New Zealand Musings

My bete noir.

One of my bete noirs is Michael Laws. He’s probably one of many New Zealander’s bete noirs. Michael Laws, for those living off the coast of this fair land, is presently Mayor of a town at the mouth of the Whanganui River, on the west coast of the North Island – the town is named Wanganui, though the local Maori would prefer the town was renamed Whanganui. However this is a major point of contention in the district, a contention with some obvious racial overtones. He keeps an internet site, as Mayor, which I confess I’ve only just found by googling his name. The mention of his daughter, Lucy, is because she has had leukaemia, and was very ill for a while. Obviously I hope she continues to thrive and that her remission is permanent – I wish the whole family well. You can also find his life story googling his name and wiki, which I’ll leave the reader to do.

The photo on his mayoral web page shows a very pleasant family photograph, and seeing this, makes me seem churlish to say that he’s my bete noir. But reading the entry about him in wiki reveals something of his political views and approach to argument.

You can understand this rather better if you google his name along with Sunday Star Times, and a number of his articles / opinion pieces will be referenced. He is then revealed for what he is, or at least what he would like people to think what he is, as reactionary, opinionated, intolerant and really rather sour red-neck, which unfortunately does find a strong echo in New Zealand’s proud tradition of red-neckism. (New Zealand at one time also had a proud socialist tradition, but for the last generation or two this has, as in many countries, especially in the Anglo-Saxon ones, very much atrophied.) I suspect that he isn’t quite as intolerant in reality as his writing would seem to indicate – but who knows? Perhaps, appallingly, he is. One would have to ask his fellow councillors in W(h)anganui or his previous political colleagues and enemies.

Indeed he has featured in this blog previously in my writing about the Iraq War. Michael was, as one could predict, a vocal supporter of this misbegotten campaign, and then, as now, his writing sparked a response from me.

This letter comes about because he wrote another pointless diatribe against liberals in the Sunday Star Times. I don’t know why I bothered writing, because Michael is entirely predictable and lots of other people write in to reply forcefully. There comes a point where contention becomes mere posturing, and Michael has been guilty of this for so long, that it is really difficult to take the man seriously. I don’t know why the Sunday Star Times continues to pay for his articles, but perhaps he just sells papers, much like a salacious gossip column or lurid court cases.

His article can be found here. My letter reads:

Dear Sir / Madam, 

You can rely on Michael Laws to be contentious, or more accurately cantankerous, if you can understand him, and in criticising liberals as humourless and boring, he shoots, as usual, the messenger. Criticising liberals for their humourlessness is akin to criticising Einstein for his poor English, or Ghandi for his dress sense, it's not exactly relevant. Moreover, many liberals I know sometimes tell the odd joke, badly, and their families have never found them boring, not that I've heard anyway. It's true that in criticising people who care little for those less fortunate than themselves, Liberals can be self-righteous, when it would obviously be preferable to allow the disadvantaged to continue to enjoy their poverty. Same with the planet, I mean it's not that important that it's future should be taken too seriously. Laws though does allow his compassionate side to slip out, buried as it usually is in his need to always explain himself by invective, when he says he sometimes feels so sorry for liberal women journalists that he'd like to hug them, if only briefly. His compassion is boundless, for who would wish to be hugged by the prickly and disagreeable Michael Laws for longer? 

Yours faithfully, 

This letter has only just been sent, so we’ll see if it’s published or not. Of course this doesn’t entirely explain why he’s my bete noir, as there are lots of people who’s views I would disagree with, and there are who would disagree with me, indeed as my views are not those of the vast majority of people at this time, I am used to being disagreed with. I think it’s his combination of contempt for his opponents expressed so unpleasantly and stridently and the meanness of his extreme right-wing views. He is divisive, and seems to thrive on causing division. Our fate as a society is going to be one where a cooperative and more rational and kinder approach to argument will be the only way we will survive. I think the reason for my contempt for Michael Laws is that he is a human dinosaur, a man no longer that useful to our society.

Wanganui at night.