Virtue Alarmed [1]

Sir: May I venture to congratulate you on your just and clear-headed editorial on the subject of a possible tour of New Zealand by Miss Rice-Davies? That able young Englishwoman has had her wry laugh at us. It is strange that she wishes to visit our grim mausoleum of the All Black and the Polled Angus heifer. The reward would be wholly financial, and even then not great. But since, for one reason or another, she has agreed to come, we should surely welcome her gladly, on account of our great poverty of local cabaret entertainment.

I wonder if that group of New Zealand women who are trying to oppose her admission to this country have an inkling of the distorted shadow cast by this public gesture of Pharisaism? It is gruelling to be a New Zealand man, and see one’s countrywomen rushing to accept the role of the Ugly Sisters at Cinderella’s ball. One knows only too well the raw, disturbed impulses which lie behind the gesture – one would like to be able to say, ‘Take it easy, take it easy.’ But one has to stand on the sidelines and writhe. People overseas will not know that the hostile group is a small minority, and that most of our women could not care less, having other things to think about.

I suggest that it is not too late for the group to change their minds – to cable Miss Rice-Davies an apology and her air fare, and invite her to their homes, and learn from her some ways and means of cracking the glass dome of boredom that fits so snugly over our metropolis. Morality is hardly the issue. If one inquired too closely into the private lives of public persons, one would be unable to visit any cinema, or play any recording, and certainly one would have to burn one’s copy of Hansard.

1965 (353)