GIRL TALK: Media is obsessed with the media

I'm not one of those butch chicks who likes to talk about cars and engines, but this week I am making an exception and ranting about transport.
Wagons, actually. Bandwagons.
I confess I've been on a few in my time for various forgettable reasons which, at the time, seemed a matter of life or death, but few have been more repellent than the latest one sweeping like an uncontrolled bushfire across our airwaves: the Paul Henry bandwagon.
Perhaps every other media commentator in New Zealand knows something I do not. Perhaps they know this bandwagon is on a fast track to the winning lotto numbers but one thing is certain ... everyone wants to be on board.
Except me.
Am I alone in saying that the brouhaha and froth over Henry's latest bout of verbal diarrhoea is interesting ... but not THAT interesting?
While the media wring their collective hands and wave a microphone in front of anyone even remotely inclined to comment on the deep-seated consequences of injuring the feelings of ethnic minorities, hundreds of those who fit such a category elsewhere in the world are being killed, abused and generally maligned in a more meaningful way without any television audience at all.
While column inches and airwaves are awash with "should he" or "shouldn't he", I can't help wondering what would have filled the space if only Paul had said how jolly it was to have a Governor General of multicultural descent. Ahhh ... if only.
But he didn't. So we stew on it. And the reality is that while small numbers of liberal left-wingers and hand-wringing do-gooders have their knickers in a twist, most people (while perhaps accepting the comments might have better been left unsaid) simply don't care one way or another. Whether it is Vetchy beating up on his woman or Campbell reporting what he oughtn't, the media just seems to be overly obsessed with the media.
The rest of the great unwashed simply chuckle, frown or sigh and go back to getting on with life. No big deal.
I'll confess to being friends with Paul Henry ... well, in the sense that 44,000 others are friends with him on Facebook ... and in a moment of boredom when the story broke, I took a look at his page to see what sort of reaction he was getting.
The level of passion that New Zealand people feel for a man they have never met talking on a show they seldom watch about a topic they hardly give much thought to was really quite remarkable.
After reading several billion posts of ardent support and blood-curdling rage, I decided I may as well experiment and leave my own post. It was a fairly moderated, intellectual comment about freedom of speech and the importance of generating debate.
Within a minute of this seemingly innocuous post (with my own name I might add), I was labelled a white-trash, racist fraud who had clearly invented a name because I was too scared to be identified as such. "I mean, who the hell is called 'Eva?"', asked my ribald opponent (who, it's worth noting, happened to be called Carebear Starfish).
The irony is that while the media talk about how awfully naughty Henry is and he enjoys an unscheduled holiday his Facebook page has garnered an additional 10,000 new friends overnight. It would seem that any publicity is good publicity and the only thing more certain than a media feeding frenzy when one of their own falls from grace is that they will do it all over again the next time Henry stomps wilfully over the line.