Mixed media: Tamihere's great escape act

Practical politics

POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: John Tamihere has been given more than a slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket. He has been given a severe slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket ... but something has been made very clear to him. He will be censured only once. His next lapse will see him no longer a Labour candidate.

* John Armstrong in the New Zealand Herald

BUSINESS NEWSPAPER: The caucus let him in, heard him out and censured him "severely" for widely disparaged remarks printed in Investigate magazine and over the weekend in the Sunday Star-Times ... but they let him stay in the party, a development some commentators are calling a triumph of practical politics.

* National Business Review

REGIONAL OPINION: Mr Tamihere's comments are the clarion call for boys and men to have a place in society from which he feels they have been sidelined. It is the kind of thing Good Man project promoter Celia Lashlie has been saying for several years, but coming from Mr Tamihere it is plainly~ directed at the group of women he feels he has nothing in common with - including heterosexuality.

* Manawatu Standard

MEDIA CRITIC: Not so much the only solution as the only one that wasn't completely horrifying to contemplate. Really, would you rather be savaged by a dead sheep Don Brash, or face the very real possibility of your renegade MP going completely feral, while he is cheered on by the substantial sector of the public that sees him as a lovable straight-shooter no matter what he says or does?

It was Tamihere's pathological inability to let anything lie that got him embroiled in the brawl with his successors at the Waipareira Trust that eventually led to his woeful Investigate interview; and which led him to revive his blog with that insane attack on 3 News.

* Russell Brown on www.publicaddress.net

Caucus stupid

SCEPTICAL BLOGGER: At the very least, John should have been subjected to the Samoan custom of ufoga (in which the aggrieved party can scream abuse, punch or slap the wrongdoer before finding it in their hearts to forgive him). As it is, forgiveness after a 15-minute apology just leaves the caucus looking stupid.

* http://metcalph.blogspot.com/

ISRAELI COMMENT: New Zealand Labour Party MP John Tamihere has shown that anti-semitism in New Zealand is not confined to the occasional grave desecration, but exists in the higher echelons of government. I cannot see how Tamihere could have been "misquoted", or how there could have been "extenuating circumstances".

* www.israellycool.com/blog

CONTROVERSIALIST WEBSITE:You've [Helen Clark] treated your caucus, the Parliament and the people of this country with opportunistic contempt. You've confirmed the widespread (and ultimately dangerous) cynicism about the rancid self-interest of our political elites, yet again. You showed that you couldn't walk the walk rather than talk tough and do nothing.

http://www.nzpundit.com/

ONLINE COMMENTATOR: Good God, I would have never believed it. Helen Clark has folded like a sack of soggy potatoes and John Tamihere is back in the fold with only a censure. A censure? Oh, how tough. How can their caucus look in the mirror with any self-respect? He has not resiled from a single word he has said.

* David Farrar on http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/

NEW ZEALAND BLOGGER: If what is reported turns out to be correct, then Tamihere has let his monstrous ego surmount any sense of ethical behaviour he may have. (Was he drunk? Does being in NZ's Parliament for too long make an MP demented?) If he's sick of hearing about the genocide of Jews - still ongoing, courtesy of Arafat v2, Assad, Khatami and bin Laden et al - then he should do the right thing and become a private citizen again.

New Zealand has no need for a politician of any stripe who would belittle history's greatest crime.

* Posted by Tony on http://silentrunning.tvf