A short missive on Te Pati Maori’s nepotising fasciitis

Sometimes I want to be Steve McQueen circa 1968. I’ve got a woollen, tweed type jacket that he might have worn. I can’t find a matching mustard coloured turtle neck skivvy – that would be perfect, but nothing’s available. They don’t make them for men. I got a grey one, from… the women’s section (thank God it wasn’t anywhere near the underwear)… xtra xtra xtra large, but it’s not mustard – there was nothing close – grey was the least feminine colours available (is that technically cross-dressing?). Apart from not obtaining a mustard-coloured skivvy to match a woollen jacket the only difficulty in stealing his look is that he was up his own arse and a c*nt in real life apparently. A dick. So, superficially – yes, the look is cool AF, but the personality type that goes with it is hard work. Or, it would be hard work if I wasn’t already one, right (?).

The lengths people will go to for an aesthetic.

I mention this, not to raise the spectre of turtle neck skivvies as gateway apparel for middle-aged cross-dressing, but as a cautionary note about substance and appearance and combinations that work together.  Imagine two of these Steve McQueen characters in the same room together, alone. They would be fighting over some bullshit indignity within a few minutes. They would look cool AF while they did it, but they would be up and fighting each other. And I’m thinking of all this after watching The Bradbury Group live podcast last night (04/11/2025) and John Tamihere’s car-phoned, drive-by counter-attack on Takuta “Doc”Ferris, whose electorate had started a petition to roll JT as Te Pati Maori President.

I’m getting the impression in some ways JT and Doc share the same personality types. Both a friend to the skivvy and jacket combo, they could both be there at the end of the movie, looking cool, about to drag race to the death in their hot rods for a reason long lost in the plot developments – that is their vibe. There’s no bluffing – every bluff will be called. Unlike a Mexican stand-off, this Maori stand-off is all guns blazing from start.

The Polynesian equivalent would be George Henare’s role as the Tohunga in the movie Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and the moment he finds out a rebellion or disloyalty has taken place he immediately strikes a fierce pose and commands “Kill them all!” – so absolutely cold, chilling AF. He’s probably a shorty too, but from memory he wears a big head piece so he looks taller.

Now, how does all this tie in with cross-dressing? It doesn’t, it simply doesn’t. The algorithm and search terms for cross-dressing sent you here, and you are about to be disappointed, but it is however linked to the other more gauche fetish: midgetry. The love of very short individuals: dwarphilia. That’s why you’re here, and for you this next passage might be your dwarf rage kink. Steve McQueen on the set of The Magnificent Seven had a petty rivalry (that he had no doubt started because he’s such a massive dick) with fellow short-arse, Yul Brynner. And I mention it because JT is such a short man. And Brynner took to wearing lifts in his shoes for height to be taller than McQueen and it came down to a showdown – probably at the showdown scene – where the main cast stand in a line and Brynner had made a mound of earth on his mark to gain some height and McQueen kicked the dirt away and that triggered a fight.

Neither of them could get past the height bar at a roller coaster and yet here they are being the leading macho cowboys of the day, powered by ego, narcissism and fuelled by the anger of stature deficit. “It’s like being on a rollercoaster,” someone might say quite innocently, and the anger of the short man brews as he is forced to say “yeah”, when in actuality the poor wee guy has always been too short to ever get on. A fully adult rollercoaster virgin ffs, what a loser. God, the anger – he must be constantly at boiling point.

Short man, short wick – that’s what they say because it’s true, let me explain. Ladies can be short, short as, what does it matter: they’re cute. But a man? A man that short needs to be devious and threatening to survive – well, it’s that or being cute and tap dancing, and men like JT don’t do cute and the only tap he would be interested in would be to do with water rights. Is it any wonder that it was the paranoid militant short guys that were calling to “cut the tall trees” in the Rwanda genocide?  The dating apps and the height women think a man can be mated with demonstrate the justification for the seething, unrelenting hate towards the over-towering world that the short man must feel every second of their tiny, dumpy, sexually limited, little – literally little – lives. Will they be normal height, ie. not disabled anymore, in heaven? Will they get to ride the rollercoaster with Jesus in heaven? These are all fair questions.

These human hobbits are real – I’ve seen them. Winston Peters, barely comes up to my arm pit. JT ditto. And they are as angry AF. Shortest male cop I’ve ever seen was a guy who had a 12 year-old kid in a lock and was pepper spraying him point blank into his face until the spray ran out (this was at the lantern festival in front of the whole town). They are explosive types. Old people shrink with age and maybe that exacerbates the feeling of diminishment.

I haven’t checked on Doc’s height, but his preference to go radio silence and for his electorate to abstain on Kapa-Kingi’s suspension and to carry the petition against JT, while he remains schtum is telling. Maybe he isn’t a short man, because I’m not seeing the super-heated cauldron of volcanism from him the likes of what JT is dishing out. Doc seems more calculating and cautious than to make broadsides personally, so from that I doubt that his instinct or intention has been to leave the party – quite the opposite, he wants to co-lead it. However, his gambit, their gambit, foolish and cack-handed as it is, has come undone ultimately, probably, because Oriini Kaipara has not sided with him and Kapa-Kingi. The scheme, the dream, is over at that point. It was a fool’s errand.

The TPM male leadership can’t go from Rawiri Waititi to anyone else but Ferris as it sits today. Doc is the heir apparent to the co-leadership by virtue of being the only other male MP. As long as no male candidate is selected to take on the only non-TPM Maori electorate (Labour-held Ikaroa-Rawhiti) Doc will continue to be in that same position as Crown Prince. That de facto situation is perhaps a prevailing fact that has motivated JT to act in such a decisive and ruthless fashion. As everyone has noted – none of this seems to have anything at all to do with policy, with the Kaupapa, it is just seemingly personalities. It’s more complex than that, of course, but it is coming down to trust and confidence which are personal qualities.

People have called for Doc and Kapa-Kingi to go. She was one thing (and her son will ensure it all turns legal if they are not satisfied), but Doc seems to be another. If you come for the King, you better not miss. Well, he’s missed. JT counter-attacked within hours. We don’t exactly know why; but generally the nexus between JT the father-in-law to the co-leader whose wife is JT’s daughter and is the party’s general manager is a nepotising fasciitis on the party.

I have witnessed and/or participated in some political bust-ups in the recent past. Seen it with Rodney Hide against Prebble in Act – the constant undermining and the stress that accompanies it – and all based on ego, absolutely nothing to do with policy at all. I saw up close how Te Ururoa Flavell in the Maori Party had to get rid of Hone Harawira to gain the leadership by succession to Pita Sharples and went about it in an underhanded way – that was more of the story than the policy dispute over the MACA legislation that is listed as the official cause of the split and the resulting Mana movement.

Given the difficulties are personalities, expectations and management that has a nepotistic troika at its centre my recommendation would be to have a Chief of Staff come in with some mana to provide some distancing and independence of advice to the leadership and be someone new who can bridge and smooth the relationships and provide some damn focus. Focus so Doc can maybe bother to write a paragraph at least for their select committee reports and basic house-keeping that has deteriorated and everyone can see it – the empty seats in the house, the no-shows at select committees etc.

If no-one is going to quit – and everyone stays where they are – then the Mexican stand-off is a stalemate and the marae-based process will probably ensure that outcome. In that case a Chief of Staff or some other form of circuit-breaker is needed or else Labour will take back both of the electorates in short order.