Wednesday 29 June 2016

WHY WE DEMONISE PEOPLE LIKE SHAILER AND HAEREWA (Letter to Dom Post,June 29)

‘Never let go of the rage’, says The Dominion Post (June 29) adding that ‘the treatment of poor Moko is indescribable’ – but then Duncan Garner, who ‘locked eyes with a monster’ describes the treatment in such detail, it smacks of voyeurism.
Your coverage of this horrible crime seems to suggest it’s what readers want. And the reason why we wallow in it, why we demonise people like Shailer and Haerewa is, we want to assure ourselves that we are not like them.
Because deep down we’re afraid we are, a little bit. Intuitively we understand that having over 40 years been responsible as a nation for killing 500,000 defenceless babies before birth, we’re also partly responsible for producing people like Shailer and Haerewa who torture and kill them after birth. They don’t see the difference - which after all is only that the babies are bigger, and we get to see their photos in the paper.
Let’s face it, rage sells newspapers. We have good reason to ‘express rage and anguish’: we know we are already morally lost.

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