Barry Soper’s King’s Birthday Honour Is a Media Farce
Barry Soper’s King’s Birthday honour has been awarded for services to journalism, but Martyn Bradbury argues the gong rewards a media culture that confused anti-Jacinda bitterness with insight and calls elite recognition accountability.
Oh, for the love of Christ…
A baby, a book and now a badge of honour – broadcaster Barry Soper’s King’s Birthday gong
A baby, a book, and now a badge of honour.
Broadcaster Barry Soper’s eventful 18 months just became bigger – with a King’s Birthday honour.
He has today been named an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for services to journalism.
NZME
…Barry Soper is the least worthy of a King’s Birthday gong and makes a mockery of an elite circle jerk!
Don’t get me wrong,
I once liked Barry’s political insights pre-Jacinda.
I didn’t always agree with them, but he had mana and called it the way he saw it.
And then along came Jacinda and Bazza went from sane to Chris Trotter/Morrissey level u-turn nutter.
Barry went from being a mercurial raconteur into a Platform-subscribing spit-flecked redneck hater who thinks Reality Check Radio is too woke.
The kind of family member who doesn’t get invited to family gatherings anymore.
His venom towards Jacinda, driven by the lockdowns, is a really cautionary tale of what happens when propertied Boomers go culture war toxic.
When Boomers go culture war toxic
The reality, as former Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy has pointed out, some Boomers are so awful, you just have to wait for them to die before the debate can progress…
‘Eventually they will pass away’: Dame Susan Devoy thinks some Kiwis will never stop being racist
Dame Susan Devoy says there are some New Zealanders who will never be educated out of their racism.
“We will never be a fully multicultural society until we’ve fully adopted our bi-cultural foundations, and that’s the struggle,” Devoy said in an interview with Grey Areas host Petra Bagust, released on Thursday morning.
“It’s an intractable problem – it’s always going to be there, it’s never going to be eradicated.”
Devoy served as Race Relations Commissioner for five years between 2013 and 2018, and told Bagust that 75% of the complaints she received during that time “were all from the same demographic”.
“They were old, not always men, but predominantly men, white – you couldn’t call them Pākehā because that offended them as well – and threatened …that something that was never theirs in the beginning was going to be taken away from them,” Devoy said.
“I don’t think any education in the world is going to change that attitude, and I think that attitude has been slightly empowered … the minute they hear politicians using dog-whistle politics, they feel beholden in themselves to be able to say the things they only thought, but to say them out loud and to other people.
“Whatever I say is not going to change their point of view, the only thing that is going to change is that eventually they will pass away, and let’s hope the next generation haven’t inherited those beliefs that they have.”
Stuff
Barry Soper is now the warning label
…Barry’s irrational hatred of Jacinda has poisoned all his previous journalism and the only kind thing you can say is that one day his career will end.
Barry is a cautionary tale of allowing bitterness to overwhelm and ruin your own body of work.
Remember to reach out to your grandparents this week and give them a cuddle and remind them ZB is not their friend. That way we stop them from becoming Barry Soper’s.
He’s received this award for his services to hating Jacinda and being the mouthpiece of the elite who keep most Kiwis living on their knees.
I hope the news that Jacinda and Clarke won an Emmy ruins his breakfast, curdles his ZB coffee, and reminds him that history has already moved on.
It might be nice just for once to hear about the ones who tuned down a gong and let them tell us why. Instead of giving air to the time servers, donators and other unworthies!
Not exactly a Pilger or Fisk here. Maybe give him an Emmy, or a ribbon
There would be 1 million people out there that would be more deserving than soaker .Every sport coach or referee for a start along with every food bank worker and Citizens advice volunteer .
All those ZB right wingers will be thinking “I must work harder for the Nats so I can get a gong next year for services to neoliberalism”
It appears that more turds are floating to the top more often these days, must be something air making them full of wind.
Never rated him….just a silly old fool with a massive unwarranted ego.
An old irresponsible boozy soak who is having children with no chance of being around for them for much longer….poor critical thinking abilities… biased….can’t see past the end of his nose….when you boil it down….a loser really.
Just another poorly educated ego getting paid for a career in talking garbage.
Soper’s been getting a bunch of puff pieces in Stuff of late – reckon he’s being groomed to replace Luxon. No-one in Cabinet is fit to.
Well he deserves some sort of payment for all the years he has worked as an unpaid Press Advisor to the National Party. I wonder who at ZB will be next?
Trotter now describes himself as a “conservative leftist”– I’d love to know what he means by this in some detail, but he now seems to expect you to pay for the privilege of reading his columns which I’m not prepared to do. I might have paid a small sum when he actually had insights worth listening to.
My father was brought up racist. I’ve got his photo albums from his time in the RN in World War II, and they are full of casual racist comments – no particular animus in them but his labels on nonwhite people would maybe make you blush these days. But he managed to escape, largely because he migrated to NZ and had to work with nonwhite people, and found they were different but still people. I think if he could do it pretty much anyone could given the right circumstances. But then I’m an old-fashioned leftist who believes in the perfectibility of the human condition.