Can't talk to you no more, you silver tongued devil
Diary of the last 8 hours and 30 years of cornflakes
8.45am
The BREAKING NEWS of the morning is that the nice lady from the cover of Time has regretfully advised that she will no longer be making herself available for a weekly Monday morning appearance on the top rating Mike Hosking Breakfast, audience: 69,000 persons.
Is that right, MTAF reader Jeremy - Hi Jeremy! , 69,000 persons?
That’s not quite as big a team as one with 5 mill in it. Just saying, as Sean Plunket (remember him!) liked to say when he was making a barbed point but wanted to sound less thuggish.
Big news though, eh, this tradition that has lasted since forever ago when they shoved poor old Merv Smith out the door at 1ZB and made him an ex cornflakes king and put Paul Holmes in and made him the future of talk radio. Big brave nervous nicotine-stained days.
Slowly but surely they clawed the ratings back up all the way to what was that number again Jeremy? 69,000? Boy that radio market sure is a scattered fragmented thing these days, isn't it?
Anyway this tradition is a big democratic tradition and don't you forget it, especially when your talking points are composed almost wholly of the words cancel and culture and woke and excerpts from the vast library of Dr Seuss titles that are not one of the six no longer being published.
What a tradition, though, that Monday morning slot.
I remember it amongst the searing flames of the 4th Labour government as we plummeted nose first from the sky, faster ever faster.
My partner then was MTAF reader Karren - hi Karren! - and she and I were working for the PM. Every Monday morning would begin the same way with a call from the Paul Holmes producer who would run through the topics for discussion and Karren would in turn call the PM and fill him in and then he and Paul Homes would get on the blower and the week in politics would be pushed away from the jetty once more.
Sometimes this chat functioned as a series recap for the new episode of This Week in New Zealand If You’re Into Dying Governments. Sometimes it was a chance for Newstalk to get a new item pushed into the news cycle, but I can’t recall it ever having any sort of pivotal effect.
In that respect, nothing has really changed, save that the current host is more given to a barely-hinged harangue and a loopy stacked question which invariably fails to get a rise from the calm smiling former Mormon on the other end of the line.
Listeners who tune in each morning to get their reckons confirmed by old mate Mike would arguably be no differently-informed if she were there or not. So as this tree falls in the forest can you hear it over all the rabble, really?
Will democracy be so greatly deprived? Perhaps, yes, if those 69,000 listeners do not ever also turn to the Auckland morning newspaper or One News or Newshub or any of the other places where news gets mashed into Watties baby food and spooned back out between ads. But that seems a slim sort of likelihood.
More to the point, it’s not a boycott of the host or the station, just the appointment. She says she will remain available as and when necessary, and as long as that’s more than - oh - all those years when John Key was PM and never much inclined to make time for Morning Report or Checkpoint, that would be more than enough, you’d think.
Also: as a piece of theatre or if you like, a Mike Drop, a statement along the lines of I am not going to begin my working week each Monday by taking grief from some dick is a pretty good one to make on International Women's Day.
Finally, and thinking back now to the way that appointment can frame the start of your working week, I say: more strength to her.
The way you start the week is no small matter. What occupies your mental landscape for the week may well be determined by the things that happens in its first hours.
Who can say what a more positive a mental space unstained by Hosking might yield, what careful thought might then have a chance to evolve.
If it gives her more room to think about the absolute nightmare of, for example home ownership or poverty or the climate crisis, well, you just keep right on truckin’ Prime Minister.
8.55 am
Dear Uncle Dave when you say housing nightmare, how big a boy are we talking, nightmare wise?
This is what were talking:
I also recommend this:
9.35am
I am crossing one of the pedestrian crossings in our seaside village and I am not waving to the driver who has stopped.
This has been a subject of some social media discussion around here and possibly, if I’m reading the mood correctly, this makes me the bad guy; the asshole, if you will,
I am not for turning or resiling, though. The law says this is how it is supposed to happen. Vehicle with wheels and lethal force stops for person on foot.
I do not wish to do anything that implies that this is not a solid legal obligation. I do not wish to do anything that implies gratitude for the dispensation of some notional favour that is actually the law of the tarsealed land.
We are slowly making our way towards a day when car mania is no more. I do not wish to see that take a day longer than it has to. For that reason I am not doin’ nothin’ to sustain or enable or indulge the dysfunction.
Also hello MTAF reader Jane! I saw you commenting that you always wave to someone who stops for you, and you maybe will now correctly remind me that I myself have waved to you from the crossing.
Just to be clear, that’s because I'm waving hello! to my friend Jane, not hello Newman to my sworn foe the motor vehicle.
10.35am
More on fishing. MTAF reader Nick - hi Nick! - has a perfect expression for what’s so wrong with the way things are being done.
2.35pm
One more thought about the business of telling the media where to get off. Behold this mighty moment from last week - if it hasn't already reached your screen - as Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki deals with an extremely familiar framing of a bullshit question.
4.20pm
Robert Plant and Patty Griffin. Oh hell yes.
I don't wave to drivers approaching a crossing I'm about to step onto - I eyeball the bastards, so they understand what's expected of them.
Some time ago I made the effort to listen to our PM's Monday (or Tuesday) morning encounters on both NewsTalk ZB and Morning Report. I have to say that I thought the Hosking lifted Jacinda's game and she answered his short sharp questions clearly - usually ran rings around him IMO. I even thought Jacinda might be seeing it as a useful 'mind gym' workout to start the week. The Morning Report interviews were pedestrian by comparison. But ...
If I tuned in sooner, and/or hung on long enough, I became aware that Hosking bracketed his reasonably straight-forward interview by prattling perception manufacturing bollocks.
I gave up tuning in so ...
a) he may have got worse, and
b) I can understand why others choose to give it away.