KEY POINTS:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers bombs - US news item
Invasion of the Body Snatchers bombshell - NZ news item
Are you feeling less than brave
As you inch toward the grave?
Are you fearful you may vanish without trace?
Are you worried that your whanau's
Going to stick you in the car now
The better that your corpse they may embrace.
Do you rue the reckless thought
That an Order from the Court
Would apply to every one of every race?
Then you're right! You should beware
Cos the coppers will not care
They'll just watch the dirt get shovelled on your face!
They will not confront your vultures
In this so-called "clash of cultures"
They'll just leave you in your far from resting place!!!
As indeed they did. The extinguished poet laureate, Mr Jam Hipkins, is entirely correct. On Monday, the police did leave Mr Takamore in his "far from resting place".
Armed with a court order and sworn to uphold the law, Commissioner Broad's heroic lads and lasses rushed to the scene of a funeral they'd been directed to stop and, while aware it was their duty to do exactly that, decided it would be a jolly sight easier for all concerned if they just shuffled their heels, averted their gaze and let those at the graveside commit the body they'd stolen to the ground they'd chosen for it. Apparently, the constabulary didn't feel "comfortable" intruding on the mourners' grief, no matter how peremptorily some of those same mourners had previously intruded upon the grief of Mr Takamore's partner and children.
Now there will be those who endorse this position. You can imagine speeding boy racers using the unsolicited collection of a deceased relative as the ultimate defence for going too fast. Equally, anyone caught with stolen Chinese garments will henceforth insist they only wanted the clothes for the formaldehyde and they only wanted the formaldehyde because their late uncle was about to take a lengthy and unexpected trip in an unrefrigerated van.
And it won't only be felons who regard with enthusiasm the police decision to treat a court order as footling nonsense. The professionally compassionate - those in the Race Relations Office, for instance - are likely to see this as timely, if novel, evidence that the force is responding appropriately to the United Nations' call for greater acceptance of the "cultural defence" in our judicial system.
The fact that "culture" carried the day - and the coffin in this case - only because the police chose appears of little consequence to the posh folk in the Hive.
Perhaps they've got enough on their plate already, what with finance companies dropping like brassieres at a strip club and Air New Zealand condemned for flying imperialistic warmongers (formerly known as "Allies") hither and yon but, whatever the reason, the anarchic possibilities created when those on the beat start thumbing their noses at those on the bench don't faze our top team one iota.
Certainly, the Minister of Justice isn't threatening nasty things like contempt of court and the Minister of Police hasn't even politely suggested to the rozzers that enforcing a citizen's legal rights is a core part of their job description!
Bear in mind, Mr Takamore's partner did actually get a court order though it doesn't seem to matter a tangi's cuss, as the laureate also notes:
In days of yore the rule of lore
Decided what was what,
But now the rule of law's supreme
Excepting when it's not.
And that should be more often
Is the UN's stipulation,
No matter that it's making us
An un-United Nation.
More culture in the courts, they say
As is the UN's fashion,
But for a family shocked with grief
No need to show compassion.
Yet showing that would surely be
Real aroha's true test,
But where there's none your culture too
Is also laid to rest.
Mind you, to be fair, what's occurred in this sad instance is not the work of culture but of cult; specifically, the cult of Maori past, a local reinvention of Rousseau's noble savage (if you'll pardon the unpalatable phrase) which has seen the creation of a mythic phenomenon unique in human history, a people of absolute virtue and no apparent vice.
And when this idealised nonsense has been officially promoted for the best part of 30 years, it's little wonder a few deluded folk decide to take the lore into their own hands by kidnapping the dead then claiming a cultural mandate to justify their crass, insensitive, selfish behaviour.
What has happened here is not a cultural matter. It's just an ugly and unpleasant example of people ignoring the wishes of those they should most heed. By their flagrant flouting of the wishes of Mr Takamore's next of kin, the self-centred body snatchers reveal themselves as neither fair nor whanau.
Bury the man where he wants to be
But not up in Opotiki,
Unless he's said he must rest there
Consign him to his family's care
Or have the rest of us conclude
You're heartless, heedless, cruel and rude,
And though your graveyard may be full of holes
Above them stand no loving souls!
