Penn Raine: Golden Child

Our friends have four adult children who joke about whose turn it is to be ‘golden child’. They judge this accolade on which of their lives and careers is currently most admired. The corollary to this is which of them could stuff up the most and avoid a proper telling off.

In our country these days there is a whole group of golden children who never get the level of ticking off that they deserve. So who are they?
As a general identifier they are likely to be part of the group that turns up at Britomart on a Saturday morning to harass passersby for money to send to the terrorist organisation, Hamas. They are members of the righteous, discriminatory Left who wave around victimhood and sniff privilege.

And when I decline to donate they probably think I’m a c***.

Andrea Vance, no doubt emboldened by her recent award of Political Journalist of the Year isn’t going to say sorry for insulting the sisters in a way that ten years ago would have seen her exiled to the outer limits of the beltway, begging for crusts. Indeed, her inclination to use hurty words that seem to us, the un-golden, more egregious than getting pronouns mixed up, has been supported by the likes of New Zealand Herald’s consultants who have opined that no, no, the c-word is ‘in the vernacular’ and perfectly excusable if used in anger.

Excellent news.

Up until then I had only heard it used ‘vernacularly’ by Irish You Tubers speaking affectionately of their friends and by people describing a recent incumbent of our Prime Minister’s office.

I think that if Vance can receive awards for offensive language, that frees up the rest of us to do it too. In the angry vernacular, of course. And to insert hakas into solemn occasions like criminal court hearings perhaps, or even, gasp, the Parliamentary Chamber.

Ah yes, I hear you say, but Te Pati Māori have been punished for this. They have, a bit, but reluctantly and possibly not for as long as threatened. And why? Because they are all golden children whose misdeeds, if any, have to be the result of oppression and colonisation.

Like Benjamin Doyle, those of us who feel like putting up icky social media posts should do so freely as long as they honestly represent our ‘authentic’ selves. Naturally some conservative kill-joys thought that he should have at least apologised and probably lost his job as well, but Doyle is another golden child, apparently, whose shrugged-off embarrassment was characterised by the mainstream as a courageous stand for the vulnerable and marginalised.

In the role of doting parents it is our legacy media that have pimped and amplified the status of the golden child. The honour is never spread around outside the charmed circle and if you do not have the correct identity you will not be excused and you will still be sent to the naughty corner.

Yesterday Vance was invited onto The Platform to talk about being our very best political journalist and she responded by saying that there was ‘no f*****g way’. As Michael Laws commented, there is now only one off-limits word left for the golden children to use.Let’s see who dares.

Penn Raine is an educator and writer who lives in NZ and France.