A prerequisite to power
What a difference a face job makes. I marvel at 79-year-old Nancy Pelosi, the top American woman in politics, as much for her plastic surgery as for her achievement. One wouldn’t have happened without the other. Ambitious American women have to look preembalmed when they hit big numbers, knowing that if they look anything like Bernie Sanders – actually two years younger than Pelosi – they will officially cease to exist.
I mean that in the sense of Japanese etiquette, where they don’t greet you walking out of the loo, say, nor do other guests acknowledge you if you pass each other along your hotel corridor. You are not seen because you are not officially on display. You take on a pleasant ghostliness instead, much as older women here do when they walk to the dairy with their cardigans inside out.
Not trying to look pleasing is a way of saying you don’t care, and you won’t get powerful that way. Eternal youth is a prerequisite.
Jane Fonda admits, at 81, that she’s had work done. That’s generous of her. It makes her a modern miracle, like Demi Moore and Cher. After all the medical stretching and tucking performed on them they could stand for president. But somehow the neck never matches the face or the backs of the hands. Never mind. You can always wear latex gloves and pretend you’re about to wash your diamonds.
It’s different with Donald Trump because he’s both male and a different species, an orange branch of homo sapiens with white panda eyes. This branch of the family tree talks in gibberish and made-up truths, which has made him a hit with voters fed up with trying to understand the nuances of policy and diplomacy, who just want to be amused.
Long ago American paediatrician Benjamin Spock visited this country with his first wife, later to be traded in for a younger version. I couldn’t take my eyes off her thick makeup, slapped on like cake icing and dipping now and then into the crevices of her face, while I interviewed him. How mean Spock must have been. He could easily have paid for her to be reconditioned.
Imagine Pelosi without her face job. Impossible. She represents the American Dream, proof that money can buy you anything, especially illusion. But nothing can buy you approval when a woman uses the favourite American swear word, motherf…er.
My goodness, a woman in the House of Representatives should always be a lady, especially if she’s from a cultural minority with a name nobody can pronounce. Rashia Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman member of Congress, was sworn in holding the Koran, which must have been offensive enough to conservative Americans, and went on to say she was keen to impeach the naughty word she used to describe Trump.
To her critics I would say she proved herself a true American right there, with the vernacular off pat. She apologised later, which is more than the president did when he talked about grabbing women by the pussy, on which basis I think she should have swaggered like he does, and stuck to her guns.
There’s a high level of debate in the US just now, so that when another new congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, defended Tlaib and called Trump racist his cronies crowed that she had displayed ‘‘sheer ignorance’’. Trump, as an orange humanoid, would know better, I guess.
I hope the many new women in government in the US don’t expect to remain idealists for long. High-flown principles hit the gutter ages ago.
It didn’t take long for the SPCA to face a backlash to its confusing comments opposing the use of 1080 poison. On the face of it, its view seems defensible. It is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, after all, and death by poison is undeniably cruel. And unlike conservation groups, the SPCA’s goal isn’t to preserve ecosystems, it’s to stop humans from inflicting pain upon animals.
But there’s a critical flaw in the SPCA argument, which risks damaging a cause the available evidence shows it should enthusiastically support.
The premise of the SPCA’s opposition to 1080 is that all animals are sentient, and considering one’s pain less important than another’s is wrong. It says: ‘‘The welfare of all animals should be viewed equally, and people should recognise that they deserve protection from suffering pain or distress, regardless of the species or where they came from.’’
Many would agree with this statement, at least in theory (it doesn’t always work in practice: you can buy rat poison in the supermarket that causes far more suffering to the animal than 1080). But it happens to be a powerful argument for significantly increasing the use of 1080, not banning it.
The scale of suffering caused by predators, particularly mustelids, that were brought to New Zealand by humans is incalculable. Death by ingesting 1080 is indeed painful, but so too is being eaten alive by a predator you have no evolutionary means to escape from.
Introduced predators are estimated to kill 25 million birds, chicks and eggs every year, not including the native snails and other invertebrates they eat. The important context is that our forests, as they are today, are all but barren in comparison to what once existed.
Ka¯ ka¯ po¯ used to be among the most commonly found bird species on mainland New Zealand, but now there are none, because they can’t inhabit any space within reach of a stoat, and are therefore confined to offshore islands. Birds such as the laughing owl were once common, too, but no-one alive today has seen one, because they were eaten to extinction by predators.
Today, stoats kill up to 60 per cent of all kiwi chicks. In 2014, one stoat or ferret was deemed responsible for killing 29 little blue penguins, setting the population back years. A cat in 2015 single-handedly ate dozens of black-fronted tern chicks in a colony on the Acheron river. One animal can kill hundreds of birds in a given year. It is not an even fight.
Even birds with a slight evolutionary advantage are not safe from predators. Rock wren live in alpine areas of the South Island, out of reach of a lot of predators, but are still on the brink of extinction due to predation.
There are a couple of ways to respond to this responsibility. One is to try to undo even a fraction of the damage caused, by eliminating predators. The other is to accept the status quo and let nature take its course. Many conservationists argue for the former, but there is some support for the latter. Both are legitimate points of view. The SPCA has made up a mythical third position. In this fantasy, we can have it all. In its own words: ‘‘There should be greater emphasis on looking for solutions that would enable species who cannot be completely removed to co-exist in the environment instead.’’
Translation: The occupants of the burning building should be able to co-exist with the flames at their feet.
As it stands, there is simply no landscape-scale alternative to saving native birds from the damage we’ve done. There are, of course, smaller alternatives to kill predators humanely – traps, for example. Attempts to calculate how much it would cost to lay enough traps to control predators have produced eye-watering numbers.
In his book Protecting Paradise, journalist Dave Hansford details some of the likely costs involved: millions of expensive traps, bait, new walking tracks, huts, staff, and helicopters, just to name a few. In Kahurangi National Park alone, the quantity of rat traps needed would cost $75 million. Some parts of the country are too steep to trap effectively. The total needed for the entire country would likely dwarf DOC’s annual budget.
If there are effective alternatives to 1080, they’re not apparent, and the SPCA certainly hasn’t named any. There is promise in new technologies, such as gene drives, but it will take some years before we know if they can be used safely, if at all. By then, many million more birds would have suffered tremendously.
I’ve spoken to many conservationists. I haven’t met one that loves 1080, or sees it as perfect. It is undeniably cruel to poison animals. But in this case, not acting is itself a moral choice. The massacre of our native birds is our fault, and allowing it to continue does not absolve us.
The SPCA argues that it values all animal life equally, but in opposing the only currently effective means to stop the carnage in our forests, it is saying the suffering of mammals is worse than the suffering of birds.
That carnage is a responsibility we all share, whether you think we should stop it or not. The SPCA is not exempt.