So I was playing mahjong with a few associates of mine who were up from Chiayi for a few days on business, and doing pretty well as usual. I was about to shout "hu le" and win another few thousand NT (we don't play too seriously) when I looked up at a TV that was fixed on a cable news channel. There was the sight of Lee Shu-chiang (李淑江), widow of would-be president killer Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄), striding through a media pack with her daughters and son and a former legislator trying to make hay, declaring that the cops forced her to give testimony that her late husband was the shooter.
The former legislator was a lawyer, Su Ying-kuei (蘇盈貴) -- a good buddy of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and chronic rumormonger. Su was most recently in the public eye in late 2004, accusing two grand justices of interfering with his duties as a legislator, claims he offered no evidence for.
Now, it seems, Su wanted the services of a "documentary filmmaker," a cherub-like American of Asian descent known only as "Jason," who, when not single-handedly showing up Taiwan's entire network of investigative agencies with his one-camera probe into the shooting, claims to be an English teacher.
Well, when you've gotta blow, you've gotta blow. "Whatta buncha stinking crap," I spat, accidentally knocking over all the mahjong tiles and a half-finished bottle of draught Taiwan Beer.
Of course, my Chiayi colleagues were not impressed by this, and the fellow opposite me, known in certain circles as "Knuckles" Chiang, became angry, accusing me of blowing his chance to win his money back. "Are you trying to start a fight?" he snarled.
Now Knuckles is a bit slow when it comes to the media's bullshit, and after I explained why I was irritated at the sight of a grandstander accusing Taiwan's finest on the anniversary of the shooting, theatrically wearing sunglasses and a floppy hat to "hide" her identity, Knuckles calmed down and we returned to the game, where I cleaned him out. Fear not: I paid for his cab to the love hotel where he was staying.
And what of "Jason," roving conspiracy-buster in search of a surname? Well, my spy on the street tells me that "Jason" is more than a hapless younger version of Frederick Wiseman exposing institutional hegemony. He is apparently linked to an executive at Hong Kong-owned cable station TVBS through family, and had been given access to the company's equipment and footage to make a film as part of a tertiary film course in the US. This may explain why a female TVBS reporter dragged him away from the cameras when other reporters started asking tricky questions. Since the Su incident, my spy tells me, "Jason" has had his TVBS privileges withdrawn, including a desk at the studio, and gone to ground.
Old Johnny can be a bit self-righteous at times, but I say what I think, and I call it as I see it. And if in doing so, my targets think I'm provocative, then that's their problem. They started it.
Which reminds me of a story on the Reuters wire on March 12 marking the first anniversary of China's "Anti-Secession" Law. It read: "One year on, as the rubber-stamp assembly meets once again for its annual 10-day session, the anti-secession law gets barely a mention from its top leaders, despite provocations from Taiwan's independence-minded president."
The "rubber-stamp assembly" is a good start and tells it like it is, but what's this about "provocations from Taiwan's independence-minded president"? Can you picture Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) flipping the bird or calling Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) the "whore of the East"? Not I. But wait -- the Reuters piece is turning Chen into the antagonist for exercising authority over a domestic agency. Chen is "provocative" because Reuters riffs on Beijing's line that anything domestic to Taiwan is domestic to China: "According to official news reports on Sunday, even President Hu Jintao, in a key speech to military top brass, neither referred to the off-shore island by name [what, not an "on-shore" island?] nor made any heavy allusions to a territory Beijing regards as a breakaway province."
"Territory"? "Breakaway province"? Here we go again: You never hear what Taiwanese think they are, nor what they think about China, or, as the report tellingly calls it, the "mainland." The point of reference is only Zhongnanhai.
You also have to wonder why reporters bother to interview people like Shi Yinhong (石印紅), a professor of international relations at Renmin University. When Shi is quoted as saying "China wants to win the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people, so in the past few months they have said very little about reunification," you just know that if he said anything slightly challenging on the matter, such as "The hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people are rather unreliable," he would be packed off to Purgatory -- the most dilapidated technical college in Qinghai Province, say -- to see out the rest of his career.
I expect that a member of the international press can become a little removed from the real world living in guarded compounds. Of course, up there in Beijing, nobody's going to object to insinuations that Taiwan is a provocateur, especially if they also airbrush Chinese neo-imperialism, replacing it with the subtlest pastel shades for foreign tastes.
And I often ask myself what it is about working in Beijing that makes so many of the foreign press corps think having a ballistic missile pointed at your ass is no biggie. Is it the pollution? The awful weather? Or is it just the sense of comfort from living in a precinct carefully separated from the landless hoi polloi?
But let's be charitable, because what reporters write doesn't always make it into the paper. The agencies they work for can add, subtract and change material, as can the outlets that subscribe to them. So no hard feelings to the reporter of the Reuters piece in question: I'll wager it was given the red rinse somewhere higher up the ladder. But if it wasn't, me old salt, unless you want an earful from Johnny next time you come to Taiwan, I advise you to take after Chen Yi-hsiung's son and wear a fake moustache at press conferences.
Heard or read something particularly objectionable about Taiwan? Johnny wants to know: dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com is the place to reach me, with "Dear Johnny" in the subject line.
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