Friday 5 January 2018

Jordan Williams’ fertile mind was fertilizing prodigiously this afternoon. (Apr. 17, 2013)

How on earth did this bloke get a law degree?
Jordan Williams’ fertile mind was fertilizing prodigiously this afternoon.

The Panel, Radio New Zealand National, Wed. 17 April 2013
Jim Mora, Josie McNaught, Jordan Williams
One of the more unpleasant commentators in this country is the anti-proportional representation campaigner Jordan Williams, a right wing lawyer who in a short time in the public eye has established himself as one of the go-to guys for any lazy journalist wanting a quick soundbite with an extreme right-wing taint to it. Williams evidently thinks that talking quietly and slowly and deliberately will fool people into ignoring the poverty of his thinking and to regard him as, ummm, …. errrr, ….pause…. thoughtful and serious. In fact, in his several appearances on The Panel, Williams has revealed that he is not much more than an indolent recycler of Reader’s Digest-level bromides against democracy, civil rights, rational thinking, and other left-wing, liberal, namby-pamby, nanny-state, commie nonsense.
If his voice was aged by thirty years, and gnarlier, and tobacco-thickened, Jordan Williams could be mistaken for poor old Garth “Gaga” George, or the C-grade movie bully-boy John “Barney” Barnett, or the hapless NBR editor and not-so-bon vivant Nevil “Breivik” Gibson. But more than anyone else, Williams sounds very like a youthful edition of the libertarian nut, S.S. counsel and cod-philosopher Stephen Franks. This is no doubt largely explained by the fact he works for Franks & Ogilvie, and has no doubt taken to faithfully aping the style of the old ACT back-bench-warmer.
On today’s show, the first half passed uneventfully, with some dull and spurious anti-gay rhetoric posing as “legitimate concerns” about the Marriage Equality Bill, then a brief and unenlightening discussion about Justin Bieber, and then an appalling, absurdly punctilious parsing of President Obama’s words following the Boston Marathon atrocity.
After the 4:30 news, it was time for the Soapbox….
JIM MORA: All right, it’s that time when we ask our Panelists what they have been thinking about. Jordan Williams, what’s on your mind?
Williams had obviously been waiting for this one for a long time. Unfortunately, however, it did not improve the quality of his talk one whit; anyone tempted to think about engaging the professional advocacy services of this fellow should listen to the quality—or lack of quality—of his performance here.
Williams proceeded to indulge in a wandery and incoherent rant against Victoria University’s refusal to have anything to do with the unhinged, wild-eyed, walking disaster known as Screaming Lord Monckton. Throughout his poorly prepared speech, Williams several times said that the university was treating Monckton “like a Holocaust-denier”. Actually, Williams unwittingly was stating the truth here: Monckton has the status and intellectual credibility of a Holocaust-denier. Williams also kept referring to Monkton, a notorious crank, as a “climate change skeptic”. To her credit, Josie McNaught took Williams up on that, pointing out that Monckton had no respect at all in the scientific community, and that he is accurately described as a denier, not a skeptic.
That simple act of contradiction almost caused Williams to melt down. He stuttered and frothed, shouted “No he’s NOT!”, stammered for several minutes, admitted that he knew nothing about climate science—“I’m only a lawyer”—and then returned to his theme that refusing to acknowledge that pop-eyed fruitcake was equivalent to curtailing free speech on campus.
I flicked off the following email to the programme…
Jordan Williams’ tolerance for loons
Dear Jim,
Does Jordan Williams support our universities extending respect to people who claim to have been abducted by aliens?
And if not, why not?
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
  • felix14.1
    “To her credit, Josie McNaught took Williams up on that, pointing out that Monckton had no respect at all in the scientific community, and that he is accurately described as a denier, not a skeptic.”
    Err, no she didn’t.
    That simple act of contradiction almost caused Williams to melt down. He stuttered and frothed, shouted “No he’s NOT!”, stammered for several minutes,”
    Err, no, that didn’t happen either.
    Morrissey, you’re making shit up. Again.
    • Colonial Viper14.1.1
      I’m sure Morrissey was just providing us with an ‘approximate transcription’
    • North14.1.2
      Well, I listened to it as well and while I might mark friend Morrissey down just slightly for a spot of (entertaining) hyperbole, he does correctly identify Williams’ “little lawyer” prissiness and the absence of a cringeworthy self-consciousness in the other panellist Josie McNaught.
      Also occurs to me that were the entitled right-wing fantasist Monckton not the subject of VUW’s “piss-off you nutter” (a similar attitude taken by institutions all over the world), and rather it were some left-wing loon, then Jordy might well not have been so quick to lambast VUW. I mean some people just aren’t worth dealing with at all. Monckton is one such. All Thatcheresque hooting and pretension.
      Williams has the stripe of another we know – Simon Bridges. Bright young man on the way up blah blah blah. Bright about what is not immediately apparent but let’s be charitable and leave it with, ummmh – “bright”. Wouldn’t frighten the horses sort of thing. Will be a safe pair of hands.
      Anyway, how the stuff are the callow likes of him calculated to add anything to any panel anywhere ? He is after all only a poster-boy anointed by that anti-MMP dinosaur Shirtcliffe. Much like Simon and Key. Early trough-training.
      • Paul14.1.2.1
        Mora’s invitation list gets more and more skewed to the right…
        You’d think, from the amount of libertarians and radical free marketeers on his show, that ACT won 15% of the vote last election.
        So why does a national broadcaster that is supposed to be balanced, clearly not reflect the wishes of the people.
        It is not Mora who selects the balance of his guests, surely. Who does?
      • felix14.1.2.2
        “Well, I listened to it as well and while I might mark friend Morrissey down just slightly for a spot of (entertaining) hyperbole, he does correctly identify Williams’ “little lawyer” prissiness and the absence of a cringeworthy self-consciousness in the other panellist Josie McNaught.”
        Sorry North but correctly identifying someone’s prissiness is a fucking mile away from saying ‘he said this, then she said that’.
        He made that whole conversation up. McNaught never made any distinction between denial/skepticism and Williams didn’t shout ‘No he’s not’ (or anything else) or stammer for two minutes.
        That’s not hyperbole, North, it’s making up false quotes. Lying is another word.
        And Morrissey does it all the time with no indication that he’s writing fiction.
        I challenge you to listen again, see if you can find the bits Morrissey quoted, and let me know the relevant min:sec. It doesn’t exist.
      • Morrissey14.1.2.3
        Simon Bridges. Bright young man…
        You mean, good-looking young man. He’s not that bright. I urge you to track down last night’s interview with Mihi Forbes on Maori Television. Bridges clearly lacks the wherewithal to engage in intelligent and robust discussion. Last night he was stressed and tense and irritated throughout the interview; I thought for a minute or so that Mihi Forbes was going to drive the poor fellow into a Jordan Williams-style meltdown.
    • Morrissey14.1.3
      Wow! Apparently it wasn’t only Jordan Williams that exploded with incoherent rage yesterday afternoon. Let’s look at what our friend Felix has tried to assert. To match his spirit of angry insistence, I’ve highlighted Felix’s words in bold type….
      1.) To her credit, Josie McNaught took Williams up on that, pointing out that Monckton had no respect at all in the scientific community, and that he is accurately described as a denier, not a skeptic.
      Err, no she didn’t.
      She did exactly that, in slightly more circuitous and hesitant language, but Williams understood the import of her words perfectly; she had skewered him in public.
      2.) That simple act of contradiction almost caused Williams to melt down. He stuttered and frothed, shouted “No he’s NOT!”, stammered for several minutes,
      Err, no, that didn’t happen either.
      Yes it did, and you know it did. Williams was utterly incapable of dealing with being contradicted—perhaps something in the diffident but persistent manner of Josie McNaught enraged him on some primeval level.
      3.) Morrissey, you’re making shit up. Again.
      Look carefully at my report. I didn’t write it up as a transcript, other than the one introductory bit by Jim Mora. I dashed it out in haste and rage—controlled rage, not incoherent spluttering like Jordan Williams’ rage—and put it online. I have no doubt that I have strengthened Josie McNaught’s role here; she was not as succinct in her statement as I have made her appear. However, there is no doubt that she bothered Williams, even when she was extremely polite and roundabout in the way she phrased her dissent after his crazed rant in support of that science denier.
      Your allegation that I made this up is easily disproved by listening to the recording that you so unwisely provided as evidence. Your nasty little suggestion that I have “made shit up” in the past has been dealt with by me and others forcefully on several occasions. You seem to be either a slow learner or simply a sucker for punishment. Have you thought of going to a dominatrix?
      4.) Here’s the audio:
      I urge anyone who is interested, to listen to that tape and then to let Felix know what is meant by such concepts as “gist”, “essence” and “summary”.
      • felix14.1.3.1
        It doesn’t matter whether you call it a transcript or not. When you say “x said this and that” and they didn’t say anything of the sort you’re lying.
        Show where McNaught said anything – anything at all – about the difference between deniers and skeptics.
        Didn’t happen. You made it up. She never touched the subject.
        Likewise Williams. Show where he yelled anything in defiance of the thing McNaught never said.
        Simply didn’t happen. There was no yelling, no stutterring, no several minutes of stammering. You made it up.
        You’ve been caught out doing this before Morrissey. You admit it’s just an impression – fine – so write it as a fucking impression, not as a factual account you fucking child.
        • Professor Longhair14.1.3.1.1
          “Show where McNaught said anything – anything at all – about the difference between deniers and skeptics.”
          If she didn’t say it then she should have said it. Morrissey has used her as a character in the service of his mission, which is to pin up the grisly exhibit “Jordan Williams”. Shakespeare did the same kind of thing, when he put eloquent words into the mouths of thugs like Brutus, Cassius, and Titus Andronicus.
          Although this fellow Williams reminds one more of one of the pathetic and mewling hypocrites that fawned over the likes of Henry VI.
          • felix14.1.3.1.1.1
            I’m not arguing the quality of the character development in this piece of fiction, I’m arguing that it shouldn’t be presented as fact.
            And despite Morrissey’s lame protestations to the contrary, that’s exactly what he did. In black and white, Prof.
  • RedLogix14.2
    to people who claim to have been abducted by aliens?
    It wasn’t so much the abduction that pisses me … it was the dumping me back here in this shit-hole.
  • emergency mike14.3
    Morrissey, does it really not occur to you that when you make shit up that people can easily check, not only will your credibility vapourize, your perceived level of intelligence will also plummet? I kind of feel a little sorry for you.
    • felix14.3.1
      I think he really believes he’s being roughly accurate, but he’s explained before that he doesn’t actually transcribe this stuff while listening to it but rather writes his impressions some time later.
      Memory is a funny thing. By the time he writes his impressions, he doesn’t remember exactly who said what, and bits from other interviews get mixed in, and snippets of other conversations, and other impressions of things people might have said on this and other topics get thrown in and it all gets a bit fragmented and then he puts it all back together in a way that seems to make sense.
      And it does – it sounds just like something Williams would say. It’s just that he didn’t.
      There’s nothing wrong with this sort of writing, but there’s a name for it. And that name is fiction, not transcription.
    • North14.3.2
      Little bit personal there mike re Morrissey. It’s hardly an emergency. CV’s got it right.
      • felix14.3.2.1
        To be fair to mike, Morrissey has been called out for making up his “transcripts” before (which is what CV was getting at) and he tends to be a real dick about it.
      • emergency mike14.3.2.2
        I disagree. I think people who present a made up fiction as a transcript of something someone said deserve what they get. I also think you’ll find a big ol’ slab of sarcasm in CV’s comment.
  • ghostrider88814.4
    well, I / We find them funny and enjoyable tales to read Morrissey

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