say cheese!

i got woken up this morning before 7am this morning (thanx jills!) by a txt telling me that i was in a photograph with the PM on page 2 of the dom. that was a little better than the page 3 spot on the waikato times later in the day.

now normally i'd be flattered, except for two things. first, i looked so awful in the photograph that it could hardly be described as flattering. my older child, while laughing her head off, told me i shouldn't care so much about my appearance. hmmmm, i seem to have taught her that lesson a little too well (except that she rarely applies it to herself!)

second was the suspicion that the prominence of this photograph had a rather nasty subtext. it feeds into that rather nasty notion of "pandering to minorities" that was around in the 2005 campaign. wearing a scarf into the mosque, in respect of the protocols there, is very often used as a point of attack against the PM. which only works because we muslims are all, like, women-hating terrorists, don't you know.

of course it helped that mr peters decided to go on his immigration attack the same day. it conveniently provided a good reason to have a picture of the PM dressed like a muslim on the front page, just to get that dog-whistle to work a little more effectively.

maybe i'm wrong, maybe things have moved on, and people will look at this picture and think "labour stands for diversity and inclusiveness, and that's great". it would be nice if the picture made people feel positive about the make-up of our society, if it provided a contrast to the nastiness spouted by mr peters. well, read the comments at the bottom of this piece, and i'll leave you to make up your own mind.


and why is it that the price of petrol falls just 2 hours after you've filled up. grrr. but i agree with poneke, it should have gone down much more and i'm tired of the excuses being offered around exchange rates and so on.

i caught up briefly with ali ikram yesterday, and expressed my surprise at him not being chosen to front sunrise on tv3 in the mornings. i can't believe they went with oliver driver, when ali does a great job. he's got a good sense of humour, and he's an excellent journalist as well. i'm not going to use the "r" word, but given his qualifications and experience, it just seems really fishy that he wasn't given the job.