As a person currently on the internet, you have almost certainly already heard about what many are insisting on calling “the Nigella incident”.

Charles Saatchi was photographed holding his upset partner by the throat, several times, in a public place, while many observers did sweet fuck all about it.

I’m not going to dwell on the event itself, because many others already have:

• Alecia Simmonds on Why didn’t anyone help Nigella Lawson?
• Anna Maxted in The Telegraph on Nigella Lawson: yes, it can happen to her
• Kate Harding with related reading on why choking is a big flashing warning sign

Now, it is fair to say that we do not know every detail of what happened.  And it is fair to say that sometimes even photographs can be misleading.  So a lot of people right now may have a small point when they say we mustn’t be quick to judge – on the face of the initial reporting.

Thankfully, Charles Saatchi has taken a lot of the guesswork out of the equation for us.

Saatchi has gone on the record with the London Evening Standard about what happened, and to call it “enlightening” is a serious understatement.

Charles Saatchi admitted the couple had a row as they sat outside Scott’s in Mayfair but said they had “made up” by the time they got home.

…

“About a week ago, we were sitting outside a restaurant having an intense debate about the children, and I held Nigella’s neck repeatedly while attempting to emphasise my point.

“There was no grip, it was a playful tiff. The pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place. Nigella’s tears were because we both hate arguing, not because she had been hurt.

“We had made up by the time we were home. The paparazzi were congregated outside our house after the story broke yesterday morning, so I told Nigella to take the kids off till the dust settled.”

Let’s play pretend for a moment.  Let’s believe everything Saatchi says:  completely harmless, just a tiff, nothing serious, all forgiven, blown out of proportion.  (And that it all depends on what your definition of “grip” is).

Even in that unlikely, bizarro universe, Charles Saatchi is still a man who:

• holds people by the neck to emphasise points (seriously, who does this?)
• can’t acknowledge that Lawson has her own feelings – “Nigella’s tears were because we both hate arguing”, not “because she was upset about the argument“
• wants us to simultaneously believe it was an upsetting argument and a “playful tiff”
• cannot grant his partner any agency.  Check out that little tell at the end.  ”I told Nigella to take the kids off.”  Not, “We decided it would be best if …” or “Nigella wanted to get the kids out of the limelight.”  

“I told Nigella.”

Even with the most charitable of views, in which this is all a hilarious misunderstand and won’t we look back on it and laugh one day, Charles Saatchi’s statements are a little scary.  

His decision to make these statements on his own, while Lawson and her agents aren’t making any statements, only adds to the picture of someone who is supremely self-centred.

He has now been cautioned for the assault on Lawson.

Tune it to #voteWTF tomorrow night for good wholesome rage.  Warning:  contains Bob McCoskrie.

Farewell, Anti-Racism Dog.  I didn’t even know you were there until you were gone.

No Right Turn is labelling this fuckup by Labour MPs as “hypocrisy”.  I honestly don’t even know if they’re clever enough to be hypocrites.

Our kids – The problem’s not poverty, it’s parenting. Do you agree?

I first heard of this on Twitter, was informed of this, and the fact that one of the “debaters” is to be Bob McCoskrie, on Twitter.  Then I visited the webpage for the show and found out who the rest of the debaters are.  On the side of “shitting on poor people”:

• Bob McCoskrie
• Hannah Tamaki
• Christine Rankin

On the side of “acknowledging that poverty is a thing”

• Celia Lashlie
• Dr Russell Wills
• Hone Harawira

Oh my god.  This is going to be a fucking trainwreck punctuated with occasional moments of beautiful Hone smackdown.  This totally calls for live-tweeting.

If you’re not already hanging on my every word on the Twitterz, you can follow #voteWTF.  I cannot promise lulz.  Only capslock.

(And if my usual Twitter account gets blocked for excessive tweeting, catch me on my jail account.)

If you want to do some homework before the debate, I recommend r0b’s Poverty Watch posts at The Standard.

The website is called Drive Social. It’s described as a “unique online experience that lets people see who they share the road with”. There’s a flash TV campaign to go with it.

But the Greens say it’s all an enormous waste of money.

…

The campaign has so far cost $1.6 million and 9500 people have signed up. That’s a rough cost of $174 per person.

As a bus user in Wellington, I was always suspicious of the Drive Social campaign because they kept putting ads in bus shelters.  Guess what?  Probably not going to find your target audience there, peeps.

Anyway.  What really struck me was that Key immediately lashed out with an over-the-top “well the Greens just think everyone should cycle everywhere” – which just makes you look silly when the next minute (and all over Twitter) Genter is being the calm, sensible voice of reason.

And even more so when, you know, you’ve spent $174 per person on a website with no tangible or even measurable results (and $40 per YouTube view of your very expensive video.)

Is this another example of the right drinking their own Kool-Aid?  Does Key really think he can just brush off obviously-ridiculous expenditure like Drive Social by saying “but they’re hippies, they don’t know anything”?

Is he shooting from the hip, unprepared, caught off-guard (he’s obviously answering TV3′s questions next to an elevator) and letting the happy she’ll-be-right facade slip for a moment?

Or is he just looking a bit tired?

Someone buy this man a million of his beverage of choice.  Fucking ace.

COULD HE BE MORE AWESOME.  I MEAN SERIOUSLY.

Organisational authority figures: add this to your fucking playbook right now.

And boy oh boy is he unable to let things go.

In 2011 he was the subject of an international media furore for saying that some women’s productivity and income is affected by difficult menstruation; a truth he was internationally pilloried for speaking about.

It was a Life Changing experience for him, about which he’s written a book due for publication in October 2013.

And as Toby Manhire in the Listener notes

In four of the five blog posts that he’s published in the site’s first four days, Thompson makes reference to the circumstances of his departure from his post at the EMA – in two of them, he talks explicitly about Mihingarangi Forbes and Campbell Live.

Let’s revisit that beautiful, beautiful furore, shall we?  Here’s Mihingarangi Forbes’ fucking amazing interview with Alasdair.  Seriously, a high point of modern NZ television journalism.  I will never not piss myself laughing when he complains about being under the weather due to a very early monthly meeting.

Here’s Rachel Morton’s unedited interview with Alasdair (sadly marred by microphone gremlins).

Here’s my posts on the subject.

And here in graphic form are his greatest hits (please do note:  all exact quotes from the video interviews linked above).

Make your own!

For ongoing lulz, he’s on Twitter too!

H/T: Toby Manhire

This week, that most troubling of questions, the issue which all other feminist work should be put aside so we can properly focus on it:  can men be feminists?

The comments … I can’t even, but Megapope on Twitter provided all the commentary necessary on that front.

Thing is, it’s just another Rebecca Kamm column.  Very little original content, lots of hip links to other sites (which, you know, I should probably be thankful for, given how the Armstrong types still like to pretend that they’re working only in print) …

And then she goes and quotes the founder of the “Good Men Project”.

Tom Matlack, founder of the The Good Men project, is also unconvinced [that men can be feminists]. But not because men don’t “get it”, or because – like Celie’s Revenge – he suspects falsity. He strays from the term because he’s experienced firsthand the furore it sparks:

“I am a feminist of the kind my mum was, and is,” he tells me via email: “She raised me in the 1970s with the idea that the Equal Rights Amendment to our constitution was just a crucial as the Civil Rights Act.”

Yet, “modern cyber feminists”, as Matlack puts it, “tell me, through heated and personal attacks, that I have no right to discuss gender because I don’t understand what it’s like to be a women who is oppressed.

Gee, Rebecca, sounds like Tom’s had a rough time!

Or maybe he’s received a lot of flack because he helped create a “project” which is so antifeminist that Hugo fucking Schwyzer resigned from it, saying “It was not ethically possible for me to remain silent while the site with which I am now best associated took an increasingly anti-feminist stance.”  (You can google the original post if you like, I ain’t linking to that creepfest.)

A project which delights in publishing pieces justifying rape if the rapist is enough of an OK dude or if it ~highlights~ the ~struggles~ of being a man in the modern world surrounded by slutty bitches.

Maybe Tom Matlack has no right to discuss gender because he’s a fucking misogynist pig.

But that conversation might be a liiiiiiiiiittle bit too radical for the readers of the Herald.

Long may Rino Tirikatene ask Shane Jones’ questions for him.

See also: Morgan Godfery - Symbolism vs substance: is the Maori Party doing anything?

~

This not-really-a-post brought to you by my flubbing the scheduling, which meant two went up last night.