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Lyndon Hood - "sporadic" blogger, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Now, Aaron.

If you're not too busy quoting other bloggers without linking to them or being unelected or something, I'd like a word.

I wouldn't normally be offended (and I certainly wouldn't be surprised) by a right-wing ideologue sneering at somebody who disagrees with him. Especially when said ideologue's name is written in such big letters at the top of their blog.

And yet...

Why are you so angry Aaron? Is Rodney Hide your momma, that you rage so when I diss him? Is that why you were googling alternate spellings of his surname?

I can't deny that I did spell His name in vain. Normally I would care. I was, for example, mortified to realise that, referring in a post to the belief that students' spelling ability is not as good as it used to be, I put the apostrophe in the wrong place.

But it's Rodney Hide and I don't care. I would have made up a spelling for his first name as well if it had occurred to me. Rodneyweiler. That would have been pretty funny.

Perhaps I just wanted to use a joke other than the one that no doubt plagued his childhood but still works admirably ("It's Rodney! Hide!","You can't run, because you're Rodney Hide!").

At any rate, somebody who managed to add no less than ten characters (a p p o i n t e d space) when quoting the personal description in my title line is in no position to cast stones.

By the way, do you actually know what the word 'dramaturg' means?

I admit that it's ACT's economic and social policies that really get on my wick - the fact that one of you occasionally says something sensible about human rights (other than property rights) is just the icing on the razor blade.

Now, by the end of that my little dialogue I was actually talking about the party generally. For instance, I'm aware that Stephen Franks may be one of the very, very few MPs who actually care about freedom of speech. Which is why his response to the flag-burning issue was so striking. And that's what I was thinking of.

I find that ACT's stated policy on cannabis reform is reasonably liberal and Mr Hide is 'strongly supportive' but their actions have yet to earn them a matching reputation. And really, for a party whose overriding principles are freedom of choice and personal responsibility, a reasonable drug policy is well, for pussies. They should be working actively to legalise them all! Let the invisible hand sort it out!

You address neither my main point (the hypocrisy of ACT's particular solution to the Awatere-Huata Question) or, I note, my unsupported general aspersion of Deborah Coddington.

And then, Aaron, you called me names. Though it is the most misunderstood of the seven words they never used to able to say on American radio, it's word that I last used in anger to characterise David Irving. Sure, I called him a cast-iron tit, but I object being placed in the same category.

Anyway, Aaron (if that's your real name), you wrote a post to sneer at me and you'll no doubt describe me as whinging now. So we're even now, right? I promise that, should we ever meet, I won't try to nationalise you. Oh, except...

It was a joke, Aaron.

You know what a joke is, right?

Right?