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Avatar: The Way of Water review - is that all there is?
Vast investment, little vision as James Cameron's eco-epic returns
by Nick HastedFriday, 23 December 2022
Into the blue: Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Kiri (Sigourney Weaver)(c) Disney
You may wonder: is this it? James Cameron's Avatar sequel replays Earth's colonial assault on Pandora in the original, cancelling out the blue-skinned native Na'vi's victory under the Dances With Wolves-like, blue-white saviour command of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine mentally steering a genetically engineered Na'vi avatar.
Sully has now merged into his avatar, and is chief of the jungle-dwelling Omaticaya, with an equally fearsome wife and five kids (including Sigourney Weaver as her previous character's avatar's teenage daughter, pictured below). Earth's renewed assault to pillage Pandora's minerals, led by genetically resurrected antagonist Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), becomes absurdly personal as Quaritch hunts the Sullys, who flee to the Metkayina, a Polynesian-style, partially amphibious people, till Quaritch descends here too.
Cameron has spent enormous financial and imaginative capital to make Pandora real; 30 years of his filmmaking life, too, when the last sequel's done. Yet the result is so often ugly, with computer-game visuals partly designed by a fantasy paperback artist, Wayne Barlowe. The water-world feels more real than the jungle. But there is no visionary pay-off for the vast investment in motion-capture and hybrid 3D, none of the ineffable wonder Cameron sought in his weird box-office misfire The Abyss, or Titanic's towering ship. A school of whale-like Tulkun wheeling in water and air is the sole poetry. The tribes and animals are avatars of the familiar, not strange new worlds.
Two sequences stand out. A Tulkun-hunt, in which one of the giant, pacifist creatures is slaughtered with calculated, cruel efficiency, is intensely emotional, and scored and shot as a martial, seafaring adventure, much like Jaws. Cameron's action skills are deployed to drag you into an awful act, with a clear whaling analogue. An Okker Aussie hunter (Brendan Cowell) and pursed-lipped, compromised marine biologist (Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement) add vivid humanity, and the yellow liquid syringed from their victim's vast brain to halt human ageing is good, sparky science fiction. A final sea battle also becomes the joltingly exciting war film you'd want from Aliens' director. Multiple replays of Titanic's near-drownings in a sinking ship and The Abyss's nautical light fantastic are more wearying auto-homages.
After Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, it's been a good year for anti-colonial blockbusters, reflecting a sea-change after a century of Hollywood glorifying white might. Cameron clearly equates Quaritch's Marine tactics with Vietnam and Iraq. "Pacify the natives," goes the command. "Exterminate the brutes," in other words (there's even a visual nod to Martin Sheen's camouflaged commando surfacing in Apocalypse Now's hell-red waters). This ideological counterstrike into millions of young cinemagoers' dreams feels welcome. Sully still uses his Marine skills to machine-gun everyone in sight, and go mano a mano with Quaritch just like John Wayne.
The Avatar films process Cameron's teen consumption of pulp s.f. – Edgar Rice Burroughs most of all – the way George Lucas transformed Saturday morning serials into Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the MCU does for comics. This is the paperback mulch behind The Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss too. It just seems such thin stuff. There's not much story, not much script.
Cameron's vision for Titanic – widely expected to lose its massive financial gamble on release – showed a monomaniac drive to effectively achieve a gruelling cinematic task. In Hollywood terms, he proved the survivor-type he believed he would have been among the real Titanic's drowning passengers. "I do get pleasure from pulling out of the dive," he acknowledged to me on its release. "We're talking about high-stakes poker, we're talking about making movies." Having won that bet, he concluded: "I think the people with money know I've proved my point now. They're going to have to let me do anything I want."
Avatar doubled down on this relentless drive, sacrificing a decade to its technological achievement, and a decade more to develop its sequels. A more interesting filmmaker has been lost in its jungle. Cameron's early films mirrored John Carpenter in their sleekly shark-like, ruthless momentum. Now he is Cecil B. DeMille, hawking herculean, hollow spectacles to hold off cinemagoing's decline.
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Might have been nice if Mr
Permalink Submitted by Wayne Barlowe (not verified) on Sat, 24/12/2022 - 19:04
Might have been nice if Mr Hasted had done some research before posting this acerbic review. A quick perusal of IMDB and Wikipedia might have clued him in to the fact that I did not work on this film - I worked on AVATAR, the original film. And, I have not done a paperback cover in some 35 years - since then, I've written books, screenplays and worked on many films. Getting the facts straight is an important step to credibility when writing a review. I tried to get a retraction but heard nothing back. This will have to do.
Hello Wayne, I know you only
Permalink Submitted by Nick Hasted on Sun, 25/12/2022 - 23:05
Hello Wayne, I know you only worked on the original Avatar, but the sequel either continues or works variations on that same visual world. I'm very happy to stand corrected on the span of your wider career, so thank you for setting me straight. Best wishes, Nick.
This review and reviewer is
Permalink Submitted by Jack A Moon (not verified) on Wed, 28/12/2022 - 17:09
This review and reviewer is naive in the extreme: "white might"? An "ideological counterstrike"? This movie is corporate Hollywood at its most bloated and self-important, fool. And while you're educating yourself, it's "ocker".
Indeed the film is an example
Permalink Submitted by strangerq (not verified) on Wed, 28/12/2022 - 18:35
Indeed the film is an example of white savior self aggrandizing fantasy and not a subversion of it. Which is why native American groups that Cameron personally insulted are calling for the film to be boycotted.


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Kevin Fields stood in a ballroom on the sixth floor of the Muhammad Ali Center in downtown Louisville on Friday clicking through PowerPoint slides.
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Space Station Crew Ready for Arrivals, Departures, and High-Flying Olympic Relay
By Ben Evans, on October 31st, 2013
Next week, Soyuz TMA-11M will arrive at the International Space Station, carrying three new crew members. Before their arrival, however, the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft will vacate the Rassvet module tomorrow and redock at the Zvezda aft port. Photo Credit: NASA
Like pieces on an orbiting chess board, Expedition 37 crew members Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg, and Luca Parmitano will board their Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft tomorrow (Friday) and relocate it from the Earth-facing (or "nadir") Rassvet module of the International Space Station (ISS) to the aft port of the Zvezda module. This will clear the way for the launch and arrival of Soyuz TMA-11M on 7 November, carrying Mikhail Tyurin, Koichi Wakata, and Rick Mastracchio. When combined with Soyuz TMA-10M's Oleg Kotov, Sergei Ryazansky, and Mike Hopkins—who have been aboard the ISS since 25 September—the coming days will see the station population jump to nine members for the first time since the end of the shuttle era.
Tomorrow's relocation has been made possible in the wake of last week's undocking and departure of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)-4 "Albert Einstein," a European Space Agency (ESA) cargo vehicle which launched and arrived at the station in June. The relocation plan calls for Soyuz TMA-09M to undock from Rassvet at 4:34 a.m. EDT Friday and undertake a short, 24-minute "hop" to the Zvezda aft port. In addition to reviewing procedures for the activity, on Monday, 28 October Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano performed leak checks on their Sokol launch and entry suits, and on Tuesday, 29 October they ran through an on-board descent drill, reviewing emergency procedures and co-ordinating the items which they will bring back to Earth on 10/11 November.
Backdropped by their rocket's payload shroud and its Sochi Olympics mural, Soyuz TMA-11M crewmen (from left) Koichi Wakata, Mikhail Tyurin, and Rick Mastracchio are pictured in their Sokol launch and entry suits at Baikonur. Photo Credit: NASA
Under normal circumstances, six-person ISS expeditions follow an "indirect rotation" protocol, whereby a given three-member subset of the crew departs, temporarily reducing the station's population to three, after which a new three-member crew arrives to boost it back up to six. This was the original plan for November, with Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano scheduled to return to Earth on 10/11 November, after six months in orbit, leaving Kotov, Ryazansky, and Hopkins aboard the ISS for two weeks, until the launch of Tyurin, Wakata, and Mastracchio in late November.
However, that plan changed when it was decided to carry an Olympic torch—part of the relay in preparation for the 2014 Sochi Games—into orbit aboard Soyuz TMA-11M, ceremonially take it outside during a spacewalk by Kotov and Ryazansky, and then bring it back to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-09M with Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano. In order for this plan to work, all three Soyuz vehicles needed to be at the station simultaneously, and the launch of Tyurin's crew was advanced by three weeks to 7 November. This will allow Kotov and Ryazansky to perform their highly symbolic spacewalk on 9 November, with the departure and return to Earth of the Soyuz TMA-09M crew (and the torch) slated for late the following night.
Paying their own tribute before a statue of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, Soyuz TMA-11M backup crewmen (from left) Alexander Gerst, Maksim Surayev, and Reid Wiseman are scheduled to begin their own mission to the space station in May 2014. Photo Credit: NASA
In readiness for their upcoming launch, Tyurin, Mastracchio, and Wakata completed their final Soyuz qualification exams at the Star City cosmonaut training center, near Moscow, on 15-18 October and flew to Baikonur in Kazakhstan on 26 October. In addition to the traditional raising of their national flags at the cosmodrome and fit checks of their Sokol launch and entry suits, the three men and their backup crew—Russian cosmonaut Maksim Surayev, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, and Germany's Alexander Gerst—inspected the interior of the Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft. Writing on Twitter, Gerst noted that the vehicle "has that typical, new-spaceship-smell that we all love." The payload shroud for the rocket is also emblazoned with an artistic mural to commemorate the impending Sochi Games. Yesterday (Wednesday), NASASpaceflight.com reported that fueling of Soyuz TMA-11M with propellants and compressed gases had been completed and the three-part vehicle had been ensconced in the Spacecraft Assembly and Testing Facility for final processing operations. Next week, mounted atop its rocket (a direct descendent of the R-7 missile, created under the auspices of Chief Designer Sergei Korolev, back in the 1950s), Soyuz TMA-11M will be transported in a horizontal orientation to the launch pad.
Commanding Soyuz TMA-11M is 53-year-old Mikhail Tyurin, already a veteran of two previous long-duration expeditions to the ISS in August-December 2001 and September 2006-April 2007, and with more than a cumulative year of his life spent off the Home Planet. To him, the notion of flying the Olympic torch to the station is a peculiarity, but one which has given much cause for celebration as the world draws near to what Tyurin describes as "something that unites us." He expects his crew to be a part of the Sochi Games, "not as participants," but because they are an international team, whose principles closely mirror those of the Olympic athletes. "Some sport events teach us to value something great, something beautiful, something good, which becomes possible thanks to lots of work and effort from the athletes," he explained in a pre-flight NASA interview. "I am not quite so interested in the winner, but I am interested in the achievement."
Rick Mastracchio, also 53 years old, is a veteran of three shuttle missions, but this will be his first long-duration expedition to the ISS. "We knew everything that we were going to do before launch," he told the NASA interviewer of the shuttle training mindset. "I had all my tasks memorized even before launch. As an expedition crew member, it is going to be quite different. Obviously, we're going to have a series of tasks given to us by the ground folks, but we are not really going to know what it is until a week or so—or even a few days—before we get to do these things." With an extra three weeks added to their mission, Mastracchio, Tyurin, and Wakata anticipate a return to Earth on 14 May 2014, producing a total duration of about 189 days—one of the longest in ISS program history. Asked for his thoughts about someday participating in a year-long expedition, like that planned for Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko in 2015-2016, Mastracchio was both philosophical and pragmatic: "My goals here at NASA are to fly in space and do what the [Astronaut] Office asks of me," he said, "so it would be a difficult mission … to be away from home for one year and it would be difficult on the body. But it would be difficult to turn it down!"
Rick Mastracchio rehearses his activities inside the Soyuz TMA-11M descent module. Photo Credit: NASA
Rounding out the Soyuz TMA-11M crew is 50-year-old Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to participate in two long-duration ISS expeditions and one of only four of his countrymen to spend a prolonged period of time aboard the space station. A veteran of three previous missions, Wakata will make history midway through his expedition, in mid-March 2014, when Soyuz TMA-10M returns to Earth with Kotov, Ryazansky, and Hopkins and he takes the helm of the ISS as its first Japanese commander. Paying tribute to the huge success of Japan's Kibo laboratory complex and its H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) "Kounotori" ("White Stork") cargo ship, Wakata is convinced that his homeland has established itself as a reliable partner in the ISS program. "As a partner of that program," he said, "Japan will be happy to see its own representative command the space station. I am just very fortunate to be able to serve as the first Japanese space station commander."
After launch from Baikonur, which is presently scheduled for 10:14 a.m. local time on 7 November (11:14 p.m. EST on 6 November), Soyuz TMA-11M will follow a now-standard flight profile to reach the ISS in just six hours and four orbits of Earth. First trialed by an unmanned Progress cargo vessel in August 2012, and then by the crew of Soyuz TMA-08M in March 2013, it is believed that getting crews to the station in a matter of hours—rather than the previous two-day rendezvous profile—is far better in terms of helping them to adapt to the microgravity environment and offset the risks of nauseous "space sickness." After arriving at the ISS at 4:31 p.m. Baikonur time (5:31 a.m. EST) on 7 November, standard pressure and leak checks will be performed, ahead of opening the hatches between the Soyuz and the space station.
There will be little time for acclimatization, for Kotov and Ryazansky are scheduled to perform their EVA on 9 November and Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano are due to undock their Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft and return to Earth on 11 November. Often left unnoticed is that for those handful of days, Fyodor Yurchikhin will become the first ISS commander to lead a nine-person expedition. With four Russians (himself, Kotov, Ryazansky, and Tyurin), three Americans (Nyberg, Hopkins, and Mastracchio), one Italian (Parmitano), and a Japanese (Wakata), it promises to be one of the most racially and ethnically diverse crews since the end of the shuttle era. The previous record was a crew of eight, back in early October 2009, when Gennadi Padalka commanded the Expedition 20 crew of Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko and Maksim Surayev, together with Canada's Bob Thirsk, Belgium's Frank de Winne,and NASA astronauts Mike Barratt, Nicole Stott, and Jeff Williams.
Soyuz TMA-11M is scheduled to launch from Baikonur on the night of 6/7 November, bound for a six-month stay at the International Space Station. Photo Credit: NASA.
"I've been calling it Expedition 37.5," joked Mastracchio in his pre-flight interview, "kind of to split the difference. Of course, when we arrive, it's going to be a very hectic time. I imagine any time a new crew arrives, it is quite hectic, just trying to settle in, find our clothes and … everything that we're going to need to live aboard space station." If the Olympic torch is fulfilling part of its own relay, then Mastracchio certainly believes that the Expedition 37 crew will have their own relay going on in those few days. When he first learned that his crew would be carrying the Olympic torch with them, he contacted the U.S. Olympic team to ask if they wanted him to carry a banner into space. As a result, Mastracchio will be taking a banner, some patches, and a small stack of photographs of the athletes into orbit.
With the departure of Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano on 10/11 November, Expedition 38 will officially commence, under the command of Oleg Kotov. This expedition will then run until mid-March 2014, when Kotov's crew will return to Earth and Wakata will take command, kicking off Expedition 39. This period was originally scheduled to include the arrival of Russia's long-delayed Multi-Purpose Laboratory Module (MLM), planned for December 2013, but since postponed again until April and later September 2014. However, its launch has reportedly been delayed until at least September 2015. This means that a number of EVAs from the Russian segment of the station may now be either cancelled or assigned other tasks.
The continued delay to the MLM will prove greatly disappointing to the entire ISS Program and, certainly, to the Expedition 38 crew. "I was part of the first crew to enter the [Zvezda] service module in 2000," reflected Mastracchio. "It would be great to be part of the first crew to enter the MLM in 2014." It appears that none of the crew will get this chance, but a number of other visiting vehicles are anticipated, starting with a Russian Progress resupply craft in late November and ORB-1, the first dedicated Cygnus cargo ship from Orbital Sciences Corp., in mid-December. As part of its own commitment to NASA, through the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract, SpaceX is expected to despatch its third dedicated Dragon mission to the ISS in February, followed by a fourth in late April.
The Expedition 38 crew will play host to Orbital Sciences' ORB-1 Cygnus mission in mid-December. Photo Credit: NASA
Both Cygnus and Dragon will be captured by means of the station's 57-foot (17-meter) Canadarm2 robotic arm and berthed at the Earth-facing (or "nadir") port of the Harmony node. According to Mastracchio, all members of the U.S. segment are fully trained to perform the capture, but "it's really kind of a seniority thing," with the most senior members of the crew overseeing each operation. Since Mike Hopkins has been aboard the ISS since late September, Mastracchio expects him to lead the ORB-1 capture and berthing in December. Subsequent operations—including the two Dragon berthings in February and April—he expects to be led by Wakata or himself.
For Wakata, becoming the first Japanese ISS commander in March 2014, following the departure of Kotov, Ryazansky, and Hopkins, is not expected to change much in his daily activities: "I will continue the duties that I have conducted as a flight engineer," he said, "like conducting experiments, doing the maintenance tasks, robotics operations or spacewalks or any task that I am assigned to. In addition to that, I will be taking the lead as the point of contact in the communications, daily and weekly, with the Mission Control Centers throughout the world and also the program management of the International Space Station in the different countries. I just need to make sure that everybody in the crew is in healthy condition and safety comes first and efficiency and also the happiness of the crew members. I would like to make sure that we always work as an integrated team to be able to utilize the expertise, talent and also enthusiasm of all the crew members that we work with. I'm just fortunate to be able to fly with such talented and dedicated crew members."
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October 31st, 2013 | Tags: aerospace, AmericaSpace, Astronaut, Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)-4 "Albert Einstein", Baikonur, Cygnus, Dragon Spacecraft, Expedition 37, Expedition 38, Expedition 39, Exploration, Explore, Fyodor Yurchikhin, Harmony node, HSF, International Space Station, ISS, Karen Nyberg, Koichi Wakata, Luca Parmitano, Mike Hopkins, Mikhail Tyurin, Multi-Purpose Laboratory Module (MLM), NASA, Oleg Kotov, ORB-1, Orbital Sciences Corp, Rassvet, Rick Mastracchio, rocket, Rockets, Sergei Ryazansky, Shuttle, Soyuz TMA-08M, Soyuz TMA-09M, Soyuz TMA-10M, Soyuz TMA-11M, Space, space exploration, space shuttle, spacecraft, Spaceflight, SpaceX, Zvezda | Category: AmericaSpace, Ben Evans, International Space Station, Space, Spaceflight
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1 comment to Space Station Crew Ready for Arrivals, Departures, and High-Flying Olympic Relay
[…] ISS for the first time since the end of the Shuttle program. Why are we doing this? So that an Olympic torch can be carried on a Russian EVA this weekend and then quickly returned two days later with the Soyuz TMA-09M crew. In order for […]

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Big dreams, no delivery
Big Mac nation
Standard scoop: Why Key fired Worth
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:30 am, July 13th, 2009 - 79 comments
Categories: john key - Tags: richard worth
Last Monday, John Key said you, the people of New Zealand, don't have the right to know why a minister in your government was sacked.
We think you do have that right. And so do others. We have been told the reason from sources in and around the National party.
The only reason for Key to keep the reason for firing Worth secret was to prevent harm to his government. That always meant it either was something really terrible and not limited to Worth (always unlikely), or that Key had acted impulsively and fired Worth for a minor offence that would set too low a bar for sacking other, more important, ministers. Don't get too excited. It's not the super-conspiracy.
Key fired Worth for being an adulterer.
The calculation was that Worth's sleaze laid bare in public would have been a running sore, so he got rid of him. Almost a bit of a let down eh? That it's something so trivial. But that's exactly why Key had to try to keep it secret.
Ministers are human. Sometimes they are unfaithful. It happens not infrequently. That could leave Key in a bind – be a hypocrite or fire vital ministers.
Not only that but anything 'as bad' as adultery is now a sacking offence. Every transgression by a minister will come with the question, is this as bad as what Worth did? The pressure will be unrelenting.
Key's claim it wasn't in the public interest to reveal the reason was just another of his lies. The real reason was he didn't want this to become a publicly known standard that he would be held. Firing Worth for adultery was a typically impulsive decision from Key, and in typical fashion he has attempted to avoid the consequences by keeping it secret.
Now, Key will have to enforce this new standard and fire ministers that have broken, are breaking, or do break it, which could see a number of important ministers gone. Or he will have to relax the standard. That will show him up as a hypocrite – impulsive, expedient, unfair, and slippery.
The standard, now public, also changes things with the media. Key has given every journo worth their salt a huge incentive to dig around the private lives of his ministers. If he applies the same standard to other ministers as he did to Worth (and to be seen as fair and honest, he must), then he will have to sack any that have strayed. That's an easy chance for a journo who gets the right info to secure a large feather for their cap.
No wonder he didn't want you to know. Lucky some others did. The real issue now is Key's abuse of the public interest excuse to cover his arse.
79 comments on "Standard scoop: Why Key fired Worth"
Sting 1
"Ministers are human." You could have fooled me.
toad 2
Rumour has it that there is a wee bit more to it than that Eddie. What I've heard is that Worth was actually caught out "on the job" when he was supposed to be at Parliament working.
Eddie 2.1
toad – a fine point of difference perhaps from what we've been told, one that Key should flesh out.
infused 3
Everyone knows he's a adulterer, lol… I think it was talked about so much people switched off.
Eddie 4
infused – yes we knew that he was an adulterer. That's not the point. the new information is that it was the reason Key fired him.
How is that new information. I think that was the impression implied by him being fired so quickly after the accusations were made.
Well, everyone I knew thought that anyway. I mean really, what was the chance of it being anything else?
there's a difference between a guess and having it told to you by someone who knows.
If you thought it was the reason all along, what do you think of Key claiming public interest as an excuse to keep it secret from the public?
Sting 5.1.1
Secrets, Lockwood caught on camera or Helen's double life? Take your pick because there is plenty of sordid tales to be told.
Raul 5.1.1.1
but sting, what have those allegations got to do with anything? This has always been about why Key fired a minister.
I think Key's fraudulent use of 'not in the public interest' is a huge scandal
Tim Ellis 6
I don't know where you reach the assumption that there's a new standard on adultery.
The issue with Dr Worth appears to be that his private actions were impinging on his ability to remain a minister. Too much scandal due to his own indiscretions. That is a much higher standard than just having an affair.
If we take another example, Mr Mallard's marriage breakdown probably wouldn't have met the test. Nor would Dr Brash's.
snoozer 6.1
isn't that exactly the problem with setting the bar so low, Tim? Isn't that exactly why Key had to try to keep the standard secret?
If the standard is really just adultery or if it us just 'too much scandal' like you reckon, isn't that also an abuse of the public interest line that Key has been using as an excuse ot to tell us?
Tim Ellis 6.1.1
If I recall "so much scandal" was the reason Mr Samuels was stood down.
This wasn't the only incident for Dr Worth. He showed a couple of previous errors of judgement and was on his last warning.
Bright red 6.1.1.1
If that's true why wasn't it in the public interest to tell us that?
Tim Ellis 6.1.1.1.1
I suppose the answer to that question is that Mr Key probably thought there had been enough panty-sniffing around the issue already, much of it prosecuted by Mr Goff.
Pascal's bookie 6.1.1.1.1.1
Even if true, that's not enough to establish public interest in not answering questions Tim, and I suspect you know it.
Most of the 'panty sniffing' as I remember came from the blame the victim crowd.
snoozer 6.1.1.1.1.2
That's not a reason for using the public interest provisions in standing orders.
Do you think a PM should be able to keep something secret from the public for whatever reason they deem necessary and then lie about it using a valid reason like public interest as a cover?
Tim Ellis 6.1.1.1.1.3
Do I think there's public interest in a prime minister confirming or denying that the reason the prime minister has asked a minister to resign is that there is a scandal based on the minister having an affair? No.
There was at least one labour MP who went quietly and didn't reach ministerial office because of a scandal in his private life. There is no public interest in airing that stuff politically and I really don't want to know the details of it.
Bright red 6.1.1.1.1.4
"There was at least one labour MP who went quietly and didn't reach ministerial office because of a scandal in his private life. "
So this person wasn't a minister in our government? Irrelevant then.
No-one's asking for details. We just wanted to know why the minister was fired.
Now we do know and I'm afraid you look like you're conceding that Key's use of the public interest excuse was totally unjustified.
Give it to me straight Tim: do you think Key was correct to say that it would be harmful to the public interest to answer questions as to why he lost confidence in Worth?
The rumsfeldian Q and A routines are cute Tim.
Usually means you don't like the actual question so you pose it the way you would like it to have been asked.
But just to be clear, you are saying that it would harm NZ for us to know why Key sacked Worth, if it was in fact about adultery.
Maynard J 6.2
The fact that ministers have not been fired for this before would be a fairly obvious indicator, closely followed by Worth's sacking being the first sacking by a Government promising new levels of accountability.
You suggets Key is the one that decided his actions (apparently adultery) were impinging upon his ability to act as a minister. Not so – Key 'lost confidence' in him. Quite a difference. But of course one there is no point arguing – given Key's lies about 'not in the public interest' we do not have enough information – and I am a bit wary of your inclination to claim opinion as fact to bother having this debate.
StephenR 7
I think I agree with Tim Ellis where he says "I don't know where you reach the assumption that there's a new standard on adultery." until at the very least this goes beyond an anonymous source inside the National party being pointed to in a post by an anonymous blogger.
Phil 7.1
until at the very least this goes beyond an anonymous source inside the National party being pointed to in a post by an anonymous blogger.
Additionally, you have to remember that it's people of Eddie's mentallity who fawn over the works of Hagar and/or Wishart – who see conspiracy at every turn, and think that because a politician had lunch in the same cafe as Graham Norton, they must be part of the rabid homosexual conspiracy. Or, perhaps they got in a cab vacated by a BAT executive, and are therefore part of an evil corporate plan to give cancer to babies.
I'm willing to bet all the cash in my pockets, against all the cash in Eddie's, that this is one step sideways from interviewing the keyboard.
snoozer 8
This really does like like a terrible abuse of process by Key. He should have just told us the reason, rather than hiding behind public interest, when there was no public interest in keeping the reason secret.
Bright red 9
Just watch Key try and squirm his way out of this one. His crediblity is sinking by the day.
Daveski 10
Funny thing Bright Red, the polls don't seem to reflect this. Moreover, apart from completely biased perspectives such as this one, the general view seems to be either complete boredom or acceptance that Key did the right thing to get rid of Worth.
What happened was that Key lanced the boil a lot quicker than the left expected or wanted reducing the opportunities to attack the credibility of Key for not tacking action.
Face facts – it's not an issue. What's more an issue is the competence or otherwise of Key's ministers. And sadly, in more than one case, I have my doubts about their abilities.
Bright red 10.1
It's not an issue when the PM refuses to answer questions in Parliament and from the media relying on the grounds that it would be against the public interest to do so only for that to be revealed as a lie?
I wonder what does count as an issue to you – that time Helen Clark's car was speeding?
Tim Ellis 10.1.1
Bright red, I don't think it is in the public interest for the public to know the sordid details of a minister's affair, or that the public scandal around it was the reason the prime minister lost confidence in the minister's ability to do their job while such allegations are flying around.
That comes down to a judgement call by Mr Key. I think he made the right one. By comparison I don't think Mr Goff carried himself off very well at all.
Bright red 10.1.1.1
This has nothing to do with the details of what Worth did or Goff. Pretty poor attempts at distraction.
You still haven't answered the question. A minister doesn't have to answer questions if they believe that it would be against the public interest (which usually means would hurt national security or the Crown's financial position) to do so. Do you think that Key used that power properly or do you think that he abused that power for political reasons?
So Bored 10.1.1.2
In reply Tim, if Worths wife cannot trust him why should the public? Why wasnt Jonkey just a little bit more upfront and decisive?
As for Goff he shouldnt have bothered getting involved, you cant make crap smell any worse by stirring it, you just get tainted.
Tim Ellis 10.1.1.2.1
So Bored are you saying that an extra marital affair of itself should be grounds for sacking from a ministerial position?
It looks to me with some of the oohing and aahing in this post is an attempt to get down into the gutter into every National MP's private life.
So Bored 10.1.1.2.1.1
Paranoia Tim. I dont think it would be at all edifying to take a gink at any MPs private life, more like very very boring.
People will have affairs (some with MPs perish the thought)! Trust is the issue, if you present yourself as trustworthy and take a position that requires some public trust you are going to have to be seen to be squeaky clean (whether you are or not).
Pascal's bookie 10.1.1.2.1.2
Apparently that's what John Key thinks Tim.
Keep up.
Wrangle 10.1.1.2.1.3
I don't read it like that at all. The post doesn't endorse or condemn Key's new standard – it just looks at the consequences of it. Ah, consequences, there's a word the Nats and their hangers-on don't like to hear.
Nobody except you has expressed the slightest interest in the details of what Worth got up to. This is all about Key – why he fired Worth and his abuse of the public interest standing orders.
Rex Widerstrom 10.1.1.3
"Not in the public interest" is a very defined form of words implying that there would be some damage to the public good caused by the release of information. It's used, for instance, to explain why we can't know too much about what the SIS or Defence Intelligence is up to.
It's also been misused to try to avoid explaining all sorts of political cock-ups and cover-ups, most lately by the NZ Police in relation to any wrongdoing by their political masters.
But I've never seen it trotted out to excuse not talking about someone "discussing the Ugandan situation" (a much better euphemism IMO).
OTOH Worth's trouser problems (we're having a special on euphemisms this week folks, buy two get one free) shouldn't be of interest to the public. But that's a very different thing.
Key could have specified adultery as the reason, thus satisfying the public interest criteria, but refused to go into detail, thus sparing the majority of us who don't wish to know from the sordid details, in which we ought not to be interested.
Wrangle 10.1.1.3.1
exactly right Rex
Daveski 10.1.2
Red – you're going off on tangents re Aunty Helen and Speedgate (and I didn't mention those because they are irrelevant and deflections).
There's been little real debate about why he was moved on. That's the real problem for the left.
As per my substantive point is the fact that the line being taken here is that there is some type of scandal because Key won't spell out the reason. It would be a scandal if Key hadn't acted or he had tried to protect Worth (I won't take any cheap shots here).
Anyway, I suspect that this is undoubtedly antidemocratic as far as you're concerned so the obvious answer is to have a referendum on whether or not Key should tell us why Worth was sent packing.
Labour strategy is looking as ineffectual as the Warriors' attack!
How about just answering the question then:
Is it not an issue when the PM refuses to answer questions in Parliament and from the media relying on the grounds that it would be against the public interest to do so only for that to be revealed as a lie?
Would you be happy if some other PM did this? Or does Key get special treatment?
Irascible 10.2
Love the anology – Tory ministers and MPs are boils on the public backside? A truly worthy analogy from a right wing blogger.
Tim Ellis 11
I suggest people read the cabinet manual on privacy considerations and the public interest http://cabinetmanual.cabinetoffice.govt.nz/8.52 . Once Dr Worth had resigned as a minister I don't see any reason why the prime minister was required to disclose information about Dr Worth's private life that was no longer likely to impact on the government.
Let's face it Labour would love this issue to go on and on to give them an excuse to continue the panty sniffing that Mr Goff started, but the government has much more important things on their minds.
Wrangle 11.1
Nobody wants to know anything about Worth's private life. We wanted to know why Key fired him. Every other PM ever had always said. Key hid behind public interest but it's clear that there was no public interst in not revealing the truth, it was purely political.
"but the government has much more important things on their minds." – like cycleways and handouts to Maccas?
Your attempt to put some of this on Goff is pathetic.
Wrangle Mr Key has said repeatedly that the reason Dr Worth resigned is that the PM lost confidence in him. It is pretty obvious why. Labour would love to trap the PM into the gutter with a more detailed response that treads heavily into Dr Worth's private life, but I don't think new zealanders really want to hear about that.
Yes there are more important things going on, like dealing with the recession.
Wrangle 11.1.1.1
'the reason Dr Worth resigned is that the PM lost confidence in him"
that's a tautology. The question is why Key lost confidence in Worth.
We know the answer now.
Do you think that Key abused his powers in relation to not answering questions because it would not be in the public interest to do so?
You know the answer is yes, just say it.
Pascal's bookie 11.2
Hang on. Are you saying that once Worth resigned, Key couldn't say why because of the privacy act?
I'm pretty sure the privacy act isn't supposed to be rogues charter. But anyway, the question is why did Key lose confidence in Worth when Worth was a minister.
PB Mr Key has said that there's no public interest in him disclosing the reason he lost confidence. It is pretty obvious that any explanation would adversely affect Dr Worth's right to privacy in matters that concern him personally.
As much as the labour party seem to enjoy getting in the gutter like this I don't think the public wants to hear it.
Pascal's bookie 11.2.1.1
As I understand it Tim, Key says there is a public interest in him not disclosing the reason. Subtler difference, but an important one. There is a default setting toward disclosure, and the PM has overuled it, saying that to reveal more would be harmful to the public interest.
My reading of the cabinet manual PB is that a person's privacy is the primary concern unless there is specific public interest in disclosing it.
I think there is a public interest in knowing why a minister has been stood down and eventually drummed out of parliament Tim.
Tim Ellis 11.2.1.1.1.2
That is a subjective opinion PB. Mr Key obviously decided differently. Since he's the prime minister he's politically accountable for the decisions he makes. I don't think he will be losing too much sleep over this one.
non-responsive Tim.
Of course it's opinion, inasmuch as everything is. What's yours?
Do you think there is a public interest in knowing why a minister has been stood down and eventually drummed out of parliament?
You forgot to say.
There may be some members of the public who are interested in knowing, PB, but that of itself doesn't make the public interest over-ride Dr Worth's right to privacy.
Mr Key clearly felt that if he had disclosed his reasons for losing confidence in Dr Worth, it would have unfairly infringed Dr Worth's right to privacy.
snoozer 11.2.1.1.1.5
Don't play dumb Tim. You know the issue isn't whether members of the public are interested.
Public interest is a reason for NOT releasing information. If there isn't a good public interest reason NOT to release information the government should release it.
As noted above, Worth's privacy is not a reason that Key has relied on for not telling.
He has claimed there is a public interest reason for not telling. Which is not true if the reason he lost confidence in Worth really is adultery.
Moreover, it's hard to see how Key would be protecting Worth's privacy by not revealing it. It is already public knowledge that Worth is an adulterer. All Key would be confirming is that this publicly known piece of information about Worth was the reason he lost confidence in him
you still forgot say Tim.
Do you think the public has a legitmate interest in knowing why Ministers get sacked?
There is nothing 'clear' about it Tim. We are being told that to let us know will hurt NZ.
It's stupid, and you look like an idiot defending it.
My understanding snoozer is that the assumption is that all information should be in the public domain, unless there are specific reasons not to disclose it. Those reasons include national security and privacy concerns, which the cabinet manual clearly identifies.
If the reason for the lost confidence was the public scandal around Dr Worth due to an extra marital affair preventing Dr Worth from continuing his job, then if he has decided to resign then I think he does have a right to privacy, rather than having his private relationships dragged through the mud by the likes of Mr Goff.
Key has never given privacy as a reason why Key lost confidence in Worth. This is purely Tim's invention.
But, what the hell, I'll bite.
Tim, pray tell: how would Key confirming that the reason he lost confidence in Worth was that Worth is an adulterer be an invasion of Worth's privacy given that his adultery is already public knowledge?
I'm afraid you have your facts askew snoozer. Mr Key has repeatedly said that he was not going to comment further on Dr Worth because he's entitled to his privacy.
"Now that Worth's gone from Parliament for good, it seems that there is no real fear of this being the case but Key has decided that as a private citizen Worth is entitled to his privacy "
That was here at the standard quoting an article from Tracey Watkins.
Privacy was the major consideration why Mr Key didn't go into further details about Dr Worth. It seems that the only people who want to know the gory details are the commenters on here.
Eddie 11.2.1.1.1.10
Tim. That doesn't refer to any need to protect Worth's privacy. It simply states that since he's a private citizen it's case closed. Different things (and niether stack up).
You've got a slippery way with words that Key himself would be proud of.
felix 11.2.1.1.1.11
But nobody wants "gory details", Timmeh.
Can you show where people here are asking for "gory details"?
You do understand the issue, Tim. Why are you pretending you don't?
Tim Ellis 11.2.1.1.1.12
You're dancing on the head of a pin Eddie. When Mr Key repeatedly says Dr Worth's situation is now a private matter, he was actually respecting Dr Worth's right to privacy.
This is not a new issue. The speaker said on 17 June:
Mr SPEAKER: I thank honourable members, because this is an issue that I accept is not absolutely black and white. But, in fact, when the Hon Trevor Mallard was recounting Speakers' rulings or briefings on the matter, he overlooked the one by Speaker Wilson just last year, which is Speaker's ruling 162/4. It actually gets into the issue of matters of public interest versus privacy as well, and there are issues to be covered there.
http://www.parliament.nz/mi-NZ/PB/Business/QOA/d/2/6/49HansQ_20090617_00000010-10-Dr-Richard-Worth-Confidence.htm
The decision of Mr Key not to discuss further his lack of confidence was always about respecting Dr Worth's right to privacy, which is a legitimate reason in the cabinet manual not to release information.
Tim. That's the speaker you're quoting and I don't accept that there is a privacy issue anyway.
Key's line was that is was against the public interest for him to tell the reason – that was a lie.
"Mr Key has said that there's no public interest in him disclosing the reason he lost confidence. It is pretty obvious that any explanation would adversely affect Dr Worth's right to privacy in matters that concern him personally."
Worth's privacy isn't a reason of public interest for not revealing information – public interest is used for things like like the deployment of the SAS and plans for the Reserve Bank to intervene in the currency. Anyway, that he was an adulterer was already known so Key saying that was the reason for firing him would not be reducing his privacy.
Remember, Tim, the question of public interest isn't 'are people interested' it's 'is there a good reason from the public's point of view not to say'. Unless there is a good reason not to say, the information shoudl be made public. Unless you want to lie in a country where a governemtn can jsut decide it wants to keep politically damaging information secret.
Respecting a person's privacy is in the cabinet manual as a good reason not to make information public, Wrangle.
If there had been police charges then it might become a public interest story. There weren't. In the end all we have is rather shoddy allegations put forward by Mr Goff on the one hand, and a complainant whose story wasn't sufficiently strong for the police to investigate further.
I don't know Dr Worth, but as he's not an MP anymore I don't think you or anybody else has the right to go rifling through his bottom drawer with some hokum excuse of "public interest". There is no public interest in knowing about Dr Worth's private life any more than there is public interest in knowing about yours.
r0b 11.3
the panty sniffing that Mr Goff started
Grow up Tim.
Maynard J 11.3.1
It is a very pathetic deflection. I am losing confidence in Tim's abilites to spin for National.
Draco T Bastard 11.3.1.1
I dunno, his acrobatic leaps trying to dodge the actual meaning of "in the public interest" and answer any questions in this thread are quite remarkable. Of course, they're also totally see through.
aj 11.3.2
Worth started the panty sniffing. Pure and simple.
dave 12
This is kind of dumb speculation.
Best guess: Key fired Worth for lying to him- and more than once. That certainly leads to 'loss of confidence'.
Why can't Key say this? Most likely because it was in personal conversation, so if it became a public spat, there would be no concrete evidence. Worth could deny it. That would lead to a lot of public messiness- including dredging up both men's record of, ahem, not being scrupulous with the truth.
Sometimes the simplest explanations are best.
dave – If that's true (and you're just guessing eh?) then Key was lying when he said he wouldn't tell us because it would be against the public interest to do so.
But a messy political situation is only something that Key would like to avoid. It's not a 'public interest' reason though.
Interfering with Dr Worth's ability to carry on a life after Parliament and his personal life generally does override public interest I'm afraid, PB. Read the cabinet manual which does set out the public interest/privacy tradeoff.
snoozer 12.2.1.1
Key has never claimed that he wasn't revealing the reason to protect Worth's privacy. He always claimed it would be against the public interest to say.
So there goes that argument Tim.
Pascal's bookie 12.2.1.1.1
He'll keep running it though. Honesty's not a strong point for timmeh.
Maynard J 12.2.1.1.1.1
PB, it would be better fot you to not know what Key's level of accountability is, and it would be better for you to not know what caused Key to lose confidence in a minister.
Or so someone is trying to tell you.
felix 12.2.1.1.1.2
TIMMEH!!!
Read it a few times now timmy. You're stretching.
Interfering with Dr Worth's ability to carry on a life after Parliament and his personal life generally does override public interest I'm afraid, PB.
is in fact a lie; but only because you state it as fact. It is of course, your "subjective opinion". For what that's worth.
gobsmacked 13
If information is made public, then people (the damn voters) compare and contrast. Can't have them doing that. Gotta keep those famous "principles" … flexible.
So if, for example, a Minister in a major portfolio (not Internal Library Filing, or whatever Worth did) gets jiggy with a kisser-and-teller and her twin sister on the table at 4 a.m. in the Viaduct, and then finds himself on the front pages, the media start asking "Is this Worse than Worth?"
And if said Minister happens to hold an electorate seat, and can't just be replaced by a party hack on the list, and so there's going to be a by-election, and the next Melissa Lee is very, very keen to stand … well, you get the picture. Some Ministers are much, much more equal than others.
John Key doesn't want to be asked each time if he's washed his hands. Sometimes he'd rather just wipe 'em on his trousers, and hope nobody notices. Consistency is something to loudly demand in opposition, and quietly dump in government.
There is a clear public interest in knowing the standard for Ministers. There is a self-serving power interest in not letting us know. It's pretty easy to decide which side you're on.
I think that hits it exactly, gobsmacked. Key was always lying when he said it was against the public interest to say. The real reason was he had set a low threshold for getting ministers sacked and he doesn't want to have to enforce that in the future.
He wanted a licence to be arbitrary and was willing to abuse the trust that is put in him by the 'public interest' standing orders to get it.
Draco T Bastard 14
If this is true then John Key has deliberately misled parliament and abused his position as PM.
Maggie 15
If the PM considered that the Cabinet Manual, The Privacy Act or the Official Information Act precluded him from telling why he lost confidence in Worth, then he should have said so. He hasn't.
Instead he has claimed that to reveal the reason is not in the public interest, which is a very different thing.
Key has a habit of making decisions on the hoof and then having to pull back from them. A recent example was when he told Pita Sharples it would be okay to go to Fiji so long as he went only on behalf of the Maori Party. Key then had to change that position after someone, almost certainly Murray McCully, chewed on his ear.
Another example was his constant changing of position on whether he would meet the first woman who complained against Worth.
Now he has made the decision he isn't going to reveal his reasons for dumping Worth because it would be embarrassing to do so. Since then he has been fishing around trying to come up with a plausible reason to justify that position.
In the old days, Rob Muldoon used to have a signed, undated, letter of resignation in his desk for every member of the Cabinet…
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Listen . . . do you smell something? « The Dim-Post : posted on 14 July 2009 at 7:30 am
Things that were neat this week « Life and Politics : posted on 15 July 2009 at 7:19 pm


text:
Blog / Country / The Katz Tapes
Merle Haggard (1999)
by Larry Katz · Published December 31, 2014 · Updated January 2, 2015
"…you've got these perfect people performing perfect music and it's perfectly boring to me."
At the end of the 1990s, Merle Haggard was one disgruntled country music legend. He was enduring the worst stretch of his career, his "lost decade." After topping the country charts a remarkable 38 times between 1966 and 1987, the hits had stopped coming. He switched labels from Epic to Curb in 1990, but the deal turned toxic. In 1999, "the working man's poet" was 62 years old and working as hard as ever, touring by bus and playing an endless string of one-nighters, including an April 18 stop at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium during one of his infrequent swings through New England.
Haggard had plenty to gripe about when we spoke and he did not hold back. Yet he sounded more wounded than angry: a noble outsider disappointed and hurt by the ways of the world, though not surprised by them.
A weekday morning, the second week of April, 1999
By phone from his home in Palo Cedro, California
Are you at home in Palo Cedro?
You got the old Mexican drawl there [laughs].
You haven't put out a new album in what seems an unusually long time for you. Do you have something in the works?
That's good to know that somebody's interested enough to notice. Yes, I do. We were under a contract to Curb and we got into a dispute, he and I. He [Mike Curb] wouldn't put my records out actually, is what it was. [Haggard claimed that Curb illegally had taken control of Haggard's back catalog.] And he just took a vindictive attitude and shut me down for several years. I had a couple of records ["1994" and "1996"], but they didn't have any covers on them. They look like tombstones.
Since that time, when I realized he wasn't going to do anything with my product, I just kinda went over in the corner and sat down and waited for my contract to be up. Now that it is up I had to cut some records that I felt were good enough to re-launch my career, I guess you could say. We're in the process of doing that. I've done three projects. In fact. we're in the midst of a gospel music project. [The 2001 album "Cabin in the Hills."] There are some new things I'm doing, and we're also re-releasing all the gospel music I've done over the years. I'm gonna do a new box set of that sort. [The gospel box has not yet appeared, at least as far as I can see after searching discographies listing many dozens of Haggard compilations.] And then I have a situation where we're going to do 61 remakes – which we've already done. They're going to come out on RCA in conjunction with a pay-per-view program that may be as much as three different evenings from Las Vegas, just like a big fight. And RCA plans to have those records in the bins all over the world and do a million dollars worth of advertising. So you're going to be hearing a lot about me, at least more than you have for awhile. [Haggard's next official release did not arrive until 2000, "If I Could Only Fly" on the indie label Anti-.] We have 61 songs to perform, 56 of them being hits from the past that we've re-recorded, including things like "Poncho and Lefty," things we deemed to be the best. I was fortunate during my hot period. I had 63 Top Two songs. A lot of them were Number Ones. I think Conway [Twitty] had a couple of more than I did and there's a couple of other people in the same bracket. But nobody had 63 Number Twos. [The 61 songs project also appears to have fallen through.]
CBS has done the unforgivable. They lost some of their masters. They came to me and asked if i would make 'em some new ones, I said, "Yeah, but I sure ain't gonna give 'em to ya. It's gonna cost you a lot of money. I'm just gonna lease 'em to you this time, I'm gonna keep the safeties." They lost things like "That's the Way Loves Go," "Poncho and Lefty." I don't know how in the world a record company loses masters. I'm sure they wouldn't approach me and offer to pay me to make new ones unless they had in fact lost 'em. They may be lost between walls of corporations or something. The Japanese bought so much, Columbia Pictures, CBS Records, some big publishing companies, I think they might be in some sort of state of confusion there. They don't know exactly what they got, who they owe [laughs]. We're auditing them at the current time and I'm gonna be auditing them for the rest of my life on account of this confusion.
I've just had a lot of bad luck over the past 10 years in getting product to the public. We fell out of the criteria with our age. Everybody probably thought I wasn't gonna live this long, but here I am. I'm still here. We still have crowds when we perform and I still got the best band in the country. Me included don't know what to think about it.
Do you feel alienated from what's going on in country music today, with all the hat acts and such?
Yeah, and I'm sure glad [laughs]. They don't play us on the radio, What they call the New Country. Let me be clear not to put down that sort of thing. Hey, if it works, more power to 'em. But it's not my bag. I don't understand what they're doing. I know everything's in tune, but I can't hear no melodies. It's not anything for me to criticize. We had so many good years of airplay – and they still play a Merle Haggard classic at times on the FM side, so there's nothing for me to do but be thankful. And I think if I were to grab a phenomenal song or something that I could make 'em play me.
If you think back historically with the performing arts, plays, films, music, if [ageism] had been the rule the amount of talent the public would have missed would have been enormous. Some people, musicians and singers especially –I mean Pavarotti is exactly the same age I am. There's nobody knocking him out of the saddle. [Luciano Pavarotti was born 18 months before Haggard, who was perhaps feeling his age: he'd turned 59 on April 6, shortly before this interview.]
This music they're making is for videos. I think that's what happened. The music is secondary. It's somewhat of a mini soap opera taking place. So you've got these perfect people performing perfect music and it's perfectly boring to me. If there's anything I hate it's perfection. Perfect has gotta be the worst thing of all when you're watching someone perform. Y'know, the guy who rides his bicycle across the high wire, if he don't almost fall it's really boring. Music just seems like it's so refined, so perfect. Everybody is using the same damn band. So I quit listening about 10 yrs ago. I still listen to the same old records I used to when I was a kid. And I'll be damned, I believe that Elvis is still the king [chuckles].
[Merle Haggard live in Las Vegas, 1999; skip to 3:00 for one of those charming, less-than-perfect moments.]
It's kind of ironic that all these soundalike male country singers that have supplanted you on radio so obviously try to sound like Merle Haggard.
It's absolutely the truth. Everytime I see one of 'em, meet one of 'em, I'm as cordial and respectful as I can be. I don't think they're in control. I don't think these people that studied me and Willie and George and Lefty and Cash, I don't think they're able to produce their own music. I think their hands are cuffed. Whereas when Johnny Cash walked into the studio – or walks in still yet – he'll be in charge. I don't think that's the case with some of these new kids. If you turn one of them loose you might find a Hank Williams or a Waylon Jennings if somebody let 'em be themselves. Let 'em try their own band. But they come to town down there and first thing they do is say, "Hey, you can't use your own band. We don't need those guys. Send 'em home, break their hearts and all that because we've got a session set up with The A Team." I think that's what's going on. Because the bottom line is money and there are people who believe that they can create and clone a Hank Williams. And that's what we got, it's not only in music, it's in films too. What else have we had except "Titanic"? And "The River Runs Through It," thats' a great film, Robert Redford. But with the amount of films that are going on you'd think you'd see a John Wayne walk out of that. Or that there'd be a Hank Williams coming along here. But I don't see none.
You're at a stage in your career where you get lots of honors and awards, but it's almost as if they'd rather praise you than play you on the radio.
It's a double-edged sword. That was the reason Mike Curb kept me on his label for 10 years – for my name. But he wouldn't let my music be heard. I don't care if you print this. It's the truth. Any way they can find to exploit Merle Haggard in this business, they do it. We do TV shows. We're not short of work. We're in demand, but…there are some honest roses coming my way, hero worship and all that, I'd be a fool not to see it. All I can do there is try to honor it, say the right things.
A few years ago [in 1994] you were the subject of two very different tribute albums that came out almost at the same time. What did you think of them?
Some were outlaws and some were conformists. One album ["Tulare Dust"] was an outlaw album and one album ["Mama's Hungry Eyes"] was a publisher's promotion [laughs]. On one, the love showed through. The other one, there was a lot of that too, but there again their hands were cuffed and they couldn't do it the way they wanted to, they had to do it according to the producers' directions. If there's anything I find unnecessary in this business it's a musical producer. If a guy that's singing a song doesn't know how to run his own session than maybe he ought to go back to selling cars. Producers are helpers. They ought to be working under the man whose name is on the record in big print. They ought to be settin' there saying, "What can I do?," watching for people playing out of tune, keeping people from runnin' up your back. But I don't think they ought to be telling people…
It's strange. A guy walks in with a talent, a guitar and songs he's written, and here's a guy who used to be a drummer who's never written a song in his life, James Stroud, sitting there because of who he knew, telling this guy with some talent how to make a record. So you wind up getting the same thing every time. And James Stroud is a friend of mine, I don't have nothing against him. He's just the first name that came to mind. But that's what you have going on down there.
You got young guys like Hank Williams [III], you know they're around, goddang, you know there's enough things to write about, there's enough horrifying subjects to come up with. But they won't play 'em on this format they got nowadays. If you write about anything off of the mainstream, thin subject matter they got going, they won't play it. They're afraid that people will look up from their computers. I've had people who are in charge of as many as 300 stations, the program director told me that. My God. That's the opposite of the way I was brought up. I don't understand that way of thinking. I thought music was meant to tease the emotions.
Did the outlaw tribute give you some hope for the future?
I heard it from the grapevine, I don't know if it's true, but that there are some real changes happening right now in New York, L.A. and Nashville. That this stuff we're talking about is all of a sudden not doing it no more. They're looking in all directions for answers. I think we're going to see something that's going to be more honest, more diverse. America is great at limiting diversity. We've only got two kinds of cows, red cows and black cows. Red chickens and white chickens. You go to Australia, they got all different kinds of cows and chickens. America seems to want everything to be in a category, in a box. They wanna put you in a little box so they can pull you up on the computer easy. If you don't fit in….you've got to market things that way. Everything's got to be boxed and properly stored or they won't buy it. That's what we're trying to do now to market all this music. I've got a lot of music to let go of the right way. I've got to make all the decisions because I don't trust anybody out there no more. I've got a couple of good attorneys and that's it.
[Fuzzy Owen, Merle Haggard and Lewis Talley. Owen, who would become Haggard's longtime manager, helped pioneer the Bakersfield Sound with his cousin, Talley. They started Tally Records and recorded Haggard's first sides in 1962.]
I've read that you were planning to revive the Tally label. Is that going to happen? [Haggard recorded his first hits for Bakersfield-based Tally in the early '60s.]
Well, I was going to do that, but there are a couple of grandkids sitting out there like frogs on a log waiting for me to do that so they can sue me. You understand? Lewis Talley [whose surname, in distinction to the label name, was spelled with an "e"] had grandkids, so I can't do that. So I have a new label, In Orbit, which is my own label. But I've got this deal with RCA, and a deal for the gospel music with people who are more familiar with selling records than I am. I'd rather let them do it than become a Garth Brooks, I don't want to do that. I don't want to run record companies or anything like that. [In Orbit appears to have existed only briefly, when Haggard recorded guitarist and longtime friend Freddy Powers in the early 2000s, though the resulting albums did not end up as In Orbit releases.]
Are you still touring as much as ever or are you starting to slow down?
Every year we talk about slowing down, but it never seems to happen. I have a wife [Theresa] sitting here, her question is why are we doing this? I don't really know. I guess it's what I do. I have a beautiful family, a young family, a six-year-old and a nine-year-old. I think I'm gonna homeschool 'em for the next couple of years and take them with me. Maybe by then I'll be too old to do it, but some way or another it seems like it would be sinful not to use what God's given me as long as I'm able.
Do you enjoy the travel or is it only the playing that makes it worthwhile?
I'd rather do anything then climb in the back of the bus. But you're right, once we make it to the bandstand, I get on the bandstand, I'm safe then. It's a great experience to be in the midst of that music, that good band, and have the love of the audience. The respect is obvious. It's a wonderful place to be, the bandstand for me, that's what makes it all worthwhile. Y'know, we don't make a lot of money. We've got enormous costs. But we make a living. We spend our life on the highway. Here I am with a second family and I'm talking about taking them on the road with me so I can see my wife and see my kids grow up.
I imagine you have a lot of pride in having the Strangers with you, one of the greatest bands ever.
Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's what makes the bandstand so inviting. To stand there with these guys that have taken a lifetime to locate. They draw each other. It's kind of like the Yankees, they don't draw any bad ball players. The Stangers, if you happen to hire a guy by mistake that's incapable or something, they'll eliminate him for you. He'll quit, because the fire will get too hot. It's not only a good band, it's a band with all kinds of experience, that can change in the middle of a stream. Y'know, I don't do any set sort of a show, it's off the cuff. That's the way the guys are capable of playing. We might stop in the middle of a song. I might start a song they've never heard. It won't be long before they're playing it right. The audience enjoys that. It's so different from the television and the music you're hearing nowadays. Our response has been tremendous. People really appreciate it. They're not stupid. They miss [this kind of music] and they crave it. Our tickets sales are proof. The age diversity is incredible. I walked off the bus and there was a black couple standing outside the bus. They had a little girl, her daddy holding her. This little girl said, "Is that the man that sings 'Big City?' What it showed me was just how powerful music is. That child didn't know who I was, didn't even ask my name. I walked over and they said, "We're here because she chose your tape. That's why we brought her. "
["The Bottle Let Me Down," live, 1968: Merle Haggard and the Strangers, with Norman Hamlet on steel guitar and Roy Nichols on guitar]
Tags: Fuzzy OwenJames StroudLewis TalleyMerle HaggardMike Curb
Curtis Mayfield (1996)
by Larry Katz · Published November 3, 2015
Next story Scotty Moore
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Class Notes for 1959
As in the past, Colby Eight members from the late '50s and early '60s gathered alumni weekend to entertain class dinners. Ed Tomey and Keeton Arnett represented the Class of '59 along with honorary class member Bob Marier '60. Sadly, this was the first time in 56 years that Keet, Bob, and Ed sang without Jay Whitman. It was hard holding back the tears. Chris Whitman's presence was strengthening. Earlier the Eight led assembled classes in "Hail, Colby, Hail," dedicating it to Jay. They miss him. * In June the N.H. Center for Nonprofits presented Ed Tomey the inaugural Board Excellence Award for outstanding contributions to the state's nonprofit sector. The award was based on 35 years of helping nonprofit boards and creating the Board Self-Assessment model. Ed and wife Maich Gardner took an 18-day trip through Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Rocky Mountain national parks in July. Ed had traveled through the Rockies on a motorcycle in 1974, the year Maich and he started dating, and he promised they would go to the mountains together someday. They never imagined they would be so awestruck. * Jim McIntosh started his 47th year as a professor at Lehigh. While he could retire at 76, he enjoys what he's doing. Jim has had to give up noontime hoops but works out a couple of times a week. In addition to usual faculty duties, he's faculty athletic representative to the NCAA and carries the university mace in academic processions, protecting the president, who marches behind him. The position allowed him to meet the Dali Lama. Sally Phelan McIntosh also works out at the Lehigh gym, also at 6:30 a.m. Retired after more than two decades in Lehigh's library, she gardens and is active in charitable groups and politics. * Vera and Dick Morrison spent most of the summer at their home overlooking Penobscot Bay. In February they visited a friend in Key West and stopped in Ft. Lauderdale for lunch with Bob Keltie and his friend, Carol. * Bob Cockburn's edition of Distant Summers: P.G. Downes' Journals of Travels in Northern Canada, 1936-1947, has been published by McGahern Stewart. * Elaine Healy '62 and Paul Reichert found a house in Westmoreland, N.H., and are fixing it up so they and their son, John, and his wife can move in. Paul finds the gravity pull very strong in N.H.—it's a lot harder climbing ladders and getting up after pulling carpeting. They had a great time at Elaine's 50th reunion. * Wendy Ihlstrom '61 and Bob Nielsen had a busy summer celebrating Bob's 75th birthday. Their children and their families came from Va. and Ariz., most staying for two to four weeks. They were exhausted! * Liz Hay Henderson lost her son, Stephen Hay Wilkinson, in June to hemochromatosis, the hereditary disease that Liz has. He lived with Liz and her husband for six years, and his disease was very different from Liz's. She had no idea what was making him sick until about a week before he died. Now she is urging everyone to get regular blood testing for ferritin. Liz is making it and doing all she can to keep doing so. * Mary Jane and Tony Ruvo spent a week at Tanglewood and time on Hilton Head. They celebrated milestones this year—75th birthday and 50th wedding anniversary. * Bill and Edo Foresman Donaldson started their 13th year of full-time RVing. They continue to marvel at this country's sights and love meeting friends and spending summers with family in Va., Conn., or Mass. As long as their health holds out, they have no end date. Hiking in the desert southwest tops their list! * Greg MacArthur is president of Viewpoint 2000, a corporate strategy and consulting company primarily in teleconferencing. He's a consultant to videoconferencing companies and has written articles for Business Week, Forbes, and Inside Wall Street. Thanks to all for writing.
Write to the Editor


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New Treatment Options for Eating Disorders, Addictions Offered for Youth, Young Adults
Plainville, CT (July 29, 2015) - Wheeler Clinic has launched a new program to provide in-home and outpatient behavioral health therapy for Anthem-enrolled children, adolescents, and young adults at risk of or diagnosed with eating disorders or addictions.
Wheeler's In-Home Behavioral Health Services - Eating Disorder Program provides a local, in-home alternative to residential eating disorder treatment centers. The program centers on an innovative, evidence-based program for adolescents and young adults, ages 10-24, either at early stages of an emerging anorexia nervosa disorder or diagnosed with anorexia nervosa disorder, including those with accompanying behavioral and emotional needs.
"The program provides an effective approach to intervention at the earliest stages and achieves significantly better treatment outcomes for youth diagnosed with eating disorders than treatment as usual," said Kim Nelson, LCSW, Vice President of Outpatient and Community-based Services at Wheeler.
The continuum of substance abuse intervention and treatment services offered by Wheeler has also been expanded to serve Anthem-enrolled families with children and youth ages 9-18 who may be at-risk for or who have substance abuse issues. Wheeler's array of addiction services offer a flexible combination of widely-recognized in-home and outpatient programs, as well as new family intervention services that provide parents/family members with information and strategies on substance abuse and parenting adolescents and encourages age-appropriate parenting skills including monitoring, limit setting, consequences, and motivating youth to get into treatment.
"Wheeler's noteworthy outcomes, demonstrated capacity to deliver quality, community-based services and extensive experience serving families across Connecticut made this an ideal collaboration," said Jill Rubin Hummel, president Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. "Our projects with Wheeler have been driven by a shared spirit of innovation and a commitment to increasing access to behavioral health services to those most in need throughout the state. We are very excited about supporting Wheeler's eating disorder and substance use treatment programs as they provide new, evidence-based treatment options for our members, delivered in the home setting, where they are likely to be of
most benefit."
The expanded service array addresses gaps families often experience when concerns arise about a youth or young adult. The programs build on the success of another in-home Wheeler service launched in 2013, Intensive In-home Behavioral Services (IIBHS), for Anthem members between the ages 3 and 24 who are at high risk or have a history of emergency department, inpatient and/or residential admissions. The IIBHS program has demonstrated significant reductions in both inpatient utilization and emergency department visits, with a 24 percent lower rate of inpatient admissions in comparison to a control group.
"Our successful collaboration with Anthem on in-home services for behavioral health shows us that we can meet the needs of consumers and families through innovative looks at traditional assumptions about how and where care is provided," said Susan Walkama, LCSW, president and CEO of Wheeler Clinic.
"The evidence is clear that these treatment modalities work and offer effective options and hope to Connecticut families. We believe these services are a valuable addition to Anthem's continuum of covered resources."
These new approaches to care are part of Wheeler's Centers of Excellence, which provide cutting-edge clinical innovation through the use of evidence-based practices, offer world-class customer care, and provide easy access to a comprehensive array of treatment and recovery services that are culturally, gender-, and age-responsive. The Centers of Excellence programs partner with youth and families to yield excellent outcomes and high client satisfaction.
Wheeler Clinic
Wheeler provides comprehensive solutions that address complex health issues, providing individuals, families and communities with accessible, innovative care that encourages recovery, health and growth at all stages of life. Our integrated approach to primary and behavioral health, education and recovery creates measurable results, positive outcomes and hopeful tomorrows for more than 30,000 individuals across Connecticut each year. Learn more: www.wheelerclinic.org.
Joanne Morrison
Associate Director of Communications
Plainville, CT 06062
www.wheelerclinic.org


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May 21, 2018 Lynda Filler Novels and Novellas
More Alive Than Ever
This is a very special review and I wanted to share it. Thank you Gabriel Constans for your very kind words.
Gabriel Constans
Love: The Beat Goes On by Lynda Filler.
Reviewed by Gabriel Constans.
Her life was flying, her heart was dying. Lynda Filler had a new job, loving family, and an almost too good to be true newly acquainted man she called "my cowboy". There'd been for-warnings, "messages", shortness of breath, but nothing really stopped her in her tracks (literally) until 2008 when she is told she has a form of congestive heart failure called dilated cardiomyopathy. Doctors told her it was a death sentence and she must "get your affairs in order". Nine years later, after driving alone for many months between Canada and Mexico, visiting a shaman in Sedona, New Mexico, and realizing, "I was the change that needed to happen in my healing", she wrote Love: The Beat Goes On. She's more alive than ever.
I worked with hospice and bereavement programs for many years. Most people…
Stephen King-Love What You Do
You've got to be kidding me!


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Posted by Marc Soskin on Apr 9, 2012
League of Legends: Intensity by Design (Part 2 of 2)
Categories: Free To Play, Multiplayer, Opinion, PC Gaming, Platform, Valve | 0 comments
Click here to read Part 1
Why does League of Legends make people so mad?
This was the question we were starting answer in the first part of this article. In it, we compared League of Legends to a game with similar team sizes, long play sessions and a critical emphasis on teamwork – Left 4 Dead 2. As a result, we've already found that League of Legends has several prominent aspects to its design that encourage competition and therefore more intense emotions. In this second part of the article, we'll take a look at these two games from the opposite angle – what does Left 4 Dead 2 do to encourage more cooperation and therefore less intense emotions?
Rewards for Teamwork
One of the things that Left 4 Dead 2 does constantly is reward the player for teamwork. Before I explain how it does that, let me first elaborate on what exactly I mean when I say "rewards." Rewards in games are not as straightforward as points, unlockable content or health items. A reward is anything that is intentionally gratifying to the player. Sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto are an excellent example. You don't get anything helpful by causing random chaos, but the cartoony carnage that ensues is gratifying enough to be its own reward.
In League of Legends, most in-game rewards are centered around destroying the enemy. For example, every time you kill an enemy, you get the statistical rewards we mentioned earlier like gold and experience, but you also get something less tangible.
"You have slain an enemy!"
Hearing the announcer say that is such a gratifying sound that it's almost enough of a reward on its own, but to make it even more satisfying, a huge announcement appears in the middle of the screen telling everyone present that you just smoked somebody. Nice! If you string several kills together, you'll hear the announcer cry, "Double kill!" or "Triple kill!" She even says it with more enthusiasm as the number goes up, peaking at the elusive, "Penta kill!" The other time similar rewards are received are when you destroy enemy buildings, which helps your team claim victory. As you might expect, announcements that carry a twinge of disappointment occur when a teammate is killed, allied structure is destroyed, or you yourself meet your doom. Other less obvious rewards come from things like comedic death animations, the light clinking sound that occurs whenever you receive gold from killing creeps, or even just the sound of a successfully aimed skill-shot – bless your Javelin Toss, Nidalee.
Left 4 Dead 2 has these kinds of rewards as well. When you kill a special infected – which in Versus mode is an enemy player – a game-wide announcement appears on the side of the screen letting everyone know, accompanied by a satisfying sound effect. Another reward for kills is the display of ragdoll physics that follows. Watching a dead hunter twirl past your head like a Frisbee simply doesn't get old. The game's characters sometimes even compliment you on your shooting. So if Left 4 Dead 2 rewards the same kinds of actions as League of Legends, what's the difference? The difference is that it expands these rewards to include actions that demonstrate teamwork. For example, every time someone protects a teammate by shooting a nearby infected that's attacking them, a game-wide announcement is made for that as well saying, "Player 1 protected Player 2," again accompanied by a satisfying sound effect. When someone kills a special infected that has a teammate captured a game-wide announcement is made saying "Player 1 saved Player 2." Now here's where things get subtle. For the player that has been saved, that message saying "Player 1 saved you," is bright blue and appears on the middle of the screen next to a large icon of a shield if the player who saved you isn't visible or if you're recovering from an attack. If they are visible and you've recovered from the attack, that message and icon move to hover over the player that saved you. The same thing occurs for the player who did the saving, with the roles reversed so the message says "You saved Player 2," and the message hovers over the player you saved. Notice that the action that provided the most direct help to a teammate was emphasized the most.
Similar emphasis is placed on players reviving or healing their teammates. When you're reviving or healing a teammate, a meter appears on the middle of your screen labeled "Reviving Teammate" or "Healing Teammate". When you're healing someone, it tells you your target by saying "Target: Player 1." However, for the player being healed or revived, that bit of text changes from "Target" to "Your Savior." When the meter is filled and the healing or reviving action is complete, the "saved" announcement and sound effect occur. However, in addition the characters thank each other as an added reward. Given the focus of the Left 4 Dead franchise on its characters, the significance of this should not be overlooked. Characters also thank each other when given minor healing items like pills or adrenaline shots. As you might expect, this action is also accompanied by a global announcement and positive sound effect. In summation, players are constantly rewarded for actions that help their teammates just as much as they are for killing enemies, sometimes even more so.
Using these almost Pavlovian techniques, Left 4 Dead 2 is constantly urging its players to cooperate rather than compete. As a result, teams are less likely to turn on each other during a match, as everyone feels a shared responsibility for what occurs. When someone goes down, it's not always their own fault, as the game has constantly reminded players that they should protect their teammates. When someone isn't revived in time and bleeds out, everyone feels responsible for similar reasons. The player that died feels bad for dying, but everyone else also feels bad for not reviving them. In this way, the game creates a cooperative environment where both defeat and victory are shared more equally, rather than a competitive environment where blame and credit tend to go to individuals.
Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu was known for – among other things – having an unusual focus around food and drink in his movies. Important conversations between characters often occur over meals or when sharing a quiet drink together. The theory behind this is that mealtime signifies a moment of recovery. It is a small window of calm where people can relax and let their vulnerabilities show without repercussions as they recuperate from the daily grind of their lives. According to Ozu, there is a sense of safety in eating. You don't have to worry about showing weakness, and the people you eat with become the people you trust. Such a theory could, perhaps, explain why most dates include a meal. In Left 4 Dead 2, teammates do not share a meal together, but there are many moments that echo what the meal signifies in an Ozu film. As a result, it provides the players with many opportunities to bond as a team.
Although both League of Legends and Left 4 Dead 2 have very long play sessions, Left 4 Dead 2 is broken up into segments. These segments start and end in areas called Safe Rooms. As the name implies, the enemy team cannot spawn in them and heavy doors prevent AI controlled infected from breaking in. The Safe Room at the beginning of a level is truly a place of recovery. You take a moment to heal your wounds, restock your supplies and just prepare yourself mentally for the round ahead. It should be noted that in Versus mode – as opposed to the single player or cooperative modes – players always start at full health, so there's no need to heal. Even so, just having that moment where you truly don't have a worry in world is a very relaxing feeling. I found it wasn't uncommon for even teams of total strangers to just take their time and chat with their team a little before putting their game faces on and getting the competition underway.
In addition, Left 4 Dead 2 has a lot of moments over the course of a level that evoke a similar feeling. Often, there will be rooms where it's difficult or impossible for the infected team to attack, such as a trailer on the second level of The Parish. In these lesser imitations of a Safe Room, players can again take a moment to relax and lick their wounds while figuring out how they're going to proceed. As with the Safe Rooms, casual conversation often finds its way into these moments and these are the times when teammates tend to get to know each other a little better.
League of Legends doesn't really have an equivalent to Ozu's meals or Left 4 Dead 2's Safe Rooms. In the chat before the game, a team will be focused on their composition as I explained previously and once the game has actually started there's always something to worry about. It takes about two minutes for creeps to spawn when playing a traditional League of Legends game on Summoner's Rift, but even then players don't have much time to lollygag. Setting up protection for your jungler or going after a level one gank will require immediate attention. Sometimes, teams will be content to leave each other alone, which provides about a minute of relaxation. Once that's over, though, forget about it. Time wasted is time better spent on farming creeps or reacting to an enemy push. The only real break players have is when they teleport back to heal or purchase an item, or are killed. Obviously, the latter is not a good thing, and the former is something done alone and kept to a minimum whenever possible. The only time a team can really relax as a together is when they're absolutely obliterating their opponents, and that's really not the same.
Even in that one minute of peace I mentioned earlier, though, League of Legends has another handicap when compared to Left 4 Dead 2 – it lacks in-game voice chat. It's a lot harder to have any sort of casual conversation when you have to willingly remove your ability to play the game effectively to reply to someone. Because of this, a lot of in-game communication is done through pinging, which is when a player temporarily marks a point on the their team's mini-map. This sometimes restricts players to saying little more than "GL HF" when a game starts and "GG" when it ends. Without moments of safety and recovery, team bonding is difficult enough in League of Legends, but without a voice chat, the likelihood of a team of strangers gaining a sense of comradery becomes even slimmer. In fact, players almost never even refer to each other by their screen names while playing. Instead, they refer to each other by the names of the characters they're playing. One could make a strong argument that it's just part of the game's jargon at this point, but the sense of detachment that it symbolizes shouldn't be ignored.
So, at the end of the day, why does League of Legends make people so mad? Clearly, it's not a simple answer. A myriad of factors can be listed, but the gist of it is that League of Legends encourages more competition than cooperation. It's not just the fact that the game takes a long time to play and has small teams that need excellent teamwork to succeed. Left 4 Dead 2 is evidence of that, as it has those traits as well, but creates less aggression and intensity by encouraging cooperation over competition.
I hope that this pair of articles has explained that adequately, because it's important to understand both as an outsider looking in at the League of Legends community and as a player within the community itself. When a player gets mad during a bad round of League of Legends, nothing's wrong with them. They're not an angry person. League of Legends is just built to bring out that kind of emotion. It's neither a bad thing nor a good thing. It's simply intense by design.