It's early yet, but I'm already declaring Today's Hoot

I just flew in from the Shire...

...and boy are my arms tired!

There's no question about it, New Zealand is the same bucolic agricultural paradise at the ends of the earth, completely surrounded by a seawater moat that stretches a thousand miles in all directions it's always been.

And the modern day Hobbits that inhabit it are by and large as clueless about current events as any Took, Broadfoot or Sackville-Baggins was about the War of the Ring. I had many a strange conversation with people back home who were taken aback that I didn't agree instantly with their upper-sixth form political analysis.

"Now let's have none o' this 'ere going on about Dark Riders, and a Shadow gowin' in the East there Mr Frodo, my old missus won't 'ave any such talk in the parlour. What I want to know is, how is all this gallivanting about going to affect my prize-winnin' marrows eh?"

"Well, I'm sure I don't know what fancy notions you might 'ave picked up over there in Minas Tirith young Meriadoc, but round 'ere we just leave folks alone. Live and let live my Grandad used to say, and I expect that if those foreign folk were to know about the Shire, they'd just see we was peaceful folk and let us in peace. Stands to reason, don't it? We don't bother them, so why should they bother us?"

"Perigrin Took, you take off that ridiculous suit of mail this instant! People'll just laugh at you looking like that. And put that sword away, you'll be putting someone's eye out, waving it about like that. You've gone all addled since going off with odd foreign people, Rangers and whatnot. It'll all end in tears, and no mistake."

...

The more "sensitive" politics gets, the lower the bar is set for giving offence. It's now at such a pitch of hyper-acuity that I suspect a heavy storm might prompt a demand for reparations from the Maori on the grounds that they never had bad weather before whitey arrived.

Case in point. I was in the Bowen House office of a cabinet minister who shall remain nameless (he's actually a good egg, and I'd probably vote for him given half a chance). After ribbing me about being one of only 216 ACT voters in the Maori seat of Te Tai Tonga (he checked) we were having a good old natter when one of his staffers asked him to come and have a look at something on her computer.

It was this ad for 42 Below Vodka. Have a look at it now. Okay, that was pretty funny, wasn't it? Maybe some of the jokes are a bit New Zealand-centric, but there was nothing harmful there. But the Minister's staffer (who is white) wanted him (Maori) to see it in case he might be offended and might want to take some sort of action.

He thought (as I did) that it was a bit of harmless and amusing fun, while she stood there emitting That Marge Simpson Noise.

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