And neither should he. Meng Foon’s call on him to apologise for using the n-word should be brushed aside as the grandstanding it is. The Race Relations Commissioner should pull his head in.
It would be different if Clark had casually used the word in circumstances indicating he approved of it, but the reverse is true. He says he finds it abhorrent, would never use to refer to anyone and is offended when he hears it used in rap music.
His purpose in using it was to ask how far artistic licence should be allowed to go in tolerating words that cause offence. He cited other examples including the phrase “f*** you, Bitch”, which the poet Tusiata Avia uses in a poem that appears to relish the idea of exacting revenge on the descendants of white colonisers such as James Cook.
Avia’s poem, parts of which ape the jargon of American rap culture, drips with allusions to violence against white people. But far from her work being condemned by the Race Relations Commissioner (no one would be so naïve as to expect that), $107,000 of taxpayers’ money has been spent through Creative New Zealand on a stage show called The Savage Coloniser, which is based on the book the poem comes from.
ACT recently called for the funding to be withdrawn, accusing the government of supporting a work that incites racially motivated violence, but Creative NZ says one of its functions is to uphold people’s right to freedom in the practice of the arts.
As it happens, that’s exactly the subject Clark was exploring. He asked whether poetic expression overrides social norms – a perfectly legitimate question. We need to have these tough debates, he says. But the same right of expression that Creative NZ invokes in defence of Avia is one that Meng Foon apparently wants to deny Clark.
The striking thing here is that it’s not Avia’s provocative and mostly incomprehensible poem that attracted the mainstream media’s attention, despite its references to shoving a knife between Captain Cook’s white ribs (aren’t everyone’s ribs white?) and a car full of brown girls driving around looking for his descendants, with the suggestion that a pig-hunting knife might be used. On the contrary, Stuff’s Sunday magazine carried a long article by Michelle Duff purring with approval.
Neither was it the spending of public money on a stage show based on Avia’s work that generated headlines.
No, what got the media fired up was Clark using the n-word in the course of a discussion about how far artistic licence goes and who controls it – fair and reasonable questions.
Fortunately, it’s true as a general rule that the further you get from the epicentre of the culture wars in Wellington, the more impervious people become to the posturing of people like Meng Foon.
Demands that people apologise for speaking their mind may work elsewhere; in fact they work far too often, much to the gratification of the bullying class. But they carry less weight in places like Invercargill.
In any case, Clark is not answerable to Meng Foon; he’s answerable to the laws of New Zealand (none of which he has broken) and to the people of Invercargill. If they don’t like the things he says, they can vote him out at the next election.
Sadly the same can’t be said of Meng Foon, safe in his highly paid (and unelected) sinecure.
Karl du Fresne, a freelance journalist, is the former editor of The Dominion newspaper. He blogs at karldufresne.blogspot.co.nz.
His purpose in using it was to ask how far artistic licence should be allowed to go in tolerating words that cause offence. He cited other examples including the phrase “f*** you, Bitch”, which the poet Tusiata Avia uses in a poem that appears to relish the idea of exacting revenge on the descendants of white colonisers such as James Cook.
Avia’s poem, parts of which ape the jargon of American rap culture, drips with allusions to violence against white people. But far from her work being condemned by the Race Relations Commissioner (no one would be so naïve as to expect that), $107,000 of taxpayers’ money has been spent through Creative New Zealand on a stage show called The Savage Coloniser, which is based on the book the poem comes from.
ACT recently called for the funding to be withdrawn, accusing the government of supporting a work that incites racially motivated violence, but Creative NZ says one of its functions is to uphold people’s right to freedom in the practice of the arts.
As it happens, that’s exactly the subject Clark was exploring. He asked whether poetic expression overrides social norms – a perfectly legitimate question. We need to have these tough debates, he says. But the same right of expression that Creative NZ invokes in defence of Avia is one that Meng Foon apparently wants to deny Clark.
The striking thing here is that it’s not Avia’s provocative and mostly incomprehensible poem that attracted the mainstream media’s attention, despite its references to shoving a knife between Captain Cook’s white ribs (aren’t everyone’s ribs white?) and a car full of brown girls driving around looking for his descendants, with the suggestion that a pig-hunting knife might be used. On the contrary, Stuff’s Sunday magazine carried a long article by Michelle Duff purring with approval.
Neither was it the spending of public money on a stage show based on Avia’s work that generated headlines.
No, what got the media fired up was Clark using the n-word in the course of a discussion about how far artistic licence goes and who controls it – fair and reasonable questions.
Fortunately, it’s true as a general rule that the further you get from the epicentre of the culture wars in Wellington, the more impervious people become to the posturing of people like Meng Foon.
Demands that people apologise for speaking their mind may work elsewhere; in fact they work far too often, much to the gratification of the bullying class. But they carry less weight in places like Invercargill.
In any case, Clark is not answerable to Meng Foon; he’s answerable to the laws of New Zealand (none of which he has broken) and to the people of Invercargill. If they don’t like the things he says, they can vote him out at the next election.
Sadly the same can’t be said of Meng Foon, safe in his highly paid (and unelected) sinecure.
Karl du Fresne, a freelance journalist, is the former editor of The Dominion newspaper. He blogs at karldufresne.blogspot.co.nz.
8 comments:
I nearly fell off my chair laughing when I saw Meng on TV suggest that knobby should apologize, what a clown. Perhaps he can get a job in a circus when he gets kicked out of his current cushy number.
While the Reds, greens, and browns are in, Meng is safe.
As a long time resident of Tairawhiti, the East Coast region where Meng Foon made a name for himself, mainly based on his long tenure as Mayor but more particularly as the first Mayor who was fluent in Te Reo, l like so many others, am able to assess Meng’s performance as our mayor which probably lead to his appointment as the Race Relations Commissioner.
While he deserves the accolades he gained for his achievements as Mayor, l’m not sure that his record in his current role would justify anything more than acute embarrassment from his past supporters.
He has become the classic case of a “Quissling” appointee unable to distinguish between what is required from someone in his position and the sycophantic support of all things promoted by the radical Maori separatists.
This is the man who, during the 200th anniversary of Cook’s first visit to Poverty Bay, was quick to join those who described Cook as a murderer! Hardly the words of someone whose job it is to prevent such rash deliberately insulting language.
Imagine the uproar if Meng had referred to Te Kooti in the same manner.
The bleeding hearts would be calling for his resignation or worse.
We need to make more detailed background checks on those who we promote to the positions that are supposed to police the public discourse. Unfortunately, Meng Foon has disappointed many who had previously given him their vote - myself included.
I agree. Foon from hong kong deciding right from wrong here.funny
Meng Foon is in my view a waste of state funding, an ornament, a sop to NZ’s Asian community, and a glaring display of patronising tokenism from the Labour Lot.
He continues however a tradition of the past ~20 years in that appointments to the HRC are of those whose hearts and heads are bursting with self righteous ideology.
They do not matter.
It's a more than a case of 'pulling his head in' - he should do the job we pay him to do - failing that, resign or be sacked. I'm sure the vast majority of people would find Avia's 'poem' a truly vile piece of racist vitriol that has no redeeming features. If that isn't something that Foon can rule on then he's either a waste of space, or the law needs tightening. I'll wager Tarrant's manifesto, which the Govt deemed too unsafe or inciteful for the public to view, is less offensive and confronting than this piece of rubbish that masquerades as a poem. And yet Foon gets upset with one word that hardly invokes a dangerous and hateful action.
It's an affront to commonsense and decency, and that our taxes pay for this fool.
It is an obscenity to call Avia’s obscenity a poem. It is nasty diversive rascist propaganda. She should be called to account. Barrett Browning, Dickinson and Rossetti would, I think be mortified that they and Avis are all deemed piers. As a literate, articulate woman myself, I am revolted by this vicious attack on history. Not to mention that Cook was in fact, murdered.
Captain Cook was a genius - and probably the greatest map-maker, and explorer of all time. Such a great man is so far above the ignorant people who abuse him and his memory. Have they tried reading his journals and other books and find out the story of his achievments.
It was such a shame that a few racist activists ruined the 200 year anniversary of Cook's discovering New Zealand for the world (yes, Maori were here, but did not know anything about the wider world - apart from the fact that they had come from some other island).
It would have been lovely for Cook's replica ship to have been able to sail around the country and be rightly honored.
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