A Hunting We Will Go

Tally Ho

Giovanni's spread across the pages of the Herald is the story of an ordinary NZ'er who became a Great White Hunter. It's the story of how he hunted down and scalped two Despicable Maori Men.

Never mind that there were two white broadcasters who offended in much the same way and who are still on air.

The excitement among the Herald editors over the Giovanni story must have been palpable. Its not easy these days to get good Maori prey - someone well known, uppity, easily despised. Someone to be toppled off their high horse. Or even to find a Decent White Hunter. But between them, Giovanni, W and JT ticked all the boxes.

Then again, maybe the Herald editors should Push Pause.

One of the Great White Hunters they promoted in his day was Alan Titford. He of the 24 year sentence for sexual brutality, child abuse, threatening to kill, torching a farmhouse, damaging his farm and blaming it on local Maori. He too was once spread across the Herald. A Great White Hunter defending his property and his family against the Savagery, the Violence, nay the Greed of local Maori.

Photo's and TV news footage of him standing among the debris of the burnt down farmhouse, pointing out the damage to the farm he said Te Roroa people were responsible for spiked a backlash against the Treaty settlement process. Arson and damage we now know he caused himself.

Yes. It is unfair to single out the Herald when other newspapers, television and radio were as culpable.  The TV footage of him showing damage to his farm that iwi were supposed to have caused played on and off over several years.

Titford's lies had a huge impact on Maori and will have on NZ'ers 50 years hence. Govt changed the Waitangi Act so that privately owned land could no longer be the subject of recommendations for the Crown to purchase, whenever that land became available. That one change, coupled with the Crown
dictated process and the settlement cap has meant that the potential for the settlements to be enduring has been lost.

That is Titford's legacy.

But what can we learn from all this. Maybe not to  blindly accept every anti Maori claim and to ask whether the same standards are being evenly applied. And to recognise that there are those whose heritage, genes and upbringing predispose them to hatred and of whom we must be vigilant
.

Celebrate, We're White, Tonight ! Its a Celebration !

Am on the lookout for Amy, friend to a Roastbuster victim, who began the saga that ended in Willie and JT being taken off air until next year.

I want to ask her whether she sees that outcome as a fair solution to her concern about young girls drinking, hanging out with predatory young men, being raped, and one girl laying a formal complaint to the police.

Somehow I doubt what happened to Willie and JT was the outcome she was looking for.

How did an issue involving mainly white girls, white boys, white police, white politicians, and white RadioLive officials end up with only two scalps, both of them Maori. Two other RadioLive hosts Sean Plunkett and Andrew Fagan's comments were worse, but they haven't been forced to fall on their swords. As I said, Celebrate, We're White, Tonight !

Grovelling apologies from Maori men aren't the norm and Willie and JT could certainly learn a thing or two from their Pakeha colleagues. I think the ability to grovel is a talent inherited from the days of English serfdom when a grovelling apology vs a reluctant apology might mean the difference between a hanging, a whipping or just getting your hand chopped off. Yes. Sean and Andrew while you might occasionally wish you could do the haka better, or pronounce Maori better, you and your whanau must be now rejoicing in your whiteness.

Then again Willie and JT could learn a thing or two from the Police about how to keep your job when you have power and you use that power to support rapists by not charging them.  

As for the ANZ (the "send a billion a year to Oz" bank) who led the hysterical withdrawal of advertisers from RadioLive, who made you the moral arbiters for NZ. Never mind the $10,000 donation to salve your brand, how about keeping the billion a year in NZ and putting some of it back to the people who earned it for you.

Giovanni Tiso must be quietly pleased that a few well placed barbs got Willie and JT off air. Such an outstanding result for so little effort and to top it all off, celebrated by half a page in the NZ Herald no less. Could life get any better. And of course none of it was racially based, it just so happened that you overlooked the Sean and Andrew diatribes and will (of course) get onto your campaign to get rid of the police responsible for allowing the rapists to carry on raping for another two years after the first complaint. But what with the interviews, the adulation and the euphoria that comes when you rip the scalps off a couple of lippy Maori you just haven't had the time.

Yes. Giovanni. Lets, Celebrate, We're White, Tonight ! It's a Celebration !