Who will the media pick on next?

What a relief it is that this week we’re not all talking about Ken Ring and his earthquake forecasts. Probably nobody’s more pleased about that than Ken. I know him slightly - he seems a nice guy. And I did buy one of his weather almanacs once. I didn't find it hugely accurate, but you can say the same thing about traditional forecasting – whether it’s about weather or finances.
For instance, just as New York’s huge money crisis was looming a few years ago, a TV host called Larry Kudlow (above right) kept on crowing to his audience, "there is no recession out there!' He was completely wrong. Guess what. He’s still one of the top news guys on Wall Street and still has his highly paid job.
What the controversy Ken Ring was really all about was potent combination of public fear, which was understandable, wound up by media hysteria and deepened by our own scientific ignorance. Really, it was the media that flogged the story to a frenzy. Hardly a day went by when they weren’t raving about things Ken had written many months before. They all loved to hate the 'Moon Man' – as they decided to label him.
It’s all one more sign that the news business is becoming ever more feverish and tabloid... like the front page headline in a recent Herald On Sunday that said ‘Wills and Kate Torn Apart – surely it won’t end this way’.
What? Was the world’s most famous couple splitting up?
Nah… the paper was talking about some perforated postage stamps from Nuie featuring him on one side – her on the other. Total tosh.
So…with Ken Ring comprehensively done over by the media, who’s next? Better be careful out there, people. These days, anyone, and anything, is fair game.

Teetering on high heels

Have you noticed how people are re-evaluating things lately? One of my favorite bloggers is Moata Tamaira, a Christchurch librarian who writes really amusing articles for stuff.co.nz
Well, they were amusing back in the times when things were normal, and even now, when things feel not at all normal, she still manages to put a funny spin on life.
Last week, she was on about the changes in her wardrobe – how she’s chucked away her favorite high heels because they’re not just useless on uneven ground but actually feel unsafe. She also talks about how she now walks alongside walls in a state of constant calculation…as in, how sound is that wall? How far would she have to run if it began to topple?
I even find myself doing it here in non-quaky Auckland. I went to a play in the old Mercury Theatre last week, and as I walked up the street I took a long look at its huge rear wall of century-old bricks. I wonder how well that would do in an earthquake, I was thinking.
And then, after Japan, I stood on a hill above a beach and watched the sea do strange things, surging up a creek and pouring back out in a cascade of foam to form a big spiral in the bay - nothing like the huge whirlpool we saw on our TV screens after the big quake and tsunami, but echoing its shape. Nearly 9000 kilometres from Japan, we are, but there was the evidence of trouble far away.
2011 is turning out to be a very weird year, but it’s also making us think about what’s really important…which is people, of course. Always has been. But we seem to need a few shocks every now and again to remind us of that.

We're all heart

Haven’t we come up shining as a community since the earthquake on Feb 22? I saw an interview with Phil Keoghan, the host of top-rating show The Amazing Race, who said the way Kiwis are responding was nothing short of amazing.
All over the country people are desperate to find a way to help. If we can’t be there on the ground, at least we can raise cash – and it’s been happening at schools and shopping centres and in offices and clubs. The money has been pouring in - so much so that you have to feel a bit sorry for anyone who's trying to raise funds for anything else.
Someone from the Red Cross knocked on our door the other night. She was, just coincidentally, taking part in their annual collection. "We have given already," I said, as my husband went to find more cash for her. I felt I needed to explain why I wasn't stuffing wads of bills into her official plastic bag.
"People are so wonderful," she told us. "I'm hearing that at every house I go to, but they'e still giving more when I say it's all going to Christchurch."
Something else I'm noticing: Have you noticed the big surge of the ‘kia kaha’ expression? Everyone’s saying it, from former PM Helen Clark to thousands of wellwishers on Facebook and Twitter.
Most of us know it means ‘stand strong’, but a friend of mine, Makuini Ruth Tai, specialises in deep analysis of the Maori language and she says it really means ‘be strengthened by lighting the breath’.
I like that. In the sports context we all know that you must have deep, explosive breath to sprint, or lift or achieve something mighty. And women know you need breath to give birth, too. So, all the more reason for us to keep saying it… kia kaha!