What on earth are we to do to about PFP Legislator Diane Lee (
After her Twu/Tu farce, if acting head of the Department of Health Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) collects his NT$50 million for libel -- and surely this is an open and shut case if ever there was one -- she will be a little poorer. More importantly, although this sum is not a problem for her wealthy family, she has still lost her credibility. Or perhaps we have to say should lose it, because memories in Taiwan are short. Lee's penchant for attention-seeking with extravagant claims, her heft as the darling of the pro-blue camp media and the nation's thirst for salacious gossip will soon conspire to find her using her position as a legislator once again to spread some scurrilous (and probably false) tittle-tattle in an effort to ruin the life of some other member of the government.
So how are we to deal with Lee the next time she sets entices the nation to heed her latest cause celebre? Readers might get tired of seeing her name written as "the often unreliable Diane Lee" or "Diane Lee, of dubious plausibility." They might, not unreasonably, ask: If you can't believe anything she says why are you bothering to report it? Alas, how do we explain that we are in the business of reporting the news and scandalous tittle-tattle is what the news is, in this benighted country. We wish it weren't this way, but if the entire nation is engrossed by the Twu Shiing-jer farce and we don't report it simply because we know Lee to be credibility-challenged, we would hardly be doing readers a service.
The problem is not just, of course, Lee. It is a long and dishonorable chain of celebrity legislators who have made their reputation by slandering people with the impunity provided them by their constitutional immunity from prosecution. Remember Lin Ruey-tu (
This is not to say that salacious sex scandals and the like do not happen elsewhere; Monica Lewinsky surely reminded us all of that. But we do note that the gossip circulated by Matt Drudge rarely makes the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post or throws the US administration of the day into a tailspin.
What is it about Taiwan, which, heaven knows, has enough real problems -- in fact real scandals that should be aired -- where politics is reduced to simple mud-slinging in the hope that some of it might stick, and the media, instead of pillorying the mud-slingers, egg them on?
Has anyone anywhere pointed out that, for example, Lee was trained as a journalist? That she went public with the Twu story with such obviously inadequate fact-checking shows her incompetence not only as a politician but also in her chosen profession of which she was supposedly a respected practitioner.
But this doesn't just shame her, the PFP or the United Daily News which rushed her pathetic allegations into print. It shames all of us: those in the political class for reducing affairs of state to these absurd vendettas; the fourth estate for playing up this stupidity and ordinary Taiwanese for being duped into thinking it important. The last time most of us were in such a petty and spiteful milieu was probably in the school-yard. It is about time that we all grew up.
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