In bed with Mike Chinoy
Dear Johnny,
Well, I'm usually a fan of your cut-away-the-bullshit, find-the-tendons-and-you-can-slaughter-1,000-pigs-without-sharpening-your-knife-if-you-have-Dao approach, but strip away the fine-cutting scatological aspects (verbal diarrhea is a trustworthy blade of any good satirist) and overall your last piece on the referendum puts you firmly in bed with Chicom Mike Chinoy ("Referendumb and referendumber," Sept. 22, page 8). I'd like to point out why such bedfellows seem strange to me (I can only pray that Cathy Pacific ain't with you).
In order to meet your stingy word requirements, I will outline the following under the title of "Why the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) demonstration on the UN was a good idea, even if it failed this time" (read it to the tune of Mr. Impossible Marley's Get Up, Stand Up).
1. I grow oh-so-tired of the frame that everything President Chen Shui-bian (
Getting into the UN, standing up for Taiwan consciousness and the people of this country in general and planting the seeds for the future seem like they are honestly Chen's and Chen's party's values. I don't know about you, but these are values I support. Compare this with, say, Ma Ying-jeou (
2. Chen/the DPP and the majority of Taiwanese who support this issue got some good press out of it in important international media outlets. Bob Dole's editorial in the Wall Street Journal (calling on US President George W. Bush to support Taiwan's UN referendum) and Indian UN academic Ramesh Thakur's piece in the India Times (on Taiwan's exclusion being the biggest and longest-running scandal involving the UN) were both spot on and show there is dissent on both US and UN policy.
If this was an election gimmick, why do you suppose they wrote and supported it? They're not voting in the next Taiwanese election, nor are they ethnically Taiwanese. Why would they have written these articles, do you suppose? Hmm?
3. Why not give the up-and-coming US presidential contenders an option to weigh in with some transparency on how they feel? Let's expose them for the money-worshippers in the temple that they are.
4. Wake up! Hell has already frozen over many times. Truman beat Dewey, Ali beat Foreman, and what about those miracle Mets? I grow even more sooo tired of the "impossible" argument (that's the one where you're in bed with Chinoy sipping bubbly). Haven't you heard or seen the T-mac Adidas commercial? All my students have, and they know that Impossible is Nothing (as is grammar, apparently).
5. Come back to your senses, Johnny! I can sense it in you!
Michael Loncar
Pingtung
Johnny replies: Well, Michael, your outline is still very long, so now I don't have the room to contest the points you make.
I will say that it's one thing to complain and moan about not belonging to a world body that conducts its affairs under a Chinese veto, but it's another thing altogether to turn the referendum into a political weapon that distracts it from its most valuable potential function: directly changing the Constitution without necessarily getting the approval of the legislature or the executive.
Result: The referendum is perceived to be a cynical, partisan tool, not a democratic jewel, and boycotts follow.
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