New Zealand is having a crisis.
A foreign crisis.
American influence is well-known for ruthlessly pervading foreign politics in any country that so much as thinks about the sweet, sweet money bag that is oil. However, absolutely no one could’ve ever predicted that New Zealand, a country primarily known for its milk powder and butter exports, would be subject to this merciless American presence. What caused this phenomenon, then? While the uneducated reader may jump to the conclusion that New Zealand’s general elections might’ve been the subject of this foreign breach, the true place of foreign tampering is one much more sinister: Forest and Bird Conservation Group’s Bird of the Century Contest.
What sick individual would tamper with a contest as important as this, one might ask? The truth is startling: British-American comedian John Oliver, the host of “Last Week Tonight.” This man, undermining the fun-loving, lighthearted atmosphere of the local contest, viciously campaigned for his own bird to win. And the horrors don’t stop there. Rather than choosing one of plethora of beautiful native New Zealand birds like the ranguru or kākāpō, Oliver chose perhaps the least fitting New Zealand bird to carry out his tyrannical campaign: the pūteketeke. While other controversies of this contest had emerged in previous years (take, for example, the 2021 winner of the Bird of the Year Contest: a bat), none have garnered as much attention as John Oliver’s pūteketeke.
What is so wrong with this bird? This bird, even without taking into account that most New Zealanders have probably never heard of it, is quite frankly one of the strangest birds to exist. Pair a shining mullet reminiscent of Billy Ray Cyrus with the vomiting habits of a toddler, and the rough outline of the pūteketeke will take shape. John Oliver took a fancy to this bird, and thus began the foreign tampering of the New Zealand Bird of the Century Contest.
In order for the pūteketeke to win the contest, it had to go against some stiff competition—namely, the kiwi bird, the namesake of New Zealanders and the country’s national bird. John Oliver, in an attempt to garner more votes, turned toward his home front: the media. As the pūteketeke’s campaign manager, he not only repeatedly mentioned the bird countless times on his show, but also hung promotional posters in major cities, created a website encouraging people to vote for his bird, and even dressed up as a pūteketeke to further his campaign. In doing so, he not only won the competition, but encouraged so many people to vote that the official website crashed, delaying the results of the competition for days.
With John Oliver’s pūteketeke stomping the kiwi with twenty times the amounts of votes, it is crystal clear who the winner of this contest is, regardless of the meddling. For all the negatives, the interference of John Oliver did have the positive effect of skyrocketing the total number of votes cast in the contest. The pūteketeke alone received more than 300,000 votes out of a total 350,000 votes, six times more than the previous year. All the attention has raised awareness for the pūteketeke, as well as all the other birds in the running for the Bird of the Century. As such, bird-lovers around the world can cast a blind eye to the foreign interference when taking into account the sheer positives that John Oliver has done unto the contest as a whole. Hopefully, the act of speaking out for birds, no matter how goofy-looking or vomit-inclined, will not merely be a passing fad, but stay in the hearts of the public.
