blogging it real

Tonight's debate was pretty tiresome, I don't know whose idea it was to have the howling partisan mobs. Obnoxious and probably makes lots of people reach for the remote. There's now a documentary about a new monkey on TV3, "a cuddly ball of red and brown fur," a welcome relief.

Neither leader seemed at their best, but what struck me fairly early on was Don seeming to revive the "what's a real Maori?" debate, circa 1970, complete with "some of them are as white as me and you" and something to the effect of "a 7/8 Maori isn't the same thing as a 1/8 Maori." Sigh.

A Maori is someone with Maori heritage who identifies as Maori I would have thought ... the fact that this may lead to separate political entitlements is a different matter (and one worth debating). But frankly, I don't care to divide myself up into eighths. Maybe I'm wrong, the question of "who is a Pakeha anyway?" is interesting, but unlikely to lead to dividing people into portions or grading their skin colour.