SHONKEY'S LAST RIDE?

....I hope so but in blundering along has he irreparably damaged our reputation?
Intelligence is a strange thing. It is really difficult to measure - sure we have IQ tests leading to ridiculous clubs like MENSA where a whole lot of wallies try to work out how to tie their shoe laces or how to keep their pants up. We also have groups of idiots who by nature of having been successful in business get together to form councils, chapters and guilds and, often these dickheads let their egos get the better of them and try their hands at politics - see Roger Douglas, John Key, Don Brash, John Banks et al. But real intelligence, in the public arena is a rare and wonderful thing. We, in our lifetime, have been fortunate in seeing it represented in the activities of David Lange, Helen Clark, Robert Muldoon etc.


We have also been unfortunate in seeing some very embarrassing exhibitions from Bolger, Shipley, Moore and others in recent times which have put us in a bad light but not as bad as Shonkey has subjected us to. Remember the cringing performance on the Letterman show? Well, forget that and watch his pathetic debate with Stephen Sackur in Hardtalk (BBC) last week. Gordon Campbell in his blog describes Key's performance thus: "At times, the interview does look like a very large cat (interviewer Stephen Sackur) playing with and batting around a seriously stressed mouse. It is also a model of how rewarding it can be to watch a polite, persistent and well researched interviewer engage with a public figure".

Shonkey is bright but not intelligent and failed to properly engage with this interviewer. Muldoon, Lange and Clark could have winged it and properly defended New Zealand's position without appearing to be a whinger or having something to hide. Shonkey couldn't. He is basically a wide boy, a con man who has dome well in the international money market selling junk investments, robbing pension funds and acting like all those other cheaters and scoundrels who have robbed us of a future. A few years ago, when a prime minister of this country was interviewed anywhere in the world, particularly in the UK we would have had the interview screened on our most important TV channel TVOne. Where was it? I had to trawl the internet to find it. This is a travesty and an example of how TVNZ has given up on screening quality and important news and documentary programmes in favour of reality shows, competitive cooking garbage and the new American craze crime-forensic porn.