We Live In A Country Where Mediaworks Is More Responsive To Petitions Than Politicians Are

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Right. I’m going to get this off my chest: The X-Factor thing is banal. As in, the whole thing.

Although not the righteous outpouring of tens of thousands of New Zealanders being annoyed by what was said on the show, mind.

I happen to rather *like* the idea of masses of Kiwis coming together to *make things happen* and exert their will on a portion of the public sphere (and note with some amusement that everyone from Family First to Tony Veitch to scores of my progressive left-wing friends and colleagues are now apparently on the same side of an issue).

But apart from my own personal and habitual annoyance with that unholy trifecta of reality shows, “talent” shows, and mass enthusiasm for/engagement with same … one thing really stands out to me about this whole imbroglio.*

It took less than 24 hours for New Zealanders to come together, have TENS OF THOUSANDS of people sign a petition, and get a decision-making body (in this case the producers of X-Factor) to bend to their will and axe the judges in question.

Now quite apart from noting it took MONTHS for people to collect the requisite number of signatures for something like the Stop Asset Sales petition, or any of the less official anti-TPPA/GCSB ones going around …

… the really big difference here is that when faced with a broad and sweeping tide of public opinion, this privately owned media company didn’t stall or try and claim that previous events mitigated the clear weight of public opinion being exercised (as National, for instance, tried to do when proffering a previous election result as justification for ignoring a referendum result on asset sales).

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It got in there, and it did something.

I just WISH our Government was just as amenable to listening to the will of the people! As you might expect they’d sort-of have to, in a democracy.

The only evidence I’ve seen so far of National being in ANY WAY even VAGUELY as responsive to public opinion … was their announcing ten new bridges pretty much as soon as they saw Winston was beating their Northland candidate in the polls.

You might disagree vehemently with New Zealand First’s dual calls for the greater use of referendums, and provision for making binding the results of same … but I think we can ALL agree that the day a privately owned media company pushing a Simon Cowell Ego Buff is more responsive to the will of the people than our own elected officials, is evidence of something seriously, seriously wrong with the latter.

Demand BETTER of your government, New Zealand. Your power is not limited to purging pontificating pop-music pariahs.

*Ok, two things. As a man whose trademark appearance on camera is *also* appearing in a suit, with slicked-back hair (we call this #MtEdenVice) … I’m PERSONALLY ANNOYED at the implication that I might be stealing a style from a man who appears to have plagarized Keith Moon’s surname.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Curwin I broke it down to the following,

    “I just WISH our Government was just as amenable to listening to the will of the people!

    As you might expect they’d sort-of have to, in a democracy.

    If the MSM had have given the blowtorch to all our issues you mentioned there would have been a much larger Petition response and more swiftly, so really it is all down to the idiot media not giving equal attention to all issues here.

    Demand BETTER of your government, New Zealand. Your power is not limited to purging pontificating pop-music pariahs.”

    That said it all really.

    And my question is;

    Why aren’t the MSM equally scoping all public issues in the very same way as they did the runaway antics of two simple minded kids, with John Key like ego’s and leave all our issues on the back burner then?

  2. Sadly, it is also true that we live in a country where people care more about a third rate television show than they do about major issues that will have profound effects on their, and on their children’s lives.
    In our celebrity obsessed lives we froth at the mouth, mobilise and react to the scripted utterances of a couple of mini famous non entities on a desperate-for-ratings pile of crap masquerading as a talent show. Meanwhile the govt is about to sign the TPPA, low paid workers are getting shafted, unemployment is hidden, beneficiaries are told to apply for non existent jobs, we are complicit in an ugly international espionage ring, the government is corrupt, but hey what about those horrible x factor judges? Weren’t they simply AWWWWWFULL???

  3. Meh…..bolix to all of them , I say !

    Mind you ,…it always struck me as strange how people have a habit of overstraining their brains so easily after a days work…

    Really…the whole ‘just spoonfeed me junk food ‘ as I sit in front of some mindless drivel while the world goes to blazes…

    Strikes me as being as cold and dead as a corpse.

    And just as braindead.

    Sad, really , really sad.

  4. I think it’s more a reflection of “mob mentality”. Once the populace gets a sniff of blood, the rabidity becomes self-sustaining and everyone will put the boot in, partly to revel in their own virtue and superiority over the target. In some case this is warranted, in some unwarranted, however the underlying trigger is the same.

    In this specific case though, the judges were dicks.

    However, consider that they were employed with a specific mandate. Call it the “Cowell Factor”. Part of the sales pitch of the show is pointing, laughing, criticising and ridiculing the “unworthy”. Just take a look at some of the trailers and snippets.

    The X-Factor judges pushed their mandate too far this time and were summarily executed.

    TV3 gets off scot free. And so do we…

  5. Being responsive to a petition about such a load of rubbish as X factor is scarcely any recommendation. Would Mediaworks take such trouble over a real petition – such as one demanding the end to mining in national parks? I don’t think so Curwen!

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