David Farrar’s three more prominent weaknesses came together in a speculator PR disaster yesterday. The weaknesses are his ego, his trick of using pictures of naked women to boost hits on his site, and his reverse midas touch, whereby every he touches turns to, well, it doesn’t turn out well.
See, Farrar led the campaign for his friend and ex-ACT MP Stephen Franks to become National’s Wellington Central candidate. Naturally, he’s pleased with himself that Franks was selected and regularly mentions Franks to remind everyone that he (Farrar) is an important guy who can get things done in the National party.
Yesterday, Franks put up on his blog a fake video of a supposed traffic control system in Denmark whereby topless women hold up speed limit signs to get people to slow down. Farrar saw that and re-posted it because it reminds people of his link to Franks and furthers the ‘nude girls=hits’ ploy he uses.
And then things started to go wrong, just as they did with Farrar’s involvement in the Free Speech Coalition, the anti-EFB marches, when he ran the numbers for English against the Brash coup, when he ran Mark Blumsky’s Wellington Central campaign in 2005, and the time he tried to eat a plate because he thought it was chocolate.
A number of Kiwiblog viewers were very upset to see Franks and Farrar acting like horny teenagers. They demanded they take down the misogynistic video. But that would have meant Farrar admitting he was wrong, and that’s something an ego cannot take. A National voter, Adam Prouse, wrote to Franks trying to make him see that posting videos of topless women on his blog was not the kind of thing that would help him win Wellington Central. The plea was ignored. But Prouse had also emailed senior National staff and the Herald. Next thing you know Franks and Farrar are in the Herald defending posting soft-porn.
Seven months until the election, and that’s Franks sunk. Ironically, no-one would have seen the video if had only been on his blog, no-one goes to it, but Farrar made it into national news. The reverse midas touch strikes again.
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