A fresh start for baseball
In a recent analysis, Alan Ellis makes some very valid points (“Taiwan’s embarrassing losses sound wakeup call,” Aug. 17, page 20).
He alludes to the problem of staff appointments and team member selection being political rather than performance-based. This is all too true with Taiwanese Olympic baseball.
Hong Yi-chung (洪一中) need not work on his management; he needs to be replaced. Taiwan, as a country, needs to take this seriously and stop making political appointments to sporting posts. To avoid this situation, maybe they should take a hint from the Chinese and search out someone like Jim Lefebvre.
Ed Greshko
Taipei
On Chen Hsing-yu’s rage
I don’t think this happens elsewhere. Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤), daughter of the former president, tripped over in front of a pack of hungry journalists this week. She got up unaided and then lashed out at a number of politicians with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
She screamed every word while crying and trembling. I don’t remember what she said exactly, but she lost control and said that elections and political campaigns required funds. Surprise, surprise.
“Didn’t [former premier] Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) [receive funds]? Didn’t [former DPP presidential nominee] Frank Hsieh (謝長廷)? … They [the KMT] want to fight our family to death … Then I’ll speak out and end my life … My whole family has to die to show our innocence.”
What a thing to say! It is hard to believe the daughter of a former top political figure would blurt out something as desperate as this.
I cannot imagine US President George W. Bush’s daughters or former British prime minister Tony Blair’s children would ever be pushed around like this, even when their parents’ popularity was at low ebb.
Chen, looking pale already, used death as a threat a few times. A person with no political power, she broke down in tears, announcing that she’d rather die to defend her innocence.
We’re all aware that this is not the first time she’s spoken of death in front of a crowd of photographers and journalists. Faced with myriad accusations, she was expected to lose control and reveal things she had been told to keep secret.
Bang, she did.
Every journalist knows her capacity to produce juicy headline material. She has a record of using irrational language, often surrendering to a bombardment by reporters, and appearing dramatic. She is therefore a dream come true for the news media.
Immediately after the incident, we read or watched edited news reports of her tripping over and losing control. Journalists tracked down the names she had given. Hsieh and Su denied her accusations.
Then we laughed at her nonsense, again, and at her incompetence in dealing with the media. We still didn’t find out where the suspicious funds came from, nor why they’re in a number of overseas accounts, even with the tremendous “help” of so many detective-journalists.
The fact is that we enjoy her failings and dramatic manner, which give us something to talk about in our mundane, boring lives.
The combination of her character flaws, every twisted plot she has ever been involved in, and her marked status contributes to our bizarre self-satisfaction.
Quite a few DPP supporters even blamed her for implicating party members.
We — regardless of our political stance — love to see her as an object of mockery so that we can take comfort in our discernment and think that we wouldn’t be as politically and emotionally foolish as she.
We — yes, we — are all responsible for our blood-hungry media that judge without evidence, that accuse without common sense and that blame a select group of people for no substantial reason. I am saddened and shocked to find that so many viewers-cum-“people” are de-sensitized to her roars and cries.
Stacy Lo
Changhua County
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