‘Absolutely heroic!’  That was Brad Pitt’s description of his wife Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a double mastectomy and subsequently to tell the world about it. I thought the description entirely apt. No one, least of all one of the world’s most famous and  glamorous movie stars, makes a decision like that lightly. And it is hard to imagine any woman deciding on such a drastic course of action without compelling cause.

That cause, in Jolie’s case, was that she had been diagnosed with the faulty BRCA1 gene, a common predictor of breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Her doctor put the risk of her developing breast cancer at 87 percent and of ovarian cancer at 50 percent. The assessment was in part based on hereditary factors. After a decade-long battle with cancer, her mother had succumbed to the disease at 56. Jolie is 37.

Last Wednesday the Herald republished a Telegraph Group story in which Jolie told of her reasons for having the double mastectomy, described the process in detail and explained her reasons for going public:

‘I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have the mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent.  I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.

‘On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.’   

Less impressed than me with Jolie’s actions was Weekend Herald columnist John Roughan whose piece ‘Genetic Risk Poses Dilemma’ effectively questioned whether Jolie had made the right decision to have a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer.

I thought the question itself presumptuous. Only the  person facing a possible lingering death from cancer, or any other crippling disease, can decide whether a particular course of action is right for them or not.

In his column Roughan questioned the medical evidence behind Jolie’s decision and took issue with her expressed motivation in writing about her experience – ‘To any woman reading this I hope it helps you to know you have options.’  There were, he argued, other less drastic options.

But it was the chauvinistic and condemnatory tone of parts of Roughan’s piece that most concerned me:

‘Isn’t it a little disturbing that genetic science has caused Angelina Jolie to remove a perfectly fine pair of breasts…

‘Men too can inherit the BRCA2 mutation, increasing their risk of prostate cancer. I don’t know what I would do, but I hope I would choose to keep any organ for as long as it remained healthy. The idea of excising living tissue that has not yet let you down seems like a betrayal somehow, a premature surrender to what might never happen…

‘Angelina Jolie saw her mother die at age 56 after 10 years of treatment for breast cancer. Now she writes, “I can tell my children they don’t need to fear they will lose me.”

‘That is one less fear for them but her article did not mention whether they also carry the gene mutation. How sad if a girl or a boy should come to maturity regarding an organ of their developing sexuality as a death sentence unless they get rid of it. Sad and unnecessary.’

Reading these comments it seems to me that Roughan, a religious conservative, approaches the topic of Jolie’s ‘perfectly fine pair of breasts’ almost as if their removal were in the same category as an abortion: ‘disturbing, excising living tissue, a betrayal somehow, a premature surrender to what might never happen, a death sentence unless they get rid of it, sad and unnecessary.’

And the question as to whether Jolie made the right decision to have a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer, has echoes at least of the question of whether the terminal cancer sufferer has the right to end his or her own life or to be assisted to do so. Those who oppose voluntary euthanasia argue the sanctity of human life; Roughan seems to argue the sanctity of human flesh.

Suffering and the fear of suffering and a premature death are central to such matters and it is my submission that any decision on the right course of action must ultimately rely first and foremost on the informed wishes of the person directly facing the dilemma. Courage comes easily to the unaffected.

Rod Emmerson’s cartoon in The Weekend Herald 11/5/13

[After Question Time in the House today (Tuesday) , Aaron Gilmore made a considered speech, in which he expressed regret for the events which had ultimately led to his resignation from Parliament. He apologised to the Prime Minister, his colleagues in the House and the National Party at large for any embarrassment his conduct had caused. His words were without rancour, accusation or blame. They were greeted with applause from all members. It was, in my view, a dignified exit.]

***

It’s possible that only the Germans, whose language is full of nouns composed of (sometimes several) other nouns joined together, could have invented the term ‘Schadenfreude’. Schaden means harm and Freude means happiness or joy. So the two joined together can be roughly translated as ‘joy at other people’s misfortunes’.

There was, it seems to me, a significant degree of Schadenfreude in the nation’s response to the downfall of Aaron Gilmore. It was combined with the righteous indignation of a populace seemingly without sin and therefore more than willing to cast not just the first stone but a positive volley of stones. The Germans could no doubt produce an exceptionally long word to describe this phenomenon.

Prominent among the righteous were Gilmore’s former friends, colleagues and acquaintances a number of whom, preferring to shun the limelight, took to dobbing him in for a variety of past crimes, real or invented,  via the honourable device of the anonymous leak. 

But nowhere was joy more unconfined than among those exemplars  of probity and propriety – the news media. The charge was led by TV3’s Paddy Gower, who could barely contain his excitement at such a treasure-trove of poor judgement and wickedness. He was assisted by the channel’s self-appointed avenging angel, the shrewish Rebecca Wright, whose performance at Gilmore’s 15-minute ritual humiliation before the  media suggested she thought kicking a man already down and bleeding was actually recommended under Marquess of Queensbury rules.

[To be fair to the saintly Mr Gower and the spotless Ms Wright, I should perhaps note that I rarely watch One News, so there may well have been even more pious commentators there.]

But it was left to the Herald’s brilliant cartoonist, Rod Emmerson, to deliver the coup de grace to the worthless Gilmore. In the best traditions of cartooning during the Third Reich, fun would be made not just of Gilmore’s actions but of his appearance – he would be portrayed as a toad.

I took the trouble to look up the definition of the word in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. It reads in part: 1. ‘Any of those amphibians that have a dry warty skin, walk rather than leap, and were formerly reputed to have poisonous attributes. 2. A repulsive or detestable person.’

Lest anyone miss the fun, the Weekend Herald devoted a generous half-page to Emmerson’s cartoon of a drunken and dishevelled Aaron Gilmore with the unambiguous caption ‘Waiter! One more for the Toad…’

On Sunday’s The Nation I commented that had I been subjected to the avalanche of personal abuse and character assassination that Gilmore had endured over the previous two weeks, amounting to the annihilation not only of his reputation but of his very raison d’être as a human being, I might well have contemplated suicide.

Later that day Gilmore resigned. Blaming ‘the intense pressure’ that media scrutiny had put him under, he said, ‘I am human.’ It was a definition of himself which he must have felt the need to reassert.

I doubt that these musings will find much popular support. Gilmore is not an attractive personality – a boastful and bullying narcissist careless with the truth. But nor is he worthless. His reputation and career are now in tatters. It’s a heavy price to pay for getting drunk, throwing your weight around and telling a few porkies.

I feel just a little sorry for him. And I doubt that many of his detractors, least of all in the media, have themselves lived exemplary lives. It is one of a number of reasons why I never call myself ‘a journalist’.

‘I just can’t say often enough…’

A dominant theme will run through all the obituaries and tributes to Parekura Horomia – that he was a lovely man. It will be unnecessary to remind anyone who knew him of the injunction not to speak ill of the dead. The thought will simply not occur. He was a lovely man and little more needs to be said.

From time to time the lovely man was delivered by ‘the boss’ into Brian and Judy’s tender care for ‘media training’. Parekura was ‘expansive’ when he spoke to journalists or in the House. His expansiveness sometimes got him into trouble  and our brief was to encourage him in the view that where journalists and the Opposition were concerned,  less really was more.

We decided that our client needed to learn the dark art of starving his questioners  of material to use against him by answering as many questions as possible with an undecorated ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. This did not come easily  to Parekura who may well have thought it abrupt or rude and whose natural instinct was to convert a word into a sentence, the sentence into a paragraph and the paragraph into a full page.  Where answering questions was concerned he was generous to a fault.    

A hard worker and a fast learner, he nonetheless got better and better at answering hostile questions with a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and we eventually concluded that he was match fit.

Everything went swimmingly until a debate on alleged misspending at Te Mangai Paho, the Maori Broadcasting funding agency. Parekura had been briefed to refer any Opposition questions on the issue to Wira Gardiner who’d been appointed interim chairman of the agency and was investigating the allegations.

‘Yes, No, Wira Gardiner,’ we half-joked to Parekura. ‘Yes, No, Wira Gardiner.’

Our student was brilliant, answering every hostile question ‘Yes ‘or ‘No’ or ‘Mr Gardiner is looking into it.’

But Mr Gardiner was also a former Maori vice-president of the National Party and this led Nick Smith to interject, ‘So the Nats are fixing it up?’

And that led in turn to Rodney Hide asking whether, since Mr Gardiner seemed to be doing his job for him,  Mr Horomia was urging Maori to vote National so that they could get a competent Minister of Maori Affairs. After a moment’s hesitation, and to cheers, laughter and applause from the Opposition,  Parekura replied, ‘Most certainly.’

I’m pretty sure he won’t mind me telling this story at his expense – and ours. He was self-deprecating and had a wonderful sense of humour.

Maori speakers tell me he was a brilliant orator on the marae. But to me he was and will always be that rarest of gems in the bear-pit that is politics – a lovely man.

Comprehension (20%) : Discuss the artist’s approach to formal education as outlined in the video clip.

Question: Could a reasonable person or a decent human being have voted against the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill?

Tom Scott’s cartoon would seem to suggest that only dinosaurs – ancient, stupid and rather ugly creatures – could have charged mindlessly in where angels feared to tread.

The cartoon interested me because it reflected the Janus-like quality of so much liberal thinking: permissive of almost everything except contrary points of view.

So let’s look as some specific areas.

The Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill, as its title so unambiguously stated, was a bill to change the legal definition of marriage. Could a reasonable person, a decent human being find cause  to object to that?

I would have thought so. Changing the legal definitions of words is always a serious business and no more serious than when those definitions refer to longstanding human institutions and are enshrined in a multitude of laws, contracts and traditions.

You don’t have to be a dinosaur to say, ‘When you change the meaning of a word, you simultaneously change the reality to which that word refers, a reality which in this particular case has existed for thousands of years  in myriad cultures.’

You’ll note that I’m not saying that opposition to the legislation is right. What I’m saying is that it expresses the natural discomfort that an entirely reasonable person, a decent human being, could be expected to feel when they are required to redefine not merely a common word but their lifelong and previously unambiguous understanding of the meaning of that word. I’m saying that it is understandable.  

Let’s move into even more fraught territory. Could a reasonable person, a decent human being,  find cause to object to same sex couples being legally allowed to adopt children? In a post which I wrote four years ago, I gave it as my view that, unless one of the couple was the child’s natural parent, I was opposed to such legislation.

My reasons were founded  in my own experience of never having had a father. I subscribed essentially to the view that, all things being equal, kids need role models of both sexes, but particularly of their own sex.

Again, I’m not saying that position was or is right. I’m saying that it is a tenable position for a reasonable person, a decent human being to take. You don’t have to be a dinosaur, stupid, homophobic or morally reprehensible.

I was called all of those things by many of those who commented on my views on gay adoption.

It is a fact that there are certain social groups with whom it can be hazardous to one’s health to take issue. At my most rational I can see that they are generally groups who have been the victims of historic and sometimes ongoing discrimination. But vilifying those who disagree with you seems to me a poor argument for tolerance.

On the whole this has not been the case in the current debate. But I suspect that in recent weeks it will have become more difficult for those who opposed the redefinition of marriage or the almost certain prospect of more liberal gay adoption laws to confidently express that view.

To a degree this will have reflected the re-framing of the debate away from the strictly legal or human rights issues, to a highly emotive discourse that invited those who opposed the legislation to cast themselves in the role of zealots, devoid of the most basic human sympathies. The key phrase in this re-framing was ‘loving couples’. It dominated the parliamentary debates and the public discourse. If you opposed the legislation you were, ipso facto,  against ‘loving couples’ whom you wished to deprive of happiness. You were a bad person.

About ten years ago I had one of the best evenings of my life. I was drinking with five gay male friends at Valerio’s Italian restaurant in Parnell. Rather a lot of red wine followed by rather a lot of grappa. The company was wonderful, the humour delicious. I loved those guys. But – and I need to stress that it would never have happened – if one of them had made a sexual approach to me I would have been repelled. I’m exclusively heterosexual. It’s not my fault. I was born that way.

So can a reasonable, decent human being be discomfited by or find distasteful  the sexual practices of those with a different gender orientation? Absolutely. And it works both ways.

Things go wrong when that discomfort, that distaste is translated into prejudice or hatred.

For the record, had I been a Member of Parliament I would have voted in favour of the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill.

Referring to John Key’s current dissatisfaction with the ‘knuckleheads’ of the Fourth Estate, a prominent journalist, who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, observed to me recently, ‘No Prime Minister who ever attacked the media got re-elected.’ He was evidently out of the country during both Rob Muldoon’s and Helen Clark’s three terms, but his remark was less than flattering to the members of his own profession. Journalists, it seems, will revenge themselves on politicians who criticise them, in the process abandoning their duty to report objectively and dispassionately.

Key’s response to media attacks on his credibility, and to the Press Gallery’s  dealings with him during ‘stand-ups’ in the corridors of Parliament, has been to suggest that he’ll either abandon the stand-ups altogether or at least greatly reduce the number of questions he will take.

I would suggest the former. It makes absolutely no sense to throw yourself into a pit of hungry bears who have been practising tag-team mauling while they waited for your arrival. It would be hard to think of a more uncontrolled, uncontrollable or  dangerous arena.   

The function of the stand-up is primarily to provide the media with (preferably incriminating) sound-bites. Indeed it has some of the characteristics of a police interview with a suspect: the wearying repetition of essentially the same question in the hope of getting ‘a confession’; the whole tag-team routine  including the occasional suggestion of a ‘good cop, bad cop’ collusion; the relentless negativity of the interrogation;  the unexpressed hope that the accused will break under pressure, lose his cool and say or do something damaging to his defence.

In media terms the stand-up is geared primarily, though not exclusively,  towards the needs of the broadcast media, in particular the essentially headline medium -television news. A detailed or expansive answer doesn’t fit the bill when the average sound bite has been reduced to around five seconds . This is clearly problematic for a Prime Minister attempting to explain his position on a complex issue or offer an extended narrative in his own defence.

And then there’s the problem of getting away. Most of the politicians I’ve worked with have found it difficult to call a halt to a stand-up session. They didn’t want to appear rude or look as though they were running away. But, just like the suspect in the police interview room, the more questions you answer, the more you explain, the more likely you are to get into trouble. This is John Key’s problem. He’s become far too accessible.

So Key’s options are to take a leaf out of Judith Collins’ book and part the journalistic waters without stopping or  limit his exchanges with journalists to formal press-conferences or pre-arranged set-piece interviews.

I’m for Option Two because I don’t think he can carry off Option One. Stopping and chatting is part of his genetic make-up and has held him in good stead for four years. But the media climate has changed. The bears can smell blood.

Referring on yesterday’s The Nation to Key’s background as a Wall Street trader, former Herald editor Gavin Ellis made this fascinating observation, ‘This is a guy who can control the level of icicles in his blood. He’s done that as a trader. Now suddenly he’s lost the ability to control the icicles.’

Brilliant!  And right. The Prime Minister looks increasingly uncomfortable in stand-ups. He conveys a sense of disappointment, perhaps even of betrayal. He looks annoyed and upset. And when he isn’t  being exactly straightforward, his face and tone betray it. He isn’t a good dissembler.

If I may extend the icicle analogy, what Key needs now is not to stop talking to journalists, but as far as possible to conduct those conversations in a controlled temperature environment.

As for my journalist friend’s comment about the dangers of offending the Fourth Estate, that danger, if it exists at all, is far less serious than the danger of looking weak in the face of journalistic intimidation. Kiwi voters prefer a bully to a wimp.

Will the GCSB affair do any permanent damage to John Key? I very much doubt it. This has been a saga of huge interest to the media but, so far as I can see, of precious little interest to anyone else. To test that theory, I conducted an entirely unscientific but quite interesting little survey of readers’ letters to the editor in the Herald over the last week. There were 109 letters in all, of which 2 were about the GCSB affair. I think the term for that would be ‘indicative’.

I could of course be totally wrong. On The Nation yesterday my colleague Bill Ralston described  the GCSB saga as ‘one of the longest running stories I’ve ever seen.’  I suspect we may look back on it as one of the greatest media beat-ups.

[Update: Susan Wood was admirably restrained in her interviews on Q & A a week after this post appeared.]

In the check-out line at Victoria Park New World this morning I bumped into my regular co-panellist on the media review segment of TV3’s The Nation, Bill Ralston. After comparing notes about why men enjoy supermarket shopping and women generally don’t, Bill asked me if I’d watched Q & A which follows the Sunday edition of The Nation on TV1 and is, I suppose, our competitor. No, I hadn’t watched it, but I’d be looking at it later on MySky. Bill thought I shouldn’t miss it. Susan Wood was ‘terrific’, she’d demolished David Shearer and given much the same treatment to National’s Nikki Kaye.

By coincidence, Bill and I had earlier been talking on The Nation to freelance journalist Karl Du Fresne who’d penned an article entitled ‘RNZ must right its lean to the left.’ Karl’s position was that there was strong evidence of endemic left wing bias by Radio New Zealand interviewers and he cited Kim Hill, Kathryn Ryan and Mary Wilson as examples.

I don’t agree with Karl’s thesis any more than I agreed with those who claimed right-wing bias on the part of the media when Helen Clark was running the country. Journalists have, in my view, an obligation to call to account whichever political party or coalition holds the reins of power, to be, if you like, an informal opposition.

Anyway, when I got home, I watched Susan Wood interviewing David Shearer and Nikki Kaye.

So did I think Susan Wood was ‘terrific’?    

Well, I suppose that depends on your criteria in judging what constitutes ‘terrific’ interviewing. Here are some of mine: (For convenience I’ve referred to the interviewee as ‘he’ and the interviewer as ‘she’. Anything else is just too clumsy. Blame the language!)

*The interviewee and his views should be the main focus of the interview;

*The interview is not a platform for the interviewer’s opinions;

*As a general principle, the interviewee should do more of the talking than the interviewer;

*Unless the interviewee is obfuscating or deliberately avoiding answering, he should be allowed to make his  points without undue interruption;

*With the same proviso, the interviewee should be allowed to finish his sentence or the point he is making;

*The interviewer should be more interested in what the interviewee has to say than what she has to say;

*The most important interviewing skill is careful listening.

And here are three more from the doyen of BBC interviewing, Sir Robin Day’s  Code for Television Interviewers:

*He should give fair opportunity to answer questions, subject to the time-limits imposed by television;

*He should press his questions firmly and persistently, but not tediously, offensively, or merely in order to sound tough;

*He should remember that a television interviewer is not employed as a debater, prosecutor, inquisitor, psychiatrist or third-degree expert, but as a journalist seeking information on behalf of the public.

So how, on these criteria, did Susan Wood do in her interviews with David Shearer and Nikki Kaye? Was she, as Bill believes, ‘terrific’?

Well, to be really fair, you should watch this morning’s Q & A ‘on demand’ and not just take my word for it. I’m kind of ‘old school’ on this topic. But I’d say that Susan failed to meet any of the criteria I’ve suggested while providing a classic illustration of the three interviewing crimes I’ve cited from Sir Robin Day’s Code for Television Interviewers.

Meanwhile, David Shearer made a reasonable fist of bumbling his way through Wood’s hyperactive barrage, quite properly demanding the right to finish at least one or two of his sentences; and Nikki Kaye’s opinions on food labeling received marginally more air time than her interviewer’s.  It’s a start.

But ‘terrific’? I don’t think so. For ‘terrific’ check out Duncan Garner, Rachel Smalley,  the late Sir Paul Holmes or, curiously enough, Susan herself in some of her earlier incarnations. In the meantime, I suggest she up her Ritalin dose. Guyon Espiner might choose to do the same.

[With possibly the occasional exception, this is my last post on Brian Edwards Media. I blog no more. Rob Muldoon once said that the only reason for my broadcasting success was “an intriguing Irish accent”. You can still hear that once a month on Jim Mora’s Afternoons programme and every Sunday morning on The Nation with the aforementioned Mr Ralston. Cheers!]