Putting out fires with gasoline
Philip Matthews on another week from Hell.
Burn, Hollywood, burn
If you had said a year ago that you could write a dystopian novel called Disneyland is on Fire and Texas is Underwater, would anyone have believed you? But fresh from disasters in Texas, Las Vegas and Puerto Rico, the United States is facing another terror. Fires this time, in California. Images of the Disneyland amusement park silhouetted against blazing orange skies said something powerful if you were thinking in an apocalyptic frame of mind and, face it, who isn’t these days? By Friday, the death toll had reached 26, making it the deadliest California fire in 84 years. More than 190,000 acres has been scorched.
The end of Harvey
You could do an A to Z of Harvey Weinstein, from actress Angelina Jolie to model Zoe Brock, and you would still not have enough space for the women, and some men, who have spoken up about decades of predatory behaviour by the Hollywood mogul after careful, devastating reporting by the New York Times and the New Yorker. His power was a form of tyranny that ran on fear but when the balance of power shifts, it shifts rapidly and completely. It was hard not to be reminded of the appalling stories about Jimmy Savile, who was considered too big to take down – his media exposure came posthumously, when everyone finally talked of the ‘‘open secret’’.
Rap battles
Politics in the United States has become the war of Donald Trump against all others. He even said, ‘‘I hate everyone in the White House,’’ according to a report in Vanity Fair. Trump on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who may have called the president a moron: ‘‘I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.’’ It is a question that answers itself, really. Trump’s various, absurd clashes and distractions also became the subject of what amounts to the best protest song of the Trump era – Eminem’s freestyle rap The Storm, filmed in a Detroit car park. Sample lyrics: ‘‘He gets an enormous reaction / When he attacks the NFL so we focus on that / Instead of talking Puerto Rico or gun reform for Nevada / All these horrible tragedies and he’s bored and would rather / Cause a Twitter storm with the Packers ...’’
One black Friday
Meanwhile in New Zealand, the land where nothing much has happened since September 23, the black Friday deadline of October 13 came and went without NZ First leader Winston Peters settling on a coalition option. The choices on offer are Labour, National or neither. It might seem comical that the shadowy NZ First board was not ready to meet and consider the long days of horse trading, indepth policy discussions and very tempting baubles, but the interregnum between governments has actually been a pleasant thing. And what’s the big hurry anyway? Four parties in the Netherlands have only just reached a coalition deal after 209 days of talking. And even then, the majority is paper thin, just 76 seats in a 150 seat parliament. That is nothing compared to Belgium’s epic 540 day gap between an election in 2010 and a government in 2011.