IT’S ONE OF THOSE throwaway lines which, precisely because so little conscious thought was given to it, tells us so much. The author, Andrea Vance, is an experienced political journalist working for Stuff. The subject of Vance’s throwaway line, Sean Plunket, is an equally experienced journalist. It was in her recent story about Plunket’s soon-to-be-launched online media product “The Platform”, that Vance wrote: “Plunket’s dalliances with controversy make it easy to paint him as a two-dimensional character: a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.”
It’s hard to get past those first four words. The picture Vance is painting is of a dilletante: someone who flits from one inconsequential pursuit to another, taking nothing seriously. And, of course, the use of the word “dalliances” only compounds this impression. To “dally” with somebody it to treat them casually, offhandedly – almost as a plaything. Accordingly, a “dalliance” should be seen as the very opposite of a genuine commitment. It smacks of self-indulgence. A cure, perhaps, for boredom?
To dally with controversy, therefore, is to betray a thoroughly feckless character. Controversies are all about passion and commitment. Controversies are taken seriously. Indeed, a controversy is usefully defined as a dispute taken seriously by all sides. And yet, according to Vance, Plunket has only been playing with controversy: trifling with it, as a seducer trifles with the affections of an innocent maid.
In Vance’s eyes, this indifference to matters of genuine and serious concern distinguishes Plunket as a “two-dimensional character”. It reduces him to a cardboard cut-out, a promotional poster, a thing of printer’s ink and pixels – insubstantial. Or, which clearly amounts to the same thing as far as Vance is concerned: “a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.” Dear me! The scorn dripping from those words could fill a large spittoon!
As if the holding of right-wing views somehow renders a person less than three-dimensional. As if conservative thinkers from Aristotle to Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke to Carl Schmidt haven’t contributed enormously to Western political thought. As if Keith Holyoake, Jim Bolger and Bill English aren’t respected by New Zealanders of all political persuasions for their rough-hewn dignity and love of country. To hold right-wing views isn’t a sickness, It doesn’t make you a bad person. It merely denotes a preference for the familiar; a wariness of the new; and a deep-seated fear of sudden and unmandated change.
As for “shock-jocks”: well, that is the sort of broadcasting talent commercial radio producers are constantly searching for. People of energy and enthusiasm, with a way of communicating both qualities to the radio station’s listeners. And if they also have a talent for decoding the zeitgeist on air: for tapping into the audience’s anger and frustration; and giving voice to their hopes and their fears? Why, then they are worth their weight in gold – and usually get it. The more people a “shock-jock” glues to the station’s frequency, the more the advertisers will be prepared to pay. That’s the business.
Perhaps Vance should have a word with the people who pay her salary: perhaps they could explain where all that money comes from.
The most important words, however, Vance saves for last. What really confirms Plunket’s lack of three dimensions are his “outdated views on privilege and race”. It is with these six words that Vance betrays both herself and her newspaper.
Who says Plunket’s views on privilege and race are “outdated”? According to whose measure? After all, his views on privilege and race correspond closely with those of Dr Martin Luther King. Is Vance asserting that Dr King’s view that people should not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character, is outdated? Is she suggesting that a poor white man has more in the way of privilege than Oprah Winfrey? Or that the privileges which flow from superior economic power and social status count for less than those attached to race, gender and sexuality?
The answer is Yes. Those who declare such views to be “outdated” are, indeed, making all of the claims listed above. This locates them among a relatively narrow section of the population: highly educated; paid well above the average; more than adequately housed; and enjoying all the “privileges” accruing to those who manage the bodies and shape the minds of their fellow citizens.
Andrea Vance is a member of this truly privileged group, and so, at one time, was Sean Plunket. So, why the sneering condescension? Why the scorn? The answer is to be found in the new priorities of the truly privileged; the people who actually run this society. They have determined that their interests are better served by fostering the division and bitterness that is born of identity politics. Rather than see people promote a view of human-beings that unites them in a common quest for justice and equality, they would rather Blacks assailed Whites, women assailed men, gays assailed straights, and trans assailed TERFS. In short, the “One Percent” have decided that their interests are better protected by corporations, universities and the mainstream news media all promoting the ideology of identity politics.
By setting his face against this new “Woke” establishment, Sean Plunket the conservative poses as large a threat to the status quo as Martyn Bradbury the radical. On the one hand stand those who question the necessity and morality of changes now deemed essential by persons no one elected. On the other, those who insist that such divisive policies will produce results diametrically opposed to their promoters’ intentions. Right and Left, joined in an “outdated” search for the common ground that makes rational politics possible. The place where both sides are willing to acknowledge and agree that, in the words of John F. Kennedy:
“[I]n the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
Frank Zappa once said “Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity”.
These days social media, right wing channels like Fox and ZB, and authoritarian populists give poor white folks some hope perhaps that they are not totally at the bottom of the social pile; there are always blacks, gays, trans, indigenous, migrants, and women to still put the slipper into! The Plunkets and Hoskings are well aware of what they are doing by offering retrograde ideas to their often information poor audiences. These grumpy, middle aged, white media men ultimately serve their employing class masters well.
Let them go for it I say. It is a contest of ideas. While human development and progress is uneven, not linear and tidy, I still like to think we do evolve over time. Huge Pubs and drinking clubs, driving pissed, clogged ash trays and blue palls of smoke hanging in the ceiling, eating piles of dripping red meat, rape in marriage–all relics of a bygone era now for most.
The boomer replacement generations are here, and will even potentially outnumber boomers at the 2023 General Election. Generations student loan and life time renter do not fear the same things many boomers do, they are more concerned with Climate Disaster than stopping justice for Māori. Plunket and his ilk will go the way of RSAs and walk shorts soon enough.
Agree with you Tiger Mountain – I don’t understand the overblown fear ascribed to being ‘Woke’ as if this in itself is the cause of great social injustice rather than a cultural shift in attitudes and behavior – as you point out. I’m old enough to remember ‘PC gone mad’ being raised to oppose any change that threatened the status quo in favor of more progressive and respectful attitudes.
Nice one Tiger, My father was badly shot up by Nazi bullets and uncle was killed by the huns in Crete. They fought for free speech and the right for those shock jocks and other NZers in Aotearoa to openly express their views. But they would not have expected those same shock jocks and other to express and promote offensive anti-Maori comments. The demographics are changing – the old boomers (like me) and traditional tory views are dying out and the new younger progressive generations are taking over.
Am a boomer myself. Fam member blown to bits at Monte Casino in ‘44, his name is on the wall at Auck War Memorial Museum.
Was always taught to use my freedom of speech.
Tiger Mountain: “…stopping justice for Māori.”
What do you mean by this? Please explain.
You absolutely nailed it Chris. Well done.
This is a very specious piece, with one purpose – to justify a view of the world that continues to privilege a white male dominated view of the world.
You’re right and I don’t get it from a writer as intelligent as Chris. Martyn also disappears into this pointless rabbit hole from time to time as well. It’s the world of wedge issues and paranoia when what we need is sharp, class based economic analysis and solutions.
ye, way to represent the youth. Big fan ma’am and, its a good sign that I’m here where with you it seems the real discussions are here. As a student doing L2 NCEA I love the use of “specious” definite gonna use it some time soon.
RNZ is epic.
Clay: “…I love the use of “specious”…”
Check out the meaning before you do. Specious this article certainly ain’t: that word has just been used as part of a commenter’s opinion.
Liz has it occurred to you that the reason the majority of judges are white men is that there are more Pakeha male lawyers than there are Maori, Chinese, Samoan, Tongan etc? In fact the majority of men in this country
happen to be white anyway. What’s more they don’t make the law, Parliament does, and Parliament may have a bigger assortment of ethnicity and gender mixes than any old-fashioned lolly shop.
That’s not right Liz, the essay is about the right to present an alternative POV not it’s justification.
The thought occurs: If your assumption is correct, that everything is about power (it’s not), why would people not try and claim (or cling to) said power – by whatever means necessary. Perhaps genuine dialogue is a better option. No?
Dr Gordon, you cannot have not taken much notice of what Chris is actually saying. Nowhere does he argue for or defend white male privilege. On the contrary he is a strong advocate for womens’ rights and racial equality.
The problem, from my point of view, is that he sees imperialism and colonialism as the best or only guarantors of human rights. So the invasion of Afghanistan by “the men of the west” is justified by the liberation of Afghan women. British rule over Aotearoa is justified so long as Maori have “equal rights”. This view of the world, even if sincerely held, is deeply flawed. The good that we may do cannot be used to exculpate us from our sins. Imperialism and colonialism have bloodied hands. Ultimately they are not concerned with democracy, morality, or human rights but with the exercise of naked power over others.
Chris does not discriminate between men and women, Maori or Pakeha, Muslim or Christian. He stands for an old style Anglophile imperial system which exercises power equally over all.
But in doing so he leans towards fascism, citing Cicero “the public safety is the highest law” and lauds “the peoples dictatorship” of, believe it or not, Jacinda Ardern. He is an advocate of political chicanery (urging the left to not reveal its true political agenda when going into an election) and expediency (counseling the left to moderate its stand to appeal to a imagined bloc of European voters who are old school colonialists and indeed racists). He is Machiavellian and that is where I find myself unable to engage with him any longer. Not because he is a colonialist, or an imperialist, but because despite all his erudition and eloquence, he is politically amoral and therefore not someone that I can trust.
Yes agree with you Liz our judiciary system according to the recent breakdown of New Zealand judges shows our legal system continues to privilege a white male dominated view of the world.
PS Apologies for getting slightly off-topic. But RNZ’s treatment of judiciary issues seems to go to an insistence that we judge anything and everything by peoples’ immutable characteristics.
Is there a white male view of the world or is this just a rhetorical device to make an ad hominem look like sophisticated rebuttal?
If a woman or non-white male agrees with Chris, is this ‘internalised sexism’, ‘internalised racism’, ‘false consciousness’ not an ‘authentic voice’ or is it just a way to paper over the cracks in an identitarian narrative?
Having flagellated ourselves by listening to magic talk and mocking Shaun and Peter and their callers I can attest that Shaun at least is in the third dimension. He is ebullient and at times both endearing and surprising. But six weeks of boomer toxicity over the summer was enough dizzying toxicity mixed with the toxicity of the paint fumed we were exposed to.
Your averment is that to hold right wing views is not a sickness nor does it make you a bad person. Views that obstruct the betterment of people who are poor, sick, disabled and downtrodden must be seen for what they truly are.
As I sat on the hard wooden pews as a child I have never forgotten the stern presbyterian minister looking directly at me from his pulpit and proclaiming that “if a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered”.
RNZ’s recent work on the judiciary is unfortunate in the extreme, and its label as “in-depth” just as ironic.
The analysis is in no way nuanced or deep enough to make out the headline claims – which seem apparently to be something simplistic like “the judiciary is racist”. The analysis shows an innumeracy at least, or a willful abuse of stats if not. An example of further nuance (in analysing discharge w/o conviction, as one of the pieces has) would be to at least to attempt to ‘control’ for the type of offending where discharge occurs, first offence dimensions, etc. In analysis the composition of the judiciary (as another piece has) one should probably also try to control for the time it takes for experience to wash through the profession and bench. We should all want to find what is at the bottom of serious analysis in this area, in order that we might do better by our fellow kiwis.
On this, a hypothesis: Even if the analysis were appropriately nuanced, I think we’d the kind of point Chris makes often. That unfortunate disparities in the justice system are ultimately linked far more powerfully with poverty, and not ethnicity. The rich irony in reading RNZ’s pieces has been that every expert spoken to speaks basically about the effect of poverty. So even in the absence of serious analysis, the anecdote in their work doesn’t match the headlines.
Then there’s the shortsightedness of the national broadcaster near-attacking the judiciary, publicly, in such obvious narrative-driven fashion. Does it really think a world with even less trust in a core institution is going to be a better one? It’s not like we can just do away a judiciary. This is matched only by the hubris of the apparent pretence that a 1000 year old institution can just be replaced at the click of a finger.
RNZ find the socio-economic divisions in our country appalling and tragic. To that, here here. Which comes to the tragedy of it all: they’re just not smart (or willing) enough to cultivate a public conversation directed to the real root causes.
Brenty: “That unfortunate disparities in the justice system are ultimately linked far more powerfully with poverty, and not ethnicity.”
That’s exactly right, and it’s what the evidence shows. It’s disingenuous in the extreme to attempt to characterise it as racism. Regrettably, the same thing is said over health and education disparities.
Some years ago, I stopped listening to RNZ National, exactly for the above reasons. It comes as no surprise to hear that it’s still going on.
“Then there’s the shortsightedness of the national broadcaster near-attacking the judiciary, publicly, in such obvious narrative-driven fashion.”
It’s bizarre at best, verging on persecution of a sort, at worst. The national broadcaster ought not to be taking sides as it so obviously does. Being a social justice warrior isn’t any part of its remit.
“Which comes to the tragedy of it all: they’re just not smart (or willing) enough to cultivate a public conversation directed to the real root causes.”
And this is the heart of the issue, in my view. That’s exactly what a national broadcaster ought to be doing, not cheerleading for persecution of the judiciary (which cannot defend itself) and for ethno-nationalism, as it presently does.
Well said… Perhaps you should write and say that to the author of the RNZ piece who’s email is on the story…
Neil: “Perhaps you should write and say that to the author of the RNZ piece…”
If that was intended for me, my response is that I would if I didn’t know that they’d either take no notice, or would respond with epithets. I know from prior experience what that lot is like, which is why I no longer listen to RNZ National. I still like Concert though: no politics there!
Its great that Chris, Sean and Martyn are corner men for those with “white trash privelege”. Good job.
Excellent article, Chris!
Vance’s article is hilarious for her choking on her cornflakes as she writes, loading her vocabulary at every turn:
“Plunket is a strong proponent of the free speech panic”… (A neutral position would be: “Plunket is a strong proponent of free speech”)
“Plunket buys into the theory popular among conservatives”… (She should just have come out and said “conspiracy theory”)
But the doozy has to be: “He is particularly exercised that a new $55m public interest journalism fund incorporates a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. However, many outlets already include this in their charters or corporate values.”
This is too funny. She is admitting that news organisations believe there is no further discussion allowed about the Treaty and they are already perfectly aligned with the govt’s prescribed view so bribing them is completely unnecessary.
As one friend rewrote it: “Herr Plunket is particularly exercised that a new $55m deutschemark Public Interest Journalism Fund incorporates a commitment to the promotion of establishing a Juden-rein Deutschland. However, many outlets already include this in their charters or corporate values.”
Christopher hits the nail squarely on the head:
A Woke establishment massively downplaying & obfuscating their own glaring economic privilege while systematically scapegoating low income ‘outgroups’ as their fall guys to do all the sacrificing & suffering.
Thank you, Tiger Mountain. Your comment is one of the best deconstructions of a post I’ve ever read. I suspect Mr Trotter wrote the piece to elicit such an incisive rebuttal as yours.
Yes those words are a way of signalling to the faithful that a someone is tainted or unclean.
Under woke or *critical* social justice King is out and Kendi is in.
OUT:
Colourblind ideals and not judging by the colour of skin (or sex, gender, sexuality etc), but by the content of character.
IN:
“The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination”
This is one example of why *critical* social justice is a cuckoo in the nest of social justice.
There is rationale to this which is to achieve equity or equal outcomes between identity groups. Indeed in the US the lack of equity between white and black is the diagnostic of structural racism. However it also means an assumption that class is always downstream of race, problematises the success of asian-americans and ignores the success of nigerian-americans. I’ve not yet seen a CSJ narrative explaining why russian-americans are far more successful that french-americans but if equity is the measure then there ought to be one.
Reasons are many however is seems we much prefer totalising narratives around identity and the resulting moral clarity of what it takes to be a good person. Not to mention circular logic.
https://youtu.be/Ey04EWAuBhA?t=337
Some sensible thoughts and similar to what I read from Vance’s piece. The Liz Gordon’s and Andrea Vance’s of the world want us to believe not subscribing to identity politics or their type of “progessivism” means we simply want to uphold the patriarchal etc and are morally repugnant. They hold if you call something “with the times” it must be both correct and good.
It’s a philosophical and conceptual crap-piece of laziness, arrogance, rhetorical trickery, and poor thought. The world has developed immensely in the last 30 years and on many social issues, including gay marriage, most have come round.
But what has happened in the last 5 years in particular is an ideology, not progress or equality, but puritanical authoritarianism of the ever-more radical Left. “Woke” is often a lazy word for this, but it’s not the rabid Right who started it. People are just realising it’s horrendous consequences and starting to speak up.
Spot on Gordon! Scary stuff really.
Andrea Vance works for Stuff. They will be decimated when Sean Plunket gets his venture off the ground. Forget buying it for a dollar. You wont be able to give Stuff away
Chris, as always I agree with you. As for your detractors, I applaud their right to their views but as someone who has been reading the daily blog for the last year or so I have to say, that it seems to have become a recent target of the Woke. Its almost as if they cant let any dissenting views exist anywhere on the net. Same names, same views and dont try and speak against them.
Keep on, keeping on and dont let them drive you away. Your point is more necessary now than ever. I am not a supporter of Sean at all but you are quite right in calling out the hypocrisy in Vance’s diatribe.
Plunket is a climate science denying dinosaur. I have heard, from his own mouth, that he would rather let the planet ‘go’ than have the capitalist lifestyle altered.
I have also heard him say that man is the supreme species and we can do whatever the hell we like to others (justifying cruelty to animals) and denies that we have and are sending others species to extinction.
Those reasons alone are enough to fight him tooth and nail. He is despicable
FoldArt: “Plunket is a climate science denying dinosaur.”
So what? The rest of us don’t have to agree with him. Or he with us, come to that.
“Those reasons alone are enough to fight him tooth and nail.”
There’s no reason at all to fight him. What would be the point? Unless, of course, you have a sneaking suspicion that he’s correct.
Well if he can get his new right wing radio station up and running, Plunkett will be able to talk himself into a lather. With special guests, Mike Hosking, Donald Trump, John Key and Kim Jong-un.
I am absolutely certain he is dead wrong, especially on those most existential points I mentioned. The planet has no space for denier like him to spread his bullshit anymore.
FoldArt: “I am absolutely certain he is dead wrong…”
All the more reason to ignore him. The world will turn, regardless of what he thinks. It isn’t your concern.
No wonder Plunket, Garner, Williams were sacked – they failed to increase Natz percentage in the polls over the last 5 years despite mass political party broadcasting for the right-wing. Hosking, Duplessis, Soper, Hawkesby, Russell, Woodham, Richardson, Beveridge, Bridge, Panapa have also been big failures and losers in STILL helping the Tories in the polls. The radio station managers should be embarrassed by the 20% result and their work performances/KPI’s. That 20-34% demographics of angry old hate-Cindy men are slowly dying out.
Bomber I thought you were an Act MP on the platform today. You and Chris should be rooting for the Social Democrats with the media opportunities you get.
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