Bill Ralston
Kiwi life has two constants: a summer news void and Bob Jones’s willingness to fill it.
The brouhaha over Sir Robert Jones’s recent National Business Review indiscretion is a little ridiculous. I’m not sure of the wisdom of raising my head above the parapet to voice such a view, however, when at last look some 40,000 people had signed a petition demanding he lose his knighthood. In a way, of course, he already has because almost no one calls him Sir Robert – it’s Bob Jones for most of us.
For the one or two people who may not be familiar with the situation, a brief summary is that to mark Waitangi Day, Jones wrote a column in NBR declaring there were no “full-blooded Maoris [sic] left”, the day should be renamed “Maori Gratitude Day” and the descendants of Maori should give him breakfast in bed, wash his car and weed his garden out of gratitude for existing.
Jones’s columns are generally outrageous and rely on preposterous overstatement for laughs. He seems to have failed to achieve that with at least 40,000 people on this occasion, and certainly the instigator of the petition, Renae Maihi, was not amused, saying what he wrote “goes beyond inappropriate” and he should be stripped of his title.
With his usual tact, Jones replied, “You have to be sick not to see [what I wrote] was a piss-take.” He then threatened to sue her, but because he did not want to be seen as a bully, it would be for a small amount, perhaps $20,000.
Labour Government minister Willie Jackson helpfully chipped in that Jones was “acting like an idiot”, seemingly ignoring the fact that the eccentric multimillionaire had been behaving in that way for decades. Comedian Mike King had a more sensible take, suggesting, “I don’t think anyone should take seriously what Bob is saying. He’s like that doddery old uncle whose social filter is now broken.”
In the New Zealand Herald, Mike Hosking wrote that Jones was “brutal, yet colourfully accurate and funny”, and blogger Martyn Bradbury said “Bob Jones is a c---”, proving that even if you did not find the original column funny, the aftermath certainly has been.
Perhaps the most interesting comment came from Maihi, who declared: “The world that he thinks he lives in, or the country he thinks he lives in, doesn’t exist anymore.” That is the problem. She is a millennial. He is from the wartime generation. When it comes to humour, millennials can be a bit po-faced and old-timers can be hopelessly offensive. Never the twain shall meet.
The offending column is no longer on the NBR website, but I suspect the public will continue to be amused or outraged for years to come by Jones’s public behaviour. In 2015, he was booted off an Air New Zealand flight because he refused to acknowledge a flight attendant’s question about whether he could open an emergency exit if required.
That incident was reported in the NZ Herald, which quoted another millennial, Lizzie Marvelly, who said passengers cheered when Jones left the plane. Marvelly tweeted disapproval of Jones’s latest stunt.
When I last saw him a few months ago at Napier airport, he appeared to be travelling on a private jet, presumably to avoid ejection from commercial flights and/or encounters with Marvelly.
I do enjoy the annual news drought when nothing happens and the media resort to covering silly-season flare-ups like the ones Jones specialises in.
When it comes to humour, millennials can be a bit po-faced.