Letter to Kim Hill after she failed to challenge A.A. Gill (Jun. 30, 2012)

You should have challenged that glib toff A.A. Gill

Dear Kim,

A.A. Gill said that America was "unpopulated" before the Europeans arrived, and then, even more breathtakingly, asserted that "Haiti's problems have nothing to do with the United States." You demurred at that; it is regrettable that you chose not to take him up on this bizarrely ignorant statement.

Gill's shallow and self-satisfied blathering reminds me of the aristocratic buffoon in the P.G. Wodehouse book who spent three days on a cruiser in Rio, then published a book called Whither Brazil?

I wonder what exaggerated fits of indignation he would work himself into if some restaurant presented him with the culinary equivalent of his political and historical thinking: the dish would be half-baked, rancid and (worst of all) served up with a supercilious sneer.

Still he got one thing right, when he confessed: "I'm obviously not an historian, so I'm not constrained by being as thorough as historians are."

Yours in disgust at glib toffs,

Morrissey Breen

Northcote Point

Dear Morrissey

Thanks for your email. I passed it on to Kim, who read it on air.

Mark Cubey

Producer, Saturday Morning with Kim Hill

Radio New Zealand National

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