Cactus Kate on Deborah Hill-Cone

Cactus Kate has done a lengthy blog post on the versatile Deborah Hill-Cone. I won’t be doing it justice by extracting just a few quotes, so make sure you read the whole thing.

But some extracts worth highlighting:

This was the first offering of Hill Cone’s I had been able to read for quite some time. It disturbed me. It was quite clearly the most obvious attempt at flirting with not women but the opposite sex in the recent history of New Zealand girlie columnists. It was cheap and nasty and absolute and total girlie crap. She mentioned several times that the girl crush was NOT a lesbian thing aimed at men. Which of course only makes them think it is. It crossed a line I will never travel in my columns. I will never play the “is she possibly bisexual in my dreams” card. It’s too mean.

Of course I immediately deeply admired its brilliance.

Forget girl crushes it seems every man I know has had or does have a crush on Deborah Hill Cone.

As I have explained to many who question Hill Cone’s transformation from technical media pin-up girl to trash media whore, it’s actually rather hard to write and act like a girlie girl. In order to stoop to depths required to write a girlie girl piece you must remove from your head pretty much everything you have been taught about being taken seriously. It’s the closest that writers get to be actors. We get to play the stupid girl for a change.

There is a collective name for those of us categorised as such and we are called the “thinking man’s pussy”. I did not invent this, I have had it explained to me by men who find it a deeply attractive quality. In order to be TMP you must be able to on demand destroy those who are so stupid that they actually think you are stupid. You must also be able to switch back and forward between girlie column airhead and shit kicking political or economic analyst with valued and clearly expressed opinions.

I shall have to arrange for Ms Cactus and Ms Hill-Cone to meet up at some stage I think!