Jim Hopkins: Tamihere raises men v wimmin battlefield

All right, everybody, all together now. You know the tune, it's that old favourite, Davy Crockett. Okay, here we go. Sing it like you mean it. 1 ... 2 ... 3.

Born in a luncheon bar in Mangere
The hottest interview of the century
Accusing all the wimmin of conspiracy
Then backin' down and makin' an a-polo-gy
Johnny
Tami-here
King of the mild ones here

Our thanks to the extinguished poet laureate, Mr Jam Hipkins, for that egregious refrain, whose sole virtue is its cogent expression of the disappointment felt by many when the widely admired contender, Johnny T, meekly abandoned his new role as blokesperson for the oppressed and downtrodden retro-hetro male and weakly waved the white flag.

For a time it actually looked as if Johnny v The Wimmin was gonna be the real deal. Sadly, within 48 hours, "Let's get ready to gruuuuumble" had become "Let's get ready to grovel" and that was that. What began with a bang ended with a whimper.

It was basically a replay of the Griffis-Tua fight without the TKO. Or that ridiculous mini-skirt either, thank the Lord. Should that flapping horror ever become a fashion trend, we won't just have a reputation for being ruled by "ministerial klingons" and devious social engineers but, worse still, bad dressers as well.

At least we won't be in sackcloth and ashes, which is what our Johnny will be wearing when he's back in the bosom of the whanau, happily toasting marshmallows round the campfire with "the tosser" and the "butch", not to mention good ol' "smarmy" Steve and all those plotters who "don't have families" and, consequently, have "nothing but the ability to plot".

Trying to imagine this happy family makes you wonder why Mr T even bothered to fire his blunderbuss. It could be the outburst is a modern example of what Daniel Defoe described three centuries ago: "Fools out of favour grudge at knaves in place."

Or perhaps our testosterone-charged blokesperson decided, like Guy Fawkes before him, that "a desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy".

Either way, he cheerfully lit the fuse to send the keg sky-high, then promptly said "sorry" to all and smarmy as if the loud noise had hurt their ears. Which it certainly must have.

Short of borrowing a line from Aristophanes - "Under every stone lurks a politician" - or quoting Theodore Roosevelt, who once said another American President "has no more spine than a chocolate eclair", he couldn't have been more offensive.

In fact, it might have been wise to quote such persons. Let's face it, "queer tosser" is much less subtle than Winston Churchill's description of an opponent as "a modest man who has much to be modest about", or the 18th-century British politician who, when told by an angry rival that he "would either die on the gallows or of the pox", calmly replied, "That depends, sir, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

Alas, we live in linguistically impoverished times.

Not that the Tamikaze attack consisted entirely of mere epithets. He also alleged that the "The Labour Party's Wimmins' Division" had "an anti-men agenda".

Well, for heaven's sake, that's no surprise. All new ideas overstate their case. And feminism's no exception. Just as the Christians bagged the heathens and the Marxists denounced the capitalists, so feminists have sought to elevate themselves in part by denigrating men.

There's no better example of this than the preposterous but oft-quoted assertion that "All men are rapists". To demonstrate how deeply offensive and empty-headed this T-shirt slogan really is, you need only to consider the equivalent, "All women are whores".

No one should assert that. And no one in their right mind should assert the other, either.

Equally, it's daft for us blokes to get our undies in a knot about the sheilas' agenda. In fact, we should be grateful there are more women in Parliament now if only because their presence offers ample evidence that women can be every bit as vain, deceitful, manipulative, incompetent, aggressive and dictatorial as men. Not more so, but not less, either.

Failings, like virtues, aren't the property of one gender. We might express our strengths and weaknesses differently but we've all got plenty of both, whichever sex we are or have become, thanks to a publicly-funded operation. The idea of women saving the world is as ludicrous as expecting salvation from spacepersons noodling about in UFOs.

Fortunately, J.T. stopped short of denouncing feminine superiority or he'd be adding another apology to an already long list. As it is, he must appease the party's leadership, whom he's accused of deliberately "throwing" the 1993 election in order to unseat Mike Moore. Plus all those gay lobbyists and plotters furtively conspiring to achieve their secret goals within "timeframes of 10 to 15 years".

Not that he's retracted anything, mind, just expressed deep remorse for upsetting folk. Which raises an inescapable point. Mr T may be prepared to follow his Investigate luncheon with a second helping of humble pie, but it's hard to see how his party can possibly preserve its reputation and accept his bizarre recipe for reconciliation.

Doing so would suggest it's made up of people so abjectly addicted to office that they are prepared to swallow the most putrid humiliations to retain their status or, alternatively, that John Tamihere's absolutely right to allege his colleagues have a secret agenda to remodel New Zealand in their own image, thus making them equally willing to swallow whatever putrid humiliations are necessary to achieve their undisclosed goal.

The first alternative puts them beneath contempt; the second, beyond trust. And we must hope that not even a politician would be willing to be in either position.