Sunday 5 April 2009

Fantastic Letter to Ed today

This letter, from an Andrea Low of Auckland, was in today's Sunday Star Times under the heading "Salacious periphera":
Two of the three lead stories on the front page show the Sunday Star-Times' remarkable knack for foregrounding salacious periphera when the real story goes begging. The Paul Henry "news" is just mean-spirited and not even a story. Imagine the real story on the front page: "...a French compensation deal for people who suffered health problems from nuclear testing in the Pacific has come too late..." (Radio NZ)
No way, not when you've got the Veitch "update" (don't forget the Laws "update"). "Ex-lover"? "Taxpayer's expense"? And consistent in both stories is an undercurrent of sexism that's all the more vicious because it masquerades on behalf of those handy conservative political constructs: "The un-PC or "the concerned taxpayer". Ugh.
Great stuff!

1 comment:

Giarne said...

That is a fab letter to editor! I just wrote a comment on the Mr Vintage website cause I was so pissed with their t-shirts (just alerted to them via this blog).

Kia ora,

I was one of the people who complained about Paul Henry's treatment of Stephanie Mills on the Breakfast show.

While I think some of your t-shirts are great I won't be buying any as I can't condone further supporting sexist wankers on TV. I get that most of your t-shirts are parodies and meant to be light hearted etc, etc; and I risk (yet again) being labelled some PC policeman.

I'm not, I'm just trying to take a stand on the few things I hold dear and one of those is being respectful of others. Paul Henry went out of his way to humiliate another human being and his tasteless remarks were puerile and pathetic - let alone to mention off topic.

Part of me wishes you put out a t-shirt that made fun of his receeding hairline, his arrogance or his obvious small-man-syndrome but that would just be tit for tat and no better than the way he treats others.

How about releasing a t-shirt that says "Love Your Body" and has different sized & shaped people on it? How about never allowing sexists another way to promote their views.

I hope the Henry t-shirts aren't selling very well but I guess that's too much to ask for.

Sorry but I won't be visiting your site again as you are making a profit off the disgusting behaviours of others.