It’s my own fault. Believing it was, surely, not possible to say anything more arrogant than her performance on March 19th when she declared herself and her administration “your single source of truth”, I hadn’t taken the opportunity to recalibrate my supersiliometer which carefully measures the contemptuous arrogance of our Dear Leader’s words. I didn’t expect anything more outrageous to pass her lips. I hadn’t dreamed it do-able, yet there my meter lies, in a useless, smoking pile.
Obviously scripted, trying to sound clever, but betrayed by deep contempt, Ardern rained ruin down on the sensitive measure during her performance interview with Hilary Barry when prodded about the little Health Minister David Carter fiasco:
Barry: “I mean; your own Health Minister went out mountain-biking, your thoughts on that?
Ardern: “Oh, I’ve shared my thoughts quite directly, as you can imagine Hilary [giggles]”.
Barry: “Would you like to share with us what you said to him?”
Ardern: “I was, as I said this morning, I was just going to give you the charity of my silence but you can be assured I did not give him the charity of my silence [giggles]”.
Too cowardly to say “I’m not going to comment” lest she seem brusque, or slippery, the fool used a cliché the left are fond of to pretend she is bestowing some form of benefit to the receiver when, actually, she was rubbing Barry’s nose in it with the pre-planned pseudo-intelligent retort, and Barry fell for it, flummoxed, she was fobbed off and whimpered to the next subject:
Used correctly the cliché is arrogant enough; used incorrectly, as Ardern did, it’s downright demeaning condescension. Leadership, it isn’t.
During an interview with Kim Hill former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer used the term when refusing to criticise the 1980’s Labour Government:
“There are many different problems that the Labour Party has had and, on those problems, I have resolutely bestowed the charity of my silence. I just feel that anything I say will only be seen as self-serving as far as I am concerned and will not assist them.”
Helen Clark too used the phrase in the correct context when refusing to comment on the nomination of Roger Douglas for the ‘Greatest Living New Zealander’ Award promoted by the Herald in 2009:
“Debate also raged after former National party leader Don Brash put in a nomination for Act MP Sir Roger Douglas for his work in transforming the country’s economy in the 1980s. Asked what she thought of Mr Brash’s attempt to nominate Sir Roger Douglas for the title, Helen Clark said she would give the suggestion “the charity of my silence“.
Used as intended, the phrase is a wholly narcissistic self-judgement designed to elevate the utterer’s perceived moral pedestal without explicitly disparaging the subject of the silence. Haughty: yes, extremely so, but memorable. A snooty version of “My Mother says if you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all”.
However, used as Ardern did, with no benefit to the ‘silence’ bestowed on her interviewer, she simply came across as trying too hard, too clever for her own pants, the comment a half-educated put-down, a throw-away cliché to shut questioning down. She would have done better to have just said ‘Ok, boomer’; at least then her petulant giggling might have fitted her puerile pitch, but as it was she just came across as the supremely arrogant empty vessel she is.
That’s how my machine got busted. Is it any wonder?
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