There are times I feel we should all be wearing compulsory life-jackets to avoid mass drowning given the amount of government-inspired wetness in the community. Furthermore, it’s getting worse.
The latest saturation outburst is the Sign Language Awareness week replacing Maori Wonderfulness week.
A manifestation of this absurdity, unsurprisingly to be kicked off by Ashley Bloomfield, is a short video to be made in which government and so-called business leaders film a video in sign language. So called “Business Leaders” are invariably corporate wets who have never started a business in their lives. One thing’s certain; that will mean ruination for their children for the humiliation they’ll suffer.
As I’ve written before, an ounce of common-sense would tell politicians that a gesticulating contortionist standing beside him or her, writhing and face-pulling, is both a huge distraction to viewers and a poor replacement for captions.
I’m deaf in certain circumstances, notably in heavily upholstered rooms. My over-indulgent large personal city office has two sets of couches and if, as occurs weekly, a diverse crowd assembles at day’s end, altruistically assisting the wine-growing industry, for which public service I’ve never been appropriately honoured, I slip into one ear my invisible tailor-made hearing aid. Otherwise, I get by OK.
That said, deafness can be an advantage. Consider this. A few years back, lying beside the swimming pool on a hot summer’s afternoon with an adult daughter, a visiting ex-wife over from Australia and my partner, the three launched into me for not getting a hearing aid, stressing (rightly) what a monstrous nuisance it is for everyone else. So I succumbed and agreed to do so the following week.
Then news came of another earthquake in Christchurch so in due course, back inside we turned on the 6pm news.
Three different Christchurch women were interviewed before we could take no more and turned it off.
Each launched a massive assault on the English language. It was a situation that cried out for a machine-gunning response. I’m damned sure no-one spoke like they did back in my childhood state house days.
So my hearing aid appointment had to wait another 3 years before I finally acted.
Now machine guns have been banned one can only wonder how many TV screens have in lieu, had books and ornaments etc hurled at them when say Jacinda appears with one of these clowns contorting themselves beside her.
The ultimate wonderful send-up of this nonsense occurred 7 years back at Nelson Mandela’s funeral when a new dignitary in the lengthy line duly took the microphone to address mourners. An official standing on the stage, plainly with a sense of humour, launched into a gesticulating sign-language performance. It was subsequently revealed he was making it up, but no matter as it’s statistically improbable that anyone in the audience was tone deaf anyway.
Of our main political party leaders, when offered a television interview opportunity and asked would they like a sign-language contortionist beside them, how many would agree?
Obviously Jacinda who has form. Judith? I’m not sure, ACT’s David Seymour I suspect probably not, the Green’s Shaw would agree to a whole team of them and only Winston would have the guts to tell them to stick it.
Finally, Garrick Tremain has as always cleverly poked fun at this nonsense with his latest cartoon below.
9 Comments
According to the New Zealand Sign Language [NZSL] Board (of course there’s a board) website: “There are approximately 11,000 deaf people who use NZSL as their primary form of communication and approximately 20,000 people in total who use NZSL.” That is between 0.002% and 0.004% of the 5M NZ population. I can only guess that the additional 9,000 non-deaf people are relatives or friends of deaf sign language gesticulators. https://www.odi.govt.nz/nzsl/about
Ardern, never requires a sign language contortionist as she more than adequately does the job herself.
Ardern, spends so much time enunciating with such condescension in her tone when addressing all 5 million of us as we sit cross legged on the mat that frankly I find the contortionists far easier to deal with.
Liked your reference to the ‘corporate wets’. The real talent are innovators and founders – not ladder climbers.
Subtitles would also mean you could watch with the sound off and avoid the painful emoting and histrionics we are usually assaulted with.
of the 11,000 people in NZ who use sign language. How many CANT READ!!
Do away with the flalying arms and put captions up.
Then hard of hearing, like me, Sir Bob and probably hundreds of thousands througout the country can READ.
I watch a number of overseas shows that use automated caption software.
So stop being woke and use commonsense and address the aging, interested deaf pricks!!
use effing captions.
Agreed Bob but we’re not throwing books & ornaments at TV screens due to the sign language contortionist. In our household – and I suspect in many more homes across New Zealand (sorry aotearoa) TV’s have met their demise over the past few months due to the sight of the gesticulating, nodding, frowning, smiling person telling me, yet again, to be kind, to wash my hands, to stay in my bubble and that I was apparently part of some team of 5 million et al. The final moment for our expensive big-screen television actually arrived on the day when it was announced at 1pm from the ‘Pulpit Of Truth’, that we had to put teddy bears in our windows for Christs sake! As you say, the ‘wetness’ is such nowadays that I’d suggest we should forget the bloody facemasks & simply just don life jackets when stepping out of our front doors.
Sir Bob you make laugh.
I had an overseas strandie with me during the first lockdown. A very anti PC individual we used to laugh everyday during the pulpit speeches at the antics for such a small percentage of the population. The deaf can read can’t they?
A moving scroll surely does the job at a 100th of the cost or even better there is Stuff News.
The insanity gets worse daily. All designed to break the will of the majority who think it is claptrap I’m sure.
Thanks for the laugh though.
I was watch BBC news in the wee small hours one morning this week, ( as you do ) and here was the Northern Ireland health Minister expounding her Covid-19 views, and here was not one but TWO sign language contortionists beating up the air, one no doubt for English, and the other probably for the Gaelic version. !!