Hard News: Veitch
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It's beautiful, because it plays on expectations while simultaneously reinforcing them.
Why can't anything just be good and nice and fluffy and that's all?
Damn complex world!
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The thing is, the system of mayoral elections being foisted on the City of Rainbows is *designed* to elect a posturing idiot.
First there'll be pre-election media jostling for momentum, which will result in two candidates becoming the only possible choices. This will laregly depend on money and TV time. All the candidates will claim to be "non-political" despite pasts as ACT candidates, National advisors, etc.
In the actual poll, voting for anyone lagging in the polls will be equivalent to an abstention. So the choice will be between two more or less right-wing candidates, with the option if you don't like either being to stay at home, or waste ones vote on an also-ran.
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Thanks for saying that George.
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Just like the "Clint Rickards" case, it has left a bad taste in everyone's mouth,and the reason is,because there is "One law for selebritys,all-blacks,and policemen,the other law for the rest of us".Equal justice for all ? Yeah,Right
I don't think there's a different law for celebrities so much as an enormous advantage in being able to afford a top-notch defence.
But speaking of All Blacks ... it's interesting seeing the usual suspects mocking the additional assault charges against Veitch that were dropped.
Whilst noting very clearly that they were not proven in court , several of them seem at least as bad as (and probably worse than) the single assault on his wife to which a "fringe All Black" readily pleaded guilty several years ago. And you may recall the fuss about that.
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Besides, it is distasteful
Out of context, I know and my apologies for that.
Gio and you Paul don't want speculation about Veitch's mental health and I understand that.
But I applaud Kracklite et al for talking about suicide and depression. I've been depressed and I don't really think I'll ever be completely free of it. What I know is that it was those of my friends who were able to talk with me that helped the most. But many of my friends (whom I love just as much) simply could not talk about such a subject.
I think talking about suicide and depression and our mental health is very important. Too often people shy away from discussing it as distasteful. But talking helps, it really does, and it saddens me that we tend not to talk much about what really is a very important thing in our lives - our mental health and the mental health of our friends.
That said, guessing as to Veitch's mental health is tough. Where it is purely gossip, I'd say yes it is distasteful blather. But I think Kracklite et al were not gossiping but instead discussing real experiences and trying to draw from their own knowledge to try and clarify what is going on so publicly for Mr Veitch. It may not help him but it may help someone who reads this thread.
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There's a funny sort of chiasmus produced by reading (and discussing) the Veitch and Boyle stories together. Public "beautiful person" reveals ugly private side; private "ugly" person reveals beautiful talent.
Agreed that the Susan Boyle effect relies on (and reinforces) stereotypes as much as it confounds them... I do like George's colonial analogy, and Sacha's link to able-ist assumptions also works.
And yet, there also something so wildly old-fashioned about her. She sort of vaults over the walls of the whole panoptic-TV-reality-circus of global-simultaneity and back to a time when the bards of a tribe were prized not primarily for their physical beauty but for their uncanny musical talent.
A mythical golden age, to be sure (and probably not one characterised by showstopping musical numbers about plucky French gamines), but still: Vera Lynn? Kate Smith?
Also, I'm thinking "local hero" for some reason.
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Why can't anything just be good and nice and fluffy and that's all?
It was beautiful, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I also think that extrinsic to her performance, good will come of this in ever so slightly reduced discrimination against those who aren't the beautiful people.
Nothing's value-free in the world for better or worse. There's always significance in words, and power. Speaking of which, I think that one of the reasons the performance was just so attractive was the way she spoke back to Simon Cowell, and asserted her value forthrightly. It set her as an equal. I'd like to think it wasn't scripted...
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I think that one of the reasons the performance was just so attractive was the way she spoke back to Simon Cowell
She's roughly his age-mate -- in another world, they'd have been at school together -- which is another part of the surreal time-travelling appeal of the encounter, I think. Susan looks like what a 48 year old used to look like, whereas Simon looks like Rupert Everett's latest face-lift squared, with teenage teeth.
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Events like Boyle's performance open up hegemonic cracks in the edifice of our consensual understandings about concepts like beauty, work, entertainment and even value. The real possiblity of them being undermined and reshaped sits alongside their reinforcement.
It's raw, tingling opportunity, and not just for the singer. I reckon that is part of the feeling that something special is going on, even if you know about the manufactured aspects. We want to believe. We deserve to.
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And on the topic of Susan Boyle's pseudo destruction of societal stereotypes, Mike Moreu has weighed in with this beauty.
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George, we get the same thing with disability in the media all the time - watch for flag words like "despite" and "overcome" and "inspiring".
You might have missed it Sacha, but she does have a learning disability -- the result of a lack of oxygen at birth -- which seems to have had an impact on her life, especially as a child, when she was bullied at school.
One thing that no one has mentioned is that a good part of what made it work is that she didn't act in line with lowered expectations -- she came out on stage and wiggled her hips!
I've been looking at her subsequent TV interviews, including the live link to Larry King (I'll compile them for this week's Newsmash) and she's similarly confident. She seems comfortable with herself.
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Regarding Susan Boyle. She does have a lovely voice.
I still wonder whether the web we use so much will create a space where people who, like her, would never normally be touched by marketing types, can present their skills.
It always seemed to me that the web should open up entertainment but it doesn't seem to have happened as much as I thought it would.
I guess I'd hoped that having "the web" discover talent might get us away from the idea that you have to be pretty to be successful.
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You might have missed it Sacha, but she does have a learning disability
Spotted that in passing, but I believe it's probably her appearance in an age of plastic popstars that would make the most immediate impression for most of the 25 million peeps that have Youtubed her. However, I'm sure you're right that disability is part of the storyline.
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The judge sentenced Veitch on the fact that this incident was a one off event,seeing as the other assault charges were dropprd in the plea deal.The judge could not take the other charges into account,but did the judge not ask themselves,how did she get onto the floor so as he could kick her in the back in the first place?.And what do you think the sentence would have been,had it been her who had broke his back? Do you think she would have been able to stand on the court steps and give him shit to the media.This prick was already dictating how he was going to do his 300 hours before he had even reported to probation.This mans arrogance truly knows no bounds.He didn't get it then,he hasn't got it now,and unless he has a real good look at himself and his actions,he will never get it,and all those who supported him and wrote testimonial's,need to have a good look at themselfes as well.(I wonder how many more of the 20 testimonial's are suspect? the all black coach who said he was a good bloke because he didn't bag anyone for the all blacks lose in the world cup in 2007,needs to hang his head in shame)It is men like him and the likes of clint rickards that we have the worst violence against women and children in the world.tony veitch should be sharing a cell with clint rickards right now.Until these men who think women are Therese to do with as they wish are held to account,then the song will remain the same and the band will play on.How many more of their likes,are out there in positions of POWER and CONTROL over women and children.
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So hang on. All you semioticians are making me concerned.
Me bawling at the clip: OK? Or not OK (TM)?
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Bawling as an act of transformative politics and basic humanity. OK even if you know part of it is a con.
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Me bawling at the clip: OK? Or not OK (TM)?
Totally OK.
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OK even if you know part of it is a con.
I'd say "even if you know there is a degree of manipulation involved", rather than than "a con".
Cowell etc aren't such geniuses that they can plan a mass viral swoon like this. There's a point where you have to take it at face value.
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It's a consensual con, not one perpetrated by a few on the many. Manipulation can be enjoyable.
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"Mass viral swoon" - I like that.
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the all black coach who said he was a good bloke because he didn't bag anyone for the all blacks lose in the world cup in 2007,needs to hang his head in shame
I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of this.
First of all it showed that Veitch was never any great shakes as a journalist.
But what it also reinforces is the sheltered, protected world in which Henry (and Brand All Blacks?) reside.
And what did Henry think he was doing getting involved in the first place?
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Me bawling at the clip: OK? Or not OK (TM)?
I'm OK, you're OK. Now pass the hankie.
Sacha, totally on the nose. Raw is right. It's like the photographic negative of that dream of discovering you're naked in front of a crowd. And we all shared the dream that was being performed by someone else for us to partake of (like the clients in Elizabeth Knox's Dreamhunter books); like in a dream, we got to be a sort of oceanic consciousness, inhabiting both the audience and the singer.
I'd wager that most of the people who forwarded the clip to their friends and their mum felt uniquely moved to do so, not part of some larger hegemonic imperative. At least, I did. It shouldn't have come as a shock that umpty-million other people had the same individual impulse, but it did.
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Just culture changing, as it does. That's the trouble with words like hegemonic - they sound like an imperative.
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"Mass viral swoon" = T-shirt quality.
And all of this commentary is the mass viral smelling salts as we straighten our skirts and pick ourselves up off the floor.
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OK even if you know part of it is a con.
For shame, Sacha. How is it a con? A woman auditions for Britain's Got Talent, and gets through because she has a lovely, some would say astonishing, voice. Are you suggesting that she wouldn't have got in front of the judges if she hadn't been somewhat not the shiny happy "norm"? I see how the producers put through ridiculous people because it makes for good television. They would have heard her sing, however, and known how good she was. I refuse to be cynical enough to believe they wouldn't have put her up there regardless of how she "looked".
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