Cult viewing with Paddy G
Ilike Mediaworks’ news division’s political editor, Tova O’brien, but boy do I miss the dramatics of Patrick Gower. With his defining hand gestures – a volley of boxer-like jabs or a rolled-up piece of paper clenched in one hand, which he swung like a conductor’s baton – Gower sure knew how to punctuate his soundbites.
There was an almost rapper-style rhythm to Paddy G’s pieces to camera that made you look forward to hearing his take on things political. Even on a slow news day, Gower’s signature delivery was so sing-song he made it easy for the most dumbed-down to swallow their information medicine.
But all good things must come to an end and, after 10 years in the parliamentary gallery, and after covering the last election (his fourth), Gower tossed in the towel to become national correspondent. Whatever that is.
At the top of his game, Gower had the guts to leave the institutionalisation of the gallery and, instead of becoming a lifer, opted to become a reporter roaming at large. Or should that be
Special Correspondent to Gloriavale?
It’s understandable that, after the claustrophobia and safety of Parliament walls, Gower might head for another confined space. But hanging round the peripherals of the cult community like yet another stage-door Johnny journo was a bit of a come-down from doing standups with Parliament in the background.
Fortunately for Gower, the convicted sex offender Hopeful Christian, aka Neville Cooper, the kingpin of Gloriavale, obligingly kicked the bucket at age 91, leaving a power vacuum. So familiar are viewers with the characters in this ongoing cult saga that, when Gower reeled off the next-in-line vying for the top job, we were familiar with their names.
Although the Gloriavale community is only 550 in number, this cult that has endured for 50 years has been a rich seam for the media to mine. When the taxpayer isn’t funding millions of dollars for its enormous families claiming hefty Working for Families benefits, we’re being bled white by NZ on Air funding to make the various documentaries/ reality TV shows, eg Gloriavale – A World Apart, Gloriavale – Life and Death, Gloriavale – A Woman’s Place, and be still our heathen hearts, the next patsy piece of propaganda to roll off the assembly line, Gloriavale: The Return.
These shows, carefully constructed without one difficult question posed of the inhabitants, and made with the hovering approval of Gloriavale higher-ups, have penetrated Kiwi living rooms for so long they are now part of the furniture. Apart from news reports of defections and former members left almost penniless, homeless, and cut off from their families, the cult, care of NZ on Air, has been normalised.
Gower’s latest piece, delivered on Thursday night in the cramped confines of The Project, where he is reduced to wingman in the guest’s seat, showed another side of Gloriavale.
Behind the outward appearance of the drab blue uniforms is a high-end hunting business for tourists, Wilderness Quest New Zealand, which is careful to keep quiet about Gloriavale. We knew about their dairy farms, beekeeping, pet-food factory businesses, but this venture where rich overseas hunters get to shoot tahr, chamois and red stags bred in captivity and fenced in the socalled ‘‘wild’’ is one slick operation.
Gloriavale has expertly manipulated the media in showing humble community life, while its outfit has $30 million in assets and is wheeling and dealing very nicely in the real world, thank you.
America has the Kardashians to gasp and gawp at, and we have the Gloriaveilians. Both cults rate highly and dominate several TV channels.