Friday, November 23, 2012

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Someone at Pataka, Porirua's art museum, has a long memory and a wicked sense of humour. The marketing campaign for their exhibition Wild at Heart includes a poster under a mock Porirua Standard masthead with the arresting headline “Oxen charge patrons…” 

Anyone who was in Wellington in the late seventies and early eighties will fondly recall The Double Standard. To the delight and horror of the morning’s commuters these mock newspaper posters were put up around the city late at night by an anonymous feminist group. The most famous took a poke at then-Prime Minister Robert Muldoon (known to his enemies as Piggy Muldoon). 

As was its want The Double Standard mashed up two events: one real and one rumoured. This time it was the reported shooting of a wild pig in the bush in Ngaio mixed with rumours that the PM had a mistress who lived in the suburb. The Double Standard gleefully announced, “Rooting pig shot in Ngaio. PM safe.”