President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) supping with his wife.
Well, that’s not quite the right description. Regardless of what was really happening, what was really being said and what people were really thinking, the picture on the front page of the China Times last Saturday showed a most horrible thing: the troubled president stuffing his mouth with a “wheel cake” — one of those foldover cakes with red bean filling that you can buy at street stalls.
Meanwhile, Ma’s wife, Reluctant First Lady Chow “Cyndi Lauper” Mei-ching (周美青), looks at hubby with an apparent expression of disgust and/or contempt as he tries to devour the proletarian delicacy with one hand while juggling chopsticks with the other.
It’s a peerless example of ambush photojournalism. Had the photo been taken one-tenth of a second earlier or later, there would have been nothing to see. Chow’s face would not have registered anything negative-looking — at least toward her husband — and Ma would have been his normally bland, slightly uncomfortable public self instead of coming across as a ravenous, oblivious, indelicate caricature.
It’s a photo that begs a caption competition: “What did Mrs Ma say to the Prez while wolfing down a dessert like a stray dog in full view of the press? Send in your best gags! Winners will receive a year’s supply of laxatives and tissue paper and a year of elocution lessons.”
The China Times’ caption headline for the photo was tame enough: “Caught on camera at the Double Ten evening banquet.”
Pictures may tell a thousand words, but in this case the significance of the newspaper’s decision to run this unfortunate pic can only be properly understood after reading the bold headline above it:
“Global stock markets collapse in panic.”
The net effect of the page’s layout? Gormless gastronome Ma acts the glutton as global markets gag on their gonads.
Do you need reminding, dear reader? If not, forgive me. The China Times is a pro-China, pro-KMT, pro-unification, pro-baby-sacrificing newspaper. Yet, with this photo, the people in Ma’s own backyard — his media glad-handers for so many years — have set him up to look like a buffoon. An elitist. An aloof goof. The Republic of China’s version of an upper-class twit.
Someone vulnerable at the next election, that is to say.
From within his party.
One respected colleague tells me that these days, in this new age of comprehensive disillusionment with party politics, the China Times is the paper to read. OK, OK ... so it supports a comprehensive gutting of Taiwanese sovereignty and runs editorials that augur a revival of footbinding. But at least it has the good dope on what’s happening in the KMT. These guys are running the country, after all.
And the good dope says that not everyone in the pan-blue camp is happy with the way things are being run.
Watch this space.
Actually, nothing of what I have just written is credible. Do you know how I know this? Because the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace say so.
Speaking at a Foundation on International & Cross-Strait Studies symposium last Sunday, Derek Mitchell from the CSIS and Douglas Paal from the, er, Endowment, took turns to say that the US is beside itself with joy at Ma’s China policy and that the DPP has no business protesting cross-strait detente.
Judging from Mitchell’s publications and Paal’s infamous term as director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), these guys have about as much commitment to protecting Taiwan’s democracy as Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has to protecting caribou from having their heads blown off.
But what really impresses me is how, once again, domestic politics has to sit at the back of the commentariat bus as the sexier issues of China, economic integration and eventual “unification” vie for the driver’s seat.
It’s hilarious how commentators slip into Taiwan and start telling everyone what a fan-bloody-tastic job Ma is doing and how Washington heads are ecstatic that Ma is in office.
One can therefore imagine the confusion that would follow if the aforementioned photograph of Ma eating his snack (or was the snack eating Ma?) were placed in front of these analysts for comment.
Skeptical reader: “How do you explain the bickering and character-smearing among pro-China forces and the president’s record-low approval rating, and what effect will these problems have on cross-strait policy and its implementation?”
Think tank celebrity: “I’m sorry, is that the time? I really must be going.”
But what really impressed me was that Mitchell once worked for that oasis of unreconstructed Sino-servility and revisionist psychosis, the China Post, as a copy editor and reporter.
Okay, okay. I won’t get heavy with people because they needed a job to get them through school or whatever. I know the pain that comes from paying your dues and surviving in a compromised vocation. Sometimes you need to sleep with the enemy.
But hey, Derek: You took this job after working for Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. And what the hell were you thinking when you put the China Post gig in your CV on the Center for Strategic and International Studies Web site? Should we infer that taking orders from those Big China troglodytes helped in some small way to shape your thinking on China-Taiwan relations?
This, at least, might help to explain the amusingly optimistic title of a book that Mitchell brought out two years ago called China: The Balance Sheet — What the World Needs to Know Now about the Emerging Superpower.
These think tank types, boy, they love their emerging superpowers.
As for the Paalster, his presence as both moderator and presenter at the symposium raised a few eyebrows in my neck of the woods. Why does a man who despises Taiwan keep returning for these think tank gabfests?
I contacted my good friend Harlan C. Exxonburger, a senior associate at the Sherman Milhaus Rockefeller III Don’t Tread On My Bald Eagle Foundation think tank in Washington for his take on Mr Paal.
He said: “Forget it, Johnny. You wanna get inside Paal’s head? Everything that we know about him, all the stuff that’s off the record, can’t compete with what’s already in the public domain.”
So, suitably chastened, I rummaged through the public domain for all things Paal and found a bunch of stuff. You know, connections with China, Washington intrigue, the usual stuff.
The best of all, the one that made the hair on the back of my neck stand erect, was a cracker of a photograph. When Paal was boss of the AIT before Stephen Young showed up, he turned up at the Taipei World Trade Center in a (ahem) rare public appearance to promote US beef.
This was at a time when Taipei was a bit nervy about releasing US beef to the public during a mad-cow disease scare. Ogle the photograph at www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/photo/2005/06/17/2005037419.
It strikes me there’s nothing more arousing than an AIT boss with business interests in China clutching raw steak for Taiwanese consumption — especially when he’s wearing a shit-eating grin.
“US meat,” indeed.
Please don’t assume that the presence in this column of Paal, Mitchell and any other think tank/political/academic types who sugar-coat Chinese ambition is meant to distract from the myriad failings of the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration.
Chen had his moments, but he and his team of haughty lawyer bait should take full responsibility for failing to appease Washington. Politics is like that: You have to soothe your audience — even if its anxiety is neurotic.
But when you look at the big picture, the failure of the US to keep the pulse of events in Taiwan, or the political misuse of that information to the detriment of democratic interests, makes me wonder if Uncle Sam needs to take one long, hard damn look at himself in the mirror.
If time is short, Sam could take a photo of himself for later reference. Hey, I’ll even throw in a caption.
Got something to tell Johnny? Go on, get it off your chest. Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but be sure to put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
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