Oh, woe is me…the combination of Kiwi, stick and snake apparently works for leftos as well

There is a story in the Herald on Sunday on the Sumner Burstyn issue. Unfortunately it’s not a very good one and really only serves as a platform for Ms Burstyn to plead ‘oh, woe is me…why are people angry with me?” We wondered last night if the media lack of response to the issues were a case of them looking after their own and based on THIS article that would seem to be the case…

The author, Joanne Carroll, does not appear to have made any attempt to interview or seek comment from the creators of the page and seems happy enough to simply regurgitate what she has been told by Summy Bear, coupled with some lightweight comment from the defence Force which does not seem to have any opinion on whether it is OK or not for people to slag off fallen soldiers before their final journey is complete. And that is the real issue here, folks, NOT the hows or whyfores of New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan…

There is an email link at the end of the article and I would suggest that anyone with concerns about the standard of NZ media reporting on this and other issues, use it. Pick your 1200 characters carefully and, as always, keep it seemly and remember that soldiers are discplined but mobs and rabbles are not…

Dear Joanne

Thank you for making the effort to cover the erupting Summer Burstyn issue however I don’t believe that you have provided a balanced perspective at all and have simply latched onto the issue for some cheap ratings. You have made no effort to portray fairly the feelings of those who have expressed their outrage at her comments on Facebook and elsewhere online but have just focussed on the minority whose comments are aggressive. Is not the fact (if the Herald still deals in such?) that over 20,000 people have joined the FB page in less than two days an indicator of where public feeling lies on this issue? The NZ media was very quick to climb aboard when similar outrage was expressed occurred over the Kahui twins.

There was a belief expressed yesterday that the NZ media’s lack of response to this issue was a case of the media covering up for its own. Your article has done nothing the assuage that belief and merely provides a forum for more of Burstyn’s self-righteous self-pity.

I hope that the Herald and the rest of the NZ media community will get it together and offer a balanced view of what the issues are.

Here’s a view from the FB page that I think presents the balance absent from the article:

Sumner Burstyn: post an antiwar comment and get 120 death threats – funny how that works.

Barbara, the thing is, your comments were not antiwar comments (I greatly respect anyone’s right to make those). Instead they were a personal attack on a young dead female soldier just after her body was returned to New Zealand for burial.
While I am sorry that the responses from 20,000 of her closest friends and collegues became personal and in some instances threatening, surely you can see that they mirrored the language and feeling of YOUR original post.

While I respect your opinion, your target, tone and timing were highly inappropriate in any civilised society. Despite your apology we continue to see similar messages from you, including personal attacks on dead service personnel in your earlier posts. As a NZ Herald columnist I would have expected a more considered approach to posting such views. I guess that’s now a matter for your employer and tomorrow’s talk back radio callers to consider.

More words from activist filmaker Sumner Burstyn.

This makes great reading. It derives from a comment made about  Lance-Corporal Jacinda Baker, one of the three Kiwi soldiers killed by an IED in Afghanistan last weekend:

After the first pushback from the community the comment was removed however as the exchange with a soldier on the link above shows, that wasn’t through any sense of remorse. It is really interesting to note, when reading this transcript that the socalled journalist very quickly descends into abuse while the infantry soldier continues to put his case in clear and articulate terms…

The issue is not whether or not we should or should not be in Afghanistan, or the whys or why nots of having a defence force; the issue is simply that someone has stooped to a vicious personal attack on a young woman who is no longer able to speak for herself – but there are, at the time of typing this, 13752 people prepared to speak on Jacinda Baker’s behalf.

While the freedom of the internet allows someone like Sumner Burstyn to publish her slander, it also allows for that slander to be challenged and not be allowed to become the new ‘truth’ and here a community has come together again to see that wrong righted.    I say ‘again’ because this is a very special community, one that spans across the world and across decades – there are names appearing here that I have not seen for years and years and that bring back such memories. We might not meet regularly or even often but we can carry on a conversation that started in a hole full of mud and bugs in South East Asia, or while shivering in the tussock of Waiouru as if that were only yesterday. And certainly we can come together again to speak on behalf of those who can no longer…

There is a lot of anger on the community page and there probably would be at any time but in this month, where we have lost five of our own, a lot of folks are venting. It isn’t an unreasonable expectation that the mollycoddled left leaning loony community couldn’t give it a rest at least til the funerals and grieving are done…

A sad day for New Zealand as Corporal Luke Tamatea, Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker and Private Richard Harris arrive back home. (c) NZDF 2012

Jim Hopkins of the NZ Herald ends an article yesterday:

Yet, somehow, we still get soldiers. Who don’t hide in other people’s houses or make self-serving speeches or expect everyone else to “do the right thing”. They do it themselves, whatever the cost. On the Stuff website, beneath its report on the death of SAS Corporal Doug Grant last year, readers have posted their comments. One says this: – “Rest in Peace – We shall remember them. If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read it in English, thank a soldier.”

That’s the essence of the debt every generation owes its troops – a debt unpaid by those who hide in embassies.