Another day, another claim of racism against a Maori. This time, it was Marama Fox, who was voted off Dancing With the Stars in a dance-off elimination between her and former cricketer, Chris Harris.

That wasn’t the complaint, of course. The complaint is that she wasn’t the worst dancer; that there were poorer dancers than her, and that she shouldn’t have been voted off because she is a Maori.

Or something like that.

This from Tau Henare on Twitter, echoing a lot of similar sentiments about Marama’s efforts. Quote.

Fucken rigged, Seymour stays. Hashtag Racist that’s what it is, the white guy falls over f.f.s Seymour was worse. Hashtag Bullshit Hashtag D.W.T.S It’s worse than Hashtag Karius’ screw up End of quote.

Tau Henare should know better than this. The language, the claims of racism are all completely unbecoming of a former Minister.

So, I could claim he is being racist because he is picking on David Seymour. But, of course, it isn’t racism if it is levelled against a white guy. And do remember that if the other white guy, Chris Harris, had been voted off instead of Marama, then there would have been no complaint. This is why we will never move forward in this country until we stop having these stupid claims that everything is rigged against Maori.

For the record, here is what happens on these ‘reality TV’ shows.

The show is not about dancing. It is about ‘watchable’ TV. The intention is to provide surprises, shocks, tears, happy moments, sad moments. If it was entirely predictable, a lot of people would not watch or would give up fairly quickly. So, the outcomes have to be, at times, unexpected. That is what ‘reality TV’ is all about.

Remember, there is also a public voting element in this show too. It enables some vote rigging, even though that is not the way it is supposed to work. Maybe David Seymour has bigger public support than Marama Fox. Who knows? Does it really matter?

So, although there is a crew of competent dancers still left on the show, it always pays to keep a few duds on the go, so they can do unpredictable things. Remember Rodney Hide dropping his partner? That is the sort of thing they actually WANT on these shows. This is not ‘Come Dancing’ where genuinely skilful dancers compete against each other. This is reality TV. Let’s not take it all quite so seriously.

A good dancer will win the show, and everyone will be happy. But in the meantime, the show has to provide a few shocks along the way, to keep the audience interested. It is not white versus black. It is not male versus female. It is reality TV.

Just for the record, I DON’T watch this show. I caught the last 10 minutes of it and saw all the drama. Frankly, I thought Marama was average. She has a big personality and put on a good show, but her dancing is ordinary. I never thought that there would be a backlash of racism claims just because she was voted off. It was always going to happen at some point.

David Seymour won’t win it either. He’s being kept on at the moment for the extra entertainment that he might provide with some serious slip-ups, but he won’t last long. Soon, they will be at the business end of the tournament and will have to start at least pretending to care about the dancing.

But here we are. Another day, another claim of racism. Even where no racism exists.