Tracey Barnett: Unsettling pointer to power of labels

It has been a couple of those strange weeks when headlines suddenly felt bipolar. The story you read last month didn't look anything like the second version of the tale you got last week.

One day a front-page headline tells you that the "Ear Flick Dad" was seemingly convicted of simply trying to get his 4-year-old to come with him a bit too forcefully.

Strange, you mumble over your bowl of Frosted Fibre Fragments, maybe Christchurch juries like locking up Dads of potential boy racers before they finish pre-school. You know, like a pre-emptive strike.

But nay, the good jury folks of Christchurch, the police and the judge have revealed a far different tale. That version eventually surfaced as the quieter page three story told us that Jimmy Mason was convicted of punching a 4-year-old boy in the face. He happened to be his son.

The judge made it plain. "It is clear the jury found there was a punch and you [Jimmy Mason] admitted as much to the police."

The man never quite got his linguistic due as the "Child-assault Dad". Police say they would have dealt with him the same way before Section 59 was even abolished.

Christchurch inspector Derek Erasmus wasn't any less emphatic. "This was not a test case. It was simply a case of a child being punched in the face and the police taking appropriate action."

So much for the "Ear Flick Dad" conviction.

Mason was convicted of assault no differently than if he had punched me in the face. Do you think jury members would have been proud to go home and tell their kids they convicted a father of an ear-pull - so rest easy, Tots, the world is now a safer place?

On a related but, yes, very separate note, I haven't filled out my shiny new $9 million referendum ballot yet. That's because I'm still not sure if watching my children inhale an entire bag of pineapple lumps faster than most land-speed records constitutes bad parenting, and thus gives me the right to smack myself - thus making it assault. You still with me?

Referendum brain-teasers aside, this is nothing if not a discomforting reminder of the power of labels. There's got to be a graduate linguistics thesis brewing for somebody on how this bill went from being called a "child protection" law to the de-neutered "smacking bill".

If the entire press corps agreed to refer to it as the "Child-assault Law" from now on, would we stop those confounding "Ear-flick Dad" headlines in the future?

Just because Jimmy Mason looks like George Harrison la 1972 doesn't mean his guitar gently weeps. He denies the punching. "I don't regret it at all," he told Breakfast's Paul Henry.

Isn't that the entire crux of this story, despite referendums or Section 59s? If a man punched any 4-year-old in the face, and still feels he's done nothing wrong - isn't that the core of this big, honking problem we are all forced to share?

The week's biggest raspberry goes to Wimbledon's All England spokesman who admitted "good looks are a factor" after seeing young, attractive women players with low world rankings mysteriously land on Centre Court, while champion players like the "Sisters of No Mercy", Serena and Venus Williams, were relegated out to Court 2, reports the Daily Mail.

There was even a Centre Court "Battle of the Babes" (both 19-year-olds, ranked 45th and 60th) that pushed other top players to the lower courts.

Top seeds were not amused. A BBC source said: "No one has heard of many of the women now, so if they are pretty it definitely gives them an edge."

How wonderfully 1962-ish to hear women's athletics reduced to porn.

Bad taste never stopped good commerce. The one piece of true sludge that brought Michael Jackson's personal life home for me was seeing his father at the microphone making his first statements after his son's death.

Jackson Snr took the opportunity to plug his own new record label, then went on to introduce his business partner (who stepped up to actually speak about their new company). I had a sudden urge to shower afterwards.

In the US, the dead cannot be libelled, but tell me that's not child abuse. Jackson will have lived as he died - milked dry for all his talent was worth.

If Jackson's sad personal tale has any counterbalance, it was seeing the worldwide scope of flash mob "mass moonwalk" tributes that instantly cropped up on YouTube.

Fans literally danced in the streets in dozens of cities from Vienna to Seattle, as did, even most bizarrely, 1500 Filipino prisoners in their matching orange prison jump suits.

Michael Jackson could barely look at the man in the mirror, yet you can't help but feel that the man for the masses would have loved that most.

www.traceybarnett.co.nz