Tuesday 11 December 2018

The Clobbering Machine strikes again: Censorship is alive and malignant over at The Standard (Dec. 12, 2018)

The Clobbering Machine strikes again:
Censorship is alive and malignant over at The Standard
The iron censorship regime imposed at the Stranded by the late unlamented “Weka” almost killed the site. This writer, i.e., moi, was by no means the only contributor there to find himself constantly scolded, warned and lectured for the most ridiculous infractions of some imaginary and unpredictable code that she (“Weka”) carried around in her fevered head. It was the blogger’s equivalent of walking blindfolded on the edge of a huge cliff, with some pecksniffian dolt—i.e., “Weka”—constantly snarling at him and prodding him with a sword. The upshot of her absurd maladministration was that the “Open Mike” thread—the Stranded’s equivalent of Kiwiblog’s General Debate—sank from several hundreds to an average of a couple of dozen posts a day.
Eventually “Weka” was fired, or else she perished in a conflagration of her own impossibly punctilious self-righteousness.
That ridiculous and destructive tendency to censor, constrict, and inhibit did not die with Weka, however. The revolving door that ushered her out also ushered back in the aggressive and abusive Labour Party apparatchik Te Reo Putake, AKA “Squealer”.
Te Reo Putake has come up with an intriguing new method of dealing with anyone vulgar and misguided enough to hold a contrary view to his own. Arguing a point and defending one’s corner, politely but robustly, is no longer permissible, apparently. What counts is whether or not you are stringently, at every moment, acting in a manner acceptable to such virtuous souls as Te Reo Putake and…. well, “Weka.” According to this line of “thinking”, the mere act of criticising something either said or written by a woman is an act of misogyny.
Sir Galahad Putake has banned this writer, i.e., moi, for one week for “pointless and unwarranted attacks on women in the media.” That’s after I dared to call Trevor Moloch’s squeeze Jane Clifton “vacuousness personified.”

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