Posts Tagged ‘Cameron Slater’
Newly political Peter Leitch – timing is everything
There’s been a dose of opprobrium directed towards a Labour MP Darien Fenton for her Facebook comments (yawn) in reaction to ‘The Mad Butcher’ businessman/philanthropist Sir Peter Leitch publicly endorsing the National Party in the lead up to the General Election. Some of Labour’s political enemies have sought to make it a litmus test, describing […]
Doing the anti-MMP campaign’s dirty work
I’ve been critical of partisan attack blogging (which I called “fixated, credibility-eviscerating attack blogging“). I am troubled (but not ‘shocked‘ or ‘outraged‘) by a demonstrated lack of what I called ‘fair-mindedness’ and the occasional deployment of untruthfulness (I regard that as a far more serious breach) I observe in some political blogs, some of whom […]
David Farrar showing WhaleOil how it’s done
Bloggers* David Farrar and Scott Yorke gave a master class in fair and reasonable political discourse and commentary on Jim Mora’s Afternoons show on Radio NZ National yesterday, which I listened to using the Radio NZ iPhone App late last night. In the context of my conversation with Cameron Slater (via our blogs) — where […]
Claims of ‘Integrity’ in the anti-MMP Campaign accompanied by smear tactics
Are smear tactics compatible with claims of ‘integrity’? I don’t think so. Especially if you piously declare you’re ‘above’ smear tactics and won’t use them … before you do. In context of an earlier discussion about allegations of ‘secret funding’ (Tribalism), I found myself again considering the lobby group Vote For Change Campaign, dedicated to […]
Tribalism
One of the perennial themes of this blog is an exploration of the ‘reasons’ for prejudice and conflict between different groups. See my 2009 post Q: Where does conflict come from? which records Tajfel’s social psychology experiments … Henri Tajfel is perhaps best known for his minimal groups experiments. In these studies, test subjects were divided arbitrarily […]
Trevor Mallard demolishes Cameron Slater*
Congratulations to Labour MP Trevor Mallard for good-naturedly wiping the smirk off Cameron Slater’s face. Well, temporarily. The result of the much-hyped (on Cameron’s part) 60 km bike race held this afternoon around Bucklands Beach was: Mallard won easily … by more than 20 minutes. I dropped over to Musick Point this afternoon and met Cam’s […]
SIS boss’s slow resignation letter + Slater says enuf!
Media wannabe Martyn ‘bomber’ Bradbury, twisting on the spit of his own sour double-mindedness appeared yesterday to pour scorn and contempt on his Right wing foil, blogger Cameron Slater: ” … to think that the SIS would hand papers like that over to Slater of all people is unbelievable.” and “It is an incredible thing […]
In praise of Cameron Slater (yeah, I’m surprised too)
If you’d suggested to me a year ago that I would be writing an article in praise of ‘WhaleOil’ blogger Cameron Slater I would have laughed at you. Hard. Yet, here I am doing just that. Let me explain. We’ve discussed these issues before: responding to criticism or negative feedback about one’s actions or statements, […]
Godwin’s law
Sometimes falsely truncated to: ‘The first person to mention Hitler in an online argument loses’, Godwin’s law actually states (well, according to, gulp, Wikipedia): As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. I saw the misinterpretation of Godwin’s law: “first person to mention Hitler, Nazis, or […]
