Why does TVNZ allow this vile behaviour?

BY LINLEY BONIFACE

OPINION: In the current era of public sector cutbacks, it must be enormously reassuring to TVNZ to know that, should further staff redundancies be necessary, it could seamlessly replace its current Breakfast host with a freshly captured gibbon without significantly lowering the quality of its journalism.

Indeed, watching a jungle creature let loose on the set of Breakfast would give viewers roughly the same frisson of appalled fascination that many of us already experience while watching Paul Henry in action. Will the set be trashed? Will there be humping of the furniture? Will guests have their hair lovingly combed through for nits, or be spat at?

There are certain groups that are pretty much assured a hostile reception on our state broadcaster's flagship morning news show. Retards, for example. Henry doesn't much like them. They look funny, and deserve to be laughed at. Apparently, some of them object to being called retards: this is outrageous, and an infringement of Henry's right to free speech. And the right to free speech is so much more important than the right of vulnerable people not to be treated with contempt.

Women. There's another group of people Henry has little respect for. They can't drive boats, for a start. They have "no grasp of technology". And some of them grow moustaches, which automatically disqualifies them from the right to express a view on something serious, even if they have in fact been invited on the show to express a view on something serious. In future, perhaps, women should be required to submit a photo to the Breakfast producers to prove they're sufficiently attractive to be permitted to have an opinion.

Poor people. They're rubbish as well. Especially poor people who have so many children that, when one dies, they just say, "Don't worry about that; we've got six others out the back". Because everyone knows that poor people don't love their children like rich white guys love their children. (Henry knows all about this subject, which is why he expresses his love for his children by discussing his teenage daughter's desire for breast implants in Woman's Day.)

Fat kids, of course, are another matter entirely. They don't deserve to be loved by anyone. They should be "taken away from their parents and put in a car compactor".

The unemployed are also a waste of space. They don't watch Breakfast, because they're lazy and drunk. Hispanics aren't much better: they do actually have jobs, picking tomatoes, but are carriers of salmonella.

Most of these groups are far too unsavoury ever to be featured on Breakfast, so we don't have the added treat of watching their facial expressions as they listen to themselves being slagged off. The exception to this rule is women: after looking back through file footage, I've noticed several regulars have adopted the same physical tic – nervously riffling their fingers through their hair – in response to Henry's hilarious jokes about their foolishness in not having been born male.

Perhaps this gesture is a sort of "dork alert" secret signal to other women working in broadcasting. The message it sends is probably this: "If I don't laugh along with this odious joke, I will clearly be seen as a bitter, man-hating bitch who should be resting up at home after my recent humour bypass operation, but rest assured that I'm only doing it to avoid spending the rest of my working life advertising thigh-shaping devices on digital TV."

Paul Henry is talented, smart and funny. These are rare commodities, which is presumably why he has made it to the top at TVNZ despite his mesmerising Austin Powers comedy teeth. But instead of using his gifts to ask tough questions of those in power about the issues we'd like answers on, he uses them to mock the powerless. When I last looked, this wasn't called journalism: it was called bullying.

So why does TVNZ respond to complaints about Henry with either a wall of silence, or an amused smirk? I suspect its attitude was best summed up by Alison Mau, Henry's former co-host, on the day of the infamous moustache-on-a-lady riff. "We need people to watch the television that we're making, for good or ill, and I think, you know, even though you have been quite vile this morning, it's – you know – it makes good telly."

Vile Comments Make Good Telly: now there's a corporate motto TVNZ can be proud of.

- © Fairfax NZ News