It would be interesting to know what, exactly, John Tamihere was thinking. Giving an interview to a magazine that is well know for hating Helen Clark didn't seem that clever to start out with, but as for the content…
It does rather look as though Tamihere's comments about the Holocaust will be the stake through his political heart at the moment, and that's hardly surprising, although it is dissapointing—as Russell Brown points out—that anything that smacks of Jew-hating gets the opprobrium it deserves, but gay-bashing is the sport of parliamentary leaders. I guess in that regard, one could look back to the Holocaust itself: when Allied troops found the concentration camps, they freed the Jewish prisioners, but re-imprisoned the homosexuals. Apparently the echoes of those attitudes persist today.
Anyway, I can't help but wonder why Tamihere thought the comparison was a good idea. How could he imagine that it wouldn't obscure the point he reckons he was trying to make, about the need for the absurdist wing of Maori politics to let go of the more nonsensical claims it makes and focus on Maoridom in the here and now, and get him mired in a controversy over whether he is a Jew-hater or simply an idiot. Nor can I imagine that his ongoing focus on the tape does him any favours; he sounds like the burglar whose only regret is getting caught.
It's one thing to get sick of hearing people like David Zwartz invoke the Holocaust and the spectre of rising tides of anti-Semitism when you dare to jail Mossad agents engaged in criminal activities in New Zealand and demand an apology from the Israeli government for it's actions against a supposed ally. Being annoyed by Zwartz is fair enough, given the trivialisation of the memory of the victims of hatred to head off criticism for a government Mr Zwartz likes. It's quite another to make a comparison that involves taking a swipe at the feelings of people who, within living memory, were being rounded up and exterminated simply because they had a Jewish relative or practised the Jewish faith or even because, given the Nazi love of Phrenology, they had “Jewish” skulls. And not just the German Nazis—all across Central and Eastern Europe during WW II, Jews were being exterminated by the locals (Catholic Croats, Poles, what have you) at a far greater rate than even the Nazis themselves could muster (Germans didn't hate Jews as much as Romanians, apparently). The United States refused to take pre-War Jewish refugees, and leading members of the moneyed classes of the US were devoted and enthusiastic friends of Hitler, and vocal in their hatred of Jews; those factors combined to keep the US out of the war until 1941.
As a 31 year old Kiwi with no Jewish relatives I know of, I find Tamihere's comments on gays and Jews offensive and stupid. If I was a 31 year old Jewish New Zealander, knowing what my grandparents could have suffered had the war gone badly, or had they been in a different part of the Western world, I'd be furious.
When is it time to change the oil in the deep fryer? When it starts looking like 10-40W oil.
After said oil has come out of the sump.
Initial impressions of Takapuna: it lives up to any number of Auckland stereotypes; the weather is nice, if a little sticky; the traffic is gridlocked at lunchtime (and being the school holidays, my workmates comment this is a good time of year); the roads are pedestrian-hostile, with crossings few and far between (on the wrong side of the road? Walk half a click for the first chance to rectify that!)
Takapuna—and Auckland as far as the eye can see from Takapuna—is flat. Very flat, It's disconcerting for a Wellingtonian. How the hell does anyone find their way around?
And the mens' toilets in the EDS building at Smales Farm have an odd feature: near floor-to-ceiling height windows facing onto a major arterial road.
Takapuna has a curious relationship with space: streets feel absurdly, almost wastefully, expansive, and there are public or semi-public spaces scattered about; the Smales Farm office complex (sorry, technology park) wallows in LA style expansionism with private roads, car parks, fountains, and gardens; some private houses are likewise truly grand. Overall, though, the closer one looks, the more one sees the houses are as close-packed as any city suburb of Wellington, albeit flat, creating a monotony unrelieved by elevation.
Despite the fine, cloudless day, these's a thick layer of gunk over Auckland proper. It's nothing compared to the likes of LA, but it's alarming to the wind-scrubbed atmosphere of home.
Smoking, pubs, and body odour: a personal stench is not a great asset. But is smelling worse the way to cover it? I think not. Cigarettes are not a deoderant. If they were, you'd be wedging them into your armpits.
It's certainly quaint listening to smokers claiming that smoking is a fine olfactory experience compared to BO, anyway.
Adobe aquiring Macromedia will be a big, fat, gang-bang for the design world, and one that makes me sad, mostly because when I worked in that part of the universe I hated Illustrator with a passion, while Freehand was a joy to use by comparison.
Watching them grab hold of staff for an under-resourced project it occurred to me that in a past era, project managers would have worked for the navy as press-gang agents.