Sat, Nov 07, 2009 page8

• JOHNNY NEIHU'S NEWS WATCH: All this insecurity — and a toothpick

  • By Johnny Neihu 強尼內湖
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  I’m feeling really insecure.

  I haven’t felt this insecure since leaving the warm sac of fluid that Mama Neihu kindly provided me before finding myself slowly and painfully — pelvis first — entering the world.

  Compared with now, I actually felt less insecure trying to convince little Grace Chao Shu-pao, a classmate in elementary school, that young Johnny would take her to the stars and back if she let me kiss her.

  “No,” she said, raising her voice so her coterie of girlfriends could hear her clearly, “you’re a silly, boring boy and smelly and I don’t want to!”

  Sigh. Now she’s married to a gormless, soon-to-retire section chief at the Construction and Planning Agency, which just goes to show: A Johnny only comes around once in your life.

  Easy to say all this now and laugh it off, of course, but at the time I was quite upset. “God give me Grace,” I used to say before falling asleep together with my many brothers and sisters in our humble 1950s abode.

  No, these days I’m gripped by the feeling that we’re losing control of our ability to control.

  At least when you’re young and stupid and suffer rejection by a sweet little girl, the pain is real and honest ... and when your mother and father eventually realize something is wrong and you unload the details, they can offer soothing words that put you back on track. You can learn from the experience and improve your chances next time.

  It’s called growing up. Maturation. Gaining control of your life. Something like that.

  But now that we’re grown up, there’s no one to comfort us anymore.

  Have you ever noticed how we Taiwanese have no bona fide national heroes? (The Yankees just won the World Series without Wang Chien-ming (王建民) because he couldn’t run over a base without hurting himself; sorry, folks, he’s no longer on my national hero payroll).

  There’s no one that youngsters can really look up to and say: “Whatever the truth of that person’s private life, in his/her achievements he/she captures the essence of what it is to be Taiwanese. I see myself in such people and my hope for the future is in part sustained by their success.”

  There are such heroes, of course, but they can’t become national heroes because there’s so little space for ideological consensus between the green and blue political worlds. Even nominally non-political figures such as Nobel laureate Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) end up stained and symbolically demoted by their dabblings in politics.

  In my beloved country, national hero status must be validated by political elements to be taken seriously in the media, so we’re at an impasse.

  With no one to look up to, and with our good community under perennial threat, we have to reluctantly turn to people with power to sustain our confidence.

  National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起) is one of those people. Su has risen to a level of considerable power. But as I have mentioned a few times over the years, this gentleman’s behavior has left a lot to be desired. On record for spreading lies and paranoia on matters trivial (the Taipei Times’ purported subservience to the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁)-era Presidential Office) to profound (the Bulletgate pamphlets that hit the desks of US congressmen), this man carries the gravest of responsibilities: protecting all our asses from Chicom encroachment.

  Instead, these days Su seems to be acting as a political minder for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), his increasingly embattled boss and old friend. Why else would he get caught up in — and personally issue an apology for — the debacle over the easing of US beef imports?

  Come to think of it, what is an NSC boss doing getting involved in bloody beef imports anyway? This is foot-in-mouth politics, not a matter of national security ... and last time I looked, the eyes, brains and ganglia of dismembered cows weren’t able to gather intelligence for Zhongnanhai.

  At first I was skeptical when I heard that Su was involved in beef negotiations. Like, dude, don’t you have more pressing matters to attend to? Such as stopping your staff from defecting, staving off invasions and hunting down the fifth column?

  Then the rumors started, and Democratic Progressive Party legislators began to attack. Finally, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) this week confirmed Su’s involvement in the process. On Thursday, Su more or less admitted to skulking behind the scenes when he apologized at the legislature for miscommunications on US beef policy.

  Su should know better. There may be a national security incentive to protect the president, even on a subject as stupid and disgusting as cow offal, but in so doing he has reinforced the perception that Prez Marky Mark Ma is overriding diplomatic mechanisms and bureaucratic processes to get the results he wants, buggering the process in its entirety and leaving Cabinet ministers in the cold and vulnerable to public and political attack.

  It’s all straight out of an Edward Albee play. Ma and Su are academics at heart, so what better way to deflect blame in this Presidential Office Walpurgisnacht than play a childish game called Humiliate the Health Minister?

  Now ... how am I supposed to deal with my growing sense of insecurity?

  In the civilized world, people who make mistakes can increase mutual confidence by apologizing. This suggests that the offender is more likely to spot mistakes in advance and avoid them.

  Su’s apology on this issue is therefore accepted.

  But if apologies are his new thing, then I want him to say sorry for all the sinister shit he got up to after Chen was shot in 2004 on the eve of his re-election. Propaganda booklets, mailouts to the US Congress, ludicrous conspiracy theories ... all of it insulting, cynical and demeaning.

  I want him to apologize for downplaying the threat from China.

  I want him to apologize for inventing the term “1992 consensus.”

  I want him to apologize for fraternizing with top People’s Liberation Army officers and security officials in Beijing in November 2005 — and tell us exactly what he said in his speech to them on Nov. 12.

  But most of all, I want him to apologize for picking at his dentures with a toothpick in full view of photographers while the prez met foreign diplomats in April last year. Man, that was gross ... who taught you manners?

  But because Su is Marky Mark Ma’s Main Man, and one of the prez’s most loyal deputies and buddies, he won’t be apologizing again anytime soon.

  Instead, it is more than likely that his tenure as National Security Council head will continue to throw up these simply bizarre, confidence-sapping incidents.

  Now I feel even more insecure.

  Got something to tell Johnny? Get it off your chest: Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
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