Precious Petals Justly Rebuked

The Clap-track Brigade

Critics of Judith Collins and David Wong-Tung's social media should get a sense of humour

Barry Soper
NZ Herald

We are all running the risk of losing our sense of humour (well maybe not all, but some of us).

To describe posts on Facebook by Judith Collins' husband David Wong-Tung as 'aggressive misogyny', as some have done, is simply ridiculous.  The Nats are making good use of humour on the platform with what they are calling the National Party's Meme Working Group.

The fiercely private Wong-Tung has been re-posting some of them on his personal Facebook site, like the one where they have tinted the Prime Minister's face green, making her look like the Marvel comic character The Incredible Hulk, followed by one calling her The Incredible Sulk with a caption saying: "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry."

That of course was a play on her telling us she was indeed uncharacteristically angry over a call-out by the Government's Covid team telling everyone in South and West Auckland to have a Covid test, regardless of whether they had symptoms.  If you had been waiting in your car for several hours waiting for a test you could be forgiven to being angry - particularly when you discovered the message should never have been sent.

Collins handled her husband of more than 40 years' Facebook posts the way they should have been handled saying she's never been able to get him to do anything she tells him to do.
  She says Wong-Tung gets sick of people having a go at both of them but it's up to him how he responds. Collins says if anyone has got the secret for how to control a 64-year-old man who used to play a lot of rugby and was a policeman then they should let her know.  He's no sexist, she protests, he's married to her!

And before everyone gets carried away, they should reflect on Jacinda Ardern's partner Clarke Gayford - who hasn't exactly been a wilting violet when it comes to defending her and indeed himself.  Before she became the Prime Minister, the fishing show host compared a Herald columnist as a bottom feeding fish for her criticism of him for trading on her image.  Ardern rightly laughed at the time saying that she wasn't about start editing her partner's social media comments.

We live in an ultra sensitive society where perceived transgressions are far too easily labelled by keyboard warriors as misogynistic, racist and bullying. They are given far too much credence and for that reason maybe the partners of political leaders should stay out of the limelight.

Either that, or for goodness sake, laugh along with the rest of us.