Thanks to the internet, Cancel Culture has gone global, as New Yorker Jocelyn Chia discovered to her dismay. A mild quip about the divorce between Malaysia and Singapore (after the British left sixty years ago) got her in trouble. She writes:
On June 5, the Comedy Cellar posted a clip from a show I had done in which I depicted Malaysia as the ex who broke up with Singapore—the country I grew up in—and Singapore was now having a "glow-up".
The clip was performing very well, but when I posted the same one on my social media on Tuesday morning, things started to take a nasty turn.
I first saw someone sharing my clip in an Instagram story—the words were in Malay which I didn't understand, but ended with a "wow!" Funnily enough, thinking it was a compliment, I reposted the story. However as negative story shares and comments rapidly piled up, I soon realized that "wow!" had not been meant as a compliment.
Next time, use Google Translate. No word on whether divorced people were offended.
I was in elementary school in the Midwest when the "divorce" happened. Lee Kuan Yew became Prime Minister of Singapore, an ethnic Chinese bastion with a Muslim Malay minority, a sizeable population from the Indian subcontinent, and a residue of Anglos. He ran the place -- it's fair to say he ran it -- from 1959 to 1990. He took "spare the rod, spoil the child" seriously: caning was a punishment. It functioned like a family firm with the patriarch using a firm hand -- near as I could tell from the far side of the World.
Singapore Inc. thrived and was often cited as a model for America by advocates of an "Industrial Policy" that picks economic "winners and losers" from the comfortable confines of D.C. office blocks and Ivy League campuses. Even as a kid, comparing a mid-sized city (less than two million inhabitants at the time) to a continent-sized nation didn't make much sense. At the time, Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago was called "the City that Works" (corruption greased the development skids), but no one suggested running the USA like Chicago -- until the Obama administration. Under Biden, it's Chicago all the way down.
This is not to knock Singapore. Long ago I spent a few weeks there and really liked it.
Malaysia took a different turn. The Malays were the majority but considered themselves an economic minority. In the 1970s, they launched the Bumiputera movement, an affirmative action program for the native Malays. Apparently, the better-off Bumis have learned to game the system.
I once had an extended conversation with an important figure in that movement. I stood in the Malaysian Business and Tourism office in Bangkok in 1981 when a nervous official came over and asked if I was an American. I said I was and he invited me to meet a fellow who had taken over his office for the occasion. Curious as to whether I would be arrested or offered some honor, I agreed.
He was an older fellow and introduced himself as a minor functionary when the anxious behavior of the local staff said otherwise. He wanted to know the attitude of ordinary Americans toward security in Southeast Asia, and I was the closest ordinary American. You see, "Cambodia Year Zero" became "Cambodia, population Zero" a few years earlier. The Vietnamese invaded and knocked over the skull racks. Refugees flooded into Thailand. The Cambodian communists were so bad that the Vietnamese communist looked good. It ended with a powerful army of veteran warriors poised near Thailand. When I headed for Asia, a friend asked me how far Bangkok was from the border. I said, "It's a two-day drive -- by tank."
During the conversation, I told my interlocutor that ordinary Americans don't care about Southeast Asian security. They tend to hear the "Americans go home" message and like the idea. That applies to the rest of the World too, except for Canada, Mexico, and Caribean vacation spots. As for Europe, well, if we leave they'll start fighting each other again and drag us into it so we stay. However, Americans will help their friends, so be friendly.
In return for my Geopolitical insights, I received a ticket to a luncheon in honor of Mahathir bin Mohamad, the new Malaysian Prime Minister -- destined to become a force in Malaysian politics for decades to come. It was free food, so I went.
They stuck me at a table full of correspondents from major Western media organizations (The Wall Street Journal and such). They were curious about why I was with them. I told of my happenstance encounter at the tourism office. Turns out he was Mahathir's guy (actually, it sounded the other way around), they all wanted to talk to him, but he wasn't giving interviews. It was a "pearls before swine" moment for them -- me being the swine.
The good news: I ate my fill. Mahathir was asked about the ethnic and racial divisions in Malaysia and he said we'd know it's solved when everyone starts marrying everyone else. I can't say he remained so open-minded going forward. Often politicians need those divisions.
Well, as is so often the case, it's a good joke if you know the history.
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