Kerre Woodham: Excuse me Tau, that was MY line

Tau Henare and Hone Harawira engaging in a bit of a bro-on-bro fight. Picture / Herald on Sunday

The hoo-ha over Tau Henare's Twitter jibe at Hone Harawira this week had me raising my eyebrows.

Not because of what he said - that Hone was so racist he puts chocolate milk in his tea.

I was surprised because that was my line, one I wrote in a column for this newspaper back in January.

I'm only new at this social media stuff but I'd always thought Twitter was for people to express their own thoughts, their own observations, their own snappy one-liners. Not other people's. At least, not without crediting them.

I pointed this out to Tau and he sent a tweet back saying he thought it must be a slow news day for the crack to be turned into a story and, besides, it wasn't his joke anyway.

I know, I replied. It's mine.

Some people might think it's a bit precious to be miffed about word theft.

After all, words are out there in the public domain. Why not just take them if you like the way they've been put together.

I suppose it's because words are my stock in trade.

I talk on the radio; I write columns; I write books; I write reviews. I have to try to be original in the way I use words because if I'm not, I won't get work.

So when the supposed Minister of Twitter is revealed as a Tweet Cheat, when he's sauntered off with a piece of one of my columns in a brazen bit of parliamentary plagiarism, to me, it's (almost) the same as shoplifting.

Ah well. No use crying over spilt milk - chocolate or otherwise.

I guess the reason Tau got so much attention when he repeated the line was because:

a) it WAS a slow news day, and

b) it was Tau calling out Hone and people seem to love that. A bro-on-bro bitch fight is just about as good as a ho-on-ho bitch fight.

Tau will probably nick that line too. Just spell my name right, Tau, and you can take what you like.

Oh, and you owe me a beer.