Wednesday 6 July 2005

Straight talk & spin

Helen Clark comes up with the straight talk on stoning, and Russell Brown with the spin.

Discussing Ashraf Choudhary's agreement that homosexuals and adulterers should be stoned in accordance with the Koran's teachings, Russell declared:
I have to sympathise with him. He was not asked whether homosexuals and adulterers should be stoned to death; he was invited to declare that the Koran was incorrect in saying so. That was how the question was asked. For a Muslim leader to say the Koran is incorrect is, I gather, beyond serious.
So? As I said yesterday, it's quite appropriate to condemn a culture -- or aspects of a culture -- when it's clearly anti-life. Why be coy?

Helen Clark (unaffected by her dinner with spin-meister Alastair Campbell) was far more direct. Newstalk ZB reports:
Helen Clark says Mr Choudhary's comments on the show certainly do not fit with Labour values or her own. She says she does not care if it is in any religious tract, it is not something that is acceptable.
Bravo! Truth is there's nasty crap in both Bible and Koran, and it doesn't help anyone to pretend otherwise. Good on her for saying so.

Clark's direct approach mirrors the similarly direct Ewen McQueen, current CHP leader, who refused to defend the indefensible Graham Capill. Said McQueen: ""To have been saying the sort of statements that he made for the number of years he said them while at the same time committing these crimes, it really is the worst form of hypocrisy." Isn't it just.

I wonder why Rodney Hide hasn't been similarly direct about Jim Peron's banishment?

2 comments:

Rick said...

I like seeing you give credit to people when they've earned some, even when 'people' is Helen Clark. Shows purity of character, cetus paribus Peron.

Berend de Boer said...

What a luck we now have Helen to declare what is cruel and what isn't.