The game that wasn’t
Dear Johnny,
Help me! Help me get back my confidence in Taiwan.
Ever since some decision-makers decided to play a freakin’ teeny-bobber soap rerun instead of the China v USA game of the century on Sunday night, I’ve lost my confidence in Taiwan’s ability to be a country.
Tell me it’s too soon to start erasing this island off my maps! Tell me there’s hope!
Patrick in Taipei
Johnny replies: Well, Patrick, I wish I could offer you some solace in this hour of Taiwan’s sporting darkness. But I can’t, so I won’t.
Instead, let me treat you to these observations.
My beloved home has what is humorously described as a professional basketball league.
Look around you as you walk your dog inside his custom-made pram on weekends: There are kids everywhere, and even some adults, playing basketball on school ball courts for want of a decent amateur league.
So you would expect that the world’s foremost forum for international basketball matches would stir up some interest in local television stations.
This would be especially true if the game involved the world’s best team, at least on paper, and one of the best players in the competition, a Chinese giant who also happens to have extensive media and commercial exposure in Taiwan (think Visa, McDonald’s, etc).
Well, you thought wrong.
So what next?
Lately I’ve been musing about what it would take to get my depressed compatriots to stand up for themselves at home, let alone at international events. What would it take, for example, to get local basketball fans so angry that they would spontaneously picket every TV station that slighted their sport?
Well, after this week I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing can.
And it’s not just sports.
Basically, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government can do what it likes because few people give a rat’s ass anymore, and those that do are too sullen to protest.
As for your world maps, it’s too late to erase Taiwan, because the KMT government has done it for you.
Time for Chez Neihu to get radical again, just like we did back in the 1960s.
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