A client marched into the monthly confab with his advertising wallahs.
"I need a bad guy for our new commercial," he said. "Delve into research on the Kiwi psyche and create a total bastard. Somebody we'll all hate," he directed.
The creative team was aghast. "But we do heroes. You know the drill - you take a slice of Ed Hillary, one jug of Southern Man, dust with Dan Carter, then get Sir Colin Meads to drive the ute. Works for anything except soft furnishings" said the creative director.
"Sorry, but I insist on unlovable," said the client. "Someone no Kiwi will have in the house." "The formula's pathetically easy," sighed the creative director. "Your fictional villain's obscenely rich and he flaunts it, so stick him in the biggest, most ostentatious house you can imagine, with his name writ big at the front gate.
Flash cars, jewellery, swimming pools. We can't stand show-offs, so fireworks displays would be another nice touch. They make us look like grateful peasants." "Sounds a fair start," said the client.
"But can we do worse?"
"Sure. Try big and fat. Make him a double cheeseburger buffoon who'd pay someone to mow his lawns. And give him some dodgy background.
Perhaps he's been at the wrong end of the camera on Best of Fair Go. Then to cap it all off, we make him a foreigner." "You mean an Aussie?"
"No, you can go too far. A German with a Kamp Kommandant accent would do the trick." As the client turned purple, you could slice the silence with a four by two.
"Are you totally mad?" he raged. "I ask for a bloke for Kiwis to hate, and you bozos give me Kim Dotcom. He's a hero, not a villain."
I apologise for being the seventh columnist you've read marvelling over the Kim Dotcom saga. But he's irresistible - a Goldfinger turned into put-upon victim by an obfuscating government, by FBI-licking police, stumblebum spooks, and John Banks, the "mate" who pocketed his money then gave him the flick.
It's an inglorious achievement. Was this all our own work, or is there some part of Mr Dotcom that, size aside, is actually heroic?
The FBI saw no Knight of the Internet. They shut down his Megaupload file storage company with all the delicacy of a raid on a Colombian drug dealer. Their indictment's detail reads convincingly, but then, most indictments do. While the Mega crew weren't there to sell bibles, this was a significant business entitled to be heard in court before being summarily ruined.
Kim Dotcom is the second of two "cybercriminal" folk heroes US posses seek overseas: Wikileaks' Julian Assange, for spilling the secrets of Washington, and Dotcom for allegedly pickpocketing Hollywood, the soul of the American dream.
Both Assange and Dotcom rose to fame as boy hackers. Two decades ago in Melbourne, Assange proved he could pull down the pants of the American military's systems. From Germany, Dotcom performed similar down-trews on Nasa and The Pentagon.
Dotcom's judge described his hacking as "youthful foolishness." The beak who rapped Assange's knuckles said the lad was not malicious, just intellectually inquisitive. Hmm. Spare the rod?
Psych profiles of hackers reveal brainy misfits who believe themselves Michelangelos of the keyboard. They lack interpersonal skills and confidence, and get back at the world via computer sabotage. Hackers long to impress.
Assange does his St Robin Hood act by stealing secrets from the powerful to tell to the poor. Dotcom, rather differently, appears to have been mounting an attempt on the Guinness record for bad taste.
Leaks from Assange's own organisation hint at a highly unpleasant young man, who now risks being remembered as a banana republic refugee from rape charges. For all that, one would presume Assange's achievements earn him more in the sympathy stakes than Kim Dotcom, but this may not now be so.
The Dotcom saga has more cockups than a roll call of roosters. Plus malice, toadying, shiftiness, deceit, and buck-passing, So does anything remotely good emerge from this sorry tale?
Well, actually, yes - emphatically yes. When we take a figure as stunningly unKiwi as Kim Dotcom into our public sympathy, we show that the New Zealander's belief in a fair go for everyone, repeat everyone, is not just our own back-patting national myth, it is real. When stuck to, it's a fine principle which will never cause harm, especially at times our authorities forget it.
• John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer. -johnlapsley1@gmail.com
