Depression

I wish my bro was a mummy-blogger.  He has the rare ability to translate his IRL personality exactly into the written word.  He can be totally caustic and make you want to punch him in the face, but he also speaks truthfully and from the heart and as such, I couldn’t agree more with his response to Deborah Hill Cone’s repulsive soliloquy on Charlotte Dawson’s death;

So, it’s about time for my annual strongly worded letter.

‘Hi everyone, I’m Hadyn Godfrey, you might remember be from such facebook rants as “Novopay….No Way!” and “Michael Laws isn’t misunderstood, he’s just a douchebag”‘

I didn’t like the article below very much so I wrote the following to the editor.

Dear Editors,

I’m truly glad that you’ve dropped the charade, took the plunge and are finally living up to your new legacy as a tabloid paper. No longer are you simply tabloid-formatted, your content now matches your look.

It’s a similar angle to the one Deborah Hill Cone presented in her creative piece entitled, ‘It wasn’t just depression that claimed Charlotte’; The forgotten, struggling newspaper just can’t keep up its gleaming facade any longer. The image The Herald presented to the world just wasn’t who you really are was it?. But now? You’ve done it now Jim, you’ve finally plucked up the courage to show the world the real you.

Good on you mate, it takes cojones to just lay it all out for all to see.

The clues have always been there, you’ve had David Farrar and Sir Bob Jones on your payroll long enough for those of us with cynical minds to start to suspect they were there for more than just a hat-tip to balance. They weren’t just mad jesters, there for our collective entertainment either, were they?

If the women of this world who are approaching their fifties can hold themselves back long enough from the apparently insatiable desire to just end it all rather than struggle on as undesirable, penniless old hags, I hope they take the time to remind you, The New Zealand Tabloid, that mental illness is a real issue that affects real human beings.

Publishing utter drivel from some pseudo-psychologist-‘journalist’, so transparently pushing her own demented view of the world on us in the most sadly opportunistic way, does so much harm to the hard work that so many have done to raise awareness and understanding of illnesses such as depression.

As a sufferer of depression myself, I know it’s exactly articles like this that prevent people from asking for help. It’s the opinion-piece version of someone telling a sufferer to ‘just get over it, you’re just sad’. Apparently depression is so insignificant that it just isn’t enough to have taken Charlotte Dawson’s life on its own. ‘You’re not depressed Charlotte, you’re just getting old, and you’re too lazy to stick around and figure out how to deal with it’, waffles Hill Cone.

Deborah Hill Cone is as entitled to her opinion as anyone in our land of free speech, but as for you NZ herald, please show some decency and common sense. For one minute can you at least pretend to not be so obviously driven by this primal need to drum up readers and make the big bucks for the suits upstairs, and act like there are real human beings EDITING your paper.

Real human beings show compassion for each other. Real human beings don’t kick someone when they’re DEAD. Real human beings don’t belittle an illness that untold numbers of us have to live with everyday.

If there are any real human beings listening in your ivory towers, start asking yourselves why you really come to work everyday. If it really is to stir up controversy to make profit at all costs, then well done, you’re doing a great job. If however you look deep inside and have any shred of true journalistic integrity left, perhaps you might use better judgement before publishing an article like this one.

Real human beings read your paper and know that Charlotte Dawson was a real human being too.

Yours sincerely
Hadyn Godfrey

*Steps off soapbox*

*Drops microphone*

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11208554

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