OPINION
What first comes to mind when you think about M&M’s? No doubt it is the sweet-tasting coloured chocolate pebbles in a packet. These M&M’s stand for Mars and Murrie. Mars refers to Forrest E Mars Snr, the founder of Mars, and Murrie refers to Bruce Murrie, the son of Hershey’s Chocolates president William F R Murrie. The story behind how M&M’s came to be begins after Mars had a fallout with his father and travelled to Europe.
What does this have to do with anything you may ask. Well, here it is. With the swearing in of the new Government there is also much swearing in certain sections of our society. We have learnt very quickly who they are: those who have had a fallout with the new administration. Our M&M’s represent the Malcontent Maori and the Media Mob. These people, unlike the M&M’s one can buy in a shop, are anything but sweet. In fact they have a very sour taste in their mouths. This is confirmed by their rhetoric, body language and either glum or furious facial expressions.
The nonsense started on Monday on TV One’s Breakfast, where Shane Jones was forced to endure seven painful minutes of pitiful questioning from a little person by the name of Matty McLean who thinks he’s a journalist. His line of questioning was echoed throughout the day by people of similar ilk who are also suffering from the delusion that they, too, are journalists.
Huge problems face this country. The economy is in tatters and already Nicola Willis has been acquainted with nasty surprises that will have come as no surprise to her. Is this what the media were interested in on the day of the swearing in of the new Government? No. They weren’t going to talk about any of that. Their priority was the changing of the names of government departments to reflect our language: English.
This would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. These child-like individuals have lost their minds. They appear to have forgotten who they are and what their job entails: to report the news and not use their professional platform as something akin to Speakers’ Corner. Jenna Lynch on Newshub on Monday night was a disgrace. She sounded more like a radio talkback host than a news reporter. She is there to report on the day’s events – not to give her opinion on them.
These journalists need to grow up fast and realise that the country now has a government of people with intellects a good deal higher than theirs. Sounding like you’re reporting from the pre-school sandpit isn’t going to cut it. They may not agree with what is being implemented by what is probably in their view a ‘far-right’ government, but it is their job to report on it. What we can do without is their left-wing opinionated spin.
What these puffed-up big fish in a small pond think is of no interest to the viewer, listener or reader. If Jenna Lynch carries on in the same vein as Monday night she will risk invoking the ‘Tova O’Brien Today FM effect’ at Newshub. That would be something of a disaster because the ‘news’ on the government-owned channel, often referred to as Pravda and with good reason, is even worse.
Monday was a bad day for the news media. Jessica Mutch McKay wasn’t much of an improvement on the tragic figure that presented on Newshub. If these people can’t get over themselves and present as the professionals they’re supposed to be then all will be lost, including their audiences. Lynch and Mutch McKay will end up talking to a mirror as opposed to a camera. We expect and deserve better. We don’t expect these people to be sympathetic to the government, but we do expect objective reporting of the relevant news.
The same applies to the Maori activists. First out of the blocks was the man whose main point of past notoriety was his spend on expensive underwear. Tuku Morgan and his activist partners in crime, Willie Jackson, John Tamihere, Marama Davidson, Margaret Mutu, the Maori Party and others, are threatening violence in the streets or court action. Like the journalists ignoring the big problems the country is facing, these types are ignoring the big problems their people face.
The plight of some of their citizens is secondary to them. What they’re angry about is losing the things they’re interested in, such as ownership of water, Maori names of government departments, the supremacy of the Treaty, and the non-event Maori Health Authority. None of these initiatives have assisted in the betterment of their peoples. Shane Jones labelled some of them ‘vanity projects’. The little socialist lad interviewing him had to ask what that meant. Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.
These Maori protesters are of no use when it comes to sorting out the parlous state this country is in. They wouldn’t even recognise it. How they think violence in the streets is an answer to anything defies belief. It is to them, though: violence is an answer to protecting their own selfish interests and to hell with anybody else, including their own. That’s all they know. It’s a disgrace; they’re a disgrace.
These M&M’s, news media and Maori activists, might have a sour taste in their mouths but they’re giving the majority of the rest of us one as well. There’s a thing called democracy. It’s what this country was founded on and believes in. It hasn’t changed despite Willie Jackson’s inane utterances. It’s what’s in play right now with a new Government sworn in. It deserves, like those of us who voted for it, to be respected.
The quicker the M&M’s wake up and get to grips with the present reality the better off we will be. Unfortunately I think that is a forlorn hope. These people are subsumed by a situation not to their liking and both Ms are determined to subvert its course.
Shame on them.