Perhaps the critics would have been happier if they had picked someone at random from the Hamilton phone book to launch their campaign, but they made their choice and now they have to live with the consequences.
For those still reeling from the shock of hearing about Malcolm's presumption, here is a simple explanation of what happens when the equally surreal worlds of celebrity and politics collide. Prominent people will be heard, solely because they are prominent.
This may be regrettable, but it is true. Then you get to consider what they have to say. Then you use your powers of reasoning to decide whether what they say is correct or not. The critics seems to believe the electorate is so dim that it will do something because someone famous has told them to.
Sometimes, people we recognise from the telly go into politics. Maggie Barry is having a go. The mayor of Christchurch was on the box for years. The Speaker of the House used to host a quiz show for children.
Are they using their high profile to give them a head start in the race to be elected? Of course they are. They'd be mad not to. And we would be equally barking to base our choices on the magnitude of their fame. We can think for ourselves.
OCCUPY
It's been a bad week for former TV stars. Take poor Dave Cull. First of all he's mayor of Dunedin. Second, he can't understand why the police are refusing to march into the Octagon and evict the Occupy protesters who have been there for a month. He's considering getting rid of the protesters by using private security firms or, as they used to be called, "goons and vigilantes".
It's a fine mess a town is in when its police are this much smarter than its mayor. They are not, however, smarter than the average parent of an adolescent. Anyone who has managed to steer teenagers through those years knows that the surest way of getting them to stop doing something is to refuse to pay any attention. Leave them alone and they will go home.
The real problem the Occupy protesters face is that they are failing to communicate their valuable message. They got our attention but failed to do anything with it.
FONTERRA STRIKES AGAIN
Niceblocks, the small company making frozen treats for grown-ups in flavours such as lemon, lime and bitters, should not be surprised that Fonterra has suddenly invented The Ice Bar Co, making frozen treats for grown-ups in flavours such as lemon, lime and bitters.
It's like complaining about sharks eating people or snakes biting them. That is what sharks and snakes do. It's just their nature. Large companies have always stolen and run with ideas from smaller ones.
Fonterra has an image problem at the moment, being widely perceived as an agricultural Godzilla that doesn't care what destruction it causes in pursuit of its goals. Unfortunately, the more people who realise what it has done in the case of the Nice Blocks, the more chance Fonterra will have yet another PR disaster on its hands.
