Te Radar: Hypocrisy provided delightful treats all year

It wasn't a bang but a whimper that was the highlight of my media year. To be precise, it was Graham Capill's whimper, as he lay, curled fetally, snivelling on the pavement, after having a little summary justice inflicted upon him by a member of our gloriously flawed public.

There will be some who say it is sinful to delight in the misfortune of others, but I suspect it is considerably less sinful than raping children.

Regardless, as best exemplified by Capill himself, this was the year of hypocrisy.

Shortly after the Right Honourable Winston Peters gallantly sacrificed himself for the sake of stable government and graciously accepted the role of Foreign Affairs Minister, I was chastised by one of his parliamentary colleagues for having the temerity to suggest that Winston had less integrity than a child pornographer.

Immediately afterwards the news broke that his party was demanding to sit on the Opposition benches. The concurrence of these two events caused me to laugh so heartily I nearly ran over a child.

It was a certain gritty honesty rather than hypocrisy that caused the downfall of John Tamihere, who achieved immortality by adding words such as "frontbum" to the national lexicon. Things weren't quite so cheery for his cats, who were put down midway through the year as they suffered from cat Aids.

They were treated with the same compassion the new Pope seemed to show towards the people of Africa, when he stated that the problem of Aids on the continent must be tackled through "fidelity and abstinence and not by condoms".

This is easy to say for someone who has spent his life denying himself the pleasures of the flesh and who is thus unaware about why exactly it is described as a "pleasure".

It isn't only physical pleasures that are being denied to people by religious zealots. Western music has recently been banned by Iran's democratically elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Whether he did this on the grounds of its sinfulness or simply his good taste is a moot point, given that the most popular tunes on Iran's State TV include the Eagles, George Michael and Kenny G.

Capill is fortunate he didn't pursue his predilections in Iran, where no doubt he would have been buried in a hole up to his neck while people threw stones at his head until he was dead, (although that punishment is usually reserved for petty criminals whose crimes include adultery or pre-marital sex).

It would be wrong to be entirely negative about the year.

One man's antics deserve praise.

David Turnock, who flew a light plane around the Sky Tower on election night before crashing into the sea, is a bastion of sanity and romantic innovation compared with many lovelorn New Zealand males, who prefer to simply beat or stab women to death in order to express their affection.

* radarswebsite.com