SEND IN THE CLOWN

A few months ago TVNZ publicist Andi Brotherston started sending me transcripts for TVNZ's very poor Sunday morning 'current affairs' show Q+ A. After I wrote something disparaging about this gutless show, the material stopped coming.

One of the many reasons that I don't bother with Q+A is its host. I don't want my Sunday mornings infiltrated by Paul Holmes.

Former Prime Minister Jim Bolger once remarked that everything Paul Holmes touches 'turns into a circus'. Yes indeed - Holmes truly is a clown.

The man who called Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, 'a cheeky darkie', is out of the same political mould as the clown who co-hosts TVNZ's weekday Breakfast show. Like Paul Henry, he is right wing, arrogant and egotistical.

And, like Henry, he is also a charlatan. He pretends he doesn't have a political axe to grind.

In his biography Holmes writes;

'I like people right across the political divides...it would be quite wrong for me to possess a political agenda.'

Really? For someone who claims not to have political view he has reserved most of his criticisms and barbs for those on the left of the political spectrum.

Over the weekend Holmes went into bat for the self-proclaimed 'working class battler' and Minister of Employment Paula Bennett.

In his weekend New Zealand Herald column Holmes, who also supported convicted partner basher Tony Veitch, praised the law-breaking Minister to the skies:

'The week, I have to say, belongs to Paula Bennett. She connects. She speaks normally. She talks the average person's language. We know where she comes from and she remembers where she comes from. She has the X factor.'

Holmes is praising a Minister who broke the Privacy Laws by releasing confidential information about two beneficiaries. She also breached her own Cabinet manual.

For someone who is big on 'law and order' issues, Holmes is entirely unconcerned that Bennett has broken the law. It's one rule for the poor, another rule entirely for the rich and powerful.

In fact he appears to be in love with Ms Bennett . He must be infatuated with her to write drivel like this:

'Charisma, in its extreme form, can be elevating and inspiring. It can also simply be an aura, a quality, that makes us expect something interesting, something we will connect to or relate to, from the person who has it. So it is with Paula Bennett. She has a little of the darkness that stars have, too, and she is becoming, in her own way, a political star.'

Crikey. This deserves to be in 'Pseuds Corner' in Private Eye.

Paul Holmes has absolutely no qualms with Bennett flouting the law because the two beneficiaries are apparently receiving 'free money'. Just to rub it in, he outlines again what the two women are receiving from Work and Income. This champion of 'law and order' has now broken the law himself.

Holmes, reliving his talkback radio days, can't resist doing some beneficiary bashing. This wealthy and smug clown, like the politician he clearly adores, arrogantly presumes he has the right to invade the privacy of two young mothers who dared to criticise government policy.