googling of "waitron" indicates it might be gaining ground.
I’m with Joe when he laughs this ridiculous word off the page. He says there are only four words he can think of that end with -ron: cyclotron, electron, neutron and moron. “One is a machine for boffins, two are sub-atomic particles, and one describes the character who invented the word waitron,” he writes. Classic Bennett.
Joe then, almost as an afterthought, puts up a rather half-hearted defence of “waitress”. But it was disappointing that he earlier appeared to accept “waiter” as a legitimate alternative.
While sharing his contempt for anyone using “waitron”, I would argue that waitress is a perfectly respectable word – along with actress – and that we should vigorously resist the attempts of the language Nazis to expunge it from the vocabulary.
I agree with Joe that there’s nothing degrading about being described as a waitress – or an actress, for that matter. The words waitress and actress simply acknowledge the reality that these people are intrinsically different from their male counterparts.
Does anyone think less of Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep or Julia Roberts for being called actresses? Any discriminatory connotation exists only in the minds of crazed ideologues.
But there’s more to it than that. The English language is a wondrous tool that enables us to narrow down meanings and nuances very precisely.
One of the purposes of words is to create mental pictures and impressions. A writer or journalist using the gender-neutral terms waiter or actor leaves the reader in doubt as to whether the person in question is a he or a she.
This can be a crucial distinction. If I were to write that I had chatted up a cute waiter in a Courtenay Place bar it would create a very different impression than if I had used the “ess” suffix.
Either scenario is highly unlikely – but it illustrates why people who use words for a living should fight like fury to prevent the English language from being de-sexed.
Footnote: Elsewhere in his column Joe noted, “A perfect dinner is one where you don’t notice what you eat.” Spoken like a true Englishman, Joe.
I love Joe’s writing and regard him as a columnist of world class. He’s funny, eloquent and perceptive even on his off-days, which are rare.
Of course it helps that I almost invariably agree with him, particularly on matters related to the use of language – which made this particular column a little different from the norm.
After wittily skewering the pretentiousness that frequently characterises restaurant reviews in newspapers and magazines (and of which I’ve probably been guilty myself), Joe confronts the terms “waiter” and “waitress”.
He notes that the “ess” suffix has fallen out of favour, supposedly because it’s demeaning. Disappointingly, he seems to capitulate on this issue when I would have expected him to put up a fight.
Although acknowledging that he has never met a waitress who said she found the word demeaning, he nonetheless turns his attention to the quest for an acceptable, gender-neutral alternative and comes up with “waiters”.
This term, Joe writes, describes their job precisely and is by definition sexually non-specific. But alas, “it has been deemed unsatisfactory by the people who resolve such matters. It seems that usage has smeared the word permanently with testosterone.”
He then pounces with glee on the preposterous neologism coined to get around this non-problem – namely, “waitron”.
I’ve seen this term used occasionally and assumed the usage was tongue-in-cheek; a satirical poke at the political correctness that now contaminates the English language. How could it be otherwise?
But no; it appears the word is making a serious bid for acceptance. It’s not in my 2005 edition of the New Zealand Oxford Dictionary (though the hideous “waitperson”, a word that almost justifies the reintroduction of capital punishment, is). However we have seen silly, gender-neutral words infiltrate the language before, and a googling of "waitron" indicates it might be gaining ground.
I’m with Joe when he laughs this ridiculous word off the page. He says there are only four words he can think of that end with -ron: cyclotron, electron, neutron and moron. “One is a machine for boffins, two are sub-atomic particles, and one describes the character who invented the word waitron,” he writes. Classic Bennett.
Joe then, almost as an afterthought, puts up a rather half-hearted defence of “waitress”. But it was disappointing that he earlier appeared to accept “waiter” as a legitimate alternative.
While sharing his contempt for anyone using “waitron”, I would argue that waitress is a perfectly respectable word – along with actress – and that we should vigorously resist the attempts of the language Nazis to expunge it from the vocabulary.
I agree with Joe that there’s nothing degrading about being described as a waitress – or an actress, for that matter. The words waitress and actress simply acknowledge the reality that these people are intrinsically different from their male counterparts.
Does anyone think less of Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep or Julia Roberts for being called actresses? Any discriminatory connotation exists only in the minds of crazed ideologues.
But there’s more to it than that. The English language is a wondrous tool that enables us to narrow down meanings and nuances very precisely.
One of the purposes of words is to create mental pictures and impressions. A writer or journalist using the gender-neutral terms waiter or actor leaves the reader in doubt as to whether the person in question is a he or a she.
This can be a crucial distinction. If I were to write that I had chatted up a cute waiter in a Courtenay Place bar it would create a very different impression than if I had used the “ess” suffix.
Either scenario is highly unlikely – but it illustrates why people who use words for a living should fight like fury to prevent the English language from being de-sexed.
Footnote: Elsewhere in his column Joe noted, “A perfect dinner is one where you don’t notice what you eat.” Spoken like a true Englishman, Joe.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
If it's popular it must be bad
I have just read Grant Smithies’ cover piece in Your Weekend about Pip Brown, the former Masterton girl (note that: Masterton girl) who is conquering the pop world under the name Ladyhawke.
Smithies is a clever and knowledgeable writer about pop and rock music (and so he should be, considering that he’s chosen it as his professional niche), but he shares the besetting fault of many others ploughing the same field. He’s a bit of a snob.
He refers to the fact that Ladyhawke draws her inspiration from the mainstream pop of the 70s and 80s: Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, the Electric Light Orchestra, Pat Benatar and so on.
Smithies manages to restrain himself from commenting on her musical tastes until it comes to Phil Collins, whom he labels “the insomniac-friendly King of Bland”. Ladyhawke recalls her dad playing Phil Collins on the car stereo all the way to Auckland and says, rather defensively: “Hey, some Phil Collins songs are really good. You can’t help but rock out to Easy Lover.”
Actually you can, Smithies interjects disdainfully, after wondering why the young Pip Brown didn’t call CYFS from a petrol station along the way.
Okay, it’s clever, and harmless enough. And to be fair, Smithies balances the ledger towards the end of his piece, where he declares that Ladyhawke’s brand of pop is as catchy as the clap (nice line). But the gratuitous sideswipe at her fondness for Phil Collins is telling.
Smithies springs from a long tradition, dating from the late 1960s, of “rock” critics (they prefer the term “rock” to “pop” because of the latter word’s supposedly trivial connotations) for whom just about anything that’s commercially successful is fatally contaminated.
It’s only a year since Smithies got into an amusing stoush resulting from an article he wrote about Billy Joel. Smithies appears to have sucked up to the former chart-topper during a phone interview, pretending to be a fan so that Joel would play ball. Then he wrote a disparaging piece in which he condemned Joel’s music as “sentimental rubbish”, never imagining that the singer-songwriter would read it. But Joel did, and wrote Smithies an indignant letter asking why he hadn’t been more honest when they spoke.
That episode may have discouraged Smithies from insincerely ingratiating himself with pop stars, but it doesn’t seem to have changed his view of popular music.
I’m no fan of Phil Collins myself, but after several decades it becomes tiresome reading rock journalists sneering at pop stars for committing the cardinal sin of being popular.
It’s as if any music that’s commercially successful must, by definition, be bad. Even the Beatles – to my mind, the most creative pop band in history – went through a long period of being treated by most highbrow rock critics, especially those from America, as unworthy of serious critical attention. More recently, Abba suffered the same fate before attaining a sort of retro-chic status. But it would be hard to find a more perfect example of pure, sophisticated pop than Abba’s.
Generally speaking, the critics prefer their rock heroes to be obscure and esoteric. They love nothing more than to write rhapsodic pieces about performers few people have heard of. It adds lustre to their critical image – or so they seem to think – if they can claim knowledge of something or someone that is too abstruse or inaccessible to have penetrated the public consciousness.
They revel in the exclusivity of the priesthood – the status supposedly conferred by inside knowledge denied to the ignorant masses.
Amusingly, the critics often use the overworked term “legend” to describe these obscure heroes. In the jargon of rock criticism, it is almost axiomatic that a “legend” is someone that only an enlightened handful – the cognoscenti – know about.
It also helps ensure critical approval if a rock star or band strikes a fashionable political pose. Better still if they’re drug-addled and dysfunctional as well. And of course no one appeals to the critics more than someone who is tormented by demons. Death by suicide or drug overdose almost always ensures canonisation. Phil Collins would undoubtedly have got a much better press if he hadn’t been so damned normal.
Ladyhawke herself appears to have suffered as a result of this syndrome. She says success in her home country was far more important to her than anything that happened overseas. Yet even when she was playing huge venues overseas, she told Smithies, she sensed a lot of negativity and cynicism whenever she came back to New Zealand. Perhaps we prefer our pop stars to be dark, gloomy and introverted – rather like our movies, as explored in Sam Neill’s documentary Cinema of Unease. But that’s a subject for another day.
In a recent blog I referred in passing to the American music journalist Tom Moon, author of 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die.
Moon occasionally lapses into the irritating gibberish that is Rolling Stone magazine’s house style, but his great redeeming grace as a critic is that he’s open to all manner of musical influences. Not only does his book span almost every genre imaginable, but Moon has no qualms about celebrating pure, commercial pop (Abba is there, along with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass) alongside the arcane and the highbrow. Moon’s slogan is “The more you love music, the more music you love”.
Significantly, Moon has worked as a professional musician (a saxophonist) himself. He understands that music is a complex interplay of melody, harmony, rhythm and sometimes words. This sets him apart from many of his peers, who seem primarily interested in lyrics (the more enigmatic the better, because we all know that if a song’s hard to understand it must be profound) and the ideological posturing of the performer.
I don’t know about Grant Smithies, but I suspect that many rock critics, unlike Moon, can’t sing or play a note and possibly aren’t really interested in music for its own sake. The result is that they write about it much as a blind person might review a movie.
Smithies is a clever and knowledgeable writer about pop and rock music (and so he should be, considering that he’s chosen it as his professional niche), but he shares the besetting fault of many others ploughing the same field. He’s a bit of a snob.
He refers to the fact that Ladyhawke draws her inspiration from the mainstream pop of the 70s and 80s: Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, the Electric Light Orchestra, Pat Benatar and so on.
Smithies manages to restrain himself from commenting on her musical tastes until it comes to Phil Collins, whom he labels “the insomniac-friendly King of Bland”. Ladyhawke recalls her dad playing Phil Collins on the car stereo all the way to Auckland and says, rather defensively: “Hey, some Phil Collins songs are really good. You can’t help but rock out to Easy Lover.”
Actually you can, Smithies interjects disdainfully, after wondering why the young Pip Brown didn’t call CYFS from a petrol station along the way.
Okay, it’s clever, and harmless enough. And to be fair, Smithies balances the ledger towards the end of his piece, where he declares that Ladyhawke’s brand of pop is as catchy as the clap (nice line). But the gratuitous sideswipe at her fondness for Phil Collins is telling.
Smithies springs from a long tradition, dating from the late 1960s, of “rock” critics (they prefer the term “rock” to “pop” because of the latter word’s supposedly trivial connotations) for whom just about anything that’s commercially successful is fatally contaminated.
It’s only a year since Smithies got into an amusing stoush resulting from an article he wrote about Billy Joel. Smithies appears to have sucked up to the former chart-topper during a phone interview, pretending to be a fan so that Joel would play ball. Then he wrote a disparaging piece in which he condemned Joel’s music as “sentimental rubbish”, never imagining that the singer-songwriter would read it. But Joel did, and wrote Smithies an indignant letter asking why he hadn’t been more honest when they spoke.
That episode may have discouraged Smithies from insincerely ingratiating himself with pop stars, but it doesn’t seem to have changed his view of popular music.
I’m no fan of Phil Collins myself, but after several decades it becomes tiresome reading rock journalists sneering at pop stars for committing the cardinal sin of being popular.
It’s as if any music that’s commercially successful must, by definition, be bad. Even the Beatles – to my mind, the most creative pop band in history – went through a long period of being treated by most highbrow rock critics, especially those from America, as unworthy of serious critical attention. More recently, Abba suffered the same fate before attaining a sort of retro-chic status. But it would be hard to find a more perfect example of pure, sophisticated pop than Abba’s.
Generally speaking, the critics prefer their rock heroes to be obscure and esoteric. They love nothing more than to write rhapsodic pieces about performers few people have heard of. It adds lustre to their critical image – or so they seem to think – if they can claim knowledge of something or someone that is too abstruse or inaccessible to have penetrated the public consciousness.
They revel in the exclusivity of the priesthood – the status supposedly conferred by inside knowledge denied to the ignorant masses.
Amusingly, the critics often use the overworked term “legend” to describe these obscure heroes. In the jargon of rock criticism, it is almost axiomatic that a “legend” is someone that only an enlightened handful – the cognoscenti – know about.
It also helps ensure critical approval if a rock star or band strikes a fashionable political pose. Better still if they’re drug-addled and dysfunctional as well. And of course no one appeals to the critics more than someone who is tormented by demons. Death by suicide or drug overdose almost always ensures canonisation. Phil Collins would undoubtedly have got a much better press if he hadn’t been so damned normal.
Ladyhawke herself appears to have suffered as a result of this syndrome. She says success in her home country was far more important to her than anything that happened overseas. Yet even when she was playing huge venues overseas, she told Smithies, she sensed a lot of negativity and cynicism whenever she came back to New Zealand. Perhaps we prefer our pop stars to be dark, gloomy and introverted – rather like our movies, as explored in Sam Neill’s documentary Cinema of Unease. But that’s a subject for another day.
In a recent blog I referred in passing to the American music journalist Tom Moon, author of 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die.
Moon occasionally lapses into the irritating gibberish that is Rolling Stone magazine’s house style, but his great redeeming grace as a critic is that he’s open to all manner of musical influences. Not only does his book span almost every genre imaginable, but Moon has no qualms about celebrating pure, commercial pop (Abba is there, along with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass) alongside the arcane and the highbrow. Moon’s slogan is “The more you love music, the more music you love”.
Significantly, Moon has worked as a professional musician (a saxophonist) himself. He understands that music is a complex interplay of melody, harmony, rhythm and sometimes words. This sets him apart from many of his peers, who seem primarily interested in lyrics (the more enigmatic the better, because we all know that if a song’s hard to understand it must be profound) and the ideological posturing of the performer.
I don’t know about Grant Smithies, but I suspect that many rock critics, unlike Moon, can’t sing or play a note and possibly aren’t really interested in music for its own sake. The result is that they write about it much as a blind person might review a movie.
Friday, September 18, 2009
The supposedly Ugly American - an easy target
(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 16.)
I was flicking through an old Listener last week when I stumbled across an article I must have missed first time around.
It was a column in which a well-known New Zealand writer recalled a female American travelling companion whom he and his wife had encountered while on a group tour of the Australian outback.
The article poked fun at the American tourist, whose name – possibly made up by the writer – was said to be Mayleen. She was described as having the exuberance of a 10-year-old and a similar level of social discretion.
The writer didn’t mock Mayleen affectionately. Rather, his tone was sneering and bordering on malicious.
Mayleen was portrayed as irredeemably stupid, loud and annoying. If the writer was to be believed, everyone in the group loathed her from the start and wanted to get as far away from her as possible.
The tour guide was quoted as saying he hoped Mayleen didn’t get run over as a result of her propensity for bounding across the highway to take photographs. It wasn’t that he was concerned for her survival, it was just that her death would have meant five hours’ paperwork.
In other words Mayleen was the archetypal Ugly American – only in female form as opposed to the more common male variant, who invariably wears a gaudy tropical shirt and has a cigar clamped in his mouth while he bores and offends everyone within shouting distance by loudly delivering his invariably bigoted opinions.
The writer of the article is a man whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past but this piece irritated the hell out of me. It was smug, snide and condescending.
I’ve seen many similar articles before – some by New Zealand writers, many by English journalists. Americans, it seems, are fair game in the culture wars. It’s taken as read that they are all crass, vulgar and stupid, and that we superior New Zealanders (or English, as the case may be) will be amused by tales of their ghastliness.
Just this past weekend, in one of the Sunday papers, I read another sneering column by a New Zealand journalist who clearly regarded Americans as greedy and feckless beyond redemption. And I occasionally read TV reviews by critics who can’t bring themselves to watch anything American but swoon uncritically over anything made by the BBC.
I have a question: if all Americans are so stupid, how come their country is the wealthiest and most powerful on earth?
The writer of the Listener article possibly told us more about himself than about Mayleen. Why was this article written? It was clever, in a cruel sort of way, but it didn’t tell us anything of value. Its sole purpose was to show how gauche, tasteless and silly Mayleen was.
Was the purpose to make the writer and his readers feel superior to this supposedly pathetic creature? I suspect the article was written in the confident knowledge that the ageing chardonnay socialists who still make up a proportion of the Listener’s readership – though not to the extent that they once did – would have shared the writer’s view that Americans are crass, vulgar people deserving only ridicule and contempt.
Would it have been written, I wonder, if Mayleen had been English, or German, or Canadian? I suspect not, because that wouldn’t have reinforced smug prejudices in quite the same satisfying way.
Scratch many supposedly liberal New Zealanders and you’ll find a nasty vein of anti-Americanism not far beneath the surface. I guess this is partly a result of our British heritage; the Brits never really forgave America for breaking away.
It’s also the ugly flipside of our otherwise attractive national trait of egalitarianism. A certain type of New Zealander despises America because of its raw, brash capitalism. We like to think our brand of liberal democracy, with its strong strand of humanitarianism, is more civilised – and by and large, I agree that it is. But that’s no justification for condemning all Americans.
For every loud, ignorant and obnoxious American of the type caricatured by self-satisfied New Zealand writers, there are many who are polite, considerate, witty, socially sophisticated and highly educated.
I sometimes wonder how many of the critics have actually been to America. In my experience those who have spent time there, and made the effort to get to know Americans, take a much more tolerant view.
A few days ago I was talking to a cousin who has visited all 50 states. He knows Americans as charming, courteous, obliging and generous people. My experience isn’t quite that extensive but my impressions are the same. Many times while travelling in the US I’ve been taken aback by the kindness, consideration and graciousness of complete strangers.
Of course you’ll find extremes of good and bad. That’s inevitable in a country as big and dynamic as America. Someone once wrote perceptively of another country that “whatever you read about India, the reverse is also true”. Exactly the same applies to America.
Fixating on the popular caricature of the Ugly American may shore up prejudices, but it doesn’t reflect reality.
In any case, every nationality’s worst characteristics seem to be exaggerated when they are away from home. The boorish Australian is a well-known phenomenon internationally and I’ve cringed at the behaviour of fellow New Zealanders overseas. Then there are the English, who are likeable people on their home ground but often seem to become obnoxious when they emigrate.
Mayleen, if indeed she exists as described, may be an Ugly American, but on the basis of the Listener article I’m not sure the New Zealander who wrote about her is any more likeable.
I was flicking through an old Listener last week when I stumbled across an article I must have missed first time around.
It was a column in which a well-known New Zealand writer recalled a female American travelling companion whom he and his wife had encountered while on a group tour of the Australian outback.
The article poked fun at the American tourist, whose name – possibly made up by the writer – was said to be Mayleen. She was described as having the exuberance of a 10-year-old and a similar level of social discretion.
The writer didn’t mock Mayleen affectionately. Rather, his tone was sneering and bordering on malicious.
Mayleen was portrayed as irredeemably stupid, loud and annoying. If the writer was to be believed, everyone in the group loathed her from the start and wanted to get as far away from her as possible.
The tour guide was quoted as saying he hoped Mayleen didn’t get run over as a result of her propensity for bounding across the highway to take photographs. It wasn’t that he was concerned for her survival, it was just that her death would have meant five hours’ paperwork.
In other words Mayleen was the archetypal Ugly American – only in female form as opposed to the more common male variant, who invariably wears a gaudy tropical shirt and has a cigar clamped in his mouth while he bores and offends everyone within shouting distance by loudly delivering his invariably bigoted opinions.
The writer of the article is a man whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past but this piece irritated the hell out of me. It was smug, snide and condescending.
I’ve seen many similar articles before – some by New Zealand writers, many by English journalists. Americans, it seems, are fair game in the culture wars. It’s taken as read that they are all crass, vulgar and stupid, and that we superior New Zealanders (or English, as the case may be) will be amused by tales of their ghastliness.
Just this past weekend, in one of the Sunday papers, I read another sneering column by a New Zealand journalist who clearly regarded Americans as greedy and feckless beyond redemption. And I occasionally read TV reviews by critics who can’t bring themselves to watch anything American but swoon uncritically over anything made by the BBC.
I have a question: if all Americans are so stupid, how come their country is the wealthiest and most powerful on earth?
The writer of the Listener article possibly told us more about himself than about Mayleen. Why was this article written? It was clever, in a cruel sort of way, but it didn’t tell us anything of value. Its sole purpose was to show how gauche, tasteless and silly Mayleen was.
Was the purpose to make the writer and his readers feel superior to this supposedly pathetic creature? I suspect the article was written in the confident knowledge that the ageing chardonnay socialists who still make up a proportion of the Listener’s readership – though not to the extent that they once did – would have shared the writer’s view that Americans are crass, vulgar people deserving only ridicule and contempt.
Would it have been written, I wonder, if Mayleen had been English, or German, or Canadian? I suspect not, because that wouldn’t have reinforced smug prejudices in quite the same satisfying way.
Scratch many supposedly liberal New Zealanders and you’ll find a nasty vein of anti-Americanism not far beneath the surface. I guess this is partly a result of our British heritage; the Brits never really forgave America for breaking away.
It’s also the ugly flipside of our otherwise attractive national trait of egalitarianism. A certain type of New Zealander despises America because of its raw, brash capitalism. We like to think our brand of liberal democracy, with its strong strand of humanitarianism, is more civilised – and by and large, I agree that it is. But that’s no justification for condemning all Americans.
For every loud, ignorant and obnoxious American of the type caricatured by self-satisfied New Zealand writers, there are many who are polite, considerate, witty, socially sophisticated and highly educated.
I sometimes wonder how many of the critics have actually been to America. In my experience those who have spent time there, and made the effort to get to know Americans, take a much more tolerant view.
A few days ago I was talking to a cousin who has visited all 50 states. He knows Americans as charming, courteous, obliging and generous people. My experience isn’t quite that extensive but my impressions are the same. Many times while travelling in the US I’ve been taken aback by the kindness, consideration and graciousness of complete strangers.
Of course you’ll find extremes of good and bad. That’s inevitable in a country as big and dynamic as America. Someone once wrote perceptively of another country that “whatever you read about India, the reverse is also true”. Exactly the same applies to America.
Fixating on the popular caricature of the Ugly American may shore up prejudices, but it doesn’t reflect reality.
In any case, every nationality’s worst characteristics seem to be exaggerated when they are away from home. The boorish Australian is a well-known phenomenon internationally and I’ve cringed at the behaviour of fellow New Zealanders overseas. Then there are the English, who are likeable people on their home ground but often seem to become obnoxious when they emigrate.
Mayleen, if indeed she exists as described, may be an Ugly American, but on the basis of the Listener article I’m not sure the New Zealander who wrote about her is any more likeable.
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