Schadenfreude

Written By: - Date published: 7:31 am, September 3rd, 2012 - 21 comments
Categories: Minister for Photo-ops - Tags:

I hope you won’t think less of me when I say I’m enjoying Key’s angst over baby formula companies using him in their ads in China. Key says it wasn’t an endorsement when he went to the factory, signed a tin of formula, and smiled for the cameras holding it. That, we’re supposed to believe, isn’t a promotion. Actually, of course, it’s meant to be a one-way promotion: of Key.

He wanted to use the manufacturers’ as a backdrop to get his photo in the paper and get some free press vaguely associated with an economic good new story. And now he’s had the tables turned, he’s having a whinge about it.

Key says its “standard” to do photos with companies products – he does “hundreds of photos a day”. Presumably, this is what he’s doing while our other MPs are debating laws, representing constituents, and coming up with policies.

Just can’t help but feel that if Key was actually doing his job, this problem would never have happened.

PS. Is there a reason that we’re exporting baby milk powder to China while much of the stuff sold here is New Zealand milk processed in Singapore? Is the stuff we send to China not up to the standards of the stuff sold here, or is it just another of those vagaries of capitalism?

PPS. Isn’t it great that this product that is trying to associate itself with New Zealand is called Cowala and has a picture of a Koala on it?

21 comments on “Schadenfreude ”

  1. There is a very good cartoon in this morning’s Herald where Key complains about the nerve of some people trying to sell a dodgy formula while holding a barrell marked “partial privatisation”.
    Talk about schadenfreude!

    [lprent: added image link. ]

  2. Bill 2

    Is it just me, or are there shades of ‘By Royal Appointment’ cast all over this?

  3. Tim 3

    Pop goes the weasel

  4. Colonial Viper 4

    Let’s have Key pose next to a Coke can.

  5. captain hook 5

    is he selling dead horses to texas rangers.

  6. brybry 6

    I hear Letterman will be doing a “Top Ten John Key product endorsements gone wrong” spot on an upcoming episode.

    • Oh no Bommer Bradbury and that beautiful dark haired lady working with him sometimes, wrote an article after getting official papers from John Keys trip to America, the same trip he apperared on the Letterman show.

      Appearently that was the trip John Key agreed to come back to NZ and change the tax laws to make it attractive for America to do business with us.

      What will he do this time, commit our young to fight America’s wars.

      Line the Corporates up for the asset sales.

  7. fnjckg 7

    schadenfreude
    -Key saying “thanks Rachel” to Petra
    -50% of alzheimers going undiagnosed
    -C.Daws0n
    -the ‘revelation’ of human nature through the looking glass of social media and blogsites
    -ever increasing costs of anything bathed in oil

    when i was young i only saw the disabilities left by thalidomide, now i see the faces of the people

  8. ghostwhowalksnz 8

    It could be worse , he could take the can of baby formula to Waitangi day , then disavow all knowledge

  9. tc 9

    As they say about the publicity hungry ‘they’d attend the opening of a letter…’. but this letters full of nasty powder much like your backers Shonkey.

  10. Rich 10

    I think what happens is that we export bulk milk powder which then gets made up into formula and put in a can overseas. But because of the SanLu scandal, NZ branded milk is for some reason seen as a premium product.

  11. mike 11

    “The reality is that I do hundreds of photos a day and that particular plant which I opened … there are at least 30 different companies which source milk powder and baby powder from that factory, and I did photos with probably every single one of those suppliers,” Mr Key said.

    http://www.3news.co.nz/More-uses-of-Keys-image-on-milk-powder/tabid/1607/articleID/267697/Default.aspx#ixzz25QJj09Mr

    Suck it up JK. I wonder what exactly he thought they were going to use the photos from those 30 odd photo-shoots for?

    Gee this guy is a real value for our money PM huh? Any chance of him akshully doing something to benefit or promote NZ that doesn’t make us look like were such a low level country that our leader happily cowtows to 30 Chinese baby powder companies by doing free commercials for their products? Laughing stock anyone?

    Or would he just say “I just followed what was in my diary,” like back when he got snapped trying to have an off-the-radar meeting with mega-dodgy right wing tycoon Lord Ashcroft in 2008.One of my fav ‘tranzrail eyes’ moments is this little chat with Duncan Garner:

    DG: “Has anyone from the National Party meet Lord Ashcroft over the past week whose been in New Zealand?”
    JK: “Yes I think they have.”
    DG: “Have you done that personally?”
    JK: “Yes I have.”

    If you look closely at 0:50-1:03 you can actually see Key repeatedly stabbing Garner with a huge dagger. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GwcCNdTYyQ

    • Lanthanide 11.1

      A friend of mine has started up a business in Dunedin and had a publicity photo taken. He was assured that it would only be used for “this one thing”. In said photo, he has a very wrinkled shirt as it hadn’t been ironed.

      Said photo has now turned up in about 9 different places and counting, including several industry magazines.

      • Draco T Bastard 11.1.1

        Pretty sure that would be a copyright breach. Tell him to talk to a lawyer.

        • Colonial Viper 11.1.1.1

          The photographer most likely owns the rights to that photo.

          • Carol 11.1.1.1.1

            I think it depends on whether the person photographed agreed (with the photographer) for use of the image anywhere, or restricted the use.

  12. tracey 12

    the same man who for s photo op with mrs clinton warned pavific nations who take chinese money. surely he nests.

  13. captain hook 13

    hmmmm…
    the new secret ingredient.
    I wonder what the communist party of china thinks of that?

  14. fender 14

    Key would have got drunk and agreed to this, anything for some royalties into the blind trust.

    This must be one of those tentacles he was talking about. Idiot PM camera slut celeb wannabe.