Jack Yan on Vox

Fairer reporting on recent murders

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:55:20 +1200

In the last month, two New Zealanders were murdered—but I have to hand it to the mainstream media, especially TV3 and National Radio, for covering these without racial bias.
   Ten years ago, the Chinese ethnicity of the victims would have been made to be a big deal. Indeed, any crime involving east Asians was treated as more (negatively) newsworthy and coverage was, effectively, racist. Perhaps not surprising in the wake of the Yellow Peril speeches of the current Foreign Minister-outside-Cabinet during the 1990s.
   Statistics from the New Zealand Police have shown that crimes involving east Asians are not proportionally out of whack with the percentage of the population. It’s nothing for us to be proud of, mind.
   It has taken a while but New Zealand citizens of Chinese descent seem to be accepted by the media a bit better than in the previous century. The record is not perfect but this is a marked improvement.
   Their deaths were reported as those of New Zealanders. While the reporting of one woman’s funeral acknowledged her Chinese roots and her Buddhist religion, that was the extent of it. There was nothing made to be odd or strange.
   The tragedies are horrible—they should never have happened in the first place. In New Zealand, one is eight times more likely to be murdered today than 50 years ago. And that is a whole separate issue. However, I am glad that these two women were not made to be outsiders in a country they called home after their deaths, whatever might have happened in their lifetimes.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Ashes to Ashes season two hint: it’s set in 1982

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:49:44 +1200

Ashes to Ashes: Keeley Hawes and Philip Glenister

TV Scoop has some hints about the next series of Ashes to Ashes, to début February 2009 on BBC One: ‘We’ve just handed in episode one. It’s set in 1982, so the Falklands have just happened. We’re taking it slightly darker this time …’ Read the rest of the quotation from co-creator Ashley Pharoah at TV Scoop. This does mean the VO at the beginning of the show has to change, as Keeley Hawes currently makes a reference to 1981.
Whatever the case, it’s going far more smoothly than the US Life on Mars—which the Los Angeles Times reported on back in early June (and this blog followed on June 5). The British press only caught up with the news this past week but it did reveal one extra tidbit that we didn’t already know: Matthew Graham said in The Guardian, ‘At the time we thought [US pilot writer and executive producer David E. Kelley] took what we said on board, but I don’t think he did in the end. I think they should go further away from us; otherwise the danger is you look like an imitation.’

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Oil consumption is dropping, so why the high prices?

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:25:50 +1200

This is from the Historian’s Vox blog: oil consumption has been dropping since 2004.

   By the typeface, I would guess this is from The Economist.
   So if oil consumption is going down, and the law of supply and demand holds, why are prices at an all-time high? The Historian gives some decent horse sense on this—and it should remind us that the oil companies have a vested interest (and the MSM are too dumb) to keep the panic going.
   According to this graph, which I haven’t looked further into: global demand on oil is decreasing. The US dollar is weak, so prices are high relative to that dollar—but high oil prices should have less of an effect on other countries who are converting their own currencies to US dollars to purchase crude. Let’s also not forget that OPEC is a cartel that sets its own prices, and the oil companies are setting their own prices, too, raking in multi-billion-dollar profits per annum.
   He also points out there is speculation—which means the bubble will burst at some stage.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Dissecting an Obama victory

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:25:50 +1200

It’s been interesting watching the MSM dissect the Clinton campaign with a whole range of experts saying why she will not be the Democratic Party nominee for the presidency. I would venture to say these are the same experts predicting a Hillary Clinton win a year ago.
   It’s that which I have found remarkable today as Sen. Barack Obama becomes the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, rather than the very strong likelihood that Sen. Obama has won.
   For months, the mainstream media have been promoting Sen. Obama heavily. One reason is that he is newsworthy to the left. More often than not, his race is used as the reason behind that promotion. In essence, most New Zealanders, and I would say most non-Americans who watched the news from the US, were left in little doubt that he would take the Democratic Party contest.
   Image sells in American politics, and probably politics in many western countries. George W. Bush got people used to thinking about a Republican president in 2000 by forming his cabinet while lawyers battled Florida. When he did win, only diehard Democrats tried to tell the American people they had been hoodwinked. Everyone else awaited the January 20, 2001 swearing-in. Go back a few years and Tony Blair, too, gave an inevitable image of a Labour victory in 1997.
   This time, Sen. Obama has done the same, and it has been a well thought-out campaign: his book, writing from a humanist perspective and admitting any faults that his rivals were likely to dig up; a consistent branding scheme (the use of the Gotham typeface, for example); and vagueness (to give his opponents less of a target).
   On some of these aspects, Sen. Obama has fielded a very different campaign. Only vagueness seems to be the common thread with other winners. A pre-campaign book was clever as well as admitting to things no other potential presidential nominee would, such as his having tried cocaine.
   In fact, when he began getting specific after a challenge by Sen. Clinton, he actually lost traction.
   I do not pretend to like all of Sen. Obama’s policies if I were to look at his voting record in the Senate, any more than I find myself in accord with Sens. Clinton and McCain.
   As a minority, I am glad that a racial barrier has been broken in American politics. Even though Sen. Obama is biracial, he has been branded an African–American through his father’s homeland, showing just how people are habitual pigeonholers. If by the quirk of genetics he had his mother’s skin colour, would his race have become such an issue?
   That one matter shows how far his campaign has come, in a country that would not have fathomed a “black” president other than in fiction, in the form of Morgan Freeman or Dennis Haysbert.
   We can accept God being played by Morgan Freeman, but a black president?
   While having huge African–American support, I totally understand the campaign Sen. Obama ran in terms of race: he plain didn’t mention it.
   I wouldn’t.
   Any member of any minority in the world, whether that minority is black, yellow, brown or white, who has been brought up on the idea of hard work and dignity, would not make race an issue—with perhaps the exception of others making race an issue for him or her.
   I think that earned Sen. Obama brownie points among many of the United States’ immigrants and people descended relatively recently from immigrants.
   It finally proves so many of those lessons from our parents right: that if you work hard, you can become a leader.
   Once upon a time, parents said that but knew that it would take a miracle for a minority to get there, whether we are talking about the US or New Zealand.
   Barack Obama is proof not only of his own abilities, but he represents the hope that the presidency is no longer governed by skin colour, but by sheer hard work. That speaks to a large part of the electorate, including Caucasian–Americans.
   In some ways this has allowed his policies to be overlooked, which is actually unhealthy for democracy. Americans need to be voting on who can bring them true honour and meaning. But just as Sen. Obama began attacking Sen. John McCain’s policies as he presumed himself the Democratic nominee, it will be up to Sen. McCain to reveal his opponent’s policy shortcomings.
   However, it was not always in the bag.
   Those same MSM experts seem to forget that Sen. Clinton, using a campaign that broke the rules on branding (a confused message and confused visual communications) got so close to Sen. Obama that it actually was a miracle she survived and gained as many votes as she did. Writing in a country that has had two successive female prime ministers and, at one point, women in the Governor-General’s and Chief Justice’s role as well, the gender difference means far less to me. What I saw was a clumsy campaign that had more traction than logic would allow me to admit.
   Sen. Clinton’s progress was nothing short of amazing considering she did not play from the rulebook, and we brand consultants will have to at least acknowledge her case and say: anomalies exist in marketing strategy.
   The question is now whether there is a Clinton vice-presidency, but Obama aides are dead set against it. Equally, Clinton aides would not want their senator cosying up with Sen. Obama.
   If the Clinton image of “will say and do anything for the top job” is accurate, and as Sen. Clinton herself mentioned the possibility of assassination, I would not consider the senator from New York to be a vice-presidential nominee if I were Barack Obama. I might get “Arkancided” in the hope of her succession.
   But right now, Sen. Obama has a Democratic Party to reunite and invigorate, something that Sen. McCain may have difficulty doing for an uninspired GOP. Sen. Obama has media visibility on his side, reaching internal as well as external audiences.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Shoegate bubbling under

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:16:29 +1200

Interestingly, the MSM has not broken this yet, though the story has been floating about for a few days. Odds are it will break Friday. Already on the Lucire ‘Insider’ blog as an op-ed.

Shoegate: Sarah Riley, Trelise Cooper in payment dispute
It’s another case of ‘She said / She said’ in the fashion world, and Trelise Cooper’s name has come up again.
   This time, footwear designer Sarah Riley is accusing Trelise Cooper Ltd. of not paying in full for supplied stock.
   On Riley’s side, there might be some hope out there that people remember Trelise Cooper Ltd. for its lawsuit against Tamsin Cooper, and that the media are prepared to align the latest case with this. That time, there was arguably more “underdog” support for the smaller Tamsin Cooper label, with the exception of a TV One news item that went off-topic by questioning Tamsin Cooper’s materials.
   The case is, after all, still talked about in the media—not always in the most glowing terms for the larger design company.
   However, after Trelise Cooper Ltd. itself became a potential defendant facing similar accusations from a company marketing its products under the Treliske trade mark, some might believe that karma has followed its natural path and the slate has been wiped clean.
   So what are the arguments?
   Riley says that Cooper owes NZ$23,000. The release, from Mint Condition Ltd., says Riley ‘has fallen victim to the foibles of designer and retailer Trelise Cooper.’
   It has affected Riley so much that her winter 2008 and summer 2009 collections have had to be cancelled, says the release.
   This time around, Trelise Cooper Ltd. has employed a publicist, perhaps one lesson learned from the Tamsin Cooper case.
   The company, through its general manager Alex Brandon, dismisses Riley’s accusations, saying that the supplied goods were faulty.
   ‘TCL [Trelise Cooper Ltd.] received a delivery from Sarah Riley in September 2007. After only two days on the shop ﬂoor TCL were alerted by customers and staff to numerous quality issues.’
   Riley, in her defence, has had one retailer, Mei Mei in Ponsonby, Auckland, attest to the quality of her products. ‘Eight years in the business, I’ve had more problems with returns on Jimmy Choo heels!’ says Mei Mei’s Jo Pearson.
   Trelise Cooper Ltd. attempted to return the stock but it was not accepted by Riley—on this point the parties agree.
   Brandon says Trelise Cooper Ltd. paid Riley ‘on delivery of the shoes $23,838 [up front] of a total invoice of $47,677.’
   This is a more routine commercial case, so the “bullying” aspect that Tamsin Cooper supporters saw in 2005–7 isn’t as apparent. One company is bigger than the other, but in our view the sympathy heartstrings are harder to pull, especially as the ﬁrst stone has been cast in the media by the smaller one.
   There are useful precedents over the quality and sale of goods in the courts already, as well as many governing part-payment. These cases that tend to be less fascinating than those surrounding intellectual property—or brands.
   At the end of the day, both sides have a varying idea over the quality of the product, and this is what any case will rest on.
   Did Sarah Riley supply shoes of a merchantable quality to Trelise Cooper Ltd.? Were there clauses in the sale of goods’ contract governing quality and payment?
   The story has not yet broken in the mainstream media but we expect it will be more an arm’s-length commercial battle rather than David v. Goliath when it does.
   We at Lucire hope the parties can settle their differences without resorting to the courts.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

‘The Clintons are crooks’—just part of the noise

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:51:24 +1200

Folks may recall the videos I posted about the possibility that Hillary Clinton committed a breach of electoral finance laws in 2000 a few weeks back.
   The following was Dugg today: ‘Paul v. Clinton: Experts Question Whether Clinton Campaign Finance Case Will Impact ’08 Race’.
   It’s an old article from 2007 but the last time it was on Digg, Democratic supporters dismissed it as a right-wing attack on their Hillary.
   Now you see from the comments on Digg that many, many Democrats have joined in and the right-wing charge has disappeared. It’s obviously accepted by more of the US population.
   The excerpts are interesting (and I am being biased against Sen. Clinton in selecting these):

The star-studded August 2000 event was later deemed to be a violation of federal campaign finance laws: The Clinton campaign had to pay a $35,000 fine to the Federal Elections Committee. Clinton’s campaign finance director David Rosen was accused of lying to the FEC, indicted, but eventually acquitted. …
   The case presents the classic question of what Clinton knew and when she knew it, said election lawyer John Armor. He said the tape shows that Clinton allegedly committed at least four felonies pertaining to illegal campaign fundraising and obstructing subsequent federal investigations into the matter. …
   “No presidential candidate was ever caught on videotape engaged in felony,” Paul told Cybercast News Service. “No candidate [has ever been] engaged in major civil fraud suit [that] she was forced to testify in.” …
   In a written declaration for the California court filed on April 7, 2006, Clinton said only that she did not remember discussions with Paul about the fundraiser.
   “I have no recollection whatsoever of discussing any arrangement with him whereby he would support my campaign for the United States Senate in exchange for anything from me or then-President Clinton,” Clinton wrote.

The following excerpt, however, is very sad:

From a political perspective, the public stopped caring about alleged misdeeds by either of the Clintons, said Gary Rose, political science professor at Sacred Heart University.
   “When it comes to the Clintons, they are generally immune to public condemnation regarding ethical lapses and violations of the law,” Rose told Cybercast News Service. “If this case continues into the general election, we'll see how it affects swing voters and independents, but it is not going to derail her bid for the nomination. I still remember Bill Clinton’s polls, and two-thirds of voters said they didn’t trust him but voted for him irrespective of his morality or ethics.”
   Even critics of Clinton don’t think the case will harm her politically.
   “She’s going to hold the highest office in the country. She’s got the money, the organization and the FBI files,” James Nesfield, president of the Equal Justice Foundation of America (EJFA), said in an interview.

   I don’t think Americans are that stupid but there is one part that rings true: we are so used to the idea of the Clintons being crooks we don’t bat an eyelid any more. The more news like this surfaces, the more it becomes part of the Clinton noise, and fewer and fewer will care. We become desensitized.
   None of this has made it into the MSM in this country and I bet little has made it into the MSM in the States.
   Also, the voting public was different in 1996 because they did not see the Sen. Dole as being potentially effective—either have an ineffective, uninspiring president, or an untrustworthy one. Americans chose the latter, since when did politicians and trust go together?
   In 2008, the world is different—Americans have the choice between an experienced candidate (McCain) or the claimed agent of change (Obama). Or, the least experienced of the three in elected office who claims sleep deprivation causes lies (Clinton).

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Sir Edmund Hillary, paradigm shifter—who’s next?

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:46:19 +1300

Fellow Voxer Bridget’s post on Sir Edmund Hillary’s passing expresses what many New Zealanders are feeling today.
   Not only has a great man left us, but the idea of a living hero has died with him. Our role models are far and few between, she argues, and she is right.
   I cheekily suggested that the only person who comes close to being a patriot is Peter Jackson, the filmmaker, for his resistance to relocate to Hollywood and his insistence on making his movies here.
   He is deserving of the title of a role model, though because of the time-frame of his success, he might not be regarded in quite the same heights as Sir Edmund—yet.
   Jackson is a paradigm-shifter in so far as he proved that New Zealand is capable of multiple Oscar winners that find mainstream audiences globally, but he is not one who proved that New Zealanders could make films. Earlier directors who did depart for Anglo–American shores did that.
   One could say that Sir Edmund Hillary was not the first man who proved that Kiwis could climb mountains, but it may be right for us to view his accomplishment with eyes opened more widely.
   In 2000 it would have been within the realm of imagination for a filmmaker to start something domestically. Maybe our imaginations would not have said anything at the level of a trilogy of Tolkien adaptations that would wind up doing a clean sweep at the Oscars, but we would have said it was possible to start mainstream film-making. Martin Campbell, for instance, was thinking of making Vertical Limit here.
   In the 1950s, with plenty of loss of life in other attempts, Edmund Hillary and his expedition proved what was considered impossible up to that point.
   The prior loss of life is what adds to the heroic image of Sir Edmund Hillary, succeeding where human endeavour could not before him.
   So without Sir Edmund and if Peter Jackson does not qualify as a hero (though still someone to be hugely admired and respected), to whom do we turn today?
   As Bridget points out, the tall poppy syndrome is alive and well, and Sir Edmund might have been an exception in New Zealand as someone who could be considered a national treasure in his lifetime. Even if the syndrome is extinguished, Sir Edmund lived through years when it was rife. You literally had to do something as grand as climb Everest to get past it. And since 1953, we haven’t lauded anyone for their accomplishments to the same degree. We didn’t send a man to the moon, and we didn’t invent the internet. The slacker quiet-man mentality of the boys from Flight of the Conchords is disturbingly close to the national psyche on numerous levels.
   Hillary and Tenzing Norkay’s sons might have scaled Everest in tribute to their fathers, and that is no small feat, but just like the Fantasy Island TV remake, no matter how much better you do it, people remember the original more.
   I suppose, too, with the advances we have made in the last 50 years, there are fewer things we are calling ‘impossible’ unless we begin to think in greater mental leaps—maybe solving how UFOs supposedly get across light years in limited times, ending the dominance of the internal combustion engine as our way of getting around short distances on Earth or curing HIV and Aids.
   Institutionalization and politicization may have seen to our inability to really drive forward humanity, even if some geniuses out there may have worked out most of these problems.
   Sir Edmund Hillary reminds us that we can dream of the impossible and steadily work to achieve our goals.
   He may have scaled Everest in 1953 but he first became interested in mountain climbing before World War II, in the mid-1930s as a teenager. We are talking a 20-year dream that he steadily accomplished.
   There are no quick fixes. Bridget’s words: ‘In this age of google, paparazzi and cellphone cameras, sometimes it feels like there aren’t many heroes left: our sports stars peddle drugs and hook up with girls whose artificial breast size is greater than their IQ, our politicians lecture earnestly on the perils of violence then resort to fisticuffs if their moral highground proves shaky, that is when they’re not defrauding immigrants or getting let off from speeding tickets. Church ministers get a television audience and suddenly it’s Harley Davidsons and overseas travel.’
   All of these people she talks about are short-termers, people who are quite happy with flash-in-the-pan moments in the mainstream media, praised as though they were latter-day Hillarys deserving of our attention.
   In reality, no parent in their right mind would want their kids admiring any of these idiots.
   The paradigm-busters are there, bubbling under. New Zealand is an inspirational place so it is hard not to come up with a dream and to accomplish it. However, whether these people have a chance to surface given government policy or institutionalization or the tall-poppy syndrome or the foreign-owned media is another matter. They might even bugger off overseas as so many have done before them.
   We need to encourage them to come forward as individuals and know they will not be laughed at or ridiculed for having a dream.
   God knows that vacuum exists now more than ever.
   And we already know this. In fact, the National Government told us so in 1999, just before the General Election. The document, Bright Future, makes interesting reading in 2008 as we are reminded of lost opportunities. Of course, it was regarded as politicking back then and the programme was cancelled. On Google’s first results’ page, this PDF hosted by the UN is the only remnant of the brochure, whereas in 1999 it was stored domestically as well.
   In essence, Bright Future spoke of the need to foster innovation and to champion individuals. The tall-poppy syndrome, it argued, should die.
   Anyone who knows me know that I would not campaign for National—at least not the National in its present form—so please don’t read this as a National Party campaign advertisement.
   It needn’t have mattered if Bright Future came out of the Legalize Marijuana movement.
   It begs the question, regardless of the source: who is ready to shift paradigms? Or, who is prepared to make a Hillary Shift, one that shifts paradigms from ‘impossible’ to ‘possible’?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Ride with the Devil gets an MSM preview—but what are ‘Asians’?

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 16:41:33 +1200

The Irish newspaper, The New Zealand Herald, has finally posted a preview of the new series Ride with the Devil, premièring Tuesday, TV2, at 11 p.m. Its star, Andy Wong, put it on to the show’s Facebook group.
   Though it gets me all the time: what are ‘Asians’? I saw this term all over the article.
   Kazakhs are Asians. Indians are Asians. Eastern Russians are Asians. If they mean ‘Chinese’, then they should say it. We’re not ashamed of our heritage.
   What are New Zealanders? Shall we say ‘Australasians’ from now on?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Ingmar Bergman dies, 89

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:04:45 +1200

As reported at Irma’s blog. Interesting: I learned of this here at Vox before the MSM.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

MSM hates Posh Spice—but American public doesn’t

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:13:16 +1200

The way the mainstream media in the US (The New York Times) and New Zealand (TV One) tell it, Victoria Beckham’s arrival in the US was a flop, with people hating her show due to her overexposure.
Thank God we have blogs. At least two Americans here on Vox thought the show was great and thought highly of Mrs Beckham—one even saying that she expected to dislike the show and wasn’t even planning on watching, but for it being on at her gym.
Sorry, MSM—I don’t know about Becks, but I think Posh is conquering America. Sure, two people on Vox do not represent twenty million. But that’s two regular people to whom she is marketing versus a handful of opinionated journalists to whom she is not marketing. This is her year.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend