But if there was ever a classic example of a small number of media muntheads ruining it for everybody else, it was the story that grew around new Labour leader Jacinda Ardern's baby plans. Even though almost everybody knew it wasn't right, proper, or even fucking legal to ask the question, she got asked twice.
So even though it was just two people - and one of them was the goddamn sports presenter on a breakfast TV show - the entire local news media scene gets blasted, especially when it was picked up by overseas media, who were basically laughing at their idiotic antipodean cousins, still struggling with the most basic issues of decency and gender equality.
As noted last week, it only takes a couple of people to make some stupid-arse decisions to taint everybody in the entire media industry, and that's certainly how it was seen, both locally and overseas.
There were more than a few reaction pieces in New Zealand too, although the best of them showed the sheer tiredness at having to deal with this shit yet again.
Some, including the irredeemably fucked Mike Hosking, tried to claim that it was a legitimate question to ask, as if the deepest and most personal decision a person can make is ripe for public consumption, and there were plenty of dickheads in Facebook comments who were absolutely gagging to share bullshit anecdotal evidence about poor beleaguered employers suffering as young women they hired threw in jobs to raise a family, as if the employer still had a right to know.
"They're just asking the question."
Once again for the cheap seats - it's none of your fucking business, even if it might affect your company or country. You don't get to pressure potential workers about it. Just fucking deal with it.
In a way, it was a shame that anybody bothered to follow up on the numbskull questioning, and didn't let it flicker and die like the nothingness it was. After all, there weren't two sides of the argument - it was just a question that was not worth asking, because, again, none of your business.
The other argument for ignoring it was that it didn't need to be defended. It would be like writing a thinkpiece saying 'is racism really that bad'? - nobody needs that because it is so goddamn self-evident that yes, it really is that fucking bad. Similarly, nobody needed to write anything that raised the possibility that the country needed to know about a potential leader's potential plans, because nobody needed to know.
After all, we're 17 years into the 21st century - businesses and employers, including at the highest level of government, can deal with this type of thing now. It's not like the entire government would collapse if a political party's leader had to take some maternity leave. Life would literally go on.
The election is just a few short weeks away, and the political news cycle quickly moved on, to focus on the fact that somebody wasn't living in the place they were enrolled at (and if we're going down that road, nobody is safe, because real life is invariably more complicated than 'you must live at this address, because that's what the official records say').
Unfortunately, there will still be people talking about baby plans if Ardern and her crew do get into power. All the news media can do is wait for them to grow the fuck up, and get the fuck over it, and stop hassling people about their baby plans, whoever the hell they are.
- Ron Troupe
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