The leftward and other blatherings of Span (now with Snaps!)

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

not exactly simon cowell

I'm ambivalent about NZ Political Idol.

Jono is, understandably, quite up on it, while Xavier is most certainly not.

I don't mind the concept, what bothers me is the execution. It is certainly not politically neutral, but a tool of the Right. Which is fine except I don't know that everyone realises that.

The breakdown of candidates is somewhat revealing:

By politics
- candidates I consider vaguely centre-leftish - 3 (Clark, Robson, Nandor) Of these only Nandor is reasonably consistently left.
- candidates I consider centre-right - 4 (Winston, Dunne, Perry, Tamihere, English)
- candidates I consider right, no centre about it - 2 (Hide, Wong, Rich)
- candidate I have no idea about yet, she's all over the place lately - 1 (Turia)

By gender
- women - 3
- men - 7

Interesting that the NZ Pol Id team were happy to put up the leader of the Labour party, but not the leader of their own side of the House...

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

maybe he or she should have finished the site first - what a dogs breakfast - nice concept, terrible production values - the voting form doesn't even work.

Nigel Kearney said...

There's a lot of disagreement about what left and right mean, but I'm pretty sure Matt Robson is further to the left than the National people are to the right.

Winston and Rodney cannot both be on the right because they disagree on just about every issue.

Span said...

ok so Winston and Rodney can't both be on the right because they don't always agree, but Helen Clark is a socialist despite the fact that the actual socialists disagree with most things she does and says?

Moneo said...

I believe some Nats in the South Island have yet to accept that a "city-boy pansy who hates the outdoors," doesn't smoke or drink and didn't play rugby, is the Leader of the National Party.

In fact I think in some parts they believe Bill English won the last election.

Its not surreal, its a fighting man.

Nigel Kearney said...

Helen Clark wants to take the country in the same direction as the socialists do, just not as far or at least not as fast.

Rodney and Winston have completely opposite goals, whether economically, socially, or politically. They just have nothing in common.

Span said...

I'm going to ignore the Clark Is A Socialist rantings for now cos there's a blog posting in that for later on this weekend.

But anyway, on the Political Idol front - I think all the judges have bagged Clark in the first week. So basically they are trying to get rid of the Prime Minister first - who probably, if you put every MP up as a candidate would certainly be a long way off being voted out first by the GP.

Just as well it will be mainly right wingers voting, otherwise Jono et al would never get their wish.

I wonder what would happen if all the right wing candidates were eliminated and only the leftish ones remained...

If they are going to be voted off one per week, it's going to be a long competition... It might even finish after the actual election!

Jono said...

Interesting to see guys but In the first week we had more votes from left wing bloggers than right wing bloggers and still Helen Clark got voted off Oh well. As for the selection of candidates, Well we have a minimum of one from every party.... Then there is the newest MP or he was when the idea was started, the current most controversiak JT, Edwin Perry who was selected because he always seems to be so dressed up(he looks the part) and then National recieved two as Labour had two and we had to be fair....yes? Ok yes I admit I am right wing, but in no way have I influenced any voters and you lot just seem to be bitching, yet you didn't vote, if you wish to change the way the results are going step up to the plate and vote...

Span said...

Jono - the problem is that there's no one who I would vote for to win - in other words I would want to vote them all off.

Could you possibly give the rationale for why you chose to mainly put up party leaders but didn't put up Don Brash?

I think the whole thing is a really good idea, I just would have done it differently myself, particularly the candidate selection. Some of the other comments on here are more critical, but they aren't mine.

Jono said...

Yeah sweet as Span, I'm not to sure why Don Brash wasn't put in, it was kind of a group consensus. Thinking about in hindsight maybe we should've put him in. Just a little inside tip there may be some wildcard entries a little later on maybe....

Span said...

wildcards - good thinking! then it could be more like Big Brother or Outback Jack, when they brought back that chick that got voted off and she went to the final two!

on the not voting but having an opinion thing - i think it is a bit rough to criticise me for having a negative opinion but not voting, when you criticised Xavier for having a negative opinion and voting.