Back in 2008 the owner of the famous Instapundit blog, law professor Glenn Reynolds, made the following suggestion in The New York Post after observing the way Presidential Vice President candidate Sarah Palin had been treated in a TV interview – Bring Your own Camera:

So, when you sit down for an interview (unless it’s live), you’re putting yourself, [] at the mercy of the editors. Usually they’re honest, but not always. But there’s a remedy now, with technology being what it is. If I were a candidate, I think I’d bring my own camera to interviews, shoot the whole thing and post the unedited raw video on the Web.

The technology for this is easy – I’ve got a little Sony HD video camera that records on a chip and fits in a coat pocket or purse – and putting video on the Web is a snap, too. Of course, the knowledge that this will happen is likely to be enough to keep people honest – but if anything is edited unfairly, the full video will tell the tale…. TV journalists won’t be happy with this, of course, but it’s hard to see a principled basis for objecting.

Since then the phrase has become a standard at his blog, where “Bring Your Own Camera” produces a long list of stories where politicians should have followed his advice, right up to the present day.

It’s such an obvious solution to the biased bullshit of the MSM that I’m surprised at how few politicians have done it since Reynolds proposed it 17 years ago.

But in the face of a MSM which is becoming ever more feral and left-wing, it seems some pollies are now doing this, including our own David Seymour, head of the ACT Party and Deputy Prime Minister, who used it against John Campbell in a TV interview just the other day – and I use the word “against” quite deliberately.

Here’s Seymour’s interview with Sean Plunket on The Platform, talking about his encounter with Campbell (8m). I was vastly amused – and frankly a bit appalled – at Seymour’s self-confessed naivety about the MSM. It seems that up until now he actually trusted the bastards to deal with him and report on him honestly.

AYFKM? He’s been in Parliament since 2014 and it’s taken this long for the penny to drop? Still, better late than never.

And here’s that full interview with Campbell. Some points I noted about it.

  • Right from the start there’s a bit of back-and-forth about Seymour’s attitude toward Campbell, the implication being that either Seymour or one of his staff, referred to Campbell as a cunt.
  • It’s interesting to see how far back on his heels he’s set by Seymour bringing his own camera and making it quite clear that it’s getting uploaded to Social Media sites.
  • Digging away on Seymour’s relationships with Winston and Luxon – just like an Opposition MP would. Since I haven’t watched Campbell in years I’d like to know if he ever asked such questions of Ardern and company in 2017-2020?
  • Also interesting to see how he’s moved with the Lefty times, from Chomsky, Pilger and Jim Anderton thirty years ago to post-colonial theory, with the following transcript section being of special interest as to how he’s now framing the questions – and the narrative – with this sort of stuff, starting at 20m (transcript cleaned up) where Seymour and Campbell clash over his Treaty Principles Bill:

Seymour: I need to shift this debate away from a Neo-feudal country where your background determines your place in the society….
Campbell: What’s Neo-feudal mean?
S: Feudalism is a system where your birth and your class – or in India your caste, or whatever country you’re in – people are born into a role in society and that’s the role that they play…
C: And do you think that that’s comparable with New Zealand?
S: I think that there are aspects of policy which are Neo-feudal…
C: … Because what we know about feudal societies is there’s massive inequalities right? And what you and I both know about Maori is that Maori are disproportionately likely to do bad in every conceivable measure: seven years short of life expectancy; more than 50% of the prison population, disproportionately likely…
S: … Oh John, we’ve had this debate. Do you want to have it again?
[Xtalk]
S: Why do you think Maori live seven years less on average?
C: Colonisation.
S: Really?
C: Absolutely.
S: So let me ask you [Xtalk] this question: why do Asians live longer than European New Zealanders? Is that because of colonisation too?
[Xtalk]
S: No, no, no. I asked you a fair question….your contention is that Maori live shorter lives because of colonisation but you can’t explain why Asians live longer lives!
C: Well, Asian New Zealanders haven’t been colonised.
S: Okay but they still live longer lives…
C: ….But they haven’t been colonised.
S: Well neither have European New Zealanders.
C: I just asked about oranges and you’ve just introduced an apple to the argument…
[Xtalk]

Seymour goes on to talk about smoking, violence, diet and other factors that explain poorer Maori life expectancy. But what he misses (and Campbell did not counter with this) is that of course all that can be tied to colonialism as well. The trick of that over-arching theory of course is that it doesn’t solve anything by being “anti-colonial” – except if you tackle each of those factors Seymour raises under the guise of “anti-colonialism”, which renders the thing moot and an academic wank.

Except of course that anti-colonial theory can be used to dismantle more than just those supposed features of colonialism – it can be used to put power into the hands of Maori iwi, more precisely into the hands of the thin crust of chiefs at the top, who will then use their power and control to break Maori free of smoking, poor diet, etc, etc.

Or maybe they won’t do a fucking thing about those factors and will simply use their new power to feather their own nests and control any critics, external or internal to the iwi.

Neo-feudalism in other words.

But the real point to notice here is that John Campbell, in answering these questions, reveals that he thinks the same way as Left-Wing politicians and political activists – in this case left-wing Maori versions of those categories. Which is no surprise of course; we’ve known this about him for more than two decades.

But that knowledge brings me back to Seymour’s prior naivety. Being interviewed by Campbell is no different for Seymour than if was being interrogated by Rawiri Waititi or Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. Readers may be aware of Campbell interviewing Lefty politicians and putting Right Wing theories to them but the only significant clash I can recall was him vs. Helen Clark in 2002 (the infamous one where she later called him “a little creep”), and in that case he came at her on the Genetic Modification (GM) issue from – the Green Party angle, even more Left than her.