(With apologies to the originators of the "redneck jokes" I hijacked..)
You know you're extremely right-wing if ....
You get off on the idea of people being tortured but cry about a dog being beaten – unless it's by you.
You support taxation only when it's used for arming the police and building roads.
You read about a murder and your first reaction is to want to do worse to the killer.
You line up outside courthouses in high profile trials and hit the van carrying the defendant.
You skip logic in an argument and go straight to verbal abuse.
You skip verbal abuse and go straight to kicking the crap out of your opponent or cheering when one of your meaner mates does.
You read about the practice of selling postcards of lynchings in the US and wonder where you can buy some for Xmas cards.
You think calling black people "monkeys" is a term of endearment.
You think dropping the atom bomb on Japan was justified.
You think people of mixed race are half-white when they are world class in something, half black when they are not, and all black when they are criminals.
You think the theory of relativity has something to do with inbreeding.
You think "potsmokingdolebludger" is one word.
You think cyclists who are killed by cars shouldn't have been on the road because they don't pay road tax.
You see no inherent contradiction in using the term "do-gooder" as an insult.
You use the word "mongrel" at least 30 times a day.
"Half-caste" to you always means "half black".
You think someone's an intellectual if they know the difference between "their" and "there".
You use the term "political correctness" as an insult at least thirty times a day but have absolutely no idea what it means.
You used to think the term '"feral underclass'"meant a wild cat under a schoolroom, but now you know that it's right-wing code for brown people.
Your gene pool doesn’t have a deep end.
You used to think that genitalia was the name of an Italian airline.
You still think genitalia is the name of an Italian airline.
You think that the war dead really are "glorious".
Your idea of a political debate is to see how many personal insults you can pack into a single sentence.
You think "agit prop" is an obnoxious rugby player.
You think clear felling tropical forest is a good thing because it means you can afford to extend your deck.
You support the right of a porn salesman to promote his sleazy products with public parades of semi naked women on motor bikes but you want to castrate rapists and lynch paedophiles..
Your sense of humour rarely clambers out of sexual innuendo but you despise "perverts".
You think the demand to "use a bullet on the scumbags" is way too liberal.
You find it hard to construct a sentence without the word "scumbag" in it.
You want to zap, shoot, flog, hang violent criminals and preserve the right to beat your kids.
You see no connection between the two attitudes or your persistent feelings of incipient rage.
You always use hyphenated words like do-gooder, bleeding-heart, liberal-leftie, touchy-feely, namby-pamby, wishy-washy, tree-hugger, feral-feminist when describing the political opposition.
You think Martin Doutre is an internationally renowned scholar and that holocaust deniers are victims of a touchy-feely, namby-pamby, do-gooder, wishy-washy, tree-hugging, feral-feminist, liberal-left conspiracy.
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Saturday, 5 June 2010
The A list
We can all sleep sounder now we know who are Canterbury's fifty most influential people – the Power A-Listers or PALs.
These sort of lists fall risk slipping into the category of junk journalism. They are as much about who isn't on them as who is, and say a lot about the priorities and values of the compilers.
We're constantly bombarded with lists of the most beautiful / sexy / wealthy / well-dressed or whatever, and despite trying hard not to, I couldn't resist doing an analysis of our home-grown "movers and shakers".
These human earthquakes are almost exclusively white, mostly male and (judging from photos and biographical details) are in, or heading towards the older demographic.
In fact, there's only one person under 30.
Three quarters are male and all, bar one, are Pakeha. (I was also guided by biographical details and photos in arriving at this figure.)
Of the female PALs, 11 are involved in politics, the arts, education or health. The twelfth is a former maker of public policy who is now a consultant on public policy.
There are two current and one former National MPs; one former and one current Labour MPs, and one former Christchurch Mayor turned "environmental entrepreneur".
Three are married to prominent businessmen a fact which no doubt helps in carrying out the charitable works which affords them their PAL status. The Arts especially benefit from PALs with time on their well manicured hands.
National heads the overall party PALitics list with a total of four current and three former MPs.
Education makes a very good showing – well, that bit of it which deals with people over the age of 18. Of the six education A-Listers, five are men and four are involved in the tertiary sector.
Both in terms of secondary schools attended by PALs and the two princiPALs on the list, Canterbury's old boy network is – as you'd expect – well represented.
Clearly the days when the leaders of student politics were significant are long gone, but I cannot see why no one from primary and early years' education figures.
There's only one churchman – the vicar of a suburban church and an outspoken supporter of the conservative Anglican Latimer Fellowship.
The sole media figure on the list is the editor who commissioned the list and who sees his newspaper as setting the City's agenda – to some measure one assumes, by publishing the list.
There are no practising doctors or nurses – the health sector PALs are both managers. Why am I not surprised?
There is no one from the labour movement unless you count the Labour MP who was a union lawyer. So, no surprises there either.
There are no specific representatives from the older population – unless you consider that is covered by the average age of the members of the list. However, given the socio-economic location of the PALs relative to the bulk of the older population, that may be an assumption too far.
The two PALs from within the criminal justice system are the tough-on-crime top cop and the elegantly attired crown prosecutor. There are no human rights advocates or prominent defence lawyers.
In the green corner we have an entrepreneur, the Chairman of ECan, and a wealthy patroness. So if you are concerned for the future of Canterbury's environment, you have every right to be.
In the "business" sector which, predictably, leads the table in terms of numbers, Christchurch City Council is far and away the most influential organisation.
There's the Mayor, the CEO of the council, the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Council's commercial arm, Christchurch City Holdings Ltd, and the Chief Executive of VBase, which manages the Council's property portfolio.
Given the Council's majority stake in the Airport, Orion and Lyttelton Port, the inclusion of the CEOs of those three organisations makes the CCC federation pretty formidable.
As an aside, given the commercial arms are managed by boards and CEOs, there's no education or social services to manage and no large scale housing – how does CCC justify paying its CEO more than the PM?
In addition to the heavy hitters from CCC Inc there are three heads of state-owned or former state-owned enterprises, three notables from the finance sector, two from retail and one each from insurance, recruitment, real estate and property.
And – ONE who heads up a company that actually makes things.
That brings me to the forty also-rans – the sixteen women and twenty-four men who are listed as examples of the social cement which holds the city together. They are granted the irritating title of "Community Hero", but let's face it – they are the B-listers.
However, their efforts are pretty important for the PALs because if you move and shake something that isn't stable, it might well fall to pieces.
Most of the B-listers run a heroic business or work in a heroic job; others (the true heroes in my book) volunteer in various community projects.
One panellist (rather naively) suggested that this is not a "rich list" but is about "influence and outcome".
Hmm. The fact that there are so many B-listers beavering away among the physically, intellectually, economically, generationally disadvantaged in our city does raise the question of how effective the PAL's influence is and how good their outcomes can be said to be.
These sort of lists fall risk slipping into the category of junk journalism. They are as much about who isn't on them as who is, and say a lot about the priorities and values of the compilers.
We're constantly bombarded with lists of the most beautiful / sexy / wealthy / well-dressed or whatever, and despite trying hard not to, I couldn't resist doing an analysis of our home-grown "movers and shakers".
These human earthquakes are almost exclusively white, mostly male and (judging from photos and biographical details) are in, or heading towards the older demographic.
In fact, there's only one person under 30.
Three quarters are male and all, bar one, are Pakeha. (I was also guided by biographical details and photos in arriving at this figure.)
Of the female PALs, 11 are involved in politics, the arts, education or health. The twelfth is a former maker of public policy who is now a consultant on public policy.
There are two current and one former National MPs; one former and one current Labour MPs, and one former Christchurch Mayor turned "environmental entrepreneur".
Three are married to prominent businessmen a fact which no doubt helps in carrying out the charitable works which affords them their PAL status. The Arts especially benefit from PALs with time on their well manicured hands.
National heads the overall party PALitics list with a total of four current and three former MPs.
Education makes a very good showing – well, that bit of it which deals with people over the age of 18. Of the six education A-Listers, five are men and four are involved in the tertiary sector.
Both in terms of secondary schools attended by PALs and the two princiPALs on the list, Canterbury's old boy network is – as you'd expect – well represented.
Clearly the days when the leaders of student politics were significant are long gone, but I cannot see why no one from primary and early years' education figures.
There's only one churchman – the vicar of a suburban church and an outspoken supporter of the conservative Anglican Latimer Fellowship.
The sole media figure on the list is the editor who commissioned the list and who sees his newspaper as setting the City's agenda – to some measure one assumes, by publishing the list.
There are no practising doctors or nurses – the health sector PALs are both managers. Why am I not surprised?
There is no one from the labour movement unless you count the Labour MP who was a union lawyer. So, no surprises there either.
There are no specific representatives from the older population – unless you consider that is covered by the average age of the members of the list. However, given the socio-economic location of the PALs relative to the bulk of the older population, that may be an assumption too far.
The two PALs from within the criminal justice system are the tough-on-crime top cop and the elegantly attired crown prosecutor. There are no human rights advocates or prominent defence lawyers.
In the green corner we have an entrepreneur, the Chairman of ECan, and a wealthy patroness. So if you are concerned for the future of Canterbury's environment, you have every right to be.
In the "business" sector which, predictably, leads the table in terms of numbers, Christchurch City Council is far and away the most influential organisation.
There's the Mayor, the CEO of the council, the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Council's commercial arm, Christchurch City Holdings Ltd, and the Chief Executive of VBase, which manages the Council's property portfolio.
Given the Council's majority stake in the Airport, Orion and Lyttelton Port, the inclusion of the CEOs of those three organisations makes the CCC federation pretty formidable.
As an aside, given the commercial arms are managed by boards and CEOs, there's no education or social services to manage and no large scale housing – how does CCC justify paying its CEO more than the PM?
In addition to the heavy hitters from CCC Inc there are three heads of state-owned or former state-owned enterprises, three notables from the finance sector, two from retail and one each from insurance, recruitment, real estate and property.
And – ONE who heads up a company that actually makes things.
That brings me to the forty also-rans – the sixteen women and twenty-four men who are listed as examples of the social cement which holds the city together. They are granted the irritating title of "Community Hero", but let's face it – they are the B-listers.
However, their efforts are pretty important for the PALs because if you move and shake something that isn't stable, it might well fall to pieces.
Most of the B-listers run a heroic business or work in a heroic job; others (the true heroes in my book) volunteer in various community projects.
One panellist (rather naively) suggested that this is not a "rich list" but is about "influence and outcome".
Hmm. The fact that there are so many B-listers beavering away among the physically, intellectually, economically, generationally disadvantaged in our city does raise the question of how effective the PAL's influence is and how good their outcomes can be said to be.
"Kill violent people, bring back capital punishment"
Now that we have a "centre, yeah right" government committed to considering ACT's "three strikes and you're in for life" policy for violent offenders, maybe Garth McVicar will reissue his call for Arizona-style army surplus tent prisons.
Perhaps we'll see more bumper stickers like those produced by Carterton's Mayor, Gary McPhee -– "Kill violent people, bring back capital punishment".
McPhee either has a great sense of humour or was blissfully unaware of the irony. He said at the time that it's not the American justice system he wants to copy but China's – i.e., where there are sixty-eight capital crimes, over half of which are non-violent offences. He also said NZ had moved too far to the political Left, so will John Key's soft-focus coalition go far enough to the Right to satisfy the law and order brigade?
A while back, a circular email was extolling the virtues of tent prisons introduced by Sherriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona. Lo and behold, a Fox News item appeared on NZ television over the holidays which reported on Arpaio's latest tactic – a reality game show aimed at luring criminals out of hiding with the promise of fame and fortune.
It's not surprising that Arizona, the US state with most people on death row, should have spawned a law enforcement officer like Arpaio. An Irish judge said of him that "he gloated over the inhumane treatment he dishes out to his inmates", and "appeared to take a chillingly sadistic pleasure in his role as incarcerator."
Arpaio forces prisoners to wear pink underwear, allegedly to prevent theft. He's even extended his "pink" theme into handcuffs. As a sideline, he flogs these items off to his adoring fans. Like his real estate deals, Arpaio's sale of these "collectables" has been the subject of legal scrutiny.
He's an enthusiastic advocate of a "restraint chair" the use of which has been condemned by Amnesty International and in which one remand prisoner died and a paraplegic's neck was broken.
The black and white striped pyjamas that members of his chain gangs (for men, women and juveniles) are required to wear are uncomfortably reminiscent of those worn by Nazi concentration camp inmates.
And then there are his army surplus tent prisons which Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesperson McVicar wants to see in NZ. In Arizona, the temperatures in these tents can reach 150 degrees F – hot enough to cause brain damage or death – not that Arpaio would lose any sleep over that possibility.
As another way of "saving taxpayers' dollars", he limits prisoners' meals to two a day at a cost of around US30c. He denies them coffee and salt; the former, because he claims it causes violence and the latter, because it saves around US$20k a year. Given the body's need for salt in extreme temperatures, it might actually be in the hope that some prisoners will die and save even more tax dollars. Given he serves out of date, oxidized food, death by diet in Arpaio's jails is not a remote possibility.
To put Arpaio's workhouse-style parsimony into perspective, lawsuits have cost Maricopa County over $40 million in settlement claims so far during Arpaio's tenure. Many other law suits are pending, and he's also facing a class-action lawsuit for violation of constitutional rights brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of remand prisoners.
Some people argue that his excesses are worthwhile because he has reduced crime but there is no evidence that his policies do anything of the sort. This Hero of the Right has been responsible for the deaths in custody of a mentally handicapped man, a blind man, and a drug addict who was in withdrawal and suffering delusions. His officers' use of a restraint chair resulted in a wheelchair bound paraplegic losing the use of his arms. The man was restrained because he demanded a catheter; he'd been arrested for possessing a gram of cannabis and calling an Irish bar owner an "Englishman".
The crimes of the others are as revealing. The blind man was serving six months for shoplifting; the mentally handicapped man was arrested for loitering; the drug addict was arrested for a minor assault on a police officer. No doubt the crimes of the desperados netted in his TV sting operation are unlikely to fall into the category of the "most wanted".
But, enough of this nasty little man. Should we do as our own champions of law and order, McVicar and MacPhee suggest, i.e., introduce tent prisons and bring back the death penalty?
Whilst there are some criminals (and people whose money and power mean they never get labeled as such) who I'd be happy to see towed way out to sea in a leaky boat with no oars, my thirst for vengeance is always eased by the thought of an innocent person facing death at the hands of the state. And it is slaked completely when I consider the implications of the socioeconomic and ethnic profiles of the prison population – in both Arizona and Aotearoa-New Zealand.
Of all executions carried out in the USA between 1930-1968, 1,751 of the inmates were white and 2,066 were black. Black people comprised around 6% of the general population but 53% of those executed for capital crimes. Even more chilling is the fact that, of the 453 executed on the bar a rape conviction, 48 were white and 405 were black.
These statistics speak both to race and class and should speak to us if we contemplate learning lessons from the likes of Arpaio and his supporters.
NZ already has an appallingly high incarceration rate and half the prison population is Maori. If you are poor and/or brown in Godzone you are more likely to be arrested, charged with a more serious crime, found guilty and receive a heavier sentence than if you are white and/or affluent. This is a reality that the law and order brigade may be content to ignore or consider to be justifiable. I do not.
Perhaps we'll see more bumper stickers like those produced by Carterton's Mayor, Gary McPhee -– "Kill violent people, bring back capital punishment".
McPhee either has a great sense of humour or was blissfully unaware of the irony. He said at the time that it's not the American justice system he wants to copy but China's – i.e., where there are sixty-eight capital crimes, over half of which are non-violent offences. He also said NZ had moved too far to the political Left, so will John Key's soft-focus coalition go far enough to the Right to satisfy the law and order brigade?
A while back, a circular email was extolling the virtues of tent prisons introduced by Sherriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona. Lo and behold, a Fox News item appeared on NZ television over the holidays which reported on Arpaio's latest tactic – a reality game show aimed at luring criminals out of hiding with the promise of fame and fortune.
It's not surprising that Arizona, the US state with most people on death row, should have spawned a law enforcement officer like Arpaio. An Irish judge said of him that "he gloated over the inhumane treatment he dishes out to his inmates", and "appeared to take a chillingly sadistic pleasure in his role as incarcerator."
Arpaio forces prisoners to wear pink underwear, allegedly to prevent theft. He's even extended his "pink" theme into handcuffs. As a sideline, he flogs these items off to his adoring fans. Like his real estate deals, Arpaio's sale of these "collectables" has been the subject of legal scrutiny.
He's an enthusiastic advocate of a "restraint chair" the use of which has been condemned by Amnesty International and in which one remand prisoner died and a paraplegic's neck was broken.
The black and white striped pyjamas that members of his chain gangs (for men, women and juveniles) are required to wear are uncomfortably reminiscent of those worn by Nazi concentration camp inmates.
And then there are his army surplus tent prisons which Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesperson McVicar wants to see in NZ. In Arizona, the temperatures in these tents can reach 150 degrees F – hot enough to cause brain damage or death – not that Arpaio would lose any sleep over that possibility.
As another way of "saving taxpayers' dollars", he limits prisoners' meals to two a day at a cost of around US30c. He denies them coffee and salt; the former, because he claims it causes violence and the latter, because it saves around US$20k a year. Given the body's need for salt in extreme temperatures, it might actually be in the hope that some prisoners will die and save even more tax dollars. Given he serves out of date, oxidized food, death by diet in Arpaio's jails is not a remote possibility.
To put Arpaio's workhouse-style parsimony into perspective, lawsuits have cost Maricopa County over $40 million in settlement claims so far during Arpaio's tenure. Many other law suits are pending, and he's also facing a class-action lawsuit for violation of constitutional rights brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of remand prisoners.
Some people argue that his excesses are worthwhile because he has reduced crime but there is no evidence that his policies do anything of the sort. This Hero of the Right has been responsible for the deaths in custody of a mentally handicapped man, a blind man, and a drug addict who was in withdrawal and suffering delusions. His officers' use of a restraint chair resulted in a wheelchair bound paraplegic losing the use of his arms. The man was restrained because he demanded a catheter; he'd been arrested for possessing a gram of cannabis and calling an Irish bar owner an "Englishman".
The crimes of the others are as revealing. The blind man was serving six months for shoplifting; the mentally handicapped man was arrested for loitering; the drug addict was arrested for a minor assault on a police officer. No doubt the crimes of the desperados netted in his TV sting operation are unlikely to fall into the category of the "most wanted".
But, enough of this nasty little man. Should we do as our own champions of law and order, McVicar and MacPhee suggest, i.e., introduce tent prisons and bring back the death penalty?
Whilst there are some criminals (and people whose money and power mean they never get labeled as such) who I'd be happy to see towed way out to sea in a leaky boat with no oars, my thirst for vengeance is always eased by the thought of an innocent person facing death at the hands of the state. And it is slaked completely when I consider the implications of the socioeconomic and ethnic profiles of the prison population – in both Arizona and Aotearoa-New Zealand.
Of all executions carried out in the USA between 1930-1968, 1,751 of the inmates were white and 2,066 were black. Black people comprised around 6% of the general population but 53% of those executed for capital crimes. Even more chilling is the fact that, of the 453 executed on the bar a rape conviction, 48 were white and 405 were black.
These statistics speak both to race and class and should speak to us if we contemplate learning lessons from the likes of Arpaio and his supporters.
NZ already has an appallingly high incarceration rate and half the prison population is Maori. If you are poor and/or brown in Godzone you are more likely to be arrested, charged with a more serious crime, found guilty and receive a heavier sentence than if you are white and/or affluent. This is a reality that the law and order brigade may be content to ignore or consider to be justifiable. I do not.
A town by any other name ...
Recently I overheard a woman in a shop in Rangiora loudly declaiming about the use of flaxes to replace herbaceous borders in public gardens. She was bemoaning the mindset that leads to this and other "PC madness" such as Māori street names which English immigrants can't pronounce.
I asked her if she thought the town's name should be changed.
'Yes' she stated firmly, 'to something English'.
She was then distracted by the mental effort of having to enter her pin number so I wasn't able to suggest some English town names more in keeping with her mindset such as Nasty, Dull, Ugley or, especially apposite in her case, Pratt's Bottom.
This encounter reminded me of a column by Rosemary McLeod last year in which she wrote of her dislike of harakeke and wharariki - New Zealand flaxes – and her love of roses and all they symbolise. Well, with a name like hers who wouldn't love roses?
Perhaps, the woman in Rangiora also hankers for a simpler, whiter time when there was civic pride, band rotundas, and a small army of gardeners to maintain the perfect lawns and formal plantings which spoke to some of "home" – and "home" was – well, not here.
The flax versus the rose is a semiotician's delight: the indigenous versus the exotic; the utilitarian versus the decorative; the authentic versus the artificial.
The native flax makes a sterling wind break; it feeds native birds, in the right setting it can be startlingly architectural, it is drought and flood tolerant, it more or less looks after itself and - it belongs here. I love it.
Roses on the other hand are about as unnatural and contrived as a plant can be and they are always trying to get back to what they were.
Hybridised roses are nutrient and water hungry, pest and disease prone and when they're not blooming, they're miserable looking things. Pick them and they drop their petals in protest –sometimes within minutes. A shower of rain and the blooms rot or let any one of our three prevailing winds blow and the petals fly off leaving stumps that have to be dead-headed.
If you don't prune them correctly, they produce multiple small flowers or shoot out green branches from the root stock. The older they get the worse the thorns are – they become like some newspaper columnists – all spiky and defensive.
Rose growers have to use an array of chemicals to control the white, green and black fly, black and brown spot and scale insects that beset the poor hybrid things. This chemical arsenal includes products like imidacloprid which, along with killing plant pests, also kills bees and lady birds, causes egg thinning in birds, is acutely toxic to earth worms, freshwater fish and crustaceans and causes thyroid problems in mammals.
While there are organic sprays and disease resistant plant varieties the fact remains – most of the chemicals that are put into the ecosystem in NZ are to keep wanted exotic plants alive or to kill unwanted exotic plant, insect and animal species.
I love the tangle of an English hedgerow but here, for the most part, the vast array of exotic weeds which festoon our hills and roadsides look fugly.
My house looks straight out at Maukatere – Mount Grey for those who don't know it by its original name – which is a lovely mountain despite all that's been done to it. There are a few tiny pockets of its original east coast beech forest left in gullies too steep for commercial planting but much of the mountain is a blighted landscape of pines and gorse. A few sad natives try to survive outside the gullies, and lupins do their best to brighten it up but mostly it's a miserable place.
I know that pre-European Māori did their own bit of species eradication but the scale and pace of European settlers' impact on this landscape in the 160 or so years of settlement is almost unparalleled. They set about deliberately trying to turn this unique group of islands into a little England.
Ironically, much of what was seen as quintessentially English was artificial. It featured plants imported from all over the world and hybridised by clever gardeners employed by land-grabbing men who became rich through the triangular trade.
The idealised 'English landscape' was a product of imperialism, and about as natural as a tea rose.
That's not to say it isn’t glorious – it is – but it's also hugely expensive to establish and to maintain. The formal garden, like the perfect lawn, is an artifice and a status symbol – for those individuals and societies with the time, money, water and space to indulge in it.
Maybe, in these cash-strapped times, those who hate the humble but hardy native trees, flaxes, and grasses, should volunteer to seed, pot up and plant out all the annuals, lift and divide the perennials, seed, feed, weed and mow the lawns; do the deheading, pruning, mulching and spraying to help maintain those blooming exotic emblems of empire.
I asked her if she thought the town's name should be changed.
'Yes' she stated firmly, 'to something English'.
She was then distracted by the mental effort of having to enter her pin number so I wasn't able to suggest some English town names more in keeping with her mindset such as Nasty, Dull, Ugley or, especially apposite in her case, Pratt's Bottom.
This encounter reminded me of a column by Rosemary McLeod last year in which she wrote of her dislike of harakeke and wharariki - New Zealand flaxes – and her love of roses and all they symbolise. Well, with a name like hers who wouldn't love roses?
Perhaps, the woman in Rangiora also hankers for a simpler, whiter time when there was civic pride, band rotundas, and a small army of gardeners to maintain the perfect lawns and formal plantings which spoke to some of "home" – and "home" was – well, not here.
The flax versus the rose is a semiotician's delight: the indigenous versus the exotic; the utilitarian versus the decorative; the authentic versus the artificial.
The native flax makes a sterling wind break; it feeds native birds, in the right setting it can be startlingly architectural, it is drought and flood tolerant, it more or less looks after itself and - it belongs here. I love it.
Roses on the other hand are about as unnatural and contrived as a plant can be and they are always trying to get back to what they were.
Hybridised roses are nutrient and water hungry, pest and disease prone and when they're not blooming, they're miserable looking things. Pick them and they drop their petals in protest –sometimes within minutes. A shower of rain and the blooms rot or let any one of our three prevailing winds blow and the petals fly off leaving stumps that have to be dead-headed.
If you don't prune them correctly, they produce multiple small flowers or shoot out green branches from the root stock. The older they get the worse the thorns are – they become like some newspaper columnists – all spiky and defensive.
Rose growers have to use an array of chemicals to control the white, green and black fly, black and brown spot and scale insects that beset the poor hybrid things. This chemical arsenal includes products like imidacloprid which, along with killing plant pests, also kills bees and lady birds, causes egg thinning in birds, is acutely toxic to earth worms, freshwater fish and crustaceans and causes thyroid problems in mammals.
While there are organic sprays and disease resistant plant varieties the fact remains – most of the chemicals that are put into the ecosystem in NZ are to keep wanted exotic plants alive or to kill unwanted exotic plant, insect and animal species.
I love the tangle of an English hedgerow but here, for the most part, the vast array of exotic weeds which festoon our hills and roadsides look fugly.
My house looks straight out at Maukatere – Mount Grey for those who don't know it by its original name – which is a lovely mountain despite all that's been done to it. There are a few tiny pockets of its original east coast beech forest left in gullies too steep for commercial planting but much of the mountain is a blighted landscape of pines and gorse. A few sad natives try to survive outside the gullies, and lupins do their best to brighten it up but mostly it's a miserable place.
I know that pre-European Māori did their own bit of species eradication but the scale and pace of European settlers' impact on this landscape in the 160 or so years of settlement is almost unparalleled. They set about deliberately trying to turn this unique group of islands into a little England.
Ironically, much of what was seen as quintessentially English was artificial. It featured plants imported from all over the world and hybridised by clever gardeners employed by land-grabbing men who became rich through the triangular trade.
The idealised 'English landscape' was a product of imperialism, and about as natural as a tea rose.
That's not to say it isn’t glorious – it is – but it's also hugely expensive to establish and to maintain. The formal garden, like the perfect lawn, is an artifice and a status symbol – for those individuals and societies with the time, money, water and space to indulge in it.
Maybe, in these cash-strapped times, those who hate the humble but hardy native trees, flaxes, and grasses, should volunteer to seed, pot up and plant out all the annuals, lift and divide the perennials, seed, feed, weed and mow the lawns; do the deheading, pruning, mulching and spraying to help maintain those blooming exotic emblems of empire.
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Hunting
(First published in the Christchurch Press)
The hunt season is upon us – the sort of hunt which involves dozens of humans, horses and dogs, and one small herbivore. Quite often the herbivore gets away after being terrorised for varying lengths of time and sometimes it gets caught.
When I was growing up in North Canterbury in NZ I met a small jodhpur-clad girl who had the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world at the time – a pony. She also had stripes of blood on each cheek and was clutching what I thought was a rabbit's foot. She had been to her first hunt and had been "blooded".
I couldn't make up my mind whether to dislike her for being excited about the killing of a bunny, appalled that she could let someone stripe her face with its blood, or envy her for her pony. My envy lost – a portent of a lifelong sympathy for the underdog or, in that case, the under-rabbit.
I'm a horse owner, and before the onset of age-related sanity, I was also a keen rider. However, I have always disapproved of hunting with hounds. Forty riders on horseback plus thirty or so hounds pursuing one very small herbivore is symbolic of all the one-sided battles there have ever been. It's David against one hundred and ten Goliaths. It's the little guy up against impossible odds, sometimes getting away but mostly being chased to utter exhaustion, then being torn limb from limb. It's indefensible.
This form of hunting causes living creatures to experience prolonged terror. It is neither a humane nor an efficient way to kill pests. I know that nature is red in tooth and claw but there's nothing natural about 18,000 kgs of horse, 2,500 kgs of rider and 1000 kgs of dog versus 4 kgs of hare.
I have no problem with people enjoying riding across country. Those who enjoy following hounds in pursuit of some small furry thing can still do so – the small furry thing just mustn't be a living creature. We don't allow racing greyhounds to chase living bunnies.
Given the fact that the hunts put spars on fences for those sensible folk who don't like to risk themselves and their horses leaping full wire, why not drag a scent for the hounds to follow? It's better for the land and safer for horses and riders. Drag hunting (the name conjures up some amusing images) was preferred by some hunts in the UK even before anti-hunting legislation was passed.
Prior to being banned, the sight of well-heeled humans astride their well-shod horses, quaffing spirits from hip flasks and lurching off in pursuit of Britain's only remaining large predator, was always good for a laugh – if you weren't a fox. Some people saw it as a proud tradition, some as selfish and cruel, and others as symbolic of centuries old class divisions.
The spectacle of dozens of riders astride powerful horses, scores of hunt supporters and spotters following in cars and a team of terrier men to dig the fox out if it went to ground, was quite surreal.
The dogs were just following their instincts, the horses were trying to balance theirs against the demands of their riders, and the humans – well, they were just having a good time. But when you know how reclusive and small a fox is, the whole thing became rather ugly.
I had a debate with a neighbour in London who said he'd seen a fox the size of an Alsatian dog in his garden. I said it probably was an Alsatian dog. No, he said, it was a fox. Nonsense, I said, foxes are little. Not this one, he said, it was huge.
The hunt season is upon us – the sort of hunt which involves dozens of humans, horses and dogs, and one small herbivore. Quite often the herbivore gets away after being terrorised for varying lengths of time and sometimes it gets caught.
When I was growing up in North Canterbury in NZ I met a small jodhpur-clad girl who had the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world at the time – a pony. She also had stripes of blood on each cheek and was clutching what I thought was a rabbit's foot. She had been to her first hunt and had been "blooded".
I couldn't make up my mind whether to dislike her for being excited about the killing of a bunny, appalled that she could let someone stripe her face with its blood, or envy her for her pony. My envy lost – a portent of a lifelong sympathy for the underdog or, in that case, the under-rabbit.
I'm a horse owner, and before the onset of age-related sanity, I was also a keen rider. However, I have always disapproved of hunting with hounds. Forty riders on horseback plus thirty or so hounds pursuing one very small herbivore is symbolic of all the one-sided battles there have ever been. It's David against one hundred and ten Goliaths. It's the little guy up against impossible odds, sometimes getting away but mostly being chased to utter exhaustion, then being torn limb from limb. It's indefensible.
This form of hunting causes living creatures to experience prolonged terror. It is neither a humane nor an efficient way to kill pests. I know that nature is red in tooth and claw but there's nothing natural about 18,000 kgs of horse, 2,500 kgs of rider and 1000 kgs of dog versus 4 kgs of hare.
I have no problem with people enjoying riding across country. Those who enjoy following hounds in pursuit of some small furry thing can still do so – the small furry thing just mustn't be a living creature. We don't allow racing greyhounds to chase living bunnies.
Given the fact that the hunts put spars on fences for those sensible folk who don't like to risk themselves and their horses leaping full wire, why not drag a scent for the hounds to follow? It's better for the land and safer for horses and riders. Drag hunting (the name conjures up some amusing images) was preferred by some hunts in the UK even before anti-hunting legislation was passed.
Prior to being banned, the sight of well-heeled humans astride their well-shod horses, quaffing spirits from hip flasks and lurching off in pursuit of Britain's only remaining large predator, was always good for a laugh – if you weren't a fox. Some people saw it as a proud tradition, some as selfish and cruel, and others as symbolic of centuries old class divisions.
The spectacle of dozens of riders astride powerful horses, scores of hunt supporters and spotters following in cars and a team of terrier men to dig the fox out if it went to ground, was quite surreal.
The dogs were just following their instincts, the horses were trying to balance theirs against the demands of their riders, and the humans – well, they were just having a good time. But when you know how reclusive and small a fox is, the whole thing became rather ugly.
I had a debate with a neighbour in London who said he'd seen a fox the size of an Alsatian dog in his garden. I said it probably was an Alsatian dog. No, he said, it was a fox. Nonsense, I said, foxes are little. Not this one, he said, it was huge.
I thought he was on drugs, but my curiosity was piqued, so I asked various people how big they thought a fox was. Estimates ranged from about the size of a spaniel to the size of an Alsatian.
The Scottish fox is the bigger of the two foxes native to the British Isles. It was introduced to England because it provided better sport than the smaller, more timid English fox. A fully grown Scottish fox weighs in at around 7 kgs – about the size of a very big cat. The vixen is much smaller.
Okay, it's a wild animal and can give good account of itself – when killing chickens. Against thirty or more fox hounds aided by the (relative) intelligence of all the humans involved and the speed and stamina of the horses (without which most of the humans wouldn't make it over the first fence) it's not very formidable.
Thankfully, Europeans didn't introduce the fox to New Zealand but, undeterred by the absence of the traditional British prey, the hunt fraternity looked around for a suitable huntee, and sadly for the hare, their gaze rested upon it.
Faster than a rabbit, lacking the rabbit's defence of going to ground, big enough (at a stretch) to justify the chase and responsible for the occasional pruning of young trees, the dotty little hare became the prey of choice for the great Kiwi hunt.
These days we place both moral and legal emphasis on humane methods of killing animals. I cannot see how hunting hares with hounds qualifies.
The Scottish fox is the bigger of the two foxes native to the British Isles. It was introduced to England because it provided better sport than the smaller, more timid English fox. A fully grown Scottish fox weighs in at around 7 kgs – about the size of a very big cat. The vixen is much smaller.
Okay, it's a wild animal and can give good account of itself – when killing chickens. Against thirty or more fox hounds aided by the (relative) intelligence of all the humans involved and the speed and stamina of the horses (without which most of the humans wouldn't make it over the first fence) it's not very formidable.
Thankfully, Europeans didn't introduce the fox to New Zealand but, undeterred by the absence of the traditional British prey, the hunt fraternity looked around for a suitable huntee, and sadly for the hare, their gaze rested upon it.
Faster than a rabbit, lacking the rabbit's defence of going to ground, big enough (at a stretch) to justify the chase and responsible for the occasional pruning of young trees, the dotty little hare became the prey of choice for the great Kiwi hunt.
These days we place both moral and legal emphasis on humane methods of killing animals. I cannot see how hunting hares with hounds qualifies.
Slavery
(First published in Christchurch Press)
2007 is the 200th anniversary of what has been described as one of the few "perfectly virtuous acts in the history of nations" – the abolition of the British slave trade.
There were virtuous people involved, among them the Quakers, who started the movement; Thomas Clarkson, written out of history by Wilberforce's sons, and Granville Sharp, who defended runaways.
But the reason abolitionism became so powerful in England was a coalescence of social and political movements, shifts in political consciousness and changes in production methods.
This social revolution made it politically, economically and militarily expedient for Britain to end slavery. It also changed the way Britain dealt with its colonies, especially New Zealand.
On a prosaic level, our consumption of sugar, potatoes, tobacco and coffee derives from the triangular trade in which ships took goods to Africa, bartered them for slaves, transported the slaves to the colonies, and returned with the products of slave labour. Our use of the word "manchester" to describe cotton and linen goods reflects that city's key role in the triangular trade.
The English dominated the trade from the late 16th century. Estimates of the number taken, mainly young and able-bodied, vary between 8 and 14 million, and up to 40 million more died in wars and raids.
From Elizabethan times slaves were taken to England where their legal status remained unclear. They often absconded and when recaptured would be sold to West Indian plantations. Granville Sharp and others fought for years defending runaways and pressing for a legal ruling on slavery in England.
The 1772 Mansfield judgement in the Somerset case said no-one could compel a slave to leave England, but it did not formally end slavery. Most English slaves effectively freed themselves by the 1790s and, with the freed slaves who had fought for the English in the American Revolutionary War, formed part of the abolition movement.
From the 1770s, Quaker pamphlets and posters exposed the way slaves were treated in the colonies. Mortality rates were very high; beatings, rapes, torture and murder were commonplace. In 1781, in an insurance scam, 135 sick slaves were thrown overboard from the slaver Zong. The case was dealt with in the English courts, not as one of mass murder, but as a property dispute.
Conditions on board slavers were little better for sailors; one in five died on the voyage. Many people saw a correlation between slavery and the injustice of press ganging and forced labour in the Royal Navy.
The Acts of Enclosure, the colonisation of Ireland and the Highland Clearances forced people off the land and enabled the creation of vast estates by rich men, many of whom made their fortunes in the triangular trade.
Feudal production methods and ties were being broken; dispossessed rural folk and unemployed artisans formed a new urban poor for whom life was both harsh and precarious. A new middle class emerged; people with the time and means to act upon their consciences and to question the vagaries and corruption of the parliamentary process.
At this time, only 5% of men could vote, but there was a strong culture of "intuitive democracy". It was legal to own and operate printing presses; there were many libraries and debating societies and an efficient road and postal system allowed a high level of uncensored communication. All these factors were successfully exploited by the Abolitionists.
Slavery created the capital that fuelled the industrial revolution that created a working class – and it was the first issue to galvanise nation-wide working class action. After Wilberforce's first abolition bill was defeated in 1788, anti-slavery petitions flooded into parliament from working class organisations. At the forefront of the demand for emancipation were women's associations which organised a boycott of sugar that was supported by 300,000 people.
The link between abolition and the radicalism of levelling and the rights of man horrified Wilberforce who believed the trade should be stopped, but that the property rights of slave owners had to be protected. He also believed that working people should be treated well but kept firmly in their place, hence his support of the 1795 Combinations Acts and the outlawing of radical and trade union activities.
The 1807 Act formally halted the slave trade but it wasn't until 1833 that slaves were freed throughout the empire. Whilst hefty compensation was paid to slave owners, slaves were forced to work for a further four years without pay. Freedom when it finally came was notional; ex-slaves had no political voice and were shackled by debt. Slavery had been replaced by another system just as brutal and exploitative.
One year after emancipation, the Reform Bill introduced one of the most detested institutions in British social history – the workhouse.
2007 is the 200th anniversary of what has been described as one of the few "perfectly virtuous acts in the history of nations" – the abolition of the British slave trade.
There were virtuous people involved, among them the Quakers, who started the movement; Thomas Clarkson, written out of history by Wilberforce's sons, and Granville Sharp, who defended runaways.
But the reason abolitionism became so powerful in England was a coalescence of social and political movements, shifts in political consciousness and changes in production methods.
This social revolution made it politically, economically and militarily expedient for Britain to end slavery. It also changed the way Britain dealt with its colonies, especially New Zealand.
On a prosaic level, our consumption of sugar, potatoes, tobacco and coffee derives from the triangular trade in which ships took goods to Africa, bartered them for slaves, transported the slaves to the colonies, and returned with the products of slave labour. Our use of the word "manchester" to describe cotton and linen goods reflects that city's key role in the triangular trade.
The English dominated the trade from the late 16th century. Estimates of the number taken, mainly young and able-bodied, vary between 8 and 14 million, and up to 40 million more died in wars and raids.
From Elizabethan times slaves were taken to England where their legal status remained unclear. They often absconded and when recaptured would be sold to West Indian plantations. Granville Sharp and others fought for years defending runaways and pressing for a legal ruling on slavery in England.
The 1772 Mansfield judgement in the Somerset case said no-one could compel a slave to leave England, but it did not formally end slavery. Most English slaves effectively freed themselves by the 1790s and, with the freed slaves who had fought for the English in the American Revolutionary War, formed part of the abolition movement.
From the 1770s, Quaker pamphlets and posters exposed the way slaves were treated in the colonies. Mortality rates were very high; beatings, rapes, torture and murder were commonplace. In 1781, in an insurance scam, 135 sick slaves were thrown overboard from the slaver Zong. The case was dealt with in the English courts, not as one of mass murder, but as a property dispute.
Conditions on board slavers were little better for sailors; one in five died on the voyage. Many people saw a correlation between slavery and the injustice of press ganging and forced labour in the Royal Navy.
The Acts of Enclosure, the colonisation of Ireland and the Highland Clearances forced people off the land and enabled the creation of vast estates by rich men, many of whom made their fortunes in the triangular trade.
Feudal production methods and ties were being broken; dispossessed rural folk and unemployed artisans formed a new urban poor for whom life was both harsh and precarious. A new middle class emerged; people with the time and means to act upon their consciences and to question the vagaries and corruption of the parliamentary process.
At this time, only 5% of men could vote, but there was a strong culture of "intuitive democracy". It was legal to own and operate printing presses; there were many libraries and debating societies and an efficient road and postal system allowed a high level of uncensored communication. All these factors were successfully exploited by the Abolitionists.
Slavery created the capital that fuelled the industrial revolution that created a working class – and it was the first issue to galvanise nation-wide working class action. After Wilberforce's first abolition bill was defeated in 1788, anti-slavery petitions flooded into parliament from working class organisations. At the forefront of the demand for emancipation were women's associations which organised a boycott of sugar that was supported by 300,000 people.
The link between abolition and the radicalism of levelling and the rights of man horrified Wilberforce who believed the trade should be stopped, but that the property rights of slave owners had to be protected. He also believed that working people should be treated well but kept firmly in their place, hence his support of the 1795 Combinations Acts and the outlawing of radical and trade union activities.
The 1807 Act formally halted the slave trade but it wasn't until 1833 that slaves were freed throughout the empire. Whilst hefty compensation was paid to slave owners, slaves were forced to work for a further four years without pay. Freedom when it finally came was notional; ex-slaves had no political voice and were shackled by debt. Slavery had been replaced by another system just as brutal and exploitative.
One year after emancipation, the Reform Bill introduced one of the most detested institutions in British social history – the workhouse.
Political Correctness: The New 'Loony Left'
(First published in Christchurch Press)
In the mid-1980s I read in this newspaper that the borough where I lived in London had banned the use of black bin bags because they were racially insulting. That untrue story was one of many about Labour-led boroughs which appeared in the British tabloid press. As smear campaigns go, it was pretty effective – until it died from a combination of the weight of its own lies and overwork.
I have been watching the development of a new version of the loony-Left campaign here in New Zealand. Some old-style stories have even reappeared. For example, last year Michael Bassett claimed the London Borough of Wandsworth's Labour Council had removed Charles' and Diana's portraits because they "celebrated heterosexuality". Wandsworth has always been a Tory Borough, and if this story is anything like the saga of Baa Baa Green Sheep, it should be consigned to the Bad Black Bin Bag.
The Right's current scare and smear tactic is the spectre of "PC madness", which is being blamed for everything from rising crime to falling academic standards. The notion of a coterie of leftist "elites" which attack traditional values, using the "weapons'"of political correctness, cultural relativism and multiculturalism, is an American, neo-conservative creation.
The idea is that leftist minority interest groups have engineered a social agenda which has undermined the "traditional" family and marriage through such things as the legalisation and/or promotion of abortion, prostitution, homosexuality, and feminism.
They are also accused of having created a claustrophobic intellectual environment, a crime wave, reverse discrimination and, by pursuing multiculturalism, of having eroded Kiwi values.
It's no wonder some New Zealanders feel out of their depth. But that's the intention, so they'll be relieved when the anti-PC life guards arrive to pull them back onto terra firma, aka, "the way things used to be".
Quite how a loose, and often competing, coalition of minority interest groups has managed to acquire weapons of mass indoctrination and use them to such shocking and awesome effect mystifies me – in my experience of interest group politics, they'd be more likely to use them on each other.
The term "politically correct" came into popular usage in the USA in the early 1970s to describe social and political initiatives which challenged discriminatory attitudes and practices. A particular focus of this was on language and imagery which perpetuated negative racial and gender stereotypes.
Some people claim that it has gone too far and has given minorities an unfair advantage over the mainstream. Claims of unfair advantage are usually ideologically motivated, as is the contraposition of minorities against mainstream. After all, everyone is in some sort of minority, especially the very rich.
No doubt political correctness has been used to intimidate and to exclude, and overly enthusiastic, opportunistic or just plain angry people sometimes use it as a stick to beat their opponents. However, the bigotry and discrimination which gave rise to it were, and remain, vastly more hurtful and harmful.
Some argue that PCness prevents people from speaking their minds, but there are always limits to what may be said in a public arena. These shift, either reflecting broader socio-political changes or as a deliberate tactic to stretch or narrow the boundaries of acceptability.
Some commentators these days use un-PC language to make a political point. In so doing, they risk legitimating the words and actions of people who take their bigotry a great deal more seriously.
A reporter asked Peter Jackson how he'd deal with the name of Guy Gibson's dog in The Dambusters. Jackson didn't comment but the non-story provoked debate about whether people who object to the 'N word' are being PC or oversensitive. Those who mourn the loss of Golliwogs and the freedom to call their dogs "Nigger", need to remember their history.
Industrialised slavery reduced black people to the legal status of animals. Slavery was abolished in 1865 in the USA but, by the early 1900s, all the Southern states had disenfranchised and segregated former slaves. Vicious caricatures and moral panics fuelled and legitimated the beatings, rapes, castrations and lynchings of black people that were commonplace throughout the South until the 1960s.
That word in the mouths of white supremacists, became the most potent symbol of those dreadful times.
When earlier generations used the word to name a pet, they didn't question whether it was offensive. They had the excuse of ignorance, given any voices speaking for women's and minority rights and interests were drowned out by the clamour of the largely white, male status quo staking its claim to the economic, political and moral high ground.
It's hard to use that excuse now that women and minorities have a political voice. If what they demand seems to be extreme, it needs a reasoned debate, not the hysteria of moral panics.
Political correctness cannot force people to abandon their values. A law which allows people to formalise same-sex relationships won't destroy the nuclear family – but the financial and emotional pressures of over-consuming, isolated family units might.
Harsher sentencing won't stop property crime while the poor have their noses rubbed in images of wealth and privilege, and where many means of achieving wealth may be legal but are unethical.
Deploring sexual violence against women and children without considering the effects of commercially generated words and images that objectify and sexualise them is hypocrisy.
The anti-PC campaign creates moral panics by presenting extreme examples of "PC-ness" as typical. It links PC to emotive words like "madness" to scare people who see themselves as middle-of-the-road.
In the mid-1980s I read in this newspaper that the borough where I lived in London had banned the use of black bin bags because they were racially insulting. That untrue story was one of many about Labour-led boroughs which appeared in the British tabloid press. As smear campaigns go, it was pretty effective – until it died from a combination of the weight of its own lies and overwork.
I have been watching the development of a new version of the loony-Left campaign here in New Zealand. Some old-style stories have even reappeared. For example, last year Michael Bassett claimed the London Borough of Wandsworth's Labour Council had removed Charles' and Diana's portraits because they "celebrated heterosexuality". Wandsworth has always been a Tory Borough, and if this story is anything like the saga of Baa Baa Green Sheep, it should be consigned to the Bad Black Bin Bag.
The Right's current scare and smear tactic is the spectre of "PC madness", which is being blamed for everything from rising crime to falling academic standards. The notion of a coterie of leftist "elites" which attack traditional values, using the "weapons'"of political correctness, cultural relativism and multiculturalism, is an American, neo-conservative creation.
The idea is that leftist minority interest groups have engineered a social agenda which has undermined the "traditional" family and marriage through such things as the legalisation and/or promotion of abortion, prostitution, homosexuality, and feminism.
They are also accused of having created a claustrophobic intellectual environment, a crime wave, reverse discrimination and, by pursuing multiculturalism, of having eroded Kiwi values.
It's no wonder some New Zealanders feel out of their depth. But that's the intention, so they'll be relieved when the anti-PC life guards arrive to pull them back onto terra firma, aka, "the way things used to be".
Quite how a loose, and often competing, coalition of minority interest groups has managed to acquire weapons of mass indoctrination and use them to such shocking and awesome effect mystifies me – in my experience of interest group politics, they'd be more likely to use them on each other.
The term "politically correct" came into popular usage in the USA in the early 1970s to describe social and political initiatives which challenged discriminatory attitudes and practices. A particular focus of this was on language and imagery which perpetuated negative racial and gender stereotypes.
Some people claim that it has gone too far and has given minorities an unfair advantage over the mainstream. Claims of unfair advantage are usually ideologically motivated, as is the contraposition of minorities against mainstream. After all, everyone is in some sort of minority, especially the very rich.
No doubt political correctness has been used to intimidate and to exclude, and overly enthusiastic, opportunistic or just plain angry people sometimes use it as a stick to beat their opponents. However, the bigotry and discrimination which gave rise to it were, and remain, vastly more hurtful and harmful.
Some argue that PCness prevents people from speaking their minds, but there are always limits to what may be said in a public arena. These shift, either reflecting broader socio-political changes or as a deliberate tactic to stretch or narrow the boundaries of acceptability.
Some commentators these days use un-PC language to make a political point. In so doing, they risk legitimating the words and actions of people who take their bigotry a great deal more seriously.
A reporter asked Peter Jackson how he'd deal with the name of Guy Gibson's dog in The Dambusters. Jackson didn't comment but the non-story provoked debate about whether people who object to the 'N word' are being PC or oversensitive. Those who mourn the loss of Golliwogs and the freedom to call their dogs "Nigger", need to remember their history.
Industrialised slavery reduced black people to the legal status of animals. Slavery was abolished in 1865 in the USA but, by the early 1900s, all the Southern states had disenfranchised and segregated former slaves. Vicious caricatures and moral panics fuelled and legitimated the beatings, rapes, castrations and lynchings of black people that were commonplace throughout the South until the 1960s.
That word in the mouths of white supremacists, became the most potent symbol of those dreadful times.
When earlier generations used the word to name a pet, they didn't question whether it was offensive. They had the excuse of ignorance, given any voices speaking for women's and minority rights and interests were drowned out by the clamour of the largely white, male status quo staking its claim to the economic, political and moral high ground.
It's hard to use that excuse now that women and minorities have a political voice. If what they demand seems to be extreme, it needs a reasoned debate, not the hysteria of moral panics.
Political correctness cannot force people to abandon their values. A law which allows people to formalise same-sex relationships won't destroy the nuclear family – but the financial and emotional pressures of over-consuming, isolated family units might.
Harsher sentencing won't stop property crime while the poor have their noses rubbed in images of wealth and privilege, and where many means of achieving wealth may be legal but are unethical.
Deploring sexual violence against women and children without considering the effects of commercially generated words and images that objectify and sexualise them is hypocrisy.
The anti-PC campaign creates moral panics by presenting extreme examples of "PC-ness" as typical. It links PC to emotive words like "madness" to scare people who see themselves as middle-of-the-road.
It doesn't specify what "traditional values" are so it won't alienate people who have conflicting definitions and expectations.
Its appeal lies in going back – to an idealised time when there was moral certainty and social order.
In reality, it's about going back to a time when women's place was in the home and people of colour were acceptable as long as they stayed apart or behaved like white people; when homosexuals stayed in the closet, criminals were hanged, disabled people were pitied, and government's primary function was to facilitate business and maintain the armed wing of the state.
It was once a sin and treason to challenge the divine right of a king. Not so long ago only white, property owning men over thirty could vote, and it was inconceivable for a black woman to be a Republican US Secretary of State.
The social changes which allowed Condoleeza Rice to rise to the top of world politics were fought for by people who would be dismissed by the anti-PC brigade as left-liberal, crusading, do-gooders out to destroy the natural order of things. Go figure.
Its appeal lies in going back – to an idealised time when there was moral certainty and social order.
In reality, it's about going back to a time when women's place was in the home and people of colour were acceptable as long as they stayed apart or behaved like white people; when homosexuals stayed in the closet, criminals were hanged, disabled people were pitied, and government's primary function was to facilitate business and maintain the armed wing of the state.
It was once a sin and treason to challenge the divine right of a king. Not so long ago only white, property owning men over thirty could vote, and it was inconceivable for a black woman to be a Republican US Secretary of State.
The social changes which allowed Condoleeza Rice to rise to the top of world politics were fought for by people who would be dismissed by the anti-PC brigade as left-liberal, crusading, do-gooders out to destroy the natural order of things. Go figure.
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