Educating Helen

I’ve just listened to a second radio interview where Helen Clark refers to “right wing blogs” incorrectly. She earlier called Fran O’Sullivan’s NZ herald column a blog and in this interview also refers to (presumably) Matthew Hooton’s SST column as a “right wing blog”.

Can someone on her staff please explain to her that she looks foolish everytime she does this. It’s like calling a newspaper a TV broadcast. Here’s the three things you need to make sure she understands:

1) A blog, short for web log, is not a newspaper column (even if there is an online version of it). It is an opinion peice published on the Internet, using blog software.

2) Not all blogs are right wing.

3) Not all publications which criticise her, are blogs.

She seems to have been told these “right wing blogs” are a bad thing, so whenever something criticises her, she is now calling it a “right wing blog” to undermine it.

This is as silly as if Don dismissed a NZ Herald newspaper column attacking him as a “socialist propoganda broadcast”.

UPDATE: Russell Brown has also noticed the PM’s confusions with bloggers. He notes she tends to regard the phrase “right wing blogger” as the worst insult she could reach for.

I have to say that the thought we annoy her so much, so she now uses us an a term of insult gives me a warm happy feeling that could only be exceeded if Scarlett Johansen wanted me as a love slave.

Perhaps a t-shirt is needed – “I am a right wing blogger and proud of it” 🙂