MAORI MP Hone Harawira would seem to have scored an own goal with his criticism in Parliament this week of Hawke's Bay district court judge Tony Adeane.
Today's letters to the editor are a fair indication of public support for the judge's decision to send a young, repeat graffiti vandal to
prison.
They also reflect the indignation at the MP undermining the judiciary by personally abusing one of its members.
In Parliament Mr Harawira said the judge, who had called a tagger's vandalism "culturally offensive", "didn't give a stuff about Maori culture" and was a "dickhead".
To most, the outburst says far more about the speaker than his target.
Even so, just how the MP reached his startling conclusion is largely irrelevant.
So, too, is the inelegant way his verdict was articulated.
That is because he is playing to a very different gallery.
Mr Harawira has placed himself in the tagger's corner, apparently the political benefits of sharing their cause being worth the odium it attracts.
However, it is the MP, not Judge Adeane, who has made tagging a racial issue.
If the judge erred, it might have been in forgetting that the grievance industry has appropriated the term "culturally offensive", which must not be used in any other context, least of all ironically.
Mr Harawira and party leader Tariana Turia argue that tagging is valid artistic expression and a manifestation of poverty or frustration (disregarding their insult to victims of tagging, to artists and to all who have less and are frustrated but do not commit crime).
They cannot bring themselves to condemn crime if it means criticising Maori.
Perversely, a political requirement to blame all else (including judges) not only tacitly condones crime but also ensures that criminals will always consider themselves more sinned against than sinning.
If taggers' horizons are so depressingly low, they might gain little improvement from being sent to jail.
But they will certainly find nothing to aspire to with a champion who abandons reason when the going gets tough.
Mr Harawira is entitled to his opinions, however crudely they might be expressed.
But if that is the standard of advocacy for the constituency to which he lays claim, then we should all be very worried.
MAORI MP Hone Harawira would seem to have scored an own goal with his criticism in Parliament this week of Hawke's Bay district court judge Tony Adeane.
Today's letters to the editor are a fair indication of public support for the judge's decision to send a young, repeat graffiti vandal to
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