The Mexican dot dance
Dear Johnny,
Recently, you wrote about the Bush administration getting off its “tuckus,” but I think you meant to spell that tuches. I don’t think spellcheck does Yiddish yet. But my late, great Yiddishe amah told me in an e-mail from the great beyond that it’s tuches.
She even told me another phrase you might use in future columns: a tuches lecker is an ass kisser, one who shamelessly curries favor with superiors, she told me, and please pardon her French.
The second thing I want to pass on to you is this: You asked how President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) interview with Mexican newspaper El Sol de Mexico got into that daily in the first place, characterizing the mashup as a “strange choice of communications vehicle.”
The answer is quite easy to figure out. The boss of the newspaper, Mario Vazquez Rana, came to Taiwan in late August and was decorated with a medal called the Order of the Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon during a ceremony at the Presidential Office. It was Ma that did the decorating.
Connect the dots, Johnny. Ma gives a man a medal; a few days later his newspaper conveniently publishes the “interview” you were talking about.
“One hand washes the other,” as my amah would have put it, were she still alive. I am not sure how to say that in either Yiddish or Spanish, but I think that’s where the dots connect, no?
CHIAYI CHUCK
Johnny replies: Thanks for the information, Chuck.
But a problem remains. In the old days former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) would throw a cat among the pigeons every now and then by sitting down with a Japanese reporter and spilling his guts on matters he would never raise with the Taiwanese press.
It made sense. Lee grew up thinking he was Japanese. He speaks the language. He admires the culture. Selective commentary made him feel more powerful and influential.
Ma, Mexico. I’ve joined the dots, Chuck, like you said. But Ma doesn’t speak Spanish and has never been a lover of Hispanic culture. Is this the best that he can do? And it took a full week for the translation to come through!
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