(Regrettably a much-deferred - and for me, unusually brief - opinion piece.)
It would seem that Newshub Nation's main interviewer over recent years, the (commendably) painstakingly diligent and thoroughly issue-conversant - let's give her all due credit - Lisa Owen, somewhere along the way missed her true calling in life: that of appointment to the modern-day *(Office of the) 'Inquisition', i.e. The Vatican's Department of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy.
The interviews upon 'the Nation' which elicit this judgment upon my part are numerous, and in recent times include one with the P.M. and another with the two then would-be Green co-leaders. Though no big fan of either Marama Davidson or Julie-Ann Genter, and someone moreover who believes Genter - admittedly, like the rather notorious Mike Hosking - was eminently better qualified for the post than Davidson, however appealing the latter to the Greens' base, they both can only be commended for their admirably self-restrained responses to Lisa Owen.
Variously resembling anything and everything from stunned to agasp to absolutely horror-stricken at Owen's take-no-prisoners, lay it on the line, in-your-face, "I'm waiting on ya'll, now stop messin' around with me!" demeanour and approach, they could have taken a leaf out of the book from a subsequent interview Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had with the Newshub Nation host. With measured grace - though I've since misplaced the exact comments being made - Ardern quickly cut Owen down to size and put her back in her place by simply and matter-of-factly, in her own inimitable 'Now let's stop being foolish kiddies, okay?' style, effectively dismissing the entire line of questioning with a frank and firm, gentle but unyielding "No!" or the like, which simply could not be argued further with. Owen had finally met her match and seemingly immediately realized as much.
*Known by various names at different times, what was up until 1908 the 'Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition' then became simply the 'Holy Office' until 1965, and thereafter has been the 'Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith'. All this according to the 'World Socialist Website', which I quote from in my treatise-length 2013 exposition 'Pope Francis (the First): A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, or "surprise, surprise": A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing?'
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