Labour good, Tory bad - sorry Helen, that's not how grown-up girls and boys see the world
KEY POINTS:
I HAVE been reading Ian Wishart's cartoonish book Absolute Power. Wishart spends 325 pages painting a picture of Prime Minister Helen Clark - Wham! Ka-pow! - as an amalgam of Mrs Danvers, Cruella de Vil and one of PG Wodehouse's ghastly aunts who "eat broken bottles and wear
barbed wire next to the skin".
I don't know who is the bigger bee-itch: Wishart or Clark. Wishart's stalker-like hatchet job almost made me feel sympathetic towards Clark. Until she says: "I definitely see children as destroying my lifestyle ... I was able to develop as a professional person with no breaks in career ... I wasn't caught in the trap of the young bride who seems to stop maturing when her kids are born."
Whoa there, sister. Wishart must realise this quote, which he dug out from the 1993 book Head and Shoulders, is incendiary; he repeats it several times just to rile us up. Bring it on: I would love to have a debate with Clark about whether having children makes one stop maturing.
My experience is the opposite and I wager many mothers would agree with me. Part of maturing is no longer framing the world in Clark's binary terms: you're either with us or agin us. It is fashionable to say politics is tribal. If that means hating anyone who isn't part of your Ponsonby dinner party clique, then Wishart's book nails this criticism. But isn't the left supposed to stand for tolerance? Presumably it does as long as you are not one of those emotionally stunted suburban mothers or a Tory.
"The one thing I hate is the National Party. I think they're loathsome people. I do," Clark says. I can't help wondering if the left is more insular than the right. I like Russell Brown (Labour pamphlet boy, according to Wishart) even though I don't agree with him, whereas Labour-ites are not allowed to like people on the other side. Look what happened to John Tamihere. Bam! Ka-pow!
Call me old-fashioned, but I expect fashion to be glamorous rather than preachy.
Trelise Cooper is making supermarket recycling bags. I switched on Fashion TV this week and caught the latest supermodel, Agyness Deyn, being interviewed backstage at Milan Fashion Week. Along with the usual fashionista insights ("Favourite colour yellow. Favourite food sushi") she was questioned about global warming. Her answer - "Everyone can make a difference, nowarimean?" - exemplifies today's trendy philosophy.
Remember Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in Lord of the Rings: Even the smallest person can change the course of the future. Lovely concept, ducky, but with all due respect when it comes to climate change: bollocks. Getting rid of plastic bags might make you feel cosy inside, but contrary to what Agyness Deyn might say, it is not making a measurable difference to the ozone layer.
Given that New Zealand has been left off the IPCC's computer models, it is hard to imagine that you choosing to bike to work is making any difference at all. Nevertheless, the sentimental concept of "people power" is too seductive to jettison, despite the fact that it simply doesn't add up. Except maybe to models.
deborah@coneandco.com
