Posts by Caleb D'Anvers
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Your capacity for self-deception, too, is simply fascinating. You said, didn’t you, that:
If a European youth was found vandalising property: "We'd probably say `Hey, what are you doing? That's not really the white way'."
Now, you know that’s total bullshit, really, don’t you? The first time I read that, I thought it was some kind of performance art. Do you actually think all the vandalism in ‘white’ suburbs is done by ‘brown kids’ driving down the Crime Motorway?
Well, there's that, but I take it that they're probably even more afraid of white kids aping teh "black" ways, i.e. getting all jiggy with hip-hop culture. I mean, wasn't this fear of cultural miscegenation a big part of the original, punk-inflected white pride movement in the late '70s? The sense that the one thing worse than a brown kid sporting an afro and saying "I love jah" was a white kid doing the same? Hence the need to create a form of music with all the "black" elements systematically excluded, which is what punk originally was?
So, I get the sense that the boneheads know that it's white kids providing the majority of the graf in New Brighton, and that's why it's so scary -- spiritual and cultural, rather than just physical, infiltration by the Other.
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Apostrafing: hit-and-run assaults on minor issues of punctuation, delivered from on high.
The price of pedantry is eternal vigilance.
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Equally, it's likely that the response was amplified by the fact that these were Grammar boys. Their school has long touted its own prowess at training young men for leadership, and its old boys have been known to display a raging sense of entitlement. So the flap was greater than it might have been had the students come from a less prominent school.
Grammar's an interesting case. Teachers at Grammar when I was there in the early '90s were, well, teachers, and like teachers anywhere tended to be left-of-centre. Sure, the head of the biology department was a fundamentalist Christian, and told us up-front on the first class of 7th-form bio that he didn't believe in evolution. But one of my Latin teachers was a card-carrying Marxist and used to show us Gore Vidal clips after we finished the course work each term. And certainly, if we'd done anything like those fucktards at the Museum did, we'd have expected a good chewing out in the Principal's office and some serious consequences.
But, that was under different leadership. Things may have changed now. I don't know. And certainly, my sense is that the socio-economics of the Grammar Zone have become even more exclusive than they were 15-20 years ago. There were still working-class enclaves in Mount Eden then. Not so now.
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Now most teachers don't know how to use apostraphes and have Forest Gumpesque intelligence.
So tell us, Brickley, how exactly does one use an apostraphe? And who the hell is Forest Gump? Curious minds want to know.
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It is rather the Tall Poppy Syndrome writ large - let's try not to create any excellent students
Oh dear God. It's also, unfortunately, a particular strand of modern conservatism writ large. "We have a total knee-jerk distrust of government and its institutions. Once you put us in charge of them, we promise to fuck them up for you. Because we don't believe in them. Yay us!"
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Back when I used to work at Auckland City Libraries, a sweet old lady would occasionally come in. She'd be invariably friendly and engaging and would start what initially seemed like any other local history reference interview. Then she'd segue smoothly to Tainui's involvement in the interstellar white slave trade, little greys, and secret alien mining bases on the moon. Had it all figured out, she did.
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Anyone else see alcohol prohibition on the horizon?
Interesting that you should say that. There could be some global activity on that front in the near future.
Having had to go cold turkey this year for medical reasons, though, I have somewhat more equivocal views on this than I once did. Objectively speaking, alcohol's a very destructive drug. If the idea that we all experience harm from "passive drinking" catches on, it could be interesting to watch. There is, it seems to me, a strong prima facie case for treating alcohol consumption more like smoking than has been case up until now. And at one point the tobacco companies looked as impregnable as the booze barons do now ...
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And as Finlay Macdonald acidly observed on The Panel yesterday, wouldn't it be nice if we could get as OUTRAGED over ... the Government ... borrowing like a P-head with a ravenous King Kong-sized monkey on its back?
Quite. If we stand in the queue with our hats on, we can borrow a few million more, apparently. Echoes of Muldoon indeed!
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Photocopies of the Maori Television Service bid were personally delivered to the offices of Finance Minister Bill English and Associate Rugby World Cup Minister Gerry Brownlee on September 24, according to another leaked document (keep them coming!)
The delivery was from Te Puni Kokiri staffer Craig Owen.
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Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman says the Government found out from TVNZ what the deal was.
But my understanding was that TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis was given the information on the clear understanding that TVNZ was out of the running.
The document also says that Murray McCully's office (Chris Major) was briefed on Te Puni Kokiri's support for the Maori Television Service bid as early as July 23.
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You can understand why MTS are crying foul.
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Is it just me, or is that completely moronic?
I guess it makes things easier for compulsive channel surfers.
What it does show is that no-one's thinking about the viewership at all. All they're thinking about is massaging the egos of the respective broadcasters.