I think I’ve only watched Q&A once this year, it was the infamous Robert Reid panel appearance where Reid brilliantly destroyed and challenged their narrative that Shane Jones was some sort of working class champion whose leaving would damage Labour for ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
Interesting to note that Robert hasn’t been invited back yet and no one is talking about bloody Shane Jones any longer.
As enjoyable as it was watching Laila Harre push back on everything Susan Wood threw at her, the quality of Josie Pagani as a commentator was a horror story.
Dear old Josie is a Fox News Democrat, she’s the person you put onto a panel to pretend there is a left-right balance. You tend to see her heavily involved in right wing media panel shows like ZB where her perspective tends to out right the right wing panelist. She blogs over at the redundant ‘Pundit Blog’, the place opinion goes to die.
Her advice to Cunliffe on the last Q&A however was jaw dropping. Using her strategic genius, Josie urged David Cunliffe to call John Key and immediately change the law for THIS election to stop the coat-tailing provision of MMP.
???????????????
Even Hooton who was on the panel stared at her in surprised shock. The constitutional crisis that Josie’s idea would plunge NZ into if Cunliffe had taken her advice, would become a global news story. To change the rules of the election 4 months out from that election would create catastrophe as an immediate legal challenge to that decision would be forced by those political parties currently using that strategy. There would be rioting in the streets as those whose vote suddenly becomes voided by this unprecedented and unconstitutional change go berserk at what would be perceived as an illegal tactic to erase the voice of everyone not voting Labour, National, Green or NZ First.
Now I appreciate I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and that my setting up of political parties to provide parliamentary math game changers annoys some in the established left and has the Wellington Twitternati in constant fits of rage, but I don’t think I’ve ever suggested tactics that would see the country plunged into a fucking civil war.
The problem is that there are so few left wing female commentators that with Laila’s leaving, Josie becomes one of the few options available to producers. May I humbly suggest they start looking to Phoebe Fletcher as a replacement candidate for panelists? Her intelligence and grasp of the issues is unparalleled as a Gen X commentator and her addition to panels would provide far better insight than suggestions that would effectively require martial law to implement.
What’s going to be interesting this time around for the election, despite the best attempts by some msm pundits, is that the Left may against all predictions and odds win. Unfortunately for the msm however, they don’t have any actual insights into the new Auckland Left that is now influencing so much of these strategic moves.
Election night coverage by both major networks could sound like crickets chirping if their lack of analysis starts to fumble when the results begin rolling in.
Internet MANA means the game has changed, the msm haven’t comprehended this yet.
Sue Bradford must be available now? There must be some Māori out there too – Morgan Godfrey? No not Willie Jackson. I’m sure there are plenty that could replace her but maybe they aren’t so palatable to good old TVNZ
Sandra Lee springs to the top of my list.
I always admired Pam Corkery as a champion of the left, well if not the left, then admired her for being closer to sanity and decency than those on the right.
I think that the brutalising nature of her time in Parliament really shows how difficult it is for females to stand up to the personal attacks and feral nature of right-dominated politics in NZ. I doubt whether she would put herself back in the den of lions that MSM has become for left-thinking people.
Helen Kelly would be much better than Pagani to advocate for the left. I doubt if I have ever heard a bad interview with Helen Kelly and admire her championing for rights of working class people. I doubt whether Helen would take a backward step in a toe-to-toe with Susan Wood either.
Still Q+A is not about fair political journalism, it’s just another mouthpiece for the right. I’ve almost smashed a TV having to listen to Hooton and Boag. I watched a re-run of Q+A and very nearly lost my brunch. I sit there as a socialist having to listen to spurious right-wing Tory claptrap. Orwell summed it up best when he called it firstly doublespeak, then duckspeak.
Time for a huge cleanout after the election to get rid of the Tory, doublespeaking and duckspeaking media “political journalists and political commentators”. Does anyone know how to signal irony online in HTML for an ironic “political journalist and political commentator”?
Agree,agree agree.
Helen Kelly is a yes woman for Labour – she has never endorsed either the Greens and certainly not Mana. Bring Sue Bradford on, she would stir up the debate and is left unlike Pagani. I saw the programme, pathetic. I thought Robert Reid was great when he was on.
Sue Bradford and Helen Kelly are both on and both are really good. Laila Hairre was on last week for the first time in ages – and she was spectacular.
I like Pam Corkery. She calls it like it is. Aside from her no-nonsense approach is her wealth of life-experience. (Ok, I’m a distant relation to Pam, so maybe I’m a little bit biased!)
Agree McChCh my TV has become an threatened species when watching Q&A and The Nation hence why I seldom watch it did catch a replay of Q&A was very annoyed with tory Wood’s butting in when Laila was attempting to answer question started to wonder if Wood was trying to stifle Laila because she might be afraid her answers might be so good they would find favour with the viewers.I thought Hooten at times was quite balanced for him as for Pagani she’s a pretend leftie and has no credibility.Lastly on Susan Wood she’s worst than Paul Holmes was.
It seems to me that Josie Pagani is the Right’s idea of a Left-wing commentator, rather than her actually being one.
I don’t watch Q&A – clearly a strategy which protects my sanity, if what I hear about the programme is anything to go by.
I try to avoid Pagani’s pontifications on anything, having discovered that she’s one of those talking heads who insist upon inflicting on the rest of us the benefit of their tenuous grasp of what’s going on politically.
There must be somebody better-equipped, surely? And does it have to be a female somebody for some reason? I do hope that she’s not being called upon just because she’s female.
The body language between her and Hooton says it all…
I just made the mistake of watching both the Leila Harre interview and the panel discussion, based on this article.
What a mistake. Not at all good for my health.
The bias was just so overt. Wood was constantly interrupting Leila and barely showing any interest in her answers. Wood dug for gossipy stores about money.
Wood’s body language, tone and manner then completely changed when she chatted with the Panel. Sycophantic giggling was the response to Matthew Hooton as he made snide comments about the Internet Party. Sorry – i thought the role of the host was to be an impartial m.c ?
Very chummy and convivial among all of the panel. It mighty looked they were all in the same club. What a bunch of….
No wonder people are switching off the corporate media.
Q+A and Ridiculousness
Here is a better political panel panel discussion than Q+A:
@ Paul: your comments confirm the wisdom of my decision to stay away from Q&A; what you describe is pretty much of a piece with what I’d heard about the programme. Life’s too short to waste any more of it on Q&A…
I prefer “Panini” to Pagani, any time.
The MSM editors and managers must be rather unimaginative and dull persons, to always stick with the same kind of “political commentators”, who have long disqualified themselves, by being so out of touch with what their own parties and especially the public think and do.
What the hell “qualifies” her to be a commenter on a show like Q+A, I ask? But it may be the media bias at play again, resorting to the more “conformist”, and also centrist and “right” friendly commentators, than anyone who may actually speak sense and has some clues.
The very fact that you are railing against her advice shows that she is onto a winner. Unlike you Martyn she supports Labour NOT Mana and NOT The Internet Party. She is being, (using your words), strategic and pragmatic as her idea will STOP Mana and The Internet Party in their tracks.
@ Juana: “….she supports Labour…” No kidding! Though I didn’t see the Q&A programme, I have heard and read her opinions elsewhere. She has a strange way of expressing that support, I must say.
Write to TVNZ directly via their contact email or on paper–they can’t ignore that! In addition to posting here of course. Q+A@tvnz.co.nz Go to the source of this pretentious inquisitorial bull.
Goff says he feel strongly about Dotcom’s ‘‘pure political opportunism’’, citing his previous donations to ACT MP John Banks, now the subject of a court case. ‘‘He wants to be able to influence and control politicians.’’
Goff says he was previously ‘‘very critical’’ of National for exploiting MMP and failing to implement recommendations from the Electoral Commission to abolish the provision.
‘‘I’m scarcely likely to endorse another rort …I’m being entirely consistent,’’ he said.
The Leader of Labour agrees with Josie yet you say she is not a true leftie. Obviously Goff isn’t a leftie then either.
I see that the ACT trolls are out on force again? Trying to drive a wedge in the left bloc.
If you are interested in minor parties Juana, I suggest a wee chat with Colin about chemtrails, a little tete a tete with Jamie on incest, see if you can arrange the willing seller Peter to see what he has to offer – a few out-of-date 5-year passports?
Has InstrinsicValue gone on holiday with the PM to arrange the Samoa All Blecks game?
It’s a bit of a giveaway having ‘Juana’ for a surname – would ‘Mari’ be your first name?
‘Thetic’ might have been a better pseudonym, but the contributors would have cottoned on that ‘Pat’ was your Christian name.
The left will galvanise to spite you Juana, unless you or your cronies are offering more fishy sinecures for wavering lefties?
@ Juana:”Goff says he was previously ‘‘very critical’’ of National for exploiting MMP and failing to implement recommendations from the Electoral Commission to abolish the provision.
‘‘I’m scarcely likely to endorse another rort …I’m being entirely consistent,’’ he said.
The Leader of Labour agrees with Josie yet you say she is not a true leftie. Obviously Goff isn’t a leftie then either.”
I’m guessing that you’re a political novice. That, or you’ve been somewhere other than NZ over the past – oh, maybe 30 years or so?
Goff isn’t leader of the Labour party; moreover, he certainly isn’t a “leftie”. He was a Rogernome back when Labour was in power during the 80s, and he retains that political perspective, even if it’s modified somewhat from what it was in the past.
You need to go and do a bit more reading before you venture further opinions in this part of the blogosphere.
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