I wrote this post for my blog. Before you read it there are some basic New Zealand facts you need to know. Our Prime Minister and Cabinet are made up of elected representatives (rather than being a seperate branch of government). John Key is the current Prime Minister of new Zealand and Richard Worth was (until today) the Minister for Internal Affairs (like the secretary of the Interior in America I guess). Richard Worth resigned today supposedly ‘for personal reasons’, but it has been confirmed that the police are investigating for an, as yet unmentioned, serious crime.
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John Key has said that he had received more than one complaint that Richard Worth was “making a nuisance of himself towards women.” He told the media:
All I can say I treated the allegation seriously. I investigated it and I was satisfied with the answers I received.
From the statements John Key has made it seems to be a reasonable supposition that the unknown crime the police are investigating Richard Worth for is an offence that is in some way similar to ‘making a nuisance of himself towards women’.
Now if you want the political point scoring I suggest The Standard or Kiwiblog. They will argue about how this compares with Clark’s actions, and the political management of it all. These are not things I care about.
There’s something very born to rule about the euphemism ‘making a nuisance of himself’. Just the language, unfortunately, not the activity. Like many born to rule terms, it’s quite honest. I can imagine quite a range of activities that Key would refer to in this way: it could refer to language, either abusive or explicitly sexual, or unwanted physical contact, even protracted unwanted physical contact. These are all nuisances, women should put up with them in the same way they might a missed bus.
And what is telling is that John Key ignored the first indications that Richard Worth was nuisance-ing woman (and we can only conjecture what that euphamism covers in John Key’s mind). Or in the language of politicians – John Key was satisfied with the explanation the Minister gave him.
Which, if you think about it, isn’t that different to what happens outside of parliament. A man (say) hears that his friend has been ‘being a nuisance to’ (or the euphemism which is most appropriate to the social circle they belong to) a woman. The man talks to his friend about it. His friends gives a response, which is either “she’s lying” or “she was asking for it” (both these responses will probably be clouded in layers of euphemism as well). And he is satisfied with that response.
And so the friend keeps doing it. Who wouldn’t? Everyone is satisfied.
Except the woman involved, who is, as so often happens, rendered, as usual, with the focus on the man, and his explanations.
Is NZ’s Internal Affairs ministry like the British Home Office? If so, good-ol’-boy tolerance is even scarier. The American analog would be a sort of cross between Homeland Security and parts of the Justice Department. Interior ministers tend to have a *lot* of security resources at their disposal. This story gets even worse when you think of what an ordinary police officer can do if he’s inclined to “make a nuisance” of himself. How much more awful for it to be the minister himself.
“This story gets even worse when you think of what an ordinary police officer can do if he’s inclined to “make a nuisance” of himself.”
Indeed.
And yet New Zealand was just rated “safest in the world”
http://www.americablog.com/2009/06/new-zealand-rated-safest-in-world.html
Hooray.
What strikes me is the paternal arrogance of the whole thing, “well, I looked into it, and I got an answer that satisfied me, and frankly, that’s all you need to know. What was the answer? None of your business. What do you mean you’re not satisfied? Quiet. Daddy’s working.”
It just stinks of entitlement.
—Myca
It sounds like Illinois politics to me. “All you need to know is what I decide you need to know.” Like Mayor Daley telling the media that a) he had a list of projects he intended to spend the Federal stimulus money on and b) he had no intention of releasing the list because c) the media and the public would just start criticizing it. Paternalistic is one way to describe it. Aristocratic or oligarchic is another. When public officials think that you’re accountable to them rather than that they’re accountable to you you’ve got problems.
BTW – here in the U.S. the Department of the Interior is concerned with running the National Parks, managing public lands in general (including selling and managing things like grazing, timber and mining concessions), etc. It has nothing to do with national security.
I took a look at the source of that peace index ranking. I wouldn’t take it as an indicator of how safe it is to be in a given country. For example; one factor is how much money the country contributes to the U.N. peacekeeping missions – I don’t see how that has anything to do with how safe it is to be in a contributing (or non-contributing) country.
They also say that the number of people jailed in the country is part of the index. However, they don’t say if that counts negatively or positively. Me, I figure the more criminals off the street the more peaceful the country is likely to be, but I bet they have another interpretation.
Here is the home page for the peace index. Here is their explanation of their methodology.
They also say that the number of people jailed in the country is part of the index. However, they don’t say if that counts negatively or positively. Me, I figure the more criminals off the street the more peaceful the country is likely to be, but I bet they have another interpretation.
RonF, I’m going to charitably assume that you were making a joke and don’t actualy believe there’s a constant number of criminals in each nation, such that if there are more people in jail, that’s a sign there’s less crime in that nation. The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and total documented prison population in the world. We do not have the lowest per capita crime rates, not by a long shot.
Ron, it might be better for you to stop talking about this on topics unrelated to Illinois politics for a while.
Just so people know the minister of internal affairs is a relatively lowly position in New Zealand (not at all like the Home Office)
Since I wrote this it has become clear that one of the complaints (not the one that he is being investigated by the police for) involved offering paid positions in exchange for sex (or asking for sex in the context of discussing job prospects). The Prime Minister asked him if he did, he said know, and the PM ignored it.
Thanks Mandolin and PG – Ron the point of this post was to point out how much the way politicians deal with sexual violence reflects the way ordinary people deal with sexual violence. Not ‘politicans are all evil’.
The Department of Internal Affairs is mostly responsible for passports, citizenship, local government, emergency services and censorship. There’s no equivalent position in the USA, but Maia’s right in that it is considered, at best, a mid-ranking cabinet post.
Sorry – my point was that the phenomena of “good old boys in authority” in general closing ranks to cover up various things is pretty common. But I was off the specific focus here, so I accept your point.
Perhaps not directly on point but something you might be interested in: one of the lead stories in the local papers this week was the verdict in a trial of a male Chicago cop who went into a bar, got drunk, was refused further service by the female bartender, and who then expressed his dissatisfaction with her refusal by grabbing her and beating her up. She was literally 1/2 his size. All of which was recorded on the bar’s security cameras. The other patrons in the bar (at least some of which were also cops) did little to stop him. The “Thin Blue Line” tried to help him out, but once the video got out there was nothing they could do. He was found guilty this last Monday I believe despite the rather astonishing attempt by his lawyer to paint the bartender as the aggressor. No sentence yet. That and a couple of other similar instances cost the Chicago Police Superintendent his job about a year ago.
But I do wonder what would have happened if there had not happened to have been a video. The guy walked out of that bar. He should have left in handcuffs – as I say, at least some of the other patrons there were cops.
PG – yeah, that one was tongue in cheek. While I won’t back off of the need for taking violent criminals off the streets, we need to work on the cause of crime more in this country. But that’s a whole ‘nother thread, or even a whole blog.
When I took a course in quality control, we were taught all kinds of inspection and sampling techniques to measure quality and provide feedback to the manufacturer. But then the instructor said “Remember, you can’t inspect your way to quality. You have to fix the process that’s producing the variations in the first place.” We can – and must – lock up people who are so anti-social as to present a danger to the public. But the human cost is high, as well as the financial. Those are people, too, with lives and souls. We need to fix the process that they came out of if we ever want things to really change.
OTOH, I do think it odd that this group apparently thinks there’s a cause/effect relationship between the amount of money given to the UN peacekeeping missions and domestic tranquility.
Seriously?
Department of Censorship?
Things like the Peace Index are a bit like Consumer Reports ratings. In their attempt to combine all the various data they make tons of value judgments. For better or worse, but it’s good to be aware of it.
If you”re reviewing a car, how much do you weight cost, or cupholders, or comfort, or appearance, or 0-60 time, or fuel economy? Unless you happen to exactly have the same priorities as the CR editors, chances are that their ratings won’t actually be a good match for you.
Same with the Peace index. If you look at Page 9 of the report, for example, you’ll see how they applied weighting (1-5) for various internal characteristics; in a quick scan I don’t see where they did that for external but I’m sure it’s in the report.
To choose two adjacent examples near the top of the list, both “Number of jailed population per 100,000 people” and “Ease of access to weapons of minor destruction” are weighted at 3 (out of 5)*
If you agree with their weighting through their list then (subject to other review of methodology) you are likely to agree with their overall ranking and conclusions. OTOH, if you feel that they are not weighting things as you would, then you won’t agree with the conclusions of ranking.
* I don’t have time to read the results in detail right now. Does anyone know how the weighting works? Is something weighted “5” given 5 times the points, or an extra 4 points, as compared to something weighted “1”?
The NZ Department of Internal Affairs – Censorship Compliance appears to be serving the same functions that the FCC’s insisting that we not show Janet Jackson’s nipple or hear Bono’s “fleeting expletive,” and the DOJ’s prosecuting child pornographers. Also with a couple of the things that in the U.S. are industry self-regulation (to avoid government regulation), such as age-appropriate labeling of movies, music, etc.