Posts by Suze Vermeer
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Two things
Thanks, everyone, for spelling arse correctly and making an old pedant very happy!
Crosby Textor sounds like someone's ghetto pimp name.
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Craig
The EFA was an easy target because it was a poorly and hastily drafted and I agree Labour had only itself to blame. I wasn't actually defending the EFA, and agree with you that it was a populist issue (campaign finance reform) on which Labour dropped the ball.I don't think you were addressing me personally when you talk about 'it being easy to get into siege mode where everything is someone else's fault -- the media, the evil Opposition, the fickle peasants, etc'. I merely note that the news media does not always serve us well.
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Danyl
True, political reporters do take any angle they choose and are left alone by editors. Sorry, I was meaning more feature writers doing pieces on social issues, politician profiles, etc.Craig
I only get to see The Herald on line but it does seem to have gone into campaign mode, particularly over EFA, which was an easy target. I reckon quite a few political journalists, like many people, are just bored with Labour and want a change. It's not so much to do with policies.
John Key is a perfectly nice bloke, if a bit bland, and I don't believe there will be any unsavoury past to be dug up. But, like Brash, he seems to need an awful lot of coaching in the art of politics. -
I can tell you from experience that all features, apart from fluffy, lifestyle ones, that appear these days in our major dailies (though can't speak for the ODT), are prescriptive. The angle and tone will be given to the reporter before a word is written.
A few years back, a planned feature about home invasion in one of our big metropolitans that was going to show how in fear we should all be at this mushrooming crime was pulled when the stats didn't back it up.
I am fairly new to this blog but why is Craig Ranapia so angry?
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Notice how everyone is 'on a journey' these days?
It covers any sort of situation.It is possible to have fun with sports cliches. When watching the footy on telly with a group of friends, each one chooses one or two cliches, and when their particular phrase/s comes up in the commentary, they get a point, or have to finish their drink (if you're into drinking games), and at the end, the friend with the most points wins. You are allowed to yell and scream, as if a try/goal had been scored, when your cliche gets trotted out. Some examples: 'quick hands', 'pinned his ears back', 'knows his way to the try line', 'handbags at dawn', 'brain explosion', 'it's not tiddlywinks', 'a bit of how's your father', 'hospital pass', 'tall timber', 'argy-bargy', calling the ball 'pill', and so on.
I find Kiwi blokes crooking in their arm, pulling their fist in towards their chest and saying 'Yessss' silly. Only Americans can really pull that off.
Also, may I repeat my plea for fellow Kiwis to call a backside an arse rather than an ass. -
Sacha
OMG. I knew blonde businesswoman had moved on from The Don, but not who to? No surprises, though, I guess.
However, despite unwelcome thoughts of Paul Henry's elocution, we must arse on and keep the word in our lexicon. I expect the next one we'll have to f ight off is 'aks' for 'ask'.lHey Pub Guy,
I'm with you on the frustration brought on by the gulf between such discussions as this and the man in the street, but I need both sorts of company and need to talk at both levels.
I don't understand all the academic jargon some posters write in and sometimes it seems to be a bit of a jousting competition between the very well read, but mostly I find it fun, informative and stimulating. -
Slightly off-topic but sort of poo-related: May I make a plea to Russell and others to spell arse the good old Kiwi way, not the American way, which is really an animal synonymous with stupidity.
Russell, you describe the stuff Stoddart quotes as 'crazy-assed'. This spelling upsets me. Are you imagining that word spoken in an American accent? What's wrong with 'crazy-arsed'?
And please don't anyone take this as simplistic anti-Americanism. It's just that arse is a perfectly fine word. Especially when used as an expletive, e.g. instead of darn, dammit, shit or bugger.
Anyhoo, excellent discussion, y'all. -
Vermeer's paintbrushes were made of badger hair.
I did not know that. Thanks, Steve, for that unforgettable factoid. Maybe it will come in handy on quiz night. (: -
On Nine to Noon, Katherine Ryan is pretty good on politics and current affairs, but painful to listen when doing feature interviews, e.g. talking to someone about a book or personal experience, etc. She has plenty of IQ but not much EQ, and is prone, for example, to ask someone whose house has burnt down and whose family has all been killed in the fire: "And that must have been hard for you?". Sometimes mawkish on the non-hard-news stuff. And she should have left writer Alice(?) Tawhai alone in her desire for privacy in her personal life, not badgered her to offer up juicy tidbits about a hinted-at difficult upbringing. Journos find that very odd, but if Tawhai says she doesn't want to talk about her personal past, then respect that, Katherine. No means no.
Noelle riding a long way on her entrancing accent, IMHO.
Jim Mora, (or now Moira, surely), smug and assumes everyone has toddlers and a mortgage.
Sean Plunkett gets over-aggro when he's bored, I reckon, though you need a bit of mongrel, balanced nicely by Geoff's 'arsenic and old lace' style.Thank god for Kim Hill illuminating the arcane worlds of science and hard sums, etc, by asking the right questions of her brainiac guests.
Media Watch great.
Yep, Chris Laidlaw a bit tired.
Simon Morris fun and informative.
Overall, though, long live Nat Rad. There's got to be something for the pointy-heads in NZ now that The Listener has gone all girly and pitching at the middle-class worried well.