The last of the fireworks have fizzled out and now everyone can go back to being thoroughly depressed about the state of the economy and life in general.
Happy New Year.
’Tis no longer the season to be jolly — but do not fear. Johnny’s here to spread a little happiness — among members of the journalistic fraternity at least — with a stocking full of gongs in the second-ever Neihu Awards.
I decided to make them a biennial affair after last year slipped by in a kaoliang-induced haze. But enough of my personal foibles (have you ever met a genuine journalist who didn’t have an alcohol or drug problem?), so let’s waste no more time and get on with the first award.
It is on a sad note that I have to present the George W. Bush Award for tragic waste of life posthumously to Liu Po-yen (劉柏煙), the 80-year-old near-lifelong Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member who died in recent days after torching himself at Liberty Square on Nov. 11 in protest at President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) ass-kissing cross-strait policy.
Poor old true blue Liu would probably have refrained from such drastic action if he had realized how his death would make him a poster boy for the pan-green camp and attract several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) bigwigs to his memorial service on Tuesday.
Even more tragic, however, was the reaction to Liu’s act from his Chicom-courting comrades. Type Liu’s Chinese name into a Google News or Yahoo News search engine and there is not one single mention of him from our colleagues in the pro-unification press.
If that wasn’t bad enough, when quizzed about Liu’s membership status, a KMT spokesman said at the time that the party had no record of Liu’s membership after 2000 and so he wasn’t their problem.
Compassion for the laobaixing lives on in the KMT.
Another posthumous award, this time for underachievement, goes to the former DPP presidential candidate, freaky Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), following the death of his political career.
Wanky Franky certainly deserves a mention for what had to be the most uninspiring presidential election campaign in recent history (and when you consider the Lien Chan (連戰)-James Soong (宋楚瑜) effort in 2004, that’s really some achievement).
Instead of talking about what he could do for his country, Hsieh spent 90 percent of the campaign obsessing about a Ma Ying-jeou green card that never was and that no one bar him and a few parrots in the pro-independence press was interested in.
Now, and deservedly so, he has been reduced to a role in the shadows with his new NGO, the aptly named Taiwan Shadow Government. The saddest thing is that this group’s Web site (www.shadowgov.tw) even has a counter showing the number of days since Ma admitted he once had a green card.
Good luck to you, Frank. But remember, not much survives in the shade for long.
While we’re on the subject of foreign affairs, the Barefaced Cheek Award has to go to journalist-turned-politician Diane Lee (李慶安), who as a former member of the local press pack should have known that you can never keep anything secret forever, let alone 14 years (tip of the hat to Next Magazine).
Not only did the brazen Diane manage to keep her dual nationality concealed for more than a decade, once rumbled she had the nerve to continue spouting bullshit with a straight face — a trick she no doubt learned over at Chinese Television System (CTS).
Poor old Di becomes the second of the Lee clan to fall from grace, following in the footsteps of her older sister Lee Ching-chu (李慶珠), whose career as a budding civil servant was cut short when pan-blue nemesis and then-DPP legislator Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) exposed her civil service exam thesis as a piece of plagiarism.
Two down, two to go.
Expect to see dear Di’s Neihu award on eBay sometime soon, as with an estimated NT$110 million (US$3.3 million) in salary to repay she will need every NT dollar she can get.
Next up is the Lien Chan Special Prize for narcolepsy-inducing monotony, which goes to Taiwan’s very own illegal alien cable channel TVBS and its flagship “talk show” Quanmin Kai Jiang (Speaking Your Mind at 2100), whose stalker-like obsession with jailbird former prez A-bian would be cause for worry for any concerned psychologist. At last count the show had done 127 consecutive programs on the former president and showed no signs of changing tack, even though most of the show’s viewers probably changed channels long ago.
The only reason I watch it anymore is on the off chance that recently denuded KMT attack dog Chiu Yi’s (邱毅) rug will fall off as he blows his top during one of his hate-filled tirades against the former prez.
Talking of the bewigged one, Chiu’s so very obvious feud with A-bian was in the running for the I’m Gonna Git You Sucka Award for most public vendetta.
This after the Apple Daily reported this week how Chen supposedly burned NT$25 million in ghost money to get the hairless terrier off his back.
But even Chiu’s loathing for Chen pales in comparison to TV celebrity Pai Ping-ping’s (白冰冰) hatred for the aforementioned Hsieh who, following the murder of Pai’s daughter Pai Hsiao-yen (白曉燕) in 1997, offered to defend the lead suspect for free in a bid to encourage him to surrender.
Pai has obviously never forgiven Hsieh for this, and so she became Ma’s celebrity-cheerleader-in-chief during the election campaign, doing her utmost to ensure Hsieh lost.
But as I’ve already detailed, she needn’t have worried. Hsieh’s campaign was about as successful as Pai’s chain of 40 shaved-ice stores, which had to close in November, a mere six months after her main man Marky Mark Ma took office promising to “save” Taiwan’s economy.
While on the same subject, the reluctance of certain sections of the media to cast Ma’s thus-far-disastrous presidency in a negative light sees this year’s Golden Neihu Award for Taiwanese journalism go to Fei Fan Television for their logic-defying caption on Aug. 29 during one of several pieces devoted to the first 100 days of the Ma regime.
In what can only be described as extreme economy with the truth, a story about the stock market included an onscreen caption that read: “Ma: 100 days in office, TAIEX breaks 7,000.”
What the TV station’s editors neglected to tell viewers was that just 100 days earlier the TAIEX had been hovering around 9,300 points.
An office source tells me that Fei Fan used to be a reasonably serious business-oriented channel when it started up a few years ago, but after its owner embarked on plans to expand his influence in the local media market, the quality and impartiality of its reporting nose-dived faster than the stock market under Ma.
Finally, there was only ever one horse in the running for the Robert Mugabe Award for contribution to media freedom.
In just seven short months since it reassumed power, the black-gloved hand of the KMT has managed to throttle the life out of just about every evenhanded news institution (not that there were many to start with).
Management reshuffles, legislative shenanigans and midnight visits from investigators are just a sample of the underhand tactics that have already come to light.
Public Television System is the latest honorable outlet to find itself under threat, but at least it seems to be going down with a fight.
Yes, dear reader. It is a depressing time for those who care about real media freedom in Taiwan. (Are you listening, Freedom House?)
But as I predicted two years ago during my last glittering award ceremony, not even a Ma presidency can erode the Taiwanese ability to stay alert and see through media bullshit.
I hope I was right.
Got something to tell Johnny? Go on, get it off your chest. Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but be sure to put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
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