This is hardly news to those of you in the US, but for those of us in alternate parts of the English-speaking world, it's quite an eye-opener. It's not that we haven't heard of Oliver - he spent three hilarious minutes recently, for example, offering cogent comment on the drive by New Zealand's "Dear Leader" to change our flag. This segment, however, hasn't had much publicity here in the Antipodes.
I'd love to see local pseudo-Christian channel Shine screen this. Not much chance!
The fern not a good symbol for flag, foreigners won't "get it". Yet present flag has to go, that Brit/Aust design should never have been approved.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, I confess, the unique bipinnate fronds of the old-world fern trees in the southern temperate rain forests hold an ineluctable charm. Hope they stopped clearing these forests and planting exotic Lombardy poplars. Also hope NZ further protects its fragile ecosystem by not falling for the mass immigration orthodoxy of US, UK, Aust..
ReplyDeleteLooking for a parallel, this would be like a movement in the US to shed the vestiges of colonialism (the thirteen stripes) and replace them with something acknowledging Native American heritage.
ReplyDeleteWith the Confederate Battle Flag, the controversy involves the lingering offensiveness of a region being proud that their forefathers fought to preserve individual states' rights to purchase and sell a particular race of human being for the purpose of forcing them to perform labor.
BB
God bless John Oliver!
ReplyDeleteSo after taking six figure salaries, Tkach, Pack, Meredith, Flurry, Tilton, Copeland....don't have to pay any property taxes on their "parsonages"(mansions)?!
ReplyDeleteThese annual property taxes would often approximate gross middle class salaries!
Christianity has conned the state with fear voodoo. Makes Insurance companies look honest by comparison.