New Zealand Twitter Dragged Amanda Palmer and It Was Satisfying

We’re one day into the Biden Presidency so let’s start things off with a bang. Remember Amanda Palmer, the wildly divisive musician with a long and exhausting history of nonsense? You may recall that she was the one who attacked a music journalist for several months because she claimed she wasn’t getting enough positive attention from the press. She also has a long history of loving the N-word, trying to get musicians to perform unpaid, once wrote a poem romanticizing one of the Boston Marathon bombers, and claimed that Donald Trump would make punk rock great again. How did that work out, Amanda? Well, Ms. Palmer never stuck around in America long enough to have her self-described Weimar-era Germany artistic revival. She also infamously moved to New Zealand as the COVID-19 pandemic kicked off. Her husband, Neil Gaiman, caused a lot of anger when he left the country and flew to Scotland during lockdown despite government advice condemning such actions. He then went back to New Zealand.

Yeah, she sucks.

Following the inauguration, Palmer decided to share a heartfelt story of an encounter she claims she had in a local coffee shop where she was greeted by ‘spontaneous applause’ because people knew she was American.

And then a group of Hobbits sang a song for her. Then Taika Waititi gave her a thumbs up. Then Jacinda Arden awarded her the official medal of New Zealand, which is shaped like a kiwi and handcrafted by the Flight of the Conchords.

Kiwi Twitter found this claim somewhat sketchy, and they had great fun with the tweet.

It’s not hard to see why people were skeptical about this actually happening. Palmer is a known bullsh*tter and attention seeker who turns everything into a commentary on herself. This is the woman who watched 12 Years a Slave and said that it was about how ‘the privileged (whites/straights/menfolk) MUST be allowed to fight for change. not just the oppressed.’ Yup, it really was a movie about and for white people, eh? Bang-up job there. This is like every Jacob Wohl tweet about hipster coffee shops, or a best-of selection from the r/ThatHappened subreddit. Even if it did happen, it’s the kind of self-aggrandizing nonsense that Palmer loves, an excuse to turn the most impactful and difficult moments in world history into her personal ukulele anthem inspiration.

She only made it even more condescending as she tried to justify herself.

‘the kiwis feel an intense affection for americans’? Jeez, they’re not mythical creatures and, from my experience with Kiwi friends, they really don’t give that much of a crap about Americans. Maybe they’re just trying to be polite and you’re twisting that into some sort of glowing deification of a foreign country?

Once again, Kiwi Twitter turned out.

Maybe New Zealand is just being polite to Palmer until she leaves. Having a celebrity bypass the rules to use your country as their personal pandemic parking spot must suck, especially when their husband flagrantly breaks the rules because he missed being in the same timezone as his pals. I’m sure Palmer will write a terribly screeched ukulele song about meat raffles and Peter Jackson to prove her love for the nation, then all Kiwis will quietly do the wanky hand gesture behind her back.