Your contributor, David Cohen yields to no one in his admiration of New Zealand, a tranquil one-horse-town just south of Australia where somebody, alas, shot the horse. But that's not to say the little land isn't without the occasional controversy mirroring those of the outside academic world.
Chinese students in New Zealand this month entered one such fray over offensive depictions of a revered spiritual figure, of sorts. As local newspaper the Manawatu Standard reports, there were heated protests at the country's Massey University after the institution's student magazine, Chaff, photoshopped an image of Mao Zedong's head atop of the body of a curvaceous woman. In an apparent spoof on Cosmopolitan magazine, the mock-up appeared under a masthead title Commupolitan.
The student publication has since published a semi-grovel, for its cheek, while
another website
helpfully gathers together most of the material relating to what may yet prove to have been a storm in a Chinese teacup.
Or will it? The original report quotes one protester, "on the verge of tears", likening the effect of the jape to that of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published earlier this year, and declaring that the communist leader was "like Jesus" to his fellow students. Adds another: "Mao gave us independence. He's no more a killer than George Washington or George W Bush."
No more a killer than George Bush, eh?
