Now for the hypocrisy two-step

Just as the pundits in the LawsWatch Cave were falling about laughing at the breathtaking failure of the Mayor of Wanganui to win enough txt votes to survive beyond the second round of Dancing With the Stars, an alert watcher stumbled across michaelandlauren.co.nz.

Yes, Watchers, not content with desperately hijacking the Wanganui District Council website, using week after week of his sordid Sunday columns, and prostituting his kids in the women’s rags to buy votes, Michael got his web-pal Nigel Morris to knock together a web site devoted to the ultimately futile txt vote chase.

But even seasoned Watchers who no longer pause over their Sunday lattes to draw breath over Mickey’s endless litany of lies and hypocrisy choked on their Eggs Benedict this morning when they came across this whopper in today’s Herald on Sunday:

… Laws was voted off last week after recording the lowest score in the show's history. Laws said he had decided not to make use of his high profile as a mayor and radio host to campaign for votes. "I'm not going to ask for people to vote for me if I can't dance. I didn't lobby at all, didn't make any trips or say vote for me," said Laws.

And as a commenter pointed out on LawsWatch yesterday, Mickey got off to a galloping start in the weekend porkies and hypocrisy race when he went ballistic for the Chron(ic)’s benefit over an Amnesty International request for support for a petition protesting China’s human rights record.

The Chronic breathlessly reports him opining that “Human rights in China is foreign policy and not the domain of local government".

On and on he goes:

"I think it stupid local government get involved in international relations and it’s an attempt to embarrass government. I will not allow the Wanganui District Council to be used as lobby fodder by an interest group which has a grievance against the government’s foreign policy."

Now isn’t that rich coming from the man who has spent most of the past few years using his mayoralty “celebrity” trying to embarrass the government, culminating in his meltdown over its foreign policy on Tonga in a delightful little November 22 2006 “mayoral e-column” called WE’RE IN TONGA… WHY?

It’s been a rotten week for the man who would be mayor and then, just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Radio Awards judges joined the Dancing judges and voted him biggest talkback loser. Right at the moment he was being re-humiliated with the replay of his freakshow failure on DTWS, he was watching Marcus Lush get covered in glory at the radio awards as the old lefty from Bluff took the best talk or current affairs host award from shortlisted Leighton Smith and Paul Holmes.

And just to underscore his abject failure in the radio stakes, he didn’t even make any of the many shortlists, though just about everyone else who managed to sit in front of a microphone did.