KEY POINTS:
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?
Well no, not really. But never
mind.
That last is one of the more challenging scraps of logic-illogic of the many uttered by Alice during her visit to Wonderland, in the much loved novel of the same name.
Nowadays it's often considered a children's story, a delightfully meandering piece of whimsy, with a likeable heroine and some catchy songs, so it's often forgotten that in creating Wonderland, Lewis Carroll ushered in the era of a new sort of surrealism, a brand of literary parody, the glorious madness which belied a sharp, at times scathing engagement with the political and social landscape of his time.
Watching the news this week, your average television viewer would be forgiven for wondering if they'd followed Alice headfirst down the rabbit hole, such was the surfeit of glorious nonsense dished up by our Foreign Minister from the other side of the Looking Glass in Wellington.
When asked how long he'd been aware of the entity at the centre of his political woes, the Spencer Trust, Winnie responded with the deliciously gnomic "and how long have you known about the alphabet"? As bonkers soundbites go this was a pearler, even for an established purveyor of non- sequiturs like Peters. Certainly it had the required effect of reducing the hack in question to a stunned-mullet state of silence. He may as well have asked him "why is a raven like a writing desk"? and been done with it.
Not that there's much that is new in the spectacle of Winston Peters fomenting happy discontent among the media. We all know it's one of his favourite ways to pass the day. Not for Peters the big-game fishing or foxhunting beloved of aristocratic ex-pats like Dame Kiri.
In keeping with his avowed humility as the would-be member for Tauranga, he sticks instead to the relatively more modest bloodsport of journalist baiting. It's an athletic activity all the same, and you still need a high horse to do it, or in Winston's case at least a high step.
He's obviously aware of the Alice oeuvre also, choosing this week to cite Carroll for his own purposes, when he compared his daily jousting with the press pack to a Mad Hatter's tea party.
It's an apt comparison in terms of pure absurdity at least. "Move around," cried the Hatter at regular intervals as the increasingly discombobulated attendees were forced to swap seats in the middle of their crazy tea. "Step back!" cried Winnie, and fled a press conference in high dudgeon when ill-mannered journalists unsportingly refused to relinquish the step.
Shocking form of them, really. The dormouse may have been a drunkard, but she never refused to do as she was told. Perhaps Peters should have provided his petulant press gang with soothing cups of tea?
As is usual with Peters, however, he has chosen a metaphor that tells only one side of the story - his side.
Seizing on the Mad Hatter's Tea Party as an image with which to discredit the media's efforts to get a straight answer from him, he's conveniently, and probably deliberately, missed the point.
Had he a closer acquaintance with the novel he'd know that it's the Hatter himself who threw the tea party and occasioned all the madness that ensued.
Likewise, there's no doubt but that it's Winston who's the ring master in this silly circus. Of course he is.
Another thing we all know about Winston is how much he needs to be in control. It's this autocratic nature that has him in the position he's in; who on earth could believe that the leader of a party as notoriously Winston-whipped as NZ First has no knowledge of one of its major sources of funding?
Even the Mad Hatter's pocket watch is telling the right time on this one, and a drunk dormouse can see Winnie's piss and vinegar tirades for what they are; an attempt to use a tried and tested technique to answer some deeply troubling questions. True, this technique has worked in the past for Peters, and you could argue we're all the richer for it. Whether it's establishing his alpha dog credentials by calling Duncan Garner "sunshine" in front of Condoleezza Rice, or regaling an assembled throng of hacks with a few lines written in the back of a green school notebook and calling it a press conference, he's always had a splendid feeling for the theatre of the absurd, a sensibility that's added some much needed colour to the pallid backlot that is New Zealand parliamentary politics.
His characteristic bombast provides a welcome respite from the monochrome drivel that passes for political oratory around here. Who wouldn't rather the rhetoric of Winston over the interminable drone of, say, Gordon Copeland? However, bombast is just that, a tale of sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying nothing.
Winston's performance this week brings to mind the outrageous complacency of another of Lewis Carroll's creations; the ill-fated Humpty Dumpty. It was poor old Humpty who told Alice, "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean, no more and no less." And we all know where such blithe self-assurance got him. The Foreign Minister would do well to cut short his tea party and learn from Humpty's mistakes. He needs to start answering some questions being put to him plainly. If he doesn't, it will take more than the Prime Minister incumbent or a leader in waiting to put old Winnie together again.
