Is there room for emotion in politics?
Philip Matthews seconds that emotion.
The father of the house
It can be nice sometimes to turn down the rude and often mindless noise of party politics and reflect on the fact that we all struggle in our different ways with the complexities of being human. Take for example the valedictory speech of National MP and former campaign guru Steven Joyce in Parliament this week. Here is a touching excerpt from the speech, which relates to his son Thomas: ‘‘Tommy doesn’t say anything, literally. He’s what they call nonverbal autistic. He’s 8 years old, he doesn’t have any vocabulary at all, but I know he likes having his dad around – he tells me with his laugh and with his eyes. And now he’s going to have dad around some more.’’ Was there a dry eye in the house after that? Joyce also proved to be a good sport about the infamous sex toy attack at Waitangi, quipping that he asked an offsider, ‘‘Do you think the cameras picked that up?’’
No reds under the bed, just Ed
As far as photo opportunities go, this was a dream. Unable to make it to any concerts by Ed Sheeran, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern invited the bewilderingly popular singer around for scones. It was low-key, casual, inexpensive, and stood in stark contrast to the megacostly photo opportunity of the week before, involving golf and a former president. So it seems the Government is good at locating visiting British buskers and a bit less skilled at locating Russian spies. Many were puzzled when Ardern said that unlike many other countries, including all of our Five Eyes partners, New Zealand is not expelling Russian spies because there are none here. Are we being naive or independent-minded? So far, some 26 countries are reported to have expelled Russian diplomats as a response to a nerve agent attack on a former Russian double agent and his daughter in the UK.
Farewell to arms
Hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters marched in US cities in what must be the biggest show of young political strength since the Vietnam war and civil rights era. They were motivated, of course, by the need to change gun laws and particularly the death of 17 people at a high school in Florida last month. ‘‘If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking,’’ school shooting survivor David Hogg said in Washington DC. ‘‘We’re going to take this to every election, to every state and every city. We’re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run, not as politicians but as Americans.’’ Just to make the link to civil rights completely clear, Martin Luther King’s 9-year-old granddaughter spoke to the same crowd and said: ‘‘I have a dream that enough is enough. That this should be a gunfree world. Period.’’
The president and porn star
Yes, it was another week in which an adult movie actress was more plausible and coherent than the President of the United States. When Stormy Daniels finally got to tell the story about her affair with Donald Trump and the alleged attempts to silence her, 22 million Americans tuned in to 60 Minutes to watch. This is the show’s biggest audience since a Barack Obama interview in 2008 and, just to rub further salt into the president’s wounds, it outdid Trump’s own appearance on the show in 2016 by 2 million viewers.