Dead at the moment?
April 22, 2025
By NZB3
For goodness sake Michelle Langstone will you give it a rest? Going on and on about how your dad died back in 2018 has produced various ‘lifestyle’ articles for woman’s magazines etc. and even a book: Times Like These: On grief, hope & remarkable love by Michelle Langstone (2021)
When will this Weekend at Bernie’s parade end? Not ever, based on the latest in the lineup…
“dad lives in her wardrobe…”He’s dead at the moment”…“You never know!” I said with what I hoped was an air of mystery, getting to my feet and brushing off the seat of my jeans. “You just never know.” – I choose to say my Dad is dead ‘at the moment’ and somehow it helps (1News, 21/4/2025)
The man is clearly long dead and not coming back. She burned the body. The obituary was posted to the Herald. Everyone else said goodbye. Still, Michelle clings on in a partly sick and partly self-promotional daze.
Apparently she really doesn’t know if death is going to stick this time. For a thespian things like knowledge are a bit hit and miss, you see. A theatre performance relies on magic charms and rituals. According to Michelle people see statues weeping. Others see messages in clouds. Some other guy told her he saw Jesus in beef schnitzel in such a convincing way that her response is “I don’t think it’s my place to challenge it.” Her mental stage was thusly set to process the death of her father.
Instead, “years of tears” with no end in sight. 1News don’t have to tell her she’s a twit and to seek counselling. But they, and the various other publishers making advertising revenue from this nonsense certainly could have refused to exploit the wounded actress.
Grief, we are told in our culture, has many outlets. Everyone had their own way of grieving. This is not true, I have found. There is only one way to grieve. You must process your loss rationally and feel your feelings; Accept. The many ways actually belongs to denial of grief. New Zealanders have many ways to avoid grieving and healing their inner pain. To this list we can add in Michelle Langston’s method which also includes wide publicity. Look at me! My father is dead at the moment! Almost as if thousands of viewers and readers of her morbid literature had not also lost a parent even more recently than she has.
Michelle knows it was “Magical Thinking” (a counselling term, btw) to try to save her father’s life by being “kind” to the universe. Perhaps mistaking Ardern’s campaign slogans for religion, this didn’t work so she moved on to flat denial. According to Woman Magazine there was a rebound within 8 weeks where Michelle met her husband and “knew right away” that he, Indian man Arun Jeram, was the one. Jeram appears to be one of the string-pullers behind Paddy Gower’s (ie of “Has Issues” infamy) TV fame. A bit of IVF treatment (also something Michelle and her publicists want the world to know) and the 40-something actress had cheated biology and become a parent herself. Hopefully for the kid’s sake the family sticks although it sounds to be based on dubious reactions.
In my strong opinion it is not healthy to keep Mr Langston, deceased, in the wardrobe for the better part of a decade and counting. He should be free at last to rest in peace. Burial is, to myself and many others, an essential part of the grieving process and the proper final end to a life. Scattering ashes, in a pinch. Others in the Langston clan might be suffering as much as I would be (and have) to be kept waiting however their pain doesn’t make headlines whereas Michelle’s analgesic sells books.
All of this, of course, is to give generous credit and the benefit of the doubt to Michelle Langstone. I’m assuming she’s on the up-and-up about her inability to take one of life’s developmental steps.
On the other hand, perhaps her pain and the publicity if fuels is no accident. Munchausen Syndrome generally involves someone faking victimhood to draw care and attention. Munchausen by Proxy generally involves a mother pretending or even causing a child to be sick in order to get care and attention for themselves. Well, it’s not too far to go to think that maybe the book deal and the unending feature articles provide a reason to make a zombie of a loved one. While Mr Dawson Langstone remains undead there will always be something ‘grabby’ an interesting to write about an otherwise closed and shut-off Michelle.
Showbusiness gigs depend on the ‘talent’ having a high public profile. Being really hot and undressed in public is good for that if you’re young and hot. “Accidental” wardrobe malfunctions will happen. Being really Woke is the way to have that at the moment. As in, more Woke than the next actor in such a way that the Wokeness contests have spiralled out of control. Being ultra-feminist or super-pro COVID-19 were big a few years ago. When Black Lives Matter it’s great to be black or marry someone who is…in the mid-2020s it’s great to support LGBT++ people or, better yet, be one.
It may be that Michelle is doing her best in these areas. But what she can do to stand out from other middle-aged women seeking the same roles as herself is to have a zombie dad and tell every newspaper all about it. Ultimately that’s her decision or the decision of her publicist. However, there is also something here to be said for the Mainstream Media that rewards and pressures for a media strategy like that. They cater to consumers who seem to want messed up people on their screens. To realise this they put out a casting call to people who want to parade themselves (or their loved ones) in such an exploited way. As of now, the supposedly authentic and loving bond between Langston and Langston has been converted into such a spectacle. A relationship between father and daughter has been capitalised, a funerary right denied, so that one actress can keep pulling in day player roles funded by New Zealand on Air.
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