Too Kind to Us?
ORMAN CORWIN’S "One World" episode dealing with New Zealand was much too gracious towards'us. In this pastiche of New Zealand social attitudes it was stated that our country is of much greater importance internationally than its size or populatina would indicate; I think, however, rhat this must be qualified by substituting
"should be" for "is" of greater impor-tance--for few of us here believe that we are, for all our social pioneering, of very great or lasting importance to more than a few liberal thinkers in other countries. If Norman Corwin’s broadcast is a means making our virtues known abroad it may well prove a twoedged weapon; such a dattering broadcast may cause visitors and immigrants
to anticipate an earthly paradise, and the consequent disappointment will be greater when it is realised that we are not quite the paragons of virtue here represented. Nothing was said, for instance, of the shortages or the rationing, and as for the climate-well, those who visit Dunedin for the first time might well get a shock after hearing Mr. Corwin emphatically state that "it never snows in New Zealand, except in the high country!" What did impress me, after the initial shock of hearing myself and my © fellow-countrymen’ praised for things which most of us take for granted (the necessity for providing for the aged and sick, the necessity for equality of franchise, the necessity for keeping down the infant mortality rate, and so on) was that Norman Corwin had managed to pack so many facts into so brief a time, and that he had, in random microphone shots, picked so representative a selection of people. Indeed, with possibly one exception, all the voices brought to the microphone were fair to awful examples of what has been so thoroughly discussed in The Listener under the heading of the New Zealand Accent: Here we had it in all its barrenness, all its distorted vowel sounds and omitted consonants, a recorded example of what we sound like to others. I’m afraid my last emotion, at the end of this broadcast, was "Horror! Do I, perhaps, sound like that. too?" :
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 436, 31 October 1947, Page 8
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356Too Kind to Us? New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 436, 31 October 1947, Page 8
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