The rule of politics is that you don’t go after the children of MPs. Not because it isn’t relatable to how a politician lives their beliefs in private or is a reflection of their personal actions, it’s a rule because the bear pit of Parliament is savage enough without throwing in children.
Children of politicians should not be our focus because it’s hard enough to grow up in NZ without that kind of media attention, but the Key’s are unique. Both children have used social media to enhance their fame, they have used their fathers privilege, power and money to embark upon soft porn Art exhibitions which are terribly liberating if you have a holiday mansion in Hawaii and that most intellectually gruelling of careers – the DJ/Model (pronounced DJ slash Model).
They’re about as soulless as an upmarket food court. Sure you’ll pay $45 for that pad thai, but what is the meaning of life when you are paying $45 for a street food?
I don’t hate Max and Stephanie Key because they are spoilt, rich brats, I hate the privilege they represent. The vacancy of their existence and the manner in which they garnish success for themselves is a cultural vanity virus that should be avoided rather than celebrated. They have turned their lap of luxury existence into nothing more than self glorification, they haven’t helped give back to the community that allowed them to prosper and they haven’t shown any of the humility we ask in an egalitarian country from those with more.
Before someone cries ‘tall poppy syndrome’, let’s remind ourselves, these children and the wealthy elite they represent are less citizen and more aristocrat at this stage. A deep dislike of all they represent isn’t envy, jealousy or tall poppy chopping – it’s basic educated decency.
Take Max Key’s latest tedious furore of being photographed with a cigarette (it would be interesting to know if any tobacco company was in the background paying for all of this btw). I don’t care that he is a model, I don’t care he was photographed with a cigarette, he could have a crack pipe in his mouth shooting meth directly into his veins while engaged in self fellatio for all I care, it’s his bewilderingly simplistic attempt at explaining himself that is so terribly woeful.
If you want to pimp a product as fucking evil as tobacco, that’s your journey to hell and seeing as his father pimps for casino’s, the apple ain’t falling far from the tree at all in this regard. It’s not his choice that deserves eye rolling, it’s his attempt at an explanation that is so painful…
But echoing his father’s defence of the shoot, Key, 21, told the Herald he was “vehemently against” smoking, and was simply posing with a cigarette as a prop for the photoshoot.
“I’ve never smoked, I’ve never had a cigarette in my mouth, and everyone who knows me knows that,” he said.
…r-i-g-h-t. So you as a DJ don’t smoke, and despite cigarettes being a terribly loaded symbol in fashion and popular culture, you just held it as a prop? That’s idiotic and uninformed on many levels, but he’s just starting…
“I’m vehemently against it, so I’m not endorsing cigarettes. It’s a fashion shoot and people do stuff [like that] all the time.”
…I don’t even know where to begin with this sentence. Is he claiming the clothes he’s wearing as a model aren’t an endorsement of the clothes? He does understand what models do right, the complexity hasn’t escaped him has it? He ‘models’ the product,and the product is a cigarette which sells a lifestyle the clothes want to attach to.
It gets worse…
Asked whether it was appropriate for someone who disagreed with smoking to be snapped with a cigarette, he said: “Well, someone commented something I thought was quite interesting – the cigarette’s not lit and I’m not smoking it, it’s simply a prop, and I guess it’s the thought of: it’s something that can kill you between your fingers but you’ve got the power to say no.
…So the photo shoot is an existential dialogue between mankind and their own sense of mortality? Really? Are you fucking high right now? You can’t actually be serious? Are you serious? You can’t be? You thought that was interesting? In what way? Like, ‘what an interesting load of mansplaining bullshit that is? Like that?
It gets worse…
“It’s not lit, it’s not in my mouth. If I was smoking it I think it’s a completely different story, but an unlit cigarette, I mean people hold them all the time.
…you are kidding right Max? You are arguing an unlit cigarette and holding it are day to day events so common that having one in a photo shoot is just a random candid moment akin to watching a cheater stalk its prey? You’re not condoning lit cigarettes, just the unlit one because holding tobacco is so prevalent in our day to day landscape that to avoid it would be to turn ones back on the natural world itself.
Is that what you are claiming Max?
It gets worse…
“I’m not endorsing smoking, it’s part of the look of what they [Remix] were going for and what they were trying to present.”
…right so you were aware of the direction of the photo shoot and agreed to do it. So you are endorsing smoking, despite claiming you do not.
It gets worse…
He added: “There’s a lot of people being like, ‘Oh smoking, blah, blah, blah’, I guarantee most of them have smoked in their life. I think it’s a little bit like they’re just trying to find something to pick on.
…I don’t even know where to begin with that brainfart…
“In movies all the time people smoke, or a model might have to hold a snake, that doesn’t mean they like snakes, or they’re endorsing snakes, it’s just part of the photograph. But even Steven [Fernandez, Remix editor] and the guys at Remix they’re not trying to endorse smoking, they would never encourage someone to smoke and that wasn’t the point of the shoot.”
…why are they allowing him to speak to the media when he is this stupid? He is damaging himself at this point. Equating cigarettes to snakes so he can denounce endorsing snakes??? WTF is he talking about?
This is a 21 year old who has had every opportunity money can buy and this is the depth of his perception? It’s a hollow joke looking for a punchline. The cigarette wasn’t the prop, Max Key is the prop to a culture that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
At 21 Max seems lost. A total poser that no one with more sense has taken under their wing and said, “Hang on son. Put your pants back on. Ditch the ciggie, you just look like an idiot. Leave home, stop going on holiday with Daddy and try to find something worthwhile to do with your life. Oh and stay out of the Herald….” Poor Max. Is there no one in your life with common sense and decency?
No he is just living life to the Max.
+100 – I don’t normally comment on kids, but Max Key is not a kid and what can you say, shallow and narcissistic is an understatement.
If you have a look at royalty and Harry and William at that age were expected to contribute to society and charity and be in the armed forces (not that I believe in that but at least the Monarchy are not hypocrites sending in troops but not expecting their kids be in danger).
Can’t see Max cleaning toilets in Africa. But it is exactly what he needs to get a reality check.
Come to think of it, he does’t need to venture far, Auckland food banks and Maraes would be enlightening for him.
+100 SAVE NZ
He probably does not volunteer to clean toilets there or anywhere else, because he is afraid someone pushes him into the bowl and pulls the flush.
Yep, I have often thought about how William and Harry used their privelege, compared to how Max is abusing his.
He couldn’t be more vacuous if he tried, I think it is a reflection of how seriously Key senior takes the responsibility of governing a country.
Max Key is in the unusual and rather sad position of having for a father the prime agent of the economic and social destruction of the country he lives in and the prime promoter in NZ of the destruction his future via planetary overheating and environmental collapse.
Max is yet to realise any of that, of course, but five years from now he will.
It has often been said that the current crop of politicians are worse than the Nazis who ran the death camps because although the Nazis who ran the death camps organised truly awful things to be done to political prisoners, Jews and Gypsies etc. they did love their own children and did all they could to protect them; the current crop of politicians organise awful things to be done to others and do absolutely nothing to protect their progeny’s futures.
Poor little wretch. He’s inherited his capacity for slithering mendacity from his papa.
Will these siblings also inherit the PM’s love of always telling lies?
We don’t need any more compulsive liars do we?
Their farther is now tending towards plotting against us all by killing us with his policies.
Here is just one example of John Key’s plans to kill us with savagely killing our public rail system and setting us up with toxic air pollution from truck pollution.
Lancet study shows Rail must save our citizens health now!
While this National Government continue to spend enormous amounts of public debt of another ($20 Billion) 3yr funding on improving Waikato & Tauranga roads for heavier freight trucks with only a pittance for rail services of $190 million for two yrs mainly for Auckland Passenger rail, Government are effectively causing a rapid increase of truck freight and resulting air pollution, while all regional rail is being deliberately bankrupted & closed down!
Public Release: 9-Jun-2016
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-06/tl-tln_1060816.php
The Lancet Neurology: For the first time, air pollution emerges as a leading risk factor for stroke worldwide
This new Lancet Medical public warning report released two days ago as a public press release warns us of new evidence that effects from air pollution is the main cause of strokes, is a stunning lightening rod for a reversal of current national Party policy of running down regional rail and forcing all freight only onto roads as this will kill many of us if this road freight only policy is allowed to be carried on.
CONSIDER;
Rail efficiency and environmental benefits to be considered; rail is five to nine times more efficient than road; Niwa statistics for litres per 1000 tonne, per kilometre: urban trucks 85 litres, articulated trucks 28 litres, intercity rail eight litres, long haul rail 2.5 litres.
Rail pays 77 percent of maintenance costs; trucks pay less than 53 percent of road maintenance costs (IPENZ).
Truck freight causes over 30 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions (Niwa).
Air pollution particulates emitted from one truck are up to 100 times higher than those from one car. (Tyre pollution is not included in this yet) This means air pollution from freight trucks could be possibly doubled to 200 times particulate pollution to that of one car.
Rail air pollution (with no tyres) is almost insignificant compared to road freight (1999 study, Impacts of Rail Transport on Local Air Quality, Ministry of Transport).
Rail emits no cancer-causing (PM) tyre and diesel particulate pollution, as road freight does.
So we are now all being exposed to a rapid increased road transport air pollution & tyre dust health impacts of strokes and disability.
Government is guilty of genocide of our citizens by their actions of destroying rail freight and promoting future road freight of a 500% increase from present levels of road freight by 2030 according to the Government’s latest 2014 Freight Demands Study if rail is not used.
The evidence of this new shocking Lancet report proves we cannot continue to ignore the elephant in the room any more.
The Lancet Neurology: Public release – 9/6/16 For the first time, air pollution emerges as a leading risk factor for stroke worldwide
EurekAlert!
Public Release: 9-Jun-2016
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-06/tl-tln_1060816.php
The Lancet Neurology: For the first time, air pollution emerges as a leading risk factor for stroke worldwide
The Lancet
Air pollution — including environmental and household air pollution — has emerged as a leading risk factor for stroke worldwide, associated with about a third of the global burden of stroke in 2013, according to a new study published in The Lancet Neurology journal.
Couldn’t have said it better Martyn, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. When one is bereft of any values or decency of course the off spring is going to emulate what they know and learn from their home life. He is a man now who can make his own choices but I seriously think both of the offspring are a bit dark and weird – I know quite a bit about art and its seriously strange how they pre-occupy themselves with self-art – total absorption in oneself, really weird.
I’m tempted to open a discussion on ‘class’ and ‘breeding’ – the latter a term the Victorians used to use. Class having been corrupted over time to simply see things in an economic sense ….. breeding, though once seen in terms of the aristocracy, morphing into more civilised attitudes that took account of things like empathy, ethics, honesty, etc. as we moved towards an egalitarian society. Both the labels are becoming meaningless thank Christ, and just like Victorian England, it won’t be long before we start seeing the Upper Class indigent when their derivatives disappear up their own arses about to lose their castles.
All that’s fucked now of course, and unfortunately Max (whose putting himself ‘out there’ and can hardly complain about any negative responses as poseur-in-chief). The breeding of a sociopath and the class of the wealthy nouveau riche.
I’m even tempted to feel sympathy but for the fact we’ll very soon be expected to feel sympathy for him. Poor little rich boi!! (going forwid). I’m waiting to hear him start using daddy’s latest buzzword …. “ultimately……”.
Ultimately, he needs a little life experience in the real world (going forward).
Ultimately, he might actually grow up and become a human being instead of a commodity to be fawned all over.
Ultimately, he moit ekshully get his own loif going forwid.
Ultimately, he could even come out
Ultimately, he could even realise all he’s enabling is an enterage of ‘ticket clippers’ who’re providing absolutely no value to his existence.
But yeah/nah
+100…yeah and as well as the ciggie on display( for the benefit of Tariana Turia a Maori Party jonkey nact fan)
…is that an American flag headscarf?
…and Kelvin Klein jockey’s ?
…boy bought by the corporates?….facile stupid?… commodification…just what New Zealand youth needs as a role model
Yes, yes, and Yes, yes.
And it’ll be a great day when TT can get over Helen Clark (and herself), and realise we’re now a decade on.
It might even make the MP’s aunty relevant again, and indeed the entire MP.
At least in the circles I mix with – there is still an utter sense of betrayal. It’s one that’s not unlike the sense of betrayal many Labour Party supotas still feel (although the signs are positive)
BTW @ Chooky – do you remember a TV series called “30 Something”? You have to remember there’s a sizeable proportion of the population that grew up with all this shite – and they now form part of the ticket clipping workforce that advise the politishuns, and are part of the star struck media, and who even think they’re so fucking clever as they reinvent existing technological slewshuns, engage in surveillance ektivty, and generally parade their wares with whatever catchy branding they can.
can’t remember “30 something”…but do remember ‘Outrageous Fortune’ which my daughter watched avidly…thinking it was my generation
Thanks for going in there and trying to sift thru this dross Bomber. I am sure you need a good scrub down after the experience. I have been at a loss to explain the insistence of the Key family in exposing their mediocre achievements and shallow lives to the country on such a regular basis. Max is young after all and Stephanie is a bloody dill. But so what? and why why why does the public need to know any of this crap? You have at least partially answered this question with this piece. I guess Key’s media minders can tick the distraction box.
I couldn’t agree more with you Martyn.
But ‘cheetah’ please!
How can someone this stupid be doing a business course at University, I thought there were scholastic requirements.
Why was tabacoo sponsorship outlawed they were just showing unopened pac s .
I guess when it’s topped off by the stars and stripes such lunacy is to be expected.
My son is doing his masters in psychology this year, yet you don’t see me parading him half naked in the NZ Herald every day this week, although he’s a better looking and more grounded young man than Max appears to be.
Education has become more about who can afford it than who is academically intelligent and committed.
With the focus on universities competing for bums on seats, it’s a long way from what it used to be.
Doesn’t surprise me he is doing just fine at uni, no one would dare fail him.
He is doing fine because at a young age he was academically inclined. He was also a keen sportsman and award winning musician.
I can understand your generalisation, however in this situation you are wrong. Wrong because my wife and I cannot afford to put him through uni. He was awarded a small scholarship to basically set him up in his first year but will end up with a $50,000 to $70,000 student loan, hardly affordable I would have thought.
He works hard without the luxury of money or the media fawning after him. He is probably one of thousands who don’t go seeking attention because he is the son of…
yes my daughter was an ‘A’ student in Commerce and Film degrees…but she couldnt afford postgrad studies despite being asked to do honours in both degrees…because she already owed $40,000 in student loans ( she went overseas and has to pay interest on her loan)…no doubt foreign fee paying students took her place in the honours programme
this government is criminal towards NZ youth
Max Key I think wants to do property and real estate ( irony given Auckland housing crisis)
Well said Chooky, so much for a “brighter future” for our children. Work hard, educate higher now for a tui’s ad.
This interview has a great point in how Edward Bernays got Hollywood to artistically portray cigarettes so that tobacco companies sold more of them.
It’s all part of the propaganda that surrounds and manipulates us everyday.
There seems to be a lot of very obvious posed smoking in films and programmes set in the 20th century. I doubt it is coincidence.
In series made now, but set in the 60s and 70s, the actors make a great play of smoking.I’m old enough to have watched tv back in the 70s, people smoked, but I don’t think it was focused on in the same way? Might need to check out a few old episodes of the Sweeny or similar and compare to, say, Endeavour.
“but an unlit cigarette, I mean people hold them all the time.”
FFS- no they don’t!
Why would anyone spend money on fags unless they were smoking them? Just more evidence that rich boys do not understand the real world.
Just for the record I wrote a pretty harsh word on young Max,… I didn’t enjoy doing it particularly. He’s a young buck , that’s all. And we all have made silly mistakes when we are young – we continue to make them when we’re older too.
But what galled me most of all was the tacky Americana / California type voyeurism aspect to it.
When we have family’s basically rotting away in shitty overcrowded houses – or living for goodness sake’s in cars and garages? And we have this shit about Max in the media instead ??!!??
It came across as a trite red herring media ploy – when we have a desperate situation for so many , many people in this country and all we get served up is that shit.
Its the same sort pf perverted crap as the Kardashian bollocks.
I don’t give a flying rats shit about the blasted stupid Kardashians , – how they pick their nose or fart in church !!!
They are irrelevant !!!
What were dealing with in this country needs the full focus of the media , If a govt’s going off the rails we have a need to know – and the media has a duty to report it.
Not plaster our bloody newspapers with dishonest fairyland garbage designed to muddy the waters – its not even edifying as far as anything educational – its just cheap , tacky pop sociology. Not even that .
If anything – the fault is with the media outlets who choose to give this sort of low quality ‘ news ‘ a prominent space on the front pages – have these media people ever heard of the ENTERTAINMENT SECTION?
BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE IT BELONGS !!!
The rest of us want to keep abreast of REAL news , – not the entertainment pages at the back of the paper!!!
“And we have this shit about Max in the media instead ??!!??”
Every bloody single day of the week!
“I don’t hate Max and Stephanie Key ..”
You are just doing a very good facsimile of it. Because of uour tolerance.
Must mention, I think you have all missed the real message, if you have a real close look at the pics the only conclusion for me is that the photographer was taking the piss. Really a model shoot, what is being sold here. All I see is some truly satirical pictures. If this young man is taking all this seriously then that is pretty sad, he should ask for his money back and get real.
You have a point there.
That’s what I have been thinking. Can’t help thinking someone was having a *bit of fun* with this so called *fashion* shoot. I mean, blowing big bubble gum bubbles!? Come on! And where was the fashion? Padded undies! John Key needs his head read. Max does not come out of this looking anything but vacuous, vain and slightly dim. But apparently Daddy thinks it’s cool. Really. Oh, and apparently Max is now a….. top… name…. New Zealander. Who knew.
Thanks Martyn for exposing what a lot of us are thinking.
Max Key might be the offspring of a PM, but he’s no child and obviously knows what he’s doing, putting himself out there, offering himself up as a diversion, to distract from what FJK is doing, more so when things begin to turn to custard for NatzKEY! Almost every day last week, msm featured something on Key junior as news!
It’s noticeable Stephanie Key’s (aka Cherry Lazer, using her paternal grandmother’s maiden name), soft porn art is solely focused on herself, being the main feature of her exhibitions.
With the exception of Bronagh, it seems there is a disturbing trait in the family where calling attention to oneself is considered necessary for some strange reason. A familial character flaw perhaps, obviously inherited from FJK I’d say.
Or have the Key offspring been deliberately primed to act as they do, attention seeking at any cost?
Whatever, it’s all quite weird.
“With the exception of Bronagh, it seems there is a disturbing trait in the family where calling attention to oneself is considered necessary for some strange reason.”
Dear Bronagh is not off her husbands “blood line” so to say, hence she can feel free from some traits you may have observed, for reasons naturally explained.
Drawing attention to oneself is nothing new, although the manner in which it happens varies enormously. Max Key’s statements appear to indicate he is completely lost without either: A/ a speech writer, or B/ His dad telling him what to say.
What is disturbing is that both Max and Stephanie appear in varying degrees of undress, and their Dad is so proud of them. I’m sorry, what?Proud of his kids appearing half naked or more? Add to that the pony-tailing pulling . . .
Something is not right here. I only ope it ISN’T what it appears to be. I’m proud of my kids too, very proud, and they didn’t have to take their clothes off to get MY approval.
From The Guardian, catching up on Max Key’s lifestyle …
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/12/got-caught-sleeping-on-air-force-one-the-lavish-lifestyle-of-new-zealand-pms-son
Life with the KEYdashians is sooooo different from that of the real word as it is for so many Kiwis!
“KEYdashian”, there we go, a new word, probably the word of the year for New Zealand, you are a genius, I hope the opposition will use this in Parliament during Question Time and the MSM will happily oblige and pick it up also, they just love such shit, as they cannot bother with serious stuff.
He’s made it into the Guardian web site which shows the whole deal. Your picture above has been cropped. We as New Zealanders should be hanging our heads in shame that out wonderful leader’s kids are only good for salacious titillating soft-porn.
“Living life to the Max” has a totally new meaning now, I suppose.
good job sir
Is there another international leader, who openly supports his adult children flaunting their half naked bodies to the world? I can’t think of one off the top of my head, because most world leaders do seem to make an effort to keep and encourage their offspring from becoming public figures, regardless of age. However, not the case in the NZ leader’s family it seems!
The very public sexual/soft porn body shots of both offspring, displaying themselves through media, makes me wonder what the upbringing process was like during their formative years.
Maybe my mind is working overtime … but ….!!!!
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