Editorial: Pantomime capers rule

Where is musical television satire now the national political circus is populated by such a stellar cast of misfits, jokers, bunglers, villains and misanthropes?

I can see it now.

Act One: Kim Dotcom, mega internet entrepreneur, performs a tango with Uncle Sam (backed, Gilbert and Sullivan-style, by an overkill chorus of NZ Police puppets falling over themselves to ignore innocence until proven guilty on the pretext of protecting original copyright for the very multi-national corporates which have ripped off starving artists since recording began).

Act Two: Dotcom, getting the hang of Kiwi spirit, steps up to a sideshow clown-shooting gallery where prize-winners must knock down the Government's voting majority before smarmy ringmaster John Key and his comely sidekick Paula Benefit can effect their evil plan to sell assets, sterilise the poor, extort smokers, impoverish superannuitants, put widows to work down coalmines in National Parks, privatise education, sell farms to overseas landlords, embrace the US war machine, and stimulate growth with idle rich immigrants who will patronise Kiwi slaves.

Dotcom aims at Banksie - not to be confused with Banksy, the pseudonymous, international graffiti artist of far greater renown- the latest fall-guy for the bizarrely dysfunctional Act Party.

Technically he misses but Banksie destroys his own credibility anyway, declaring, "I have never had a relationship with Dotcom; he is a married man".

Perhaps Banksie cannot imagine a platonic relationship (hardly ideal in an MP whose job description requires conducting professional relationships)? Or maybe he quite fancies Dotcom were he single?

Whatever, Dotcom has the last laugh with the song, Amnesia. The audience sings along wholeheartedly with "Nothing to fear, nothing to hide". All power to Dotcom's creative cheek. This is entrepreneurialism we can all enjoy.

Act Three: Enter the camouflaged Urewera Four in a remote bush camp. Cue another overkill chorus in police uniforms (there's a theme emerging here) where the women and children of a small town are terrified at gunpoint while masked NZ police collect "evidence" illegally and then, after wasting taxpayer millions, fail to secure convictions while further trampling the mana of touchy Tuhoe.

Cue dramatic gunshots, flag burnings, haka and Tame Iti's grand entrance in unprecedented courtroom sartorial splendour.

Act Four: Falling balloon pilots and parachuting jumpmasters are found to have consumed cannabis. Despite the fact that traces of cannabis in blood does not mean they were stoned at the time, or that if they were it had contributed materially to their accidents, a public outcry demands pilot drug testing.

A cameo conjuror from OSH provides light relief by magically producing risk- free adventure.

Drug testing spreads like wildfire. No employed persons - judges, lawyers, teachers, MPs, reporters, doctors, nurses, farm managers and police be very afraid - are exempt.

In the second most promiscuous nation but the country with allegedly the most marijuana smokers per capita on the planet, this leads to the happy-ever-after ending every successful show needs by creating a new growth industry and depleting the employee pool, thereby providing job opportunities for the children of the promiscuous, who dance like there's no tomorrow.

Audiences laugh uproariously because otherwise they'd weep.