I had a dream of America. Children of the Dragon standing in a circle on a lane somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, with their hands gripping each other's --
Rumor has it that Condoleezza Rice is the first US secretary of state since Elihu Benjamin Washburne to be unable to locate Taiwan/Formosa on a map. And who can blame her? For two-and-a-half years she's been rehearsing Brahms' Op. 123 "Can't we all be kosher" Nocturne in F Flat Minor as part of the roadmap for peace in the Middle East.
Little wonder, then, that all Taiwan-related comment by the State Department comes from underlings. And last week, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was the latest and most senior underling to allow Rice to steer clear of engaging the issue: For God's sake, he said, don't piss off the Chinese by holding a plebiscite.
Then there was Dennis Wilder over at the White House's National Security Council, who unilaterally declared the Republic of China to be a non-state. Hey, any fatuous argument will do if it keeps Taiwan out of the running for fat UN perks, right boys?
Let's not get too carried away with Negroponte and Wilder's words -- unlike most of Taiwan's media. Sure, the former recycled Washington's concerns in a way that errs on the side of Beijing. And sure, the latter is a late challenger to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, whose poor command of global treaties and UN documents will be a boon for undergraduate international law courses the world over.
The real action, as always, was in the Taiwanese press. Veteran China Times Washington correspondent Norman Fu (傅建中) wrote an opinion piece on Aug. 30 claiming a US official told him that Washington could mobilize the Taiwanese people to topple President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) administration in five minutes.
What I find hilarious is the inanity of this "revelation." Let's assume that some idiot really said this. What are the actual chances of the US engineering a coup in Taiwan? Bret Easton Ellis has the answer: Without an American psycho, less than zero. We're supposed to believe that some US official of senior rank went to a bar to get smashed and flex his patriotism by ingratiating himself with a hack reporter whose newspaper barracks for Chinese interests in Taiwan.
Yeah, that makes sense.
The conversation probably went something like this:
Norman Fu: You know, we Chinese have a 5,000-year-old civilization, and you can't possibly begin to understand it.
US official: Yeah, man, but we got the best friggin' military in the world. We kicked Saddam's ass, man. And we got the phattest babes, 'cos they don't have to wear no damn veil on their faces. Hell, when they stick some of that prime beef booty in your face, you'll know why you been in Washington all this time.
Fu: Do you think Mr Bush will kick Chen Shui-bian's ass? He really deserves to have his ass kicked, doesn't he?
US official: [belches and spits] Damn straight. We'll kick that nip's ass, too. What is he, a president? I tell ya, Norm, two phone calls to a couple buddies my Dad was with in Nam and the president's toast.
Fu: Can I quote you on that?
US official: [lurches, vomits, then resumes] Quote me and you're toast, too, motherfucker. I don't wanna blow my internship at State. Anyways, I'm being hyper ... hypo ... ah, what is that friggin' word ... hypur ... hypathourtical, that's it. I got nothin' against Thailand. You got great whores. You seen that ping pong ball shit, man? Brother, you need to write a story about that shit.
So we see, dear reader, the key to Fu's article has little to do with the newsworthiness of the purported act and everything to do with the identity and credibility of the informant.
But old Norman, bless his soul, is a consummate prickteaser. There's no way he's gonna tell you anything once everyone's interest is aroused -- even though the credibility of the piece requires it.
Or maybe it's just because he was instructed to concoct the whole thing.
Please, Norman, I beg you: Prove me wrong. I and the Taiwanese and US governments would be terribly grateful if you would supply one shred of evidence to the contrary. Until then, based on the work you've done to date and that of some of your colleagues, I hope you'll forgive me if I can't take you on your word.
And if you don't cough up some proof, I will assume you were indulging in a Taiwanese variant of that classic Republican dirty campaigning protocol known as "ratfucking" (aaahhh, Donald Segretti ... Watergate ... it just takes you back).
The question is, for whose benefit were these unfortunate rats boned? Why did the Presidential Office jump on a far-fetched non sequitur? Was it because they needed something to embarrass Washington after so many embarrassing episodes of their own? Or is it simply because the Presidential Office is terminally dopey and can't help being taken in by Taiwan's execrable journalists? Was this, indeed, the intended effect of the article?
All this commotion happened while I had my mind and body in another place -- the US, of all places. But this journey through the US turned out to be more Eddie Murphy than Jack Kerouac.
I was there at the invitation of the Sherman Milhaus Rockefeller III Don't Tread On My Bald Eagle Foundation, a Washington think tank where I was to present a paper entitled "The Hell With Context: Why Norman Fu Makes Me Proud To Be a Taiwanese Journalist," but it was pulled at the last minute when State Department insiders threatened to suspend Deep Throat-style links with the think tank's directors.
Why? I can't be certain, but I suspect that Negroponte's aides heard about my Taipei Times connection and blinked. They must have actually believed Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Su Chi (
So, after that debacle, I wanted to avoid Washington. And after I suggested a rural detour, my gal Cathy Pacific was won over when she found out that there wasn't any good shopping on The Mall.
So we went country.
Amish country.
Lancaster County in Pennsylvania has lots of Amish and Mennonites. There, in a village called Soudersburg, we entered a store that didn't seem too nastily commercial and began looking around. I spotted some of those hats that Amish men wear and was admiring their distinctiveness when I spotted a tag inside the brim.
Made in China.
What, so the Chicoms are now manufacturing Amish souvenirs sold in Lancaster County? Is nothing sacred, dammit?
Then I spotted a small metallic figure of an Amish buggy with horse. Turn it upside down and you have a pencil sharpener. That's so incongruous, I thought, it's almost charming. And it was brand new, by the way. Then I read the fine print.
Made in China.
With such deep penetration into trading of Americana, no wonder Beijing has the greenback well and truly by the balls.
But back to Norman Fu. I figure if he can make a living by printing unverifiable comments by movers and shakers in the US Establishment, then so can I.
While in the US I learned that an academic with US military and intelligence connections was terribly concerned that a catastrophic terrorist event will take place sometime this month on US soil. The contact who passed on the information was unnerved at these concerns, but I was skeptical.
It seemed odd that there was apparently enough evidence to fear an attack in a given month -- this month -- but not enough for the US Homeland Security Advisory System to raise its threat level from yellow (elevated) to orange (high) or red (severe).
And it seemed particularly odd that the academic was maintaining family holiday plans ahead of this feared national emergency. Okay, okay, I know it's reasonable to want your family out of harm's way, even if you don't know where the "way" is precisely. But whatever happened to rallying around the flag?
On my way back to my beloved country, I stopped at a West Coast airport and was given a second dose of skepticism on the way the Americans are defending their patch. While lining up to check in on a US airline, I heard a non-American man ahead of me tell his family: "Well, if it goes off, we won't know anything about it."
Then I saw what he was talking about: Two very large unattended bags sitting in the middle of this long, snaking line of passengers. Eventually I approached an airport employee -- just like the announcements were telling us to do if we saw anything suspicious.
"Excuse me," I said, "but there are two large bags sitting over there in that line that don't seem to belong to anyone."
"Thank you very much, sir," the employee replied, before promptly doing nothing about it.
And no, this is not Johnny doing his own ghost-writing: The bags didn't detonate. Some asswipe passenger left them there as the line inched forward before collecting them and moving to the counter -- presumably he was too lazy to shunt his stuff around like the rest of us.
This was Johnny Neihu's America: disorientated Establishment academics, inept airport security, mischievous pro-China reporters on the prowl and economic capitulation to the Central Kingdom. With all this going on, you can just picture Beijing's economic insurgents stopping by the side of a road in Pennsylvania after delivering their Amish trinkets -- for a quick circle jerk.
Overall, I very much enjoyed my time stateside. Americans have hearts as generous as their waistlines, and that's a very big compliment.
But why is it that most Americans with power will suffer just about any fool gladly -- except those who want Taiwan to be free of despots?
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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