Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Shags, Wags and other Things

Feeling a little in the colour today. Ended up sleeping at 4am and am up and about trying to bash out sentences on the computer in an effort to try and stay awake and fill up my life with its usual meaningless thoughts. Khai Meng CO-Chairman of O&M, Asia-Pacific describes writers and other creative folks as the "Meaning Makers" of the future. I would not go so far as to give myself any fancy pretentions of changing the world. I am merely a slightly more refined version of a whore, willing to say anything to please whoever may be listening and somehow hopping to make a living of sorts - well when you think about it, I might as well join the cruder version of whoredome - I'd get to collect the cash before I get *&(^#@().

Anyway, enough  of that. If I carried on in this vein, I might actually sound intelligent and we couldn't have that could we? No, it's best if I kept my thoughts to the inane and continued to ramble on in my usual fashion. Then, I'd probably sound like the rest of the world, caring only for the things that I care about.

It's reached such an advanced stage in Singapore when the national newspaper carries four pages of stories about fadding romances between second-rate sports stars, cats that dress in Armani and so on with alarming regularity in its Sunday edition. Most would blame this sad situation on the media. I prefer to blame the public. 

We're more interested in debating who slept with whom than in more serious issues like torture being legalised and justified and so on and so we create the demand for mundane stories. I admired Rupert Murdoch most when he reffused to appologise for paying papparazi for taking photos of Princes Di after she died. - He said that he only paid the Paparazi because they took photos that sold papers, which were bought by the British Public - which was at that time going through a spate of breast-beating over Diana's unfortunate demise at the hands of a drunk driver. It was a politically incorrect but as Minister Mentor Lee would say, "I'm not interested in being politically correct, I'm interested in being correct."

Iran has held a two-day conference on the truth of the Holocaust. It's quite a funny thing to do in a morbid sort of way. Auschwitz was a horrible event and one shouldn't take anything away from the suffering of the people who died in the concentration camps. However, as awaful as it's been, the Mullah's of Iran have shown up the West for being totally hypocritical in its approach to global issues. When you insult Muslims by drawing awful cartoons of the Prophet its called excercising freedom of speech. When you denny the Holocaust took place, its a jailable offence in many European countries. Freedom of Speech, as Larry Flynt once pointed out, is offensive and if you want to make it the cornerstone of your society, you have to accept that someone, somewhere will be offended.

And its sad that the Mullahs are winning this PR war. The West is for the most part a force of good in human history. Most of the material advances we enjoy, the political freedoms are part of the West's influence on human history. The Mullahs and guys like David Duke of the KKK represent a misuse and abuse of God, which makes it even more embarrasing for the "Engightened" people to be shown up to the hypocrites by them.


No comments

© BeautifullyIncoherent
Maira Gall