"There’s.. a danger confronting young women that must be faced: deliberately seeking out authority figures for social encounters and eventually consensual sex is playing with fire."
A striking quote from Michael Bassett's stunning column, "The Anti-Police Hysteria," where he makes several excellent points. This anti-cop dementia is largely media driven. Begining with the Dominion Post enabling Louise Nicholas' bizarre fantasies, through numerous overblown scandals, right up to Dame Bazely's soon to be released report on police conduct, which is sure to be accompanied by feverish howls of outraged reporters decrying a 'sick culture' of the NZ police.
Our news media are atrocious sexual hypocrites. Almost weekly the Dom Post's website (stuff.co.nz) publishes salacious, sensational or silly sex stories. The Civil Union & Prostitution Reform bills were passed to the applause of hacks everywhere, congratulating NZ's progressive sexual liberalism. Gay & lesbian ministers, Methodist & Presbyterian, are feted by journalists. Questions hang over the shady sexual proclivities of MPs such as David Benson-Pope, even the Prime Minister herself, but are ignored or dismissed as rumour-mongering. Last year a raft of stories were published about sexual liaisons between school teachers and their students. Not once has the msm described the education sector as a 'sick culture'.
But if we expect higher moral standards from the police, shouldn't we also expect the same ethical propriety from MPs, schoolteachers and clergy? In my opinion every cop is entitled to a horny sex life in private. They are cops, not priests; upholders of law, not chastity. The legal/moral distinction is important and appears lost on many critics. It seems a strange puritanism surrounds the private lives of police officers. Recently retired MP Georgina Beyer was a prostitute in her youth, illegal at the time, with not a peep of protest from the press. Yet a younger Clint Rickards is villified for (legal) group sex with a police groupy.
Perhaps a feminist double standard is at play? When an Auckland policewoman was discovered moonlighting as a prostitute, she escaped the wrath of a censorious press. The average journalist is a young (30 or under) white, woman. A generation raised on feminism's ambivalence about female sexuality. On the one hand, it loudly exalts women's sexual liberation, cheering on bold carnal adventure. On the other, it's uncomfortable or silent about the ugly consquences of licentiousness: rape, date-rape, STDs, teen pregnancy, proliferating pornography, abortion's long-term emotional harm, etc.
To be fair, the sexual confusion is not confined to the media alone, but is symptomatic of society's broader disconnect and confusion about sex where modern liberal attitudes clash with archaic, primal impulses - libertine ideologies vs biological realities. But that's a topic for another post
Moreover, it's true that Shipton & Schollum are convicted rapists, but are they mere isolated incidents? If our police force was truly a 'sick culture' then examples of egregious conduct would be common throughout all policing districts and generations. Where are all these 'ominpresent' rape scandals to support the notion of a sick culture?
Either way, the relentless persecution of our cops by an antagonistic fourth estate is inexcusable. From Joanne Black's incessant self-righteous whinging about being ticketed in her previous Dom Post columns, to major print editors appealing for anti-police anecdotes from Joe Public, through to the frenzied media trials of Rickards & co - such deranged reportage is unseemly and disgusting. I know many individuals bearing anti-police grudges, including relatives. They're either criminals or angry youths rebelling against authority figures. But I'm aghast that the msm - a white, urban, middle-class institution (if you'll excuse my clumsy over-generalisation) - are so hostile to an establishment vital to an orderly functioning society. As NZ's civil life slowly disintegrates, it's the very middle-classes that has the most to lose as crime spirals inexorably out of control.
On a related note...
My (tin-foil hat) theory is that Rickards is a victim of a political witch hunt. Helen Clark wants him gone and her flunkies installed at National Headquarters. There are too many coincidences. First, commissioner Doone 'relieved' of his position. Following his successor's reign, Howard Broad, who helped oversee the Peter Ellis sex debacle -- where innocent women were charged with faux crimes -- was made top cop. Meanwhile, Lyn Provost, a civil servant with NO experience, expertise or prior interest in policing, was reappointed assistant commissioner. During the Robinson/Broad/Provost era, some questionable plans have emerged from the commissioner's office. These include:
1. Plans to share sensitive information with dubious agencies such as Women's Refuge - a increasingly politicised body with a spurious anti-male agenda.
2. Plans to implement computer software to decide whether a reported crime warrants investigation, rather than relying on the judgement of individual officers. (Perhaps to massage crime numbers so as to reassure a nervous public? After all, a crime isn't a 'crime' if it's not recorded as such.
3. Plans to overhaul the Police Act. Most alarmingly, amendments to allow cops suspected of wrongdoing to be fired before proper employment/judicial proceedings have been finalised. This would neatly solve Helen Clark's 'Rickards problem', or any cop deemed 'problematic' by future govt ministers.
I must stress, the above is pure speculation and I could be completely wrong about everything. Yet Labour's track record of restructuring Courts, e.g. establishing the Supreme Court; appointing favoured judges to the lower courts; altering the process of impeaching judges, etc, suggests scheming to facilitate further ministerial meddling with the police/court/justice systems.
We may never know. Our msm are either disinterested, too busy screaming 'rape!' or too scared to inquire. Fran O'Sullivan, assistant editor of NZ's biggest newspaper, was too lax or timid to fully investigate commissioner Doone's shonky dismissal. If a seasoned journalist of her calibre is afraid to probe Clark's machinations, what chance that a young reporter with half her experience will ask hard questions?
Shame on the msm.
Our news media are atrocious sexual hypocrites. Almost weekly the Dom Post's website (stuff.co.nz) publishes salacious, sensational or silly sex stories. The Civil Union & Prostitution Reform bills were passed to the applause of hacks everywhere, congratulating NZ's progressive sexual liberalism. Gay & lesbian ministers, Methodist & Presbyterian, are feted by journalists. Questions hang over the shady sexual proclivities of MPs such as David Benson-Pope, even the Prime Minister herself, but are ignored or dismissed as rumour-mongering. Last year a raft of stories were published about sexual liaisons between school teachers and their students. Not once has the msm described the education sector as a 'sick culture'.
But if we expect higher moral standards from the police, shouldn't we also expect the same ethical propriety from MPs, schoolteachers and clergy? In my opinion every cop is entitled to a horny sex life in private. They are cops, not priests; upholders of law, not chastity. The legal/moral distinction is important and appears lost on many critics. It seems a strange puritanism surrounds the private lives of police officers. Recently retired MP Georgina Beyer was a prostitute in her youth, illegal at the time, with not a peep of protest from the press. Yet a younger Clint Rickards is villified for (legal) group sex with a police groupy.
Perhaps a feminist double standard is at play? When an Auckland policewoman was discovered moonlighting as a prostitute, she escaped the wrath of a censorious press. The average journalist is a young (30 or under) white, woman. A generation raised on feminism's ambivalence about female sexuality. On the one hand, it loudly exalts women's sexual liberation, cheering on bold carnal adventure. On the other, it's uncomfortable or silent about the ugly consquences of licentiousness: rape, date-rape, STDs, teen pregnancy, proliferating pornography, abortion's long-term emotional harm, etc.
To be fair, the sexual confusion is not confined to the media alone, but is symptomatic of society's broader disconnect and confusion about sex where modern liberal attitudes clash with archaic, primal impulses - libertine ideologies vs biological realities. But that's a topic for another post
Moreover, it's true that Shipton & Schollum are convicted rapists, but are they mere isolated incidents? If our police force was truly a 'sick culture' then examples of egregious conduct would be common throughout all policing districts and generations. Where are all these 'ominpresent' rape scandals to support the notion of a sick culture?
Either way, the relentless persecution of our cops by an antagonistic fourth estate is inexcusable. From Joanne Black's incessant self-righteous whinging about being ticketed in her previous Dom Post columns, to major print editors appealing for anti-police anecdotes from Joe Public, through to the frenzied media trials of Rickards & co - such deranged reportage is unseemly and disgusting. I know many individuals bearing anti-police grudges, including relatives. They're either criminals or angry youths rebelling against authority figures. But I'm aghast that the msm - a white, urban, middle-class institution (if you'll excuse my clumsy over-generalisation) - are so hostile to an establishment vital to an orderly functioning society. As NZ's civil life slowly disintegrates, it's the very middle-classes that has the most to lose as crime spirals inexorably out of control.
On a related note...
My (tin-foil hat) theory is that Rickards is a victim of a political witch hunt. Helen Clark wants him gone and her flunkies installed at National Headquarters. There are too many coincidences. First, commissioner Doone 'relieved' of his position. Following his successor's reign, Howard Broad, who helped oversee the Peter Ellis sex debacle -- where innocent women were charged with faux crimes -- was made top cop. Meanwhile, Lyn Provost, a civil servant with NO experience, expertise or prior interest in policing, was reappointed assistant commissioner. During the Robinson/Broad/Provost era, some questionable plans have emerged from the commissioner's office. These include:
1. Plans to share sensitive information with dubious agencies such as Women's Refuge - a increasingly politicised body with a spurious anti-male agenda.
2. Plans to implement computer software to decide whether a reported crime warrants investigation, rather than relying on the judgement of individual officers. (Perhaps to massage crime numbers so as to reassure a nervous public? After all, a crime isn't a 'crime' if it's not recorded as such.
3. Plans to overhaul the Police Act. Most alarmingly, amendments to allow cops suspected of wrongdoing to be fired before proper employment/judicial proceedings have been finalised. This would neatly solve Helen Clark's 'Rickards problem', or any cop deemed 'problematic' by future govt ministers.
I must stress, the above is pure speculation and I could be completely wrong about everything. Yet Labour's track record of restructuring Courts, e.g. establishing the Supreme Court; appointing favoured judges to the lower courts; altering the process of impeaching judges, etc, suggests scheming to facilitate further ministerial meddling with the police/court/justice systems.
We may never know. Our msm are either disinterested, too busy screaming 'rape!' or too scared to inquire. Fran O'Sullivan, assistant editor of NZ's biggest newspaper, was too lax or timid to fully investigate commissioner Doone's shonky dismissal. If a seasoned journalist of her calibre is afraid to probe Clark's machinations, what chance that a young reporter with half her experience will ask hard questions?
Shame on the msm.
2 comments:
Excellent piece.
Well said. There is no doubt in my mind that HC is behind this police bashing. Rickards is too much of a man for her liking.
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