Public Address - Hard News (Home)

The other family violence | Jul 04, 2006 20:41

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I'm trying to find a way of describing the mother in the Timaru riding crop case - as she is revealed in a HoS profile - that isn't insulting or defamatory. Perhaps I'll just settle for saying that she doesn't seem to be of entirely sound mind and has trouble confronting the implications of her own conduct.

For all that she has been championed by some in the local winger blogs (curiously, some of same people who decry the violence in Maori families), the story depicts a family with a fractured and violent history. It also notes that the attempted assault by her 12-year-old son, for which the crop was drawn in retaliation, was preceded by one of her regular thrashings of the same child with a cane. Can anybody really still claim that her divinely-ordained assaults on her children were appropriate or effective?

Now she's up on assault charges. But Dave Crampton insists that she was in fact the victim of an assault by another of her sons, who he dismisses as a "brat". He describes it as "sad" that CYFS has now stopped unsupervised access with her younger son (the one involved in the riding crop incident) because of the new assault charge. I'd describe it as prudent.

Some catching up: Australian Senator Bob Brown has been threatened with "eternal damnation" by the Exclusive Brethren if he continues to push for an inquiry into issues raised by this amazing story about the Brethren's covert electoral activities in Australia and New Zealand.

Jordan Carter correctly wonders whether Tony Blair's government has gone mad as he surveys the latest work from the excellent Henry Porter. Porter also has a summary of his battles with Blair over the erosion of rights and liberties that have taken centuries to accrue in this month's Vanity Fair. And a KiwiBlog thread discussing the lawsuit against Helen Clark over election spending notes that Act also used tax dollars on a number of publications (including one a week out from the election) that really did look a bit like election advertising.

Meanwhile, America's leading conservative media voices demonstrate yet again that they are completely batshit crazy. The New York Times publishes a soft travel story about a town in Maryland where the wealthy folks with holiday homes include Rumsfeld and Cheney. The story includes a picture of Rumsfeld's driveway. Michele Malkin, Powerline, NewsMax and various others seize on this and several claim the Times has run the story with the specific intention of alerting terrorists to the location of the leaders' houses, as a form of retaliation against the government. Turns out that NewsMax itself is among a number of publications to run very similar stories in the past. But that, um, wasn't helping the terrorists.

Amid it all, some bedwetter publishes this nasty little rallying cry:

So, in the school of what's good for the goose is good for the gander, we are providing this link so YOU may help the blogosphere in locating the homes (perhaps with photos?) of the editors and reporters of the New York Times.

Let's start with the following New York Times reporters and editors: Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. , Bill Keller, Eric Lichtblau, and James Risen. Do you have an idea where they live?

Go hunt them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above. This is your chance to be famous - grab for the golden ring.

Yup. Hunt down the children. Kos has the short version and Glenn Greenwald has the fully nutty drama.

The hilarious (well, it would be if it wasn't also sort of sad and disturbing) part is that it turns out, as Greenwald notes in a follow-up, that the Times had specifically requested and received permission from Rumsfeld to photograph the damn driveway in the first place. Billmon reports on a bizarre exchange with one of the howling accusers, David Horowitz.

Meanwhile in Iraq, the justice minister demands "swift intervention" by the UN Security Council over the rape and murder of a 15 year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her family by US troops. Curiously, this major story goes completely missing from Little Green Footballs.

And some more Great Blending: Emo Matt (by his own description a "twenty something hipster with a useless Communications degree who looks and acts like a teenage myspace scenewhore") writes it up in his MySpace journal (catch: you need MySpace registration to read it). But he's happy: danah interviewed him before she flew out, and he picked up several commissions to build corporate MySpace profiles on the night.

Morgan had some thoughts and some criticisms, Robyn summed up and Jessie provoked some discussion.

And, of course, you have Matt Buchanan's photos from Auckland in the gallery for this post. And, finally, a Slashdot thread about an interview with one of the founders of MySpace …

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Mission Accomplished | Jul 04, 2006 10:00

It really is not a great feeling sitting glumly watching webcams, wondering if the fog around Wellington airport is ever going to clear and trying to work out what you'll do if the guest star you've spent months building an event around can't fly to Auckland.

Eventually, after we got on the phone and shelled out for a whole new flight with a different airline, there seemed some hope that danah boyd would get to reach Auckland on time for The Great Blend. The last we heard, she was approaching an aircraft, and after that I just hopefully assumed that the aircraft had actually taken off. I was so relieved when she walked into the building at ten past seven.

Despite having spent hours in stressed-out and crowded Wellington airport, danah was brilliant, as she has been throughout. There's been a hell of a lot of media interest and she's been a real trooper about doing the interviews: Campbell Live (less than two hours after arriving in New Zealand), the Dom Post (twice), NZPA, Breakfast, National Radio, One News, The Big Idea, NBR.

It was nice to put on a good Great Blend for our Wellington crowd. The thing that really pleased me about Wellington was getting together Justin Zhang from SkyKiwi with Sam Morgan. Justin was, beneath the deadpan exterior, quite excited about meeting Sam, and I think Sam was impressed with Justin. Despite having 120,000 registered users and a million-dollar annual turnover, SkyKiwi has been a kind of secret to the rest of the New Zealand Internet, so it was nice to tell people something new. And Justin - again, beneath the deadpan exterior - may actually be one of the funniest men in New Zealand.

The Wellington venue, The Boatshed, is something of a secret in itself. A lot of people said they'd walked past it a million times but never been in. It's delightful - fairylights on the ceiling and picture windows all around. Samuel Flynn Scott and Bunnies on Ponies were great too; I don't think I could perform after as many drinks as they had.

Indeed, the Wellington punters themselves surely knocked back a few convivial bevvies. Mark Cubey was so happy that he gave my friend Kerry his business card. Three times! Kim (y'know, Kim) also turned up to conduct research for what I think was the most interesting interview anyone did with danah.

I left danah in the hands of the Webstock crew for Friday, and flew back to Auckland, fondly imagining that she'd join us in Auckland early afternoon. But she made it, and the do was, if anything, a little better even than Wellington. We had to overflow people up to the mezzanine at the Grey Lynn Community Centre, people loved Starlords and I made a last-minute executive decision to recruit Matt from Reality Compound (where's that picture, dude?) onto the panel. Justin killed again, with all-new material.

I officially signed off being A Responsible Adult about 10.30pm, and went clubbing with danah, Matt Gibbons, Tze Ming and her friend. We popped up to Kujah (where the first person I laid eyes on was John Gadsby - seized with delight at definitely not being the oldest person in the room, I bowled up and introduced myself; turned out he'd made a video with the Open Souls, who were playing there), then Coherent where Timmy Schumacher was playing (very quiet, on account of the football, but kinda fun). I left Matt and danah still shaking their booties (they met some interesting New Zealanders doing highly unusual things over the next few hours) and popped up to see Andy 'n' Daz, who were pulling an all-nighter to finish their skate doco (it's called No More Heroes and it's playing all centres in the Film Festival).

It was a highly satisfactory evening that could all have come to bits when, as I approached my taxi home, I literally slipped on a banana peel. Man. They're not joking when they make those banana peel jokes, let me tell you. Those buggers are slippery. I managed not to go crashing to the footpath, but I briefly thought I'd torn a muscle or something.

I got home in time to see the closing stage of the England-Portugal borefest. Please don't write to correct me, but I can't help feeling that there's something slightly wrong with the game when two teams can play for two hours without anything really happening, and then have to wrench an arbitrary result out of penalty kicks.

Sunday was, as you might expect, quiet. Apart from the latest episode of Doctor Who ('Army of Ghosts'), which was a riot.

Apres Wellington, Zippy Gonzales correctly noted that the most stimulating conversation was to be had outside with the smokers (even if it was alarmingly cold) and learned how to pronounce Keith Ng's name. Joanna from Hubris had a good time but didn't say hello because people who talk while bands are playing suck, and her Wellingtonista crewmates cracked some late-night funnies on the email afterwards. It was good to see Miraz and I'm glad she enjoyed the show. Webweaver has a nice summary of what was said during the evening.

Matthew Sew Hoy has some pics from Wellington online - including a rather special shot of Sam Flynn Scott playing guitar with his teeth.

From Auckland, Jen thought Sean James Donnelly was a bit of alright, Claire-a-Belle enjoyed the (live) social networking and Dave Underwood was pleased to have discovered MyDeathSpace. Me too. It's quite compelling.

So that's another round done. Although pretty much everyone who went to the events seems to have found them enjoyable and rewarding, there's some sense in which I'm doing this for myself. It's a kind of proof of concept every time. Plus, I get hundreds of people to listen to my killer back-to-mine playlist on my iPod. I already have some plans for another Great Blend at the end of the year, at a very interesting new venue. For now, I'm done, and I have a Listener cover story to write inside of a week. Yikes. So thanks to everyone who came and enjoyed themselves, all the people involved in the events and most especially danah, Kate Carthew from Pead, Cath and Steve at the Music Industry Commission and our brilliant sponsor, Karajoz Coffee Company. Peace out, as the kids probably don't say any more.

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All your base aren't belong to us? | Jun 28, 2006 10:23

I'm inclined to take Telecom at its word with respect to yesterday's announcement that it will separate its retail and wholesale businesses, even if it doesn't fully follow the example of British Telecom, whose executives were reportedly recently flown in to advise on separation strategies.

BT's voluntary separation involved the creation of two separate boards (but not separate companies), and Telecom hasn't gone that far. But where it has gone is not the all-your-base-are-belong-to-us place it has hitherto been heading.

Theresa Gattung said on Morning Report today that: "You could say we've been reading the tea-leaves." Indeed. The Dom Post's two-monthly poll of Wellington businesspeople found a striking 86% of them in favour of this year's regulatory announcements, and only 7% against. The cheerleaders for the old way are thin on the ground.

The good behaviour clause in the Telecommunications Amendment Bill - which could actually see Telecom avoiding elements of regulatory reform by undertaking to reform itself -will also have helped concentrate minds.

Question: does the newfound cross-party will to concentrate on Maori family violence mean that race-based policies are okay again?

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Human Trails In Cyberspace is well worth a look (although it would be nice to have seen more detail). It covers several attempts to socially map the Internet. Pretty pictures.

No Right Turn has a dabble with one of those online surveys that tell you what box you fit in. This one comes from a Canadian marketing company and is thus more demographic than political. I washed up as an Autonomous Rebel with a bit of Connected Enthusiast, which rather flatters my prejudices about myself.

And that's all. A few big days from here on in: danah boyd arrives today and will be on Campbell Live within a couple of hours of touching down (I'm considering making an offering to the traffic gods). There's a been a huge degree of media interest in her, and in addition to various print interviews, she'll also be talking to Kim Hill on National Radio at 11.25am on Saturday.

Both the Wellington and Auckland Karajoz Great Blends officially kick off at 7pm, but we should have the doors open half an hour before that. I've made a couple of additions to the Auckland bill (it's a Saturday, so we can run a bit later). Robyn Gallagher will join us on the panel there, and there'll also be a brief presentation with respect to Freeview that some of you will find very interesting, in a practical sense. I'm all excited.

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Approaching the obscene | Jun 27, 2006 09:58

Much as I wanted to avoid joining the feeding frenzy, I think I finally lost patience with the Kahui family show while I was listening to their awful "family spokesperson" Ani Hawke holding forth on Morning Report yesterday. There was a creepy sense of arrogance about the way she spoke; the way she brandished tikanga and her far-too-cute-in-the-circumstances characterisation of the family group as the "Tight Twelve".

In the end, the family members did not come forward with what they knew, as she had promised. Perhaps, in a technical sense, they are all simply exercising the right to silence that any of us would have in their place. In any other sense, their behaviour seems to approach the obscene.

This puts the Maori Party in an interesting position. For years, Tariana Turia has been insisting that abused children are without exception better off in whanau care, that they should never be allowed into "stranger care". She has sometimes given the impression that she believes children to be the property of families, with their interests effectively subjugated to those of the family.

Is that what we're seeing here? Or, as Pita Sharples now suggests, is this just a bunch of ratbag complicit actors using tikanga as a cloak?

When Turia originally made such comments, she was a Labour MP and the toddler we came to know as Lillybing commanded the headlines. Six years on, Lillbing's family has never revealed what someone must know about her miserable death, not in "stranger care", but among aunts and uncles. And Maori babies remain at far greater risk of abuse than any other in New Zealand.

Not everything about this is wholly awful. The Weekend Herald's Once Were Warriors depiction of a feckless, drunken household also made note of the twins' father, "a gentle, modest man [who] did much of their bathing and caring." A vigil stood against family violence in South Auckland this morning. Politics seems to have been put aside for a cross-party accord on violence against children. And maybe this very public tragedy might begin to change things.

Elsewhere, it appears that those Muslim terrorists in Miami weren't exactly Muslims (or even really terrorists), those definitely weren't the WMDs we were looking for and all those Make Poverty History promises weren't actually meant to be taken seriously. Jesus. Is fake news the new black?

And finally, it's good to see that they finally found a use for that TV wall that Heaton Dyer bought for Mike Hosking to stand in front of on Sunday. Now Mark Sainsbury stands in front of it on About Now, but the script is better. They seriously need to slow down those animations during the interviews though. Having a little dabble with 80s neon kitsch is one thing. Repeatedly drawing attention to it is another.

Still: TV One late talk show in doesn't altogether suck shock. Go the Sainzer.

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