From PublicAddress.net
Don Brash looked up 'feminist' in the OED, and decided that he is one after all, even if he isn't a woman. But is his wero-phobia Victorian prudishness about naked natives or confusion over whether he might also be Maori as well as a feminist?
PRESENTER: What about the haka before an All Black rugby test? Is it a good look?
BRASH: I'm very comfortable and relaxed about that. I'm more relaxed about that than I am about some of the official welcomes that foreign visitors get. They must wonder what kind of country they get when the only official welcome they have is? is a Maori New Zealander jumping around half naked. I mean, I think there is a place for Maori culture but why is it that we always use a semi-naked male, sometimes quite pale-skinned Maori, leaping around in, you know, mock battle?
I've had a wee jibe about this already in the No Right Turn comments box. Quoting, um, myself now, out of laziness not self-importance:
Is a pale-skinned Maori not a real Maori? Does he think it would confuse the visitor if their 'half-naked savage' was obviously also part 'European'? Is it not even a real wero if the Maori performing it isn't dark enough? I don't get it. Or maybe if they're a bit of a tub, Brash finds the big white wobbly belly aspect of it distasteful.
To me this all just seems like Brash is making some kind of subconscious appeal for hotter, sexier, well-oiled half-naked wero-performers.
Either that, or he genuinely wants international visitors to think they've arrived in England rather than New Zealand.
Having previously attempted to craft race-relations solutions for the psyche of Don Brash here, I thought I might keep going.
1. Comfier, Sexier, wero
Taking the first angle, we needn't look far to find the perfect hot sexy oiled-up pale-skinned half-naked jumping Maori to make Brash "comfortable and relaxed" in representing New Zealand to international dignitaries through either a traditional wero, or in the spirit of compromise, a half-naked rendition of the Te Rauparaha Haka.
Ah, Carlos. He might have to twink out his sexy tattoos though. They look a bit too Maori.
I'm hoping that if Brash can accept this, then in the spirit of reciprocity (which he should be familiar with because he has a Chinese wife) he would also agree to adopting an election platform of demanding the All Blacks perform their international test-match haka topless also, thus raising the National Party's appeal with female voters, pouring on more of that 'feminism' stuff.
2. Returning to New Zealand to the rule of the British
Both my parents saw the independence of their countries from Britain when they were growing up. Can you imagine what it was like to be a teenager in the decolonising third world of the fifties and sixties? It was a time for the birth of rock n' roll, for the collapse of Empire, the birth of freedom. Malaysia has Merdeka Day. That's Freedom Day to you bub. Singapore's National day likewise is a celebration of their Independence day. Back then everyone looked up to India, which threw off the oppressive shackles of colonialism first of all the colonies. Britain sucked! Except for the Beatles and the Animals and the Stones. And maybe Herman's Hermits, and Gerry and the Pacemakers. But the Empire, the Empire, people hated the British Empire like they hate the American Empire now. Brash's desire for a return to the cold British handshake-on-arrival and Knighthoods and OBEs seems to me not just personally irrelevant, but historically backward. I mean - where does he think we are?
But it's not about me. It's about Don Brash. When did New Zealand declare independence? Does the date stick out for you? I can only recall that it was offered independence and didn't take it to start with. How lame is that. Awww, poor widdle country doesn't want to gwow up and leave home. Yes, our national day is closer to marking the start of colonial rule than the end of it. The day that people really think of as the cutting of the apron strings, the kicking of the adult offspring out of the basement bedroom and into the real world after too long spongeing off the parents, was when the UK joined the EEC and ended New Zealand's open access to British markets. I don't think they're really going to want us back, are they?
But waaiiit a minute, if Turkey can join, why can't we? Eh? Eh? New Zealand is more 'European' than Turkey, isn't it? It's more 'European' than Bosnia surely? I mean, Bosnia is white, but they're, like, Muslim! Who let them in? Eh? Okay, for Don Brash's sake, say we manage to join the European Union as a clip-on to the United Kingdom, through virtue of being about 75% white and kind of talking like Cockneys who got sent far far away from East London two hundred years ago... where would we find ourselves? In a place with... oh... ongoing devolution to indigenous regional parliaments and increasing protection of indigenous languages, culture and even accents through television channels, radio and arts support... and regular celebration of a history full of half-naked savages jumping up and down. Such as this one:
Bugger. But if it it was all happening in 'Europe', then this sort of cultural policy would actually be a 'European' way of doing things, right? And then Don would be more comfortable and relaxed about it. Hooray!
3. Assuaging Don's fears that he might actually be Maori.
In Brash's wero-discomfort, he seems openly confused about what a 'pale-skinned' Maori representing Maori and New Zealand culture, might actually signify. It seems a kind of fear. What is he so scared of? That he might make a racist joke in front of someone he assumed was white? Wait a minute... His entire Treaty policy is a racist joke, told in front of a nation who he assumes is all white. No, that can't be it.
Consider this. Said Don to Dallow after the 'not a feminist' debacle:
"[A]pparently a feminist can be a man or a woman, I didn't know that."
"[A]pparently a Maori can have both Maori heritage and non-Maori heritage, I didn't know that."
