Tova O’Brien: A mouthpiece for the National Party AND the Labour Party
Tova O’Brien is Stuff’s Chief Political Correspondent.
Tova has responded to criticism that Tova makes everything about Tova by writing her column about Tova.
I don’t want to give Tova any undeserved grief but as a ‘gotcha’ journalist, I’ve never understood half her ‘gotchas’.
Like, she seems convinced the story she’s unearthed is a rare mineral of journalistic laser guided precision brilliance, while most of us aren’t sure what the actual point of any of it is.
Her journalism is similar to how pretty girls always seem to think their iPhone photographs are great Art.
Enough of Tova on Tova.
The level of apologist The Press stooped to this week in their demand that we all care about the mental well being of white tertiary educated wealthy women in the form of their audience base and Lauren Dickason has to be read to be believed.
Yes Dickason was depressed, yes Dickason was having a hard time in a new country, yes it was extra stressful because of Covid but none of that even gets close to criminal insanity!
Criminal Insanity is an absolutely credible and righteous legal defence whereby a person can not tell the difference between right or wrong, where their logical functions as a rational human being have been severed from reality, and Lauren feeling depressed and sad sad doesn’t even get close to that psychological state.
Dickason wasn’t hearing voices or seeing things that didn’t exist, she wasn’t disconnected from reality, Jesus wept, she was justifying the order of murder because the youngest one was ‘playing up’.
The Jury didn’t even give her infanticide, they sat there, watched her, breathed the same air as her and viewed the evidence and watched her as it was viewed and determined guilt.
The manner in which she strangled and suffocated her children to death, the time it would have taken to complete this, the way her eldest begged her and told her she was a good mummy – Lauren spent a lot of time ensuring her children died, she didn’t really put that level of determination into killing herself!
We all understand a moment of snapping, we can comprehend a psychotic episode where an individual can’t tell the difference between right and wrong and we build law that accepts and provides a defence to this part of human nature, but depression and feeling sad sad doesn’t allow carte blanche homicide.
The Press managed to ignore the 20minutes it took for her to garrotte and suffocate her children. They simply skipped right over it, blink and you’ll miss it…
She killed the children over the course of some 20 minutes and put them to bed with their toys and comforters and told them she loved them.
…and it’s those 20minutes that we as parents can not ignore.
A snapped moment, a frenzied attack over in less then a minute we can all envisage, but 20 minutes while the other children looked on in terror?
It is those 20 minutes that The Press with such Professional Managerial Class ease, gloss and glide effortlessly over to polish their point that white tertiary professional women need understanding too.
The Press position seems to be, ‘Sure she killed her kids, but depression plus mother stress plus career challenges’.
In an age of subjective rage where ‘lived experience’ trumps objectivity, we have lulled ourselves into a micro aggression trigger culture where if we feel it, that’s all that matters. Luckily for the justice of her children she murdered, that shit don’t fly in Court.
In our attempt to destigmatize depression, we have put mental health on a pedestal and treated it as some great victory of human experience that should be celebrated.
Lauren Dickason believed we would be sympathetic to her for murdering her children, she believed we should have felt sorry for her, she believed her experience trumped all else.
It didn’t.
Turns out there is objective reality and external truth and just because you feel it, that isn’t a justification.
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Probably a classic case of actual printed racism/sexism from the Press. Just because the murderer doesn’t fit their pre-conceived notion of murderers being tattooed, wife beating, brown males then somehow this makes it better. Evil lurks in the hearts of many people, regardless of their sex or ethnicity. Killing three of your own defenseless young children in cold blood is about as evil and despotic that you can get. Any sentence less than life + 22 years plus deportation is an injustice..
I thought Tova worked for the Platform. Stuff are lucky to have such an objective journo.
Share your opinion of Tova. Tova is all.about Tova. I’m flabbergasted that she took offence to someone suggesting her radio show floundered because it was not attracting listeners
Blames the failure on everything except her unpopularity.
I don’t think Martyn understands postnatal depression at all.
Agree
Seems like the oposite of, me too.
Suspicious looking guy, whistled or inappropriate comment or stood too close or assaulted me with a kiss when he was on his third strike and had a diagnosed intellectual disorder – terrible, lock him away.
Wonderful mum strangled naughty children – I completly understand and totally empathize and my heart goes out to her. Feeling sorry for someone doesn’t change the facts. This type of cognitive disonance pervades the family court everyday.
She thinks she is more important than the news,it certainly is all about her.
Manages to look like the Mona Lisa in that image. Sounds like she wavers around Moaner and Lesser along with so many of the yuppie political journos – their day will come when they can arise over the horizon of blah.
This perspective and that of The Press, offer a glance into the increasing divide in the ways we look at things and determine what they mean. Unfortunately, this divide is reaching religious levels, in which doubt can play no part in considering the nuance of reality – both external and internal. Perhaps this is fuelled by the lack of religious/spiritual belief in society – the human yearning for meaning has to find a place to land even in a godless world. Although it may be very difficult to manage the ambiguity, both articles gesture towards a part of the truth.
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