IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW: The Ruminations of Robert Winter
Friday, February 17, 2012
Richard Taylor: New Zealander of the Year?
Weta does excellent work, but no-one with any sense of decency or employment relations perspective can ignore the rabble-rousing, anti-union and anti-decent conditions role played by Richard Taylor in "The Hobbit" dispute. For many of us, this taints this award.
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Agree!
ReplyDeleteAh, to live in the fancy fin de siècle world of those who made this award!
ReplyDeleteAll around their gilded Bastille the mob is gathering, but for the elite there is still time for one last round of mutual back slapping.
Perhaps next year's winner will be Madame Guillotine?
I can't agree, Robert: I think Taylor and his tacky creations, and the Tolkien circus generally, is a national embarrassment. The bloke should be deported to Nevada on aesthetic grounds
ReplyDeletehttp://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2010/10/off-fence-comrade.html
Scott - thanks for linking back to that post on your site. I re-read the comments section. Vivid times! I had forgotten how irrevocably that dispute it broke Russell Browns credibility as a left wing (or even left-ish) commentator. Not in his being wrong with his immediate knee jerk support for Jackson and co, but in the hubris he displayed once he came under attack from reasoned analysis.
ReplyDeleteHis placing of his ego at the centre of his interpretation of the dispute was actually an ironic underlining of the hyper-individualism of neo-liberalism, and served as a full stop on his career as a political commentator.
Re-reading your comments and reflecting about it in the bath this morning, maybe the emotional fury of the Hobbit dispute was a cathartic moment for the left in New Zealand as well. Maybe we will look back at the Hobbit dispute as the moment when discredited third way liberals, resentful of being increasingly politically dismissed as empirical failures in the light of the GFC, found the excuse to walk out of their marriage with the left and embrace a retreat into the comfort and hubris of middle aged success.
@Scott: poor Nevada deserves better?
ReplyDelete@Sanctuary: the Hobbit Case was indeed a crucial moment, in many ways.
Indeed, Robert: I think it was a moment when some of the Grey Lynn latte liberal crowd realised that being 'progressive' (isn't that a terrible word?) had implications beyond lifestyle and consumption choices. You could eat organic, buy free trade, follow all of the coolest new bands and still be a right-wing prick...
ReplyDelete