Paul Henry has touched me.
by Adam & Lara on 08/18/10
Before you learn who Paul Henry is, you should learn a thing or two about the New Zealand network television programming landscape.
New Zealand has 5 non-cable TV stations (4 if you don't count TVNZ 5, which just constantly shows low-production-quality advertisements for regional restaurants and attractions). Between all of those channels is one good show, The Simpsons. It's kind of like American TV in those dark years between Family Guy getting canceled and reinstated. Couple that with the fact that you'll never see a baseball, football or hockey game televised here, and you might as well replace your TV with a box fan that sprays feces at you.
Google image search for "feces fan" produced this irrelevant but hilarious gem. Try searching yourself! Then delete your browser history.
There are a small number of especially horrible shows. For example, Noise Control is basically a Cops-style show where "noise patrol officers" (not actual police) respond to noise complaints in Auckland. Another one is What's Really in Our...?. It used to be called What's Really In Our Food?, but the marketing geniuses at TVNZ3 realized that there are some really weird and possibly gross sounding (demographic dependent) chemicals in non-foodstuffs like shampoo and lotion. And to top it off, they have possibly the worst nature show I've ever seen:
Where did they find this guy - Spatula City?
So the entertainment TV sucks. But I (Adam) hardly watch it anyway since I work during the day and slave away at this shitty blog at night. The only program I consistently watch is the morning news which conveniently airs while I'm housing cereal and hydrocodone on the couch before work. And in these several minutes of peace, I'm forced to stare at this asshole:
This is Paul Henry, Asshole.
First off, he's not really a news anchor, he's a morning show host - the Regis of the South. After an actual journalist reads the news, he sits there and gives his opinion on it. Unsurprisingly he has an opinion about everything - which doesn't make him an asshole de jure, but just think of how many people you've met who have opinions about everything who aren't assholes. Occasionally he interviews people and asks them tough questions to get to the bottom of the truth, and for that I thank him.
To wrap it up, I hated this guy until I found this video of him commenting on one of his interviewees' mustaches. The interviewee was Stephanie Mills of Greenpeace.
Final thought: It's not funny when somebody is an asshole to you, but it is funny when they are an asshole to somebody else. Jim Saraceno calls this the Tom Green Poop On A Microphone Effect and completely disagrees with it, which makes it even funnier to me.
