Occasionally I am seduced by unwelcome muses into a bit of literary appreciation. My hand was forced recently by two people. One is US think tank honcho Ted Galen Carpenter; the other Taipei City Government Department of Labor Director Su Ying-kuei (蘇盈貴).
Carpenter is a prolific anti-Taiwan media commentator. His latest work is a co-authored essay in Policy Analysis, a publication of the Cato Institute think tank. The lead author is a young whippersnapper called Justin Logan, who, judging from his online photo, is the love child of Stephen Colbert and Dennis Pennis.
It's an interesting article, and like all interesting articles, it teases you with some facts and genuine insights -- before getting down to the contentious stuff.
Or, in this case, the bullshit.
The title doesn't mince words: "Taiwan's Defense Budget: How Taipei's Free Riding Risks War."
And it makes some good calls. How about this: "The US should not be positioning itself as the arbiter of which Taiwanese defense needs are most pressing" (page 4); "A robust, capable [military] posture is the most prudent course for Taiwan, regardless of party, politics, or ideology" (page 5); "Today there is little interest [in Taiwan] in reunification with the mainland" (page 8); and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has an "irresponsible policy on defense spending" (page 9).
There are also several good points about concern within the US on Taiwan's underspending on military wares.
But then there's the bullshit. An appetiser: "A comprehensive [Democratic Progressive Party]-led de-Sinification program is in high gear" (page 3).
"Comprehensive"? "High gear"? Pass the bong, boys!
And then: "the only way to explain Taiwan's policy of political provocation and military capitulation is a belief in a US security commitment" (page 6).
This is disingenuous. The article itself castigates the KMT for turning Taiwan's special defense budget into a debacle, then conflates legislative obstruction with executive efforts to pump up the military. It seems to have never occurred to the authors that a good chunk of the KMT wants Taiwan to be militarily weak. And not a word about KMT brown-nosers on pilgrimages to Beijing.
The article also selectively quotes Taiwanese military officers to give the reader the impression that no one in the forces gives a damn about the China threat and that the US is expected to do all the hard work.
In the end, Taiwan comes across as an irritant, a country that should be made to depend on no one and the hell with the consequences. Forget treaties such as NATO and ANZUS in other parts of the world; Taiwan, you're on your own, baby. No US intervention in a cross-strait conflict under any circumstances. And Japan's response? Naaah -- we'll worry about that when we've finished democratizing Iraq.
Taiwan, ultimately, is "peripheral" to the US national interest.
Really? Let's take back all those damn semiconductors, then.
To the extent that the US should intervene, Carpenter and Logan support Taiwan reaching a brokered deal like Hong Kong: an end to sovereignty. Anything, anything at all that will avoid a US-China war. Including abandoning a democracy that the US nurtured.
The Cato Institute claims principles that include "free markets" (apparently unless they have Chinese characteristics) and "individual liberty" (apparently unless you've got yellow skin).
Oh, and let's not forget how Cato is into "extend[ing] the promise of political freedom and economic opportunity to those who are still denied it, in our own country and around the world."
At the bottom of the "About us" page of the Cato Web site is this curious sentence: "We reject the bashing of gays, China, rich people, and immigrants that contemporary liberals and conservatives seem to think addresses society's problems."
Very noble.
Logan himself claims to be interested in "democracy promotion." I assume his sense of humor must come from Dennis Pennis' genes. Give the man another few years and he'll dye his hair red.
Fellas, if you're going to travel down the think tank road, couldn't you fall in line with some of the principles espoused by your colleagues? And if you can't, shouldn't you cut your losses and remove references to those principles from your Web site?
So, to literary appreciation.
What ol' Ted probably doesn't know is that a couple of his very distant relatives, Karen and Richard Carpenter, wrote a song called Close to You that captures his torment and lays it out for all to see and pity (the lyrics need to be tweaked a little). Try singing this out loud and slowly because it's more effective:
Why do words
Suddenly appear
In the Times
And the FEER?
Dislike green
You long to be
Close to blue.
Well, Ted may be no pan-blue groupie, but he ought to know that his policy prescriptions are indistinguishable from hardline blue-camp China shills. Sorry, Ted, the chorus stays.
And now to poetry.
Ever wondered why there haven't been any prosecutions (excepting former New Party legislator Elmer Fung (
This might be the answer: National and local governments are too busy promoting touchy-feely activites such as poetry-writing contests for migrant workers who can afford to buy their own stationery to write drafts.
Su Ying-kuei, now in charge of migrant labor in Taipei instead of professional rumor-mongering, hosted such a get-together last Sunday. The Taipei Times quoted poet/judge Chen Ke-hua (陳克華) as saying that this year poems turned away from "the horrors of mistreatment" and toward the "feelings of homesickness and missing loved ones." One winning ode favorably compared an employer with the author's mother.
Chen said this was a sign of improvement in labor relations.
An improvement, perhaps, for those with the time to write, or whose employers are willing to be identified in government festivals of self-congratulation.
As it happens, I was walking our mutt Punkspleen near the Taipei City Government Department of Labor during the contest, and as I put his droppings in a trash can (triple-wrapped in China Post pages stolen from a 7-Eleven) I spied a crumpled piece of paper. It was a poem.
Is it self-pitying doggerel, or a poignant plea from the heart? You be the judge, dear reader.
Ballad of the Real Mother
When I first came to this place
I told my kids back home
"It's OK, my loves, it's wet but warm
and I've got a mobile phone."
"The people are quite friendly
And the food is almost good
There's trees and parks and slippery slides
In my neighborhood."
The biggest problem of them all
(May I be so bold)
Is that very few speak English
All that well, if truth be told.
My bosses said I ought to teach
Their child an English word
Then every time I did so
They corrected me. Absurd!
From that point on it seemed as if
I couldn't be a friend
So I looked for other confidants
On whom I could depend.
I made some friends at
Fellowship
We gossiped all day long
They're really lovely ladies
And they knew what's right, what's wrong.
They told me how to put up with
The silly things at work
Like carrying all the baggage
When the bosses want to shirk.
And being shouted at in public
Though I do the work just fine
And saying my friends are dirty
If they're standing in the line
With a handsome man from Thailand
And his friends to see a show
I say to them: "He's honest,"
But they scowl and say "Oh, no,"
"Don't go near brown men
They'll take your innocence away."
I said: "I already have children.
That's a silly thing to say."
Then Daddy becomes angry
And he shouts back at his wife:
"Sack that slut before she
Gets the youngster into strife."
So now it's not so easy,
Though I've kept the job at hand
I'm lonely sometimes, angry too,
But never take a stand.
And though I love this precious child
Much more than his own Mum
And though his Daddy likes to
Stick his thing inside my bum
I shouldn't cry, I shouldn't fear
I thank the Lord humbly
At least I still have Sundays off
And abortions are tax-free.
Heard or read something particularly objectionable about Taiwan? Johnny wants to know: dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com is the place to reach me, with "Dear Johnny" in the subject line.
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