The double standards are doubling down on double standards. Witness the Boris McShag Johnson, currently interim Prime Minister of the lesser Great Britain. Let's give him a gender makeover and see what that uncovers? He always looks like he just got out of bed.
Possibly there is something goingon with the ever-shifting liaisons but if a female politician looked that scruffy, she would be demolished for not looking at her best. Let's count his fathering? No, we can't, as apparently he does not know himself. Imagine a woman holding high office who seems unable to say how many children they have - they would be torched like a witch on the pyre of media fires.
What a female politician wears, if she has children or not, if she colours her hair or wears a new jacket can make or break a career. Would we look on so whimsically at a lying, deceitful, bombastic, avoiding-all-responsibility, narcissist, back-stabbing woman in high office doing what Boris Johnson does and decide this was acceptable?
No, society would not, but for some reason Boris Johnson seems to get away with all this while brazenly blaming others for his own failures. Why is this? To simply dismiss this as another measure of a double standard is too easy. It requires the media to bring a focus to these issues when they concern a man in equal measure to the scathing criticism of female politicians.
Terry Sarten (left) and Jay Rerekura wrestle with the question of whether songs are literature. Photo / file
Of course, there is another like him across the Atlantic who has been providing politicians the world over (including here) with a guide to how to get away with pursuing self-interest, behaving badly, derailing democratic process and demeaning any who would dare to question their wisdom. Why do we let this pass?
If this was a female politician the commendation would be deafening. Let's flip the double standard and condemn these behaviours for what they are.
There is another sort of unhelpful double standard at work in the way illegal drug seizures are reported in the Kiwi media.
When caches of methamphetamine P are seized at our borders, the stories always quote a street value as a way to indicate the significance of the find. This unintentionally signals to the criminally inclined that there are potential massive profits to be made - which is hardly likely to act as a deterrent. It would be better to emphasis the social cost incurred by P use in our own communities. This is the price paid for the consequent violence, child neglect, damaged lives and social destruction. The most recent estimates are that methamphetamine use has a social cost of $20 million a week - that's $1billion a year.
It is a drug that undermines communities in various insidious ways. The consequences of child neglect, their witnessing violence, children being brought up by their grandparents or in state care are all part of the street price that does not feature in the value of drugs seizures in a way that reflects the real cost of P use in New Zealand.
