Editorial: Interview sealed fate after blunder

Alasdair Thompson was always reluctant to jump - but eventually he got pushed anyway.
News this week that the Employers' and Manufacturers' Association (EMA) chief executive had been sacked from his post, following comments that the productivity of women was linked to their menstrual cycle, came as no surprise.
Perhaps more of a surprise was the fact it took this long for him to lose his job.
Mr Thompson was always going to try to hang on grimly to his role.
Even his demeanour in the now-infamous interview with television reporter Mihingarangi Forbes was indicative of a man used to getting his own way, a man used to calling the shots.
But surely even Mr Thompson, an experienced executive who had previously worked at the EMA for 12 years, must have known the incident was likely to end eventually with him losing his job, one way or another.
His initial radio comments which sparked the furore were bad enough.
But the television interview was the final nail in the coffin, particularly once it went viral on the internet.
The visual record of Mr Thompson's misguided interview with Ms Forbes, which came across as a case study in how not to handle a public relations disaster, put the final seal on the deal.
The EMA tried to deflect the cries of outrage from women's groups and the like.
What it couldn't deal with was the mass public outrage - the Facebook groups, the posts to Twitter, the letters to the editor.
On the face of it, it may not have seemed it, but there were always two sets of views about Mr Thompson's comments.
The more vocal of the two groups called for the embattled chief executive's head, while the far quieter group, knowing that they were in the minority, was those who thought the controversy was simply another example of political correctness gone mad.
Even if Mr Thompson genuinely believes in the comments he made he should have known they espoused a view most people would find unacceptable.
It's difficult to understand how such an experienced chief executive could make such a stupid mistake.
But then, it appears Mr Thompson never was that good at comprehension.
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