PRISON BLOG 27

Sunday Beige-Times

I’ve just seen that Tze Ming Mok’s column in the Sunday Star-Times has been discontinued, or “axed” to use her term that I like. Whilst still available I’ve won a bet on the demise of her column. She probably lasted longer than my TV column did, so I do have some sympathy, but when every week is an esoteric, defensive diatribe focused solely on an immigrant minority how long do you realistically expect it to last in red-necked NZ?

As I find out, they don’t particularly appreciate “younger” writers either – the target audience think they should shut up and mind their manners after all, so it was brave of them to put her in the bull ring. Maybe their tokenism was a balancing attempt to counteract an all-Pakeha cast and especially Michael Laws and his racially-charged vitriol (does he have to keep referring to Tongan’s etc as “brown” why doesn’t he remind us that others are “white”?) and Frank Haden…where does one start?

I note that Tze Ming took at as her mission to be a “Token Media Asian” and wonder whether that was actually her grief. It begs the question whether Finlay MacDonald is a Token Liberal Lefty, Michael Laws a Token Provincial Reactionary and Rosemary McLeod a Token…whatever she is, and why Tze Ming chose to limit her comments to in-crowd references and speak to that community rather than from it. Her best column that I read was her one on East Timor that was informative, timely and had FA to do with being a TMA.

So farewell Tze Ming from the MSM and it’s matrix of interlocking duopolitic foreign domination, you will be missed, now how do we get rid of Frank Haden?

DON’T FORGET Tim’s Book and magazine collection for the Prison Library, please send your books and magazines to:
Tim Selwyn
Librarian/Unit 7
Hawkes Bay Prison
Private Bag 1600
Napier, NZ

Tim Selwyn (Editor of Tumeke!)
PRN 60477981
Hawkes Bay Prison
Currently appealing sedition conviction