Sideswiped: Intergrity in decline
Trump channels Alan Partridge, stories with marginal news value, the best song about being cheated on, the comments section as live action.
The coalition government are not very good at a) the economy b) leadership and c) PR. Here are their top flubs this week (so far)
A tale of two lunches: Seymour having a slap-up feed at the De Nada restaurant in Epsom, while Sylvia Park School kids were served an "unidentifiable pasta ball and lentils" for their cut price ACT party $3 midday meal.
Other lunches were described by Principals as “dog food lunches” and "a container of sadness and carrots" by Ōtāhuhu College students.
Herald food critic, Kim Knight described it as “a tomato-ey sludge on a pile of structurally challenged penne.” As a proper journalist, she deconstructed the meal and shared the factual data: “I counted roughly 67 small cubes of carrot, 29 pieces of penne and two tablespoons of tomato-infused mince.”
Speed freaks: Nice burn from Laura Tupou on the government’s announcement to increase speed limits on 38 roads, some as much as 60km per hour, in the name of productivity. The PM and Transport Bish made the announcement on a corner where someone died in a car accident…
Quadrupling down: He calls himself the Prince of the Provinces, more like the Fresh Prince of Hot Air. On Tuesday he shouted “send the Mexicans home” across the parliamentary floor. Asked by Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking he stood by his comments, Jones doubled down: “It’s a Mexican stand-off” he said. This carry on is writ large in the populist playbook, under ‘free speech’.
Jones once said Indian students had ruined academic institutions, and there were too many immigrants from New Delhi.
He’s not a fan of renewable energy... “I don't care about these woke, riddled munchkins who want to fry eggs on solar panels.”
Or endangered frogs: "If there is a mineral, if there's a mining opportunity and it's impeded by a blind frog, goodbye Freddy."
Give Shane Jones the finger…
Trump or Alan Partridge
Looking for an explanation for the tragic mid-air accident in Washington? I give you this solid take…
With all the weird stuff Trump is doing, this explanation by Jeff Maurer (I Might Be Wrong) resonated:
“This seems like a president trying to do stuff that he’s clearly not allowed to do and seeing how it goes — if the president was a toddler, we’d call this “boundary testing”. And Republicans are playing the role of wilfully ignorant parent, utterly convinced that their precious little boy — their sweet Donnie Angel, that special little child — could never do anything bad.
Equally predictably, the left is freaking out. It’s unfortunate that some on the left always reach for the most extreme language available — calling Trump a “fascist” doesn’t mean much once you’ve already used that word to describe Bush, Obama, J.K. Rowling, traffic cameras, and Thomas the Tank Engine.”
Marginal News Value
I clicked on these so you don’t have to. None of them require any further reading.
1.
2.
3.
Dog rugs
RIP Marianne Faithfull
Arguably the best, most visceral song ever written about being cheated on. “Broken English, an album on which Faithfull suddenly appeared to spring back to life, fangs bared. Its songs were about addiction, terrorism and infidelity – the closing Why D’Ya Do It was so explicit in its description of an affair that workers at EMI walked out, refusing to press the album – or depicted Faithfull as the ghost at the feast of 60s nostalgia.”
This from 2021, when she nearly died from Covid.
The Comments Section
The annual Aussie lamb ad.
Nobody should have to eat a container of sadness and carrots, but what an evocative description!
Trump getting up on stage and throwing blame/DEI grenades around over a tragic air accident that happened not weeks or days ago, but mere hours prior, where 67 people were killed, is floating to the top of the list of most disgusting things that sack of shit has ever done.