Written By: - Date published: 11:56 pm, October 12th, 2008 - 47 comments
Categories: bill english, election 2008, helen clark, national, same old national, sexism -
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When I saw this guy using the guise of a Youtube debate question to attack Clark on her appearance, I felt sorry for the little jerk – what a pathetic life he must lead.
When I saw Bill ‘do what it takes to win’ English do the same thing (at 1.30), while an audience of old, fat, white men laughed, my stomach turned.
Same old chauvinist National; same old sexist pigs. No wonder there’s rumours going round of a ‘racist secret tape’. The true face of National hasn’t changed. It’s still the same born-to-rule rich boys and their bigoted worldview.
I would challenge Key to rein in his filthy henchmen but it’s clear he has neither the will nor the authority to control them.
For the record, I think Clark looks great at 58, she’s fit and trim, and hasn’t been aged by the pressures of leading in the way others have. But that’s irrelevant. The only reason, the only reason, the Tories attack her for not being a former beauty queen is that she’s a woman – a smart, powerful, confident one at that – and that scares them.
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You know what, they should really look in the mirror before they go criticising Helen Clark. At least her pictures look okay after they’ve been retouched.
In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need retouching for politician’s photos. But sadly, in this world, people judge politicians far too much by their appearance, and not enough by their leadership ability- and this is even more true for female politicians like Helen Clark. Even if John Key didn’t try to smarten himself up on his billboards- he’d still be at an advantage, because as a man he’s judged by his appearance to a lesser extent.
“Ben, heard of Lee Atwater?”
Yep, and I read he actually apologised before he passed away!
The McCain campaign is being run by Steve Schmidt who worked on the 2004 Bush campaign under Rove, and they are running a typically dirty campaign. Given that they’re lying about a number of things, you’d expect them though to also mention things like Jeremiah Wright, or the ACORN association. I think the fact they haven’t is because the media will accuse them of racism. I’m not sure that bringing up the dodgy practices that ACORN were involved in is necessarily racist though. Also, Palin’s wacky religious beliefs have also been brought up.
Yep, Atwater apologised. Doesn’t mean the GOP stopped dogwhistling.
The ACORN stuff is mostly a beat up. Registration fraud is not in any way the same thing as voter fraud.
Palin’s religious beliefs have gotten very little attention compared to Wright. To argue otherwise is just insane.
“sadly, in this world, people judge politicians far too much by their appearance, and not enough by their leadership ability ”
Very true – attractive photogenic politicians like JFK, Obama & Bill Clinton do have a major advantage.
The typical Rove/Atwater operation has surrogates doing the dirty work. The official campaign stears clear.
Daveski: On that I’d agree. Not all conservatives wish to return to social structures at the end of the 19th century. Especially my conservative female friends.
SP probably overstated that case to make his point. However he was talking about two particular people also expressing their opinion and effectively stating how close to a stereotype they conformed. Now I have to say that watching those two idiots made my blood boil as well – but I was slightly more restrained (as you can see from my comment first up on this thread).
I’d agree with SP that it is a crappy look for the conservatives when you get the same old stupid idiocies about female appearance not only from the nutters, but also from the deputy leader of the main conservative party. What in the hell does it matter if Key looks like a penguin. Or Helen looks like she is aging. You’d have to wonder who in the hell he was trying to send that message to – his daughters?
“Palin’s religious beliefs have gotten very little attention compared to Wright. To argue otherwise is just insane.”
I don’t know about that – about the first thing I heard about Palin was that she thought the Flintstones was based on a true story. I thought the reason the Wright thing got such major play was because of the YouTube footage rather than the media actually investigating. I think Palin has been pretty effectively branded as a religious wacko who is a female version of George W Bush, but less intelligent (of course that does actually seem to be the case).
the reason the tories are bigots is this. they believe that somehow the possession of money has conferred upon them a right to do what they like and what they like to do is bash people around because as Adam smith opined so many years ago now that command over labour provides the greatest psychological satisfaction. They cant pick on their mates so they go for anybody not able to fight back and more importantly who they are most scared of. The poor and the coloured. q.e.d.
“the reason the tories are bigots is this”
Randal, being intolerant to people who are different to you, or who hold different views, occurs in all human societies. You certainly don’t need to be in possession of money to be bigoted.
[randal is not saying all bigots are rich. SP]
LP – agreed
My frustration as I think it’s clear is that I believe that Maori could benefit more from working with National such being the vagaries of MMP.
Maori economic independence sits natively with National’s pro-business – Maori sovereignty may not site so comfortably with National, but economic independence does.
I readily agree that some nats are still in the 19C. Not all. And if the Nats could be smarter, they could develop a strong relationship for the betterment of NZ.
Sadly for my viewpoint, I see a majority of Maori are still of the opinion that their best interests are served by voting Labour. I’d love to see the Maori Party bringing something different to the table with the Nats.
There is a difference between the economic objectives espoused by the Nay’s and Maori iwi organisations. At least according to my understanding from family involved in it either directly or observing.
The iwi corps are building or trying to build a long-term asset base largely in long-term property investments (sort of a reverse land-grab). They are often leasing these out in multi-decade leases. They then use the revenues to finance the types of things that they need in their communities. Some they are using to finance their way into purchasing other land. Obviously the reason for this is that they are planning on running century long acquisition campaigns, which they can do because the ownership is vested in the iwi itself. Hopefully, it is a lot more difficult to alienate than in the 19C. Of course they are acutely aware of what happened in the 19C with the government writing laws to allow asset alienation by changing the ownership arrangements away from the customary in-common hapu/iwi ‘ownership’.
Normal business people do not do that kind of long-term planning. By Maori standards they are all short-term get-rich speculators. The nearest western analogy to what the iwi are doing is the churches who operate on a similar time scales. Guess what, they don’t like the speculators getting access to their businesses either.
Did anyone else notice how National used ‘We Are Family’ at their launch – a tried and tested gay anthem? Sort of ironic, given how many of them voted against Civil Unions… Then again, perhaps they trying to encourage the closeted National gay male MPs to come out…