“A SHOCK JOCK who is politically WAY out of his depth.”
Did Toni Street take advice from Janet Wilson before she executed
Monday’s exquisite live-on-air attack on Mike “Contra” Hosking?
Seven Sharp, Television One, Monday 14 March 2016
Did Toni Street take advice from Janet Wilson before she executed
Monday’s exquisite live-on-air attack on Mike “Contra” Hosking?
Seven Sharp, Television One, Monday 14 March 2016
The glib little homilies scheduled for the end of each episode of Television One’s godawfulSeven Sharp are usually not worth the wait. If it’s not thirty seconds of something banal, it’s something infuriating, like Mike “Contra” Hosking boasting, contrary to all evidence, how he gave Nicky Hager a “hard time”. [1] Anyone who actually makes a point of listening to them is either (a) bored, (b) stupid, ( c) bewildered, or (d) an aficionado of the dismal.
Tonight, however, the closing homilies followed an item that was actually interesting—about a dive bomb competition in Taupo. That’s why I was still watching when it came time for the sub-Father Ted routines. After the item was finished, Hosking’s offsider Toni Street stared at the camera, pausing just a little longer than would be comfortable. Then she delivered something she had clearly been planning for a long time: she let Hosking—and the viewers—know exactly what she thought of him.
But she could not afford to criticize him directly, of course; instead, she followed the time-honored tradition of criticizing someone who exhibits identical characteristics to the actual object of her scorn. [2] So to have a go at Hosking, she had to find a substitute target to attack. Who could be out there with a level of arrogance, pomposity, shallowness and overbearing conceitedness that approaches that of Mike Hosking?
After that tense extended pause at the end of the dive-bombing item, Toni Street launched her remarkable little insurrection. She began by talking about Megan Kelly, the Fox News broadcaster who suffered a nasty public attack by Donald Trump last year. Noting with satisfaction that Megan Kelly was now more popular than she had ever been, Street paused again, and then said this….
TONI STREET: The increase in her ratings indicates the support for someone who can out Donald Trump for what he is: a shock jock who is politically way out of his depth. …..
At the end of that remarkable little hatchet job, its victim immediately began thirty seconds of pedestrian and ill-informed comment about something else. He showed no apparent signs of appreciating he’d just been (metaphorically) tarred, feathered and kicked in the arse by someone who really despises him.
[2] What made it so effective was that Toni Street maintained her composure throughout. She wielded the hatchet with exemplary coolness. Media junkies will no doubt remember Janet Wilson’s far more hysterical hatchet job on her husband three years ago….
