It is getting really silly now. Last week, I wrote about Hilary Barry’s sycophantic interview with Jacinda, shown on air last Wednesday evening, and then regurgitated on the TVNZ website. Tracy Watkins was the next through the door at Jacinda’s place, producing an article last Thursday… and then another on Sunday, based on the same interview. All these articles still cover Jacinda’s pregnancy, the fact that she is only the second premier to have a baby while in office, and also how cute baby Neve is.
I’m sure she’s cute. Babies often are. But why is it that all the media can do to raise Jacinda’s profile is to talk about the baby? Could it be because there is nothing good to say about Jacinda’s premiership at all?
Here is the latest, from Stuff on Monday
There’s not a parent on earth who doesn’t blame their child’s more “challenging” traits on the other parent – and it turns out that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is no different.
In an interview with Australian journalist Lisa Wilkinson from The Sunday Project, Ardern said one-year-old daughter Neve was “very strong willed”.
And in her trademark diplomatic way, while she took some of the “responsibility” for her daughter’s assertiveness, she also made sure dad Clarke Gayford, who is Neve’s main caregiver, was attributed – saying the personality trait was “a mix” of both her mum and dad.
Which is interesting, because some of us have seen the interview with Lisa Wilkinson, who was definitely not cute and cuddly with Jacinda, asking her some hard questions about her position on Australia’s policy of sending Kiwi criminals home.
She might be one of the most popular Prime Ministers of all time, but that hasn’t stopped Lisa Wilkinson from asking Jacinda Ardern the difficult questions.
On the Sunday Project, Lisa wasted no time grilling the PM, declaring she’ll “probably get criticised” for doing so.
After discussing how New Zealand is doing four months after the terrorism attack in Christchurch, Lisa tackled Ardern’s recent criticism of Australia’s policy to deport New Zealand criminals, news.com.au reports.
The usually poised Ardern appears to squirm awkwardly and looks visibly uncomfortable as Lisa boldly quizzes her in front of the camera.
A Newspaper.
I don’t think she is ‘usually poised’ at all. It is just that she never gets asked any hard questions by the New Zealand media, and so it must have come as a slap in the face to the darling of the world media to be asked a forthright question.
I’m surprised that our favourite ‘newspaper’ published this article.
In an interview earlier this year with Now To Love and NEXT magazine, Ardern said that then eight-month-old Neve was proving to be a “real character”.
Stuff.
“She’s only going on eight months and she already has some real spunk,” Ardern laughed. “She’s a real character … she certainly lets us know her feelings and emotions.”
Do you remember similar stories about the Key children or the children of Bill English? No? That is because there weren’t any. Those prime ministers were measured by their performance running the country, not by the cuteness of their children.
I apologise for writing yet another article on this subject, and I realise you must think I have a fixation with our dear leader, but it is not that at all. As I suspected, we are currently in another polling cycle, with the results likely to be out next weekend. Do you think it is a coincidence then that we are seeing puff piece after puff piece about Jacinda and baby Neve?
It can’t be a coincidence, can it?
Our media is performing a bit of subliminal psychology so that, if you are called by a polling company and asked who you would vote for, your immediate picture of our prime minister is one of a lovely, girl-next-door young mother with a cute and cuddly baby… when it should be of a prime minister and a government who are failing on all fronts, who promise nothing and keep delivering it, and who are starting to do some serious damage to our economy.
None of you are that stupid though, are you?
Why don’t we just rename the NZ media Tass and have done with it. That would suit Jacinda down to the ground anyway.