What better way to start a column than dwarf tossing? Well ... not quite. Will dwarf racing suffice?
Once again, you have to hand it to the Australians. Transport yourself, dear reader, to the Cranbourne Cup in Cranbourne, Victoria state, where, during an intermission in the real racing, three vertically challenged gentlemen dressed as jockeys launch themselves down the home straight, hands a-whippin’, on the backs of three vertically unchallenged gentlemen.
About 100m down the track, the outside lane team of red/orange/pink-shirted dwarf and white cap/denim pants/white-shirt-presenting-man-boobs everyman fall over, sending the dwarf flying across the finish line and onto his ass — and the crowd into hysterics.
Ah, Australians at the races. The thought of it oozes tan cream, silly dresses, beer guts threatening to burst out of A$500 shirts and socialites purring “Youse all look simply gawjus, da-aa-aa-lings” before letting it all out and bawling “Move yer bloomin’ arse!” (or the Strine equivalent) as the horses near the finish line.
But, like Canberra’s diplomacy in Asia, Aussies don’t go far enough — when it comes to bad taste.
If old Johnny had been the MC at the Cranbourne Cup, you would have seen the fully grown men on the backs of the dwarfs. Or, better still, real jockeys on the backs of the dwarfs, whipping their thighs to pulp with riding crops.
And there would have been a female dwarf wet T-shirt competition. The announcer: “Contestant No. 5 is from Moonee Ponds and is the manager of a gardening center. Well bugger me, mate, hasn’t she got a nice pointy rack under that sopping-wet Mambo T-shirt ... pity you’d have to break your back to get to know her better, heh heh heh [whooping noise from the crowd]. And here’s No. 6, short but sweet: Sheila Faye Rudd from Geelong. G’day Sheila, mind the hose ...”
So you see, my penal pals Down Under approach bad taste like it were a constitutional republic: They can never quite get there. If you want to go down the road of bad taste, as Sean Connery might say, you’ve got to go all the way.
They should take lessons from Taiwan’s elected representatives. The stinky specter of true bad taste hovered over the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus this week as the ongoing Persecution and Assassination of Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as Performed by the Members of the KMT Legislative Caucus in Taipei Under the Direction of Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) entered the realm of the wholly neurotic.
I’ve said it before somewhere (I think) and I’ll say it again. Just as the Chen-ster begins to gather up enough sympathy to force his party colleagues to actually do something about his farcical detention, that Gormless Gaucho from Guantian (官田) says something so thoroughly ill-advised and impossibly self-destructive that the true believers have to rush for cover — again.
Now he’s saying things that are so crazy that the KMT is going just as crazy in the rush to “overkill” him.
How crazy is Chen? He and his goofball advisers signed on to separate, doomed campaigns in the US courts that would have (a) forced Washington to declare Taiwan to be a territory under uninterrupted military occupation — not by the KMT, mind you, but by the US, and (b) authorized US President Barack Obama to send the cavalry to free Chen on the basis that Chen was allegedly, in his own words, “an agent of the US military government.”
Clearly, Chen had caught Staphylococcus Roger-Lin-aureus — an ailment whose virulence lies somewhere between swine flu and hepatitis B — after being got to in detention by Roger Lin (林志昇), president of the ultra-fringe, ultra-nutty Formosa Nation Legal Strategy Association.
OK, Chen was being stupid and vain by endorsing this bunch of extremist clowns. But does anyone really think he was taking orders from the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)? If he had been, surely, there would have been prime US beef ads on every government Web site and prime US beef promotions in every government service center during his terms in office.
But how crazy is the KMT? Seizing every possible chance of taking the injured Chen and tearing him to pieces, the likely lads in the caucus have declared that Chen’s alleged “agent” comment proves that he was a spy and committed treason.
This is where the bad taste comes in. At a presser on Wednesday, KMT legislators did a commendable impersonation of the Taliban by producing a picture of Uncle Sam pointing at the audience and asking: “Who is the bastard son of Uncle Sam?”
Those in the US political and government establishment who still believe the KMT has respect for American iconography might care to review this little incident. This press conference was led not by some obscure rube legislator coveting media attention, but Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟), the head of the party’s legislative caucus (and a rube legislator who covets media attention).
These guys seem to be hinting that Chen was an agent of the US government — because he said so, even if in an apparently legal context. That’s actually an extraordinary thing to imply, not because this accusation for domestic consumption is even remotely credible, but because it makes quite clear, together with a depiction of Uncle Sam as a sinister, sexually assaultive figure, that deep, deep, deep inside the unlit, grimy, verbally hazy, unloved-as-a-child recesses of these people’s minds, America is the enemy.
Did you get that? If not, allow me to repeat.
They think that America is the enemy.
Once more for the US State Department:
America is the enemy.
And now, the icing on the cake: To punish the former prez, our beloved KMT buddies said they would push for a retroactive legislative amendment to strip Chen of every salary bauble. Jerome Cohen, are you listening?
The irony, of course, is that as president, Chen did exactly the opposite. He took no notice of US concerns at several crucial moments — and in doing so incurred the wrath of ... the KMT.
Now, according to the KMT legislative caucus, all Chen has to do is be allowed out on bail for a few hours, and he will rush to the AIT, claim asylum and be whisked out of Taiwan by the Americans (in refrigerated containers containing rejected beef; he might need warm clothes) and go into exile in a Long Island mansion, where he can wear some decent threads and throw Great Gatsby-style parties for expat Taiwanese having a rest from writing letters to the editor.
Let’s explore this a little further. If “bastard son of Uncle Sam” is the slogan du jour for our KMT pals, I ask: Just which unfortunate Asian lady did Uncle Sam get in the sack to produce such ill-fated progeny?
Did Sam have a Koxinga (鄭成功) -style session with a Japanese wench? That might explain part of the KMT’s seething hatred of Chen — if not its fetish for Koxinga.
While I investigate Uncle Sam’s history of Asian trysts, I’ve a mind to hire some Taiwanese dwarves and send them down to the street outside Chen’s lock-up in Taipei County, where they can play basketball on a mock-up court against the tallest players in the nation (and with the baskets at the standard height), and have some scantily dressed hot young dwarf babes with extremely long false eyelashes and dangerously steep high heels sell betel nut and Whisby to the onlookers.
Make no mistake: These days, bad taste is the only way you’re going to get a crowd near Chen.
Got something to tell Johnny? Get it off your chest: Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
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