Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits sunlive.co.nz

Hands up, who doesn't bother watching TVNZ's breakfast show anymore?
We don't care who Paul Henry offends, he is damned good television and the country is the worse for his departure.

Nationally, the Paul Henry saga has been interesting. Actually, more than interesting. Riveting. Here's a guy who is the most popular media personality in the country, saying stuff that a large proportion of the population agree with, yet he's lambasted for off-the-cuff comments.
Does that make most of us racist? Probably, in the eyes of the PC-crazed zealots out there.
Okay, so he's a shoot from the lip media cowboy. So?
Here at RR, we don't think the Dikshit comments were racist. Paul Henry made fun of the sound of the person's name. If he'd poked fun at any other potentially silly name, such as Poppycock, Crapp, Schizenhousen (Jack Shizenhousen has his own Facebook page) or any number of others, it wouldn't have been because of that person's origins, but more specifically the absurdity, in English, of their name. Childish, maybe, but racist? I doubt it.

Chat mode
The comment about Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand can certainly be perceived as racist, although when you see it in context, it really is an off-the-cuff comment more intended to try to stir up John Key from his seemingly always-confident and relaxed position. I really don't believe it was anything more than Henry thinking aloud, and in chat mode.
He's just a bit of a cowboy, a little outspoken, and just happened to pick on the wrong Indian.
And if Sir Anand is a Kiwi, how could Indians be offended?
It was certainly no more racist than some of the tripe we've heard dribbling out of Hone Harawira's gob over the years. Yet Harawira's not been given any marching orders. He's still roaming around like a loose cannon, dividing the country whenever possible with the most entrenched racist bull you could ever imagine.

Hot property
Anyway, Henry's breakfast TV fate seems to be sealed, but I bet he's got something lined up. He'd be hot property in the market right now, and really was rather wasted on morning TV. Let's just hope he's not being lured over the ditch by big salaries and big audiences, because he'd cream it there, and I doubt we'd ever be lucky enough to see him back.
Moral of the story, though, is that the PC fanatics run the country. The rest of us quietly get railroaded. We've been somehow programmed to be overloaded with guilt and inflicted with other people's standards.
Maybe it's the tall poppy nonsense; who knows.
But one thing's for sure. If you're a minority group or race you can say what you like. But if you're an average white male, give up now. THEY will get you.
Predictably the Indians are just as bad as Paul Henry, with members of that community reportedly outraged by who won the Miss India-NZ competition. She is pale in complexion and was accused of not looking Indian enough to win.

Thinking out loud
Meanwhile, the lovely Andi Brotherston, the PR face of TVNZ, also managed to put her foot in it, telling a media source that Henry was ‘prepared to say the things we quietly think, but are scared to say out aloud'.
(Oddly, that's something I get told about RR every week.)
Andi, of course, used to work here in Tauranga, in radio, and my most enduring memory is of her rocking in late to a Lion Breweries-hosted beer tasting session, and raising the ire of the entire room by announcing (without having sipped a brew) words to the effect that the whole room was a bunch of pissheads talking nonsense because, ‘all beer tastes the same'.
There was mild uproar, of course. Well, about as uproarish as you can get from a crowd which has sampled a few dozen ales.
Anyway, back to her statement.
She soon realised that we're not allowed to think those things, that it was a dumb statement, and offered to resign. Crikey, I thought, we're getting a bit dramatic here.
Anyway, Andi's still there.
It goes to show that you can't really say what you really think. You have to say what the ferocious PC minority think you should think.
Are we just going to roll over and accept that?