“Great news, people – it looks like I won’t have to wave my undies.”
Alf remembers the potty-mouthed Pam Corkery (and not too fondly) from the days when she was a Member of Parliament for the Anderton Mob and rejoiced when she gave it away to go back to broadcasting.
She should have stuck to broadcasting and not taken another crack at politicking as press secretary for the Internet Party’s leader, Laila Harre.
She was an Alliance list MP and a colleague of Harre back in those days for just one term, from 1996 to 1999. Then she quit.
We must suppose the only politicians with whom she became acquainted during those three years were greenies and pinkos, because – as the Herald reminds us today:
In her 1999 book, Pam’s Political Confessions, she said, “Politicians are, by and large, far more self-deluding, devious, bloated, insecure, egocentric w****** than I had feared.”
She certainly did not exchange pleasantries with Alf at that time, to find there are politicians who do not meet her disparaging description.
The Herald happened to recall how Pam portrays politicians in a report on her performance at Kim Dotcom’s Internet Party campaign launch.
During the proceedings Dotcom made a speech in which he recalled his antics as a 19-year-old. He had hacked the German credit rating system, he said, because he wanted to ruin the German Prime Minister’s credit rating, and he hacked in to NASA to find out if aliens existed.
Alf presumes he wanted to ruin the German Chancellor and that he was not referring to Herr Hitler, who happens to have been a very disagreeable person, although whoever it was (as Dotcom said) “I didn’t like the guy”.
By his account:
“And then I added that I also didn’t like John Key. But it was not in reference to the [Whale Oil] hacking. It was just for my dislike of another politician.”
Dotcom told Radio New Zealand he wanted to be “crystal clear” about the Whale Oil allegations.
“I have nothing to do with the hacking of Whale Oil, I’m not behind Whale Dump. I have issued a press release some days ago about that and I can’t believe that these allegations are still live.”
But we need not dwell too much – not for now – on Dotcom and who he has hacked and who he has not hacked.
This is about Pam Corkery, who has admitted she was upset about her actions following something described as an ugly spat outside the Internet Mana Party’s campaign launch in Auckland yesterday.
“I’m very embarrassed,” she told the Herald this morning.
The former MP and broadcaster politely refused to comment further.
“I don’t comment – I’m a press secretary. I don’t care how you angle it, I just don’t do that (comment) and I’m very embarrassed.”
Alf is astonished by her demonstrating she is able to shut up and not comment.
That’s not the Pam Corkery with whom he is familiar (in a reputational way, he hastens to explain).
She should have exercised this talent in tact yesterday when she gave the media an earful because they wanted to know much, much more about Dotcom’s hacking prowesss and how it might be used in this country against a Prime Minister he does not much like.
Ms Corkery told reporters, who wanted to speak to the party founder about his admissions of hacking, to “just piss off”.
“We’ve talked about jobs today and people living in poverty. You want to interview Kim, who did say no interviews, about a 19-year-old story,” she said.
“You work in news you puffed up little s***.”
Dunno if s*** means shit, slut or some other four-letter word beginning with s.
He does know Laila Harre is not pleased.
Ms Harre told Radio NZ today that immediately after the incident occurred, Ms Corkery apologised for “losing her cool”.
“After the incident that occurred, she immediately alerted me to it, she apologised for losing her cool with the media pack that had been pursuing her for some time in quite an aggressive way for an interview with Kim Dotcom, which they were aware wouldn’t be given. And they were aware of that before the event.
“No, she didn’t handle things well, and she’s very regretful of that.”
Harre was disappointed that media who recorded the scene had decided that was the story of the day. She should be disappointed that her press secretary provided them with this story of the day.
Maybe she should be wondering if Corkery’s heart is in the business of promoting the Dotcom party.
The Herald recalled:
Writing in a column in the New Zealand Herald in March, Corkery said, “If Kim Dotcom becomes part of a king-making triumvirate in September, I will run around the neighbourhood waving my undies in the air.”
By drawing media attention away from the policy stuff at the party’s campaign launch, Pam will have lessened its chances and Kim Dotcom’s of becoming part of anything governmental.
She can keep her undies on and not go dashing around the neighbourhood waving them in the air.
And we can all shout hurrah at being spared an unseemly spectacle.
Alf Grumble 
Pam led the news on both channels. National’s launch was relegated.
Pam wins.