Public Address - Hard News (Home)

In other news, the sky is falling | Jan 29, 2007 11:00

Yesterday's Herald on Sunday editorial paid Public Address a compliment - declaring that this site and Kiwiblog are "worthwhile reads, maintained by a dedicated group of talented writers and thinkers" - and then proceeded to get it completely wrong.

After delivering its compliment, the editorial - under the lurid headline 'Big Blogger is watching - and spewing inarticulate filth ' - continues:

But most bloggers - and we're talking 95 per cent - are fly by night, gutless wonders who prefer to spit venom under inarticulate pseudonyms …

These bloggers, operating under their own misguided belief of self-freedom rarely research any offerings and have little knowledge of defamation laws and other publishing restrictions. Journalists, broadcasters, columnists and politicians are common targets - and this week we've seen the boundaries stretched intolerably far.

Apart from being inelegantly written, this is silly. "Most" bloggers are not "gutless wonders" or any other kind of monster. They're writing about their cats or something.

The topic of the editorial is, of course, the Child Youth and Family watch website, which is hosted by Blogger, and naturally uses the Blogger syntax, but arguably isn't a blog in the conventional sense. I don't think it's terribly useful for the HoS to write off the content of the site as "the incoherent ramblings and personal attacks of the disaffected". Some of the accounts are quite well written and perhaps some of the people providing them have genuine cause for complaint.

The problem, of course, is that people can feel genuinely aggrieved by a CYF intervention yet have no perspective on their own conduct in the matter. They may not be the most reliable witnesses. They may in fact be crazy people.

But what really counts out this site - and it's the reason I won't link to it - is the publisher's open invitation for readers to submit "name and shame" stories about individual CYF employees, and "welcoming" home addresses, photographs, car registration details and the like. It's hard to see this as anything other than an appeal for vigilantism, and it's reprehensible - especially when it comes from someone who is taking advantage of Blogger's anonymity.

This nasty tone is precisely what has made the CYF watch site news - it is unusual - but the HoS sees it as evidence of a wider pattern: "Online abuse is now rampant in all parts of New Zealand society," the editorial shrieks.

Is it? Really? It would take a bit more than some vague references to Bebo and rate-your-boss sites to make that case.

The editorial winds up with some un-journalistic lip-smacking at the prospect of bloggers having their asses sued, and an attack on the "extraordinarily hopeless" Google (as the owner of Blogger, although anyone who didn't already know that might be mystified by the reference, and it's possible that the author doesn't know either) for not immediately yanking the site's account on receipt of a complaint.

Google is not obliged to do so under US law, and would be going down a pretty scary road if it banned every blog that was the subject of complaint. I rather doubt that the HoS would welcome such curbs on itself.

You'll note I haven't linked to the HoS editorial either. That's because it's not online. And perhaps that in itself is a mercy.

Ironically, the editorial appears above a column by Ms Coddington, who accused one or more of the Public Address team of being "insane bloggers". Mediawatch ran a good report on the controversy that provoked the insult: the response to Codders' dodgy Asian Angst story for North and South. The audio is here.

Elsewhere, Rolling Stone is suggesting that Al Gore may yet enter the US presidential race. That would be good.

The Independent has a story from Davos claiming that US government policy (and especially foreign policy) is driving capital away from US markets.

Delusion is now such a vivid characteristic of the Bush cult that a Pajamas Media columnist - an actual journalist - can refer to Bush in the wake of his State of the Union speech as a "great American orator". And no, he wasn't being ironic. (Hat tip: the excellent Instapundit watch blog, Instaputz.)

This is cool: AmericaBlog's John Aravosis ran both Bush's SOTU address and Democrat Jim Webb's response through some software that generates a tag cloud based on frequency. Very interesting …

And finally, I'm delighted to see that Mystery Girl is touring the Lemonheads, the Clean and the Slits in March. It looks like a good month for gigs.

PS: A journalist friend is coming back from the UK for his first NZ holiday in years, and is wondering about Wi-Fi coverage during his trip, and particularly in Christchurch and elsewhere in the South Island. Any advice for him?

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Just a little bit good, surely? | Jan 26, 2007 10:28

Even at the risk of having to momentarily lay down the chip on her shoulder, you might have thought Tariana Turia could have found something to welcome in the news on Maori outcomes from last year's census. Some indicators haven't changed - relative lifespan and Maori over-representation in prison - but there is also some pretty good news in the numbers.

At 41%, the growth in the median income of Maori from 2001 to 2005 (from $14,800 to $20,900 a year) outpaced that of the general population, where median income rose 31%, to $24,400.

Census and other data released last week also show:

* About 54 per cent of Maori adults now have level 1 NCEA or above, up from three-quarters of the national average in 1996 to four-fifths.

* About 64 per cent of working-age Maori are now in paid work, up from 70 per cent of the national average to 80 per cent.

* Maori incomes have risen faster than average across the board. The proportion earning at least $70,000 a year has doubled from 1.7 per cent of all Maori in 2001 to 3.4 per cent, while the proportion in the total population rose only from 5.1 per cent to 8.1 per cent.

Of course there are gaps yet, but it seems churlish to me to see these trends as anything other than encouraging. Bickering over where credit is due doesn't seem to be the point.

Turia's response was to dismiss the results and question the data, then accuse other politicians of patronising Maori by travelling to the Ratana marae and using Ratana for political gain. Is that not a judgement for church leaders to make?

John Key made a good start, with a straightforward speech at Ratana. It's nice not to feel the need to read between the lines of the National leader's utterances. Helen Clark also seems to have demonstrated good grace. Perhaps we'll have a nice Waitangi Day.

Donnie Davies' video for 'The Bible Says' may have been yanked by YouTube - and now by MySpace - but that doesn't seem to have slowed his onward viral march.

The belief that his hymn to homosexual recovery is in fact a super-dry parody is meanwhile gathering steam and one gay site is proposing that Donnie is in fact improv actor Todd Quillen. (Others have pointed out that all the Davies-related websites are on recently-registered domains associated with the same front company.)

"Davies" has issued another video message, this one thanking blogger Andrew Sullivan for his support for his song, his band Evening Service, and his ministry, Love God's Way (they've rather brilliantly burgled the Psychedelic Furs' 'Love My Way' for the closing theme music). Meanwhile, you may find his list of gay bands to steer clear of useful. Oh, and God Hates Figs. True fact.

If you haven't seen Spiders on Drugs, it's worth a couple of minutes of your time.

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There's a funny bit at the end ... | Jan 25, 2007 10:22

There's a Sydney Morning Herald story today about the discovery of a gang video called lebo thugs on YouTube. Its most offensive element is a still frame of gang rapist Bilal Skaf. The story appears in two versions: one which leads with John Howard slamming it as "sickening" and a reminder "that there is undoubtedly within a section, a small section, of the Lebanese Muslim community a group of people who are antagonistic to the values and the way of life in this country," and an update in which a student confirms it features several former pupils of a Sydney high school.

The student describes the video as "stupid" and an embarrassment, but also says he is surprised at the stir, given that: "I went to 'Cronulla riots' on YouTube and there's all these videos of Anglos saying 'We are proud of what we did'. So there's already other race hate videos out there. Why are they only targeting one [community]?"

I checked: he's right. First result, a clip called Cronulla Oi, backed by an overtly racist track from the Oi band Skrewdriver, which mentions "race war" and "mass graves" and urges listeners to "stand up for your race and your nation too."

Meanwhile, the lebo thugs video - contrary to the paper's reports - is still available on YouTube and is equally disturbing. It's an extended gang branding exercise (with a lousy gangsta rap soundtrack) that features the picture of Skaf and also video of a disgraceful mob beating of an innocent backpacker in Sydney.

The key difference between the white thug propaganda and the non-white seems to be the Lebanese gangs' growing eagerness to own the very same vicious crimes that the white racists tout as cause for race war. (Meanwhile, there was vicious gang rape committed last year by young white Australians in Darling Harbour; the case was abandoned in strange circumstances after the complainant suddenly refused to give evidence.)

Read the comments under those video clips and it's hard not to wonder where Australia has got itself. As this blogger concludes, "Fact of the matter is, I think my Macedonian mate was right. Give it time and Sydneyites will be throwing Molotov cocktails at Melbournites."

Meanwhile, DPF revises his original take on the Sydney BDO and flags and proposes that the organizers should hand out Australian flags to everyone at the gate. I suspect there are thousands of music fans who'd just like their music festival back, thanks very much.

Anyway, if all the talk of race war and thuggery doesn't kill your Big Day Out buzz, the Sydney police have promised to do their best. They'll not only have riot squads, uniformed and plainclothes officers at the site, but will station drug dogs at the main railway station and the site entrance. A study last year suggested the drug dog strategy was both ineffective and dangerous (because it panics festival-goers into necking all their drugs at once). There is a danger of all this not being any fun any more.

After, all that, some bigotry you can laugh at. Someone posted this musical clip, recorded by a "recovering homosexual" under the sway of some church, in the comments of an American blog I was reading this week. It occasioned lots of humourless tut-tutting. Oh really. Frankly, this isn't just one of the funniest things I've seen lately, it's quite the gayest. "Fill me with your love," indeed, big boy …

NB: YouTube has taken down the clip for breaching policy, but it's available here too ...

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Draped in their flag | Jan 23, 2007 09:29

As agreed in yesterday's discussion thread, Australian Big Day Out promoter Ken West made a terrible blue when he told a journalist there would be a ban (it was never official) on bringing the Australian flag to the Sydney BDO, which takes place on the day before Australia Day.

John Howard, doubtless sensing opportunity, leapt in to decry the "stupid" and "offensive" call, sparking a political stampede in which an immigration minister declared that the government should ban the event if the promoters didn't back down. Wow. You will comply.

But it's worth looking at the context of West's remark. Last year's Sydney BDO was held on Australia Day, not long after the Cronulla race riots. Longtime punter Bernard Zuel describes the vibe in a Sydney Morning Herald column:

For a start, there was no escaping it. If you weren't facing a sweaty, frying-in-the-sun bloke - and it was almost always a man - waving a flag in front of or at you, the image of the flag was on bikinis, T-shirts, bandannas, bare backs and sunburnt faces.

Then there were the happy drunks grabbing a hand and wishing you "happy Australia Day mate" - something I have never heard anyone say in 39 years in Australia - and the slightly less happy drunks barking the declaration "I'm Australian, mate" or less eloquently than that, "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi oi oi".

Maybe it was my imagination, but there seemed an even stronger than usual response in the heat of the day to Australian acts on the main stages, from the retro rock of Wolfmother to the strine-rich hip-hop of Hilltop Hoods. They weren't just good bands on a bill with a swagger of international acts, they were "Our Bands".

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was not enough for many of the patriots to announce themselves, to enjoy their moment for themselves. Everyone else was required to participate, to affirm and in some instances, as one letter writer to the Herald reported, to kiss the flag.

There are now multiple accounts available of the enforced flag-kissing - and of beatings administered to those who failed to comply.

Here's another punter's story:

"People were wearing the Australian flag and were a bit racist. There was a group of Middle Eastern people sitting down and they went up to them and said `you're not Australians'.

"They were really, really drunk. There was this real yob mentality.

"I told them to bugger off and they started yelling at me, saying I wasn't Australian because I wasn't behaving like them.

"If you weren't with them, you were against them.

"When one of the singers said she didn't agree with John Howard's policies, she had beer cans thrown at her."

If I'd been a Kiwi wandering around the Sydney BDO minding my own business, would I have been obliged to kiss some bully's flag? Or would my white skin have saved me the grief?

Here's a little racist stupidity in response from the Australian blogosphere:

I have just about had enough of all this racial crap that has evolved sice 9/11.

Have you looked past your own backyard yet?? The BAD guys are winning!

I never had a problem with any race prior to 9/11. Now if I say no to a middle easterner, I get told it's because he's a middle easterrner. If I want my police force to wear the Australian Police uniform & not turbans & scarves, I am showing intollerance to another race. It went from Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays. These are just a few of the many changes. And now to say "don't wave the Australian flag" the day before Australia Day, for fear it will incite others into violence???

Have they any idea how many people like myself who embraced multiculturalism, now cringe at every change to our Australia lifestyle?

The only people who are inciting racism are the ones who are changing every part of our Australian lifestyle. What they seem to forget is…. people are "meant" to move here because of what a great country it is. Not to make it greater in their image.

So Australians wave your flag…. if you dont like it, go home. It's just that simple.

And more.

There are times when I am grateful for New Zealand's rather diffident take on nationalism and national days.

Anyway, as we agreed in yesterday's discussion, West blew it badly. The smarter move would have been to ban all flags and banners on safety grounds, rather than blurt what West did, but his concerns were not entirely without foundation.

I know a little of how promoters think, and when you're responsible for the safety of 50,000 intoxicated people on a confined site, the conduct described above is poison. (Bear in mind also, that the Australian Open was marred last week by nationalistic brawls between ethnic Serbs and Croats.) For West and his promotion partner Vivian Lees, this is an event on which they've based their lives: one which relies hugely on peaceful, boisterous, co-existence. They can hardly be blamed for getting the fear.

And if you think that simply removing drunken bullies is a painless solution, you may be a politicians. You have certainly never been a concert promoter.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of Hilary Clinton. Is she capable of working as US president? Easily. Is she electable? This intriguing Atlantic Monthly story, moved out from behind the magazine's paywall on occasion of her candidacy, suggests her ability to win friends and influence people should not be underestimated.

Meanwhile, the winger talking points on Barack Obama are distributed, in an array of flimsy smears based on his race, his name and the fact that he attended a Muslim school in Indonesia as a six year-old. The slime is being attributed by those peddling it to the Clinton campaign, but that seems highly unlikely. Even if Hilary were that evil, she's not that stupid. But it hardly bears thinking about how ugly the next US presidential campaign will become.

The Beast's quite scurrilous 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2006 is a good read.

In the wake of the iPhone, there's a larger-scale demonstration of multi-touch sensing (from the TED conference) available on YouTube. There are obvious applications for data visualisation and music and graphic composition. It makes those Star Trek control consoles look a bit dull. Prediction: in the future people will wash their hands a lot more.

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