I love you, Mary.

To Mary of Radio NZ:

I listened to you this evening while sitting in my first NZ traffic jam.  After zigging right and zagging left on the stacked hairpin turns around Evans Bay, I was accosted by such an eruption of red light that I instinctively pulled down my sun visor.  I replaced it after quick self-counseling that this day, like other squally days but somehow more special for the largest storm on the planet churning nearby, was a dark day and those red lights required that I stop.

So I stopped.  No longer able nor willing to abide the sludgy techno fest on the cool station that had to be recorded on cassette through a microphone plugged into a Radio Shack tape recorder, I sought out Radio NZ.  I found you, Mary.

I've heard you before; I swear.  But I confess: I've never really listened to you, hearing your guests struggle to craft their messages on whatever political nightmare or social quandary they've stumbled into over the high octave trill of your voice.  For this, you also deserve tribute because your job as the host of your program is to get the spokespeople to speak, to provide time for their mangled fabrications or messy half-truths.  Yay, Mary, you make the guests talk.  Job well done.

Tonight, however, I honor you for something more.  Because tonight, you outdid yourself.  When I turned on the radio, you informed me that you would be interviewing Mr. Hide, the leader of the ACT party here in NZ (which, for my benefit and others who haven't yet managed to give a rat's ass about NZ politics, is kind of a Tea Party equivalent, but more entrenched and possibly better educated.)

A couple years back, Mr. Hide had been told by an ACT party parliamentary hopeful, David Garrett, that Mr. Garrett had criminally obtained an NZ passport in the name of a dead child.  Not his child, but the child of a family who had buried their son in a cemetery where Mr. Garrett happened to meander one day while deciding to see if he could get a forged passport.  Mr. Garrett commit the crime in 1982 but wasn't caught until 2005 when he was indicted by not convicted of passport fraud on the basis of a false affidavit in which Mr. Garrett assured the court that he'd led a blameless life.

Mr. Garrett told Mr. Hide this stuff, leaving out the bit about the false affidavit, and Mr. Hide promptly encouraged him to stand for parliament.  You see, integrity could be restored in politics if they all acknowledged their baser, criminal instincts.  Anyhoo, Mr. Garrett rose to some prominence as ACT's law and order patsy, demanding stricter sentencing, decrying second chances, and grooming his killer facial hair.

Now that the country has discovered that the man who doesn't believe in second chances for criminals is, in fact, a criminal, Mr. Garrett has found his own second and third chances, as well as his caterpillar moustache, rescinded.

Back to you, Mary.  I write to you tonight because you invited Mr. Hide to your program, he appeared and you tore him a new one.  You see, my ability to anticipate reason and challenge in the national discourse has been tortured by my long exposure to American media.   They aren't allowed to do what you did because money is on the line, and even if it isn't, it really is.  A Senator could opt to never appear on a show again if a radio host on NPR used his or her intelligence to grill the Senator on the basis for his or her votes.  Really, that would be no great loss to the Senator, who can always find friendlier shelter on a better controlled outlet.  Oh well.

Mary, you deserve a totem pole.

Tonight, Mary, as Mr. Hide tried to justify his impossibly hypocritical logic in encouraging his colleague to stand for parliament, even while permitting the facts to remain undisclosed to the people, you whipped your switch at him and he jumped.  You quoted ACT party literature, you found old quotes about zero tolerance uttered by Mr. Garrett himself, and you nailed Mr. Hide.  When Mr. Hide tried to return to his chosen points, you said, "No, I'm not interested in that."  And, at the end of it all, you wished him a pleasant evening.

For that, Mary, I love you.  Thank you for being one reason that NZ is better, even if it is really small.