I strongly object to writers who refer to groups of people and profess to speak for them. It happens all the time with Maori, and now Paula Bennett presumes on behalf of women.
But once a politician always a politician so it's hardly surprising.
Political parties run 'focus groups' to find out who to woo and what to say. They put their political pinkies in the wind and blow with it. And blow is a good word.
This piece is a lot of 'blow'.
'We' this, 'we' that. Heavy on stereotypical female roles. A shout out to the sisterhood? A signal about how to behave if you want to belong?
Identity politics, to be blunt about it.
BUT Bennett knows more about women than I do. She has lost none of her political smarts. Her cloaked advice is for National (not Labour): "You must capture our heads and our hearts." Currently common corporate parlance.
I must have been mistaken when I thought identity politics was the domain of the left.
It squeezes out the individual who doesn't identify with any group - who gets a shiver down their spine when told WHAT THEY THINK AND WANT. Exactly what Bennett has done.
This whole device (former minister speaks for her gender to her former party) leaves me cold.
Then again, my cynicism regarding politicians has never been as deep as it is right now.
The manipulative game they play, and which voters willingly participate in, is ruinous.
2 comments:
Lindsay will next weeks article by Paula Bennett be on how National can CAPTURE Men's heads and hearts.
Or will she focus on some other areas of men's anatomy?
Just wondering.
Lindsay, you speak for many of us with your comment "Then again, my cynicism regarding politicians has never been as deep as it is right now."
This country is drowning under a flood of political double talk and the only life saver available for me and mine is the metaphorical Ark we have built around ourselves.
I don't care anymore for their empty rhetoric and will survive regardless of their best intentions.
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