Garth riddance

Serial plagiarist Garth George has finally penned his last column for Granny Herald. It’s way past time.

Garth is a curmudgeon’s curmudgeon, often taking the negative viewpoint, apparently, just because it is negative. If not, it sure seemed that way.

Garth was anti-women, anti-gay—in fact, he was against anything that didn’t smack of a 1950s rigid white, Christian, male-centred world. The world moved on, but Garth never did. He alluded to that in his (thankfully) final column for the Herald, where he allowed that he wrote “from a standpoint at odds with that generally accepted by the populace.” In other words, he was hopelessly out of touch. No wonder the Herald fired him.

That final column also bemoaned the fact that modern journalists and news photographers don’t wear a suit and tie. That he should focus squarely on attire, not ability, and the attire of men alone, says pretty much all that needs to be said about how out of it Garth had become.

What was most offensive about his last column—and nearly every column had something offensive—was his talk about inequality as if it was only about economics. Garth tried to perpetuate legal inequality in New Zealand and was quite proud to do so—there is no other possible interpretation of his treating women like children in reproductive choice or his long anti-gay record.

Sadly, Garth will continue to have columns in a couple of the Herald’s provincial papers. The good news is that it’ll be off the main Herald website, the bad news is that provincial New Zealand will still be subjected to his sexist, homophobic and christofascist bile. With luck, this will only be temporary, a way to ease him out without summarily firing him, no matter how much he deserves it.

Still, at least Auckland and the parts if the country that read the Herald are rid of this loathsome troglodyte. Having him off the Herald website will spare New Zealand international embarrassment, which is also good.

To sum up, I will not miss his columns at all. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Related: Dangerous Garth