Why it's useful to have a hide as thick as an elephant's while you live in this country

I skip the dailies for a few days and find an uproar in cyberspace over something that some minster or other said. This time it's in reference to bloggers; women bloggers in particular.

Malaysian Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan was reported by Sin Chew (March 9, Early Evening edition pp 5) to have said the following:

"Bloggers are liars. They use all sort of ways to cheat others. From what I know, out of 10,000 unemployed bloggers, 8,000 are women.

"Bloggers like to spread rumours, they don't like national unity. Today our country has achievements because we are tolerant and compromising. Otherwise we will have civil war.

Malays will kill Chinese, Chinese will kill Malays, Indians will kill everybody else.

He asked people not to believe bloggers and gamble away Malaysia's future because 50 years of Merdeka (Independence) takes a lot to achieve it.

We have to show to the people our positive attitude. If the world learns from us, there will peace and no civil war."

I'm not certain about the authenticity of the translation but I get the gist of what was said. So I suppose everyone else's girlfriends, mothers, aunts, sisters, wives, and basically anyone with the XX chromosome are generally unemployed, liars or cheats. I wonder if he took a second to think how he came into the world and whose womb he sprung out of? What really scares me is the way he nonchalantly says "Malays will kill Chinese, Chinese will kill Malays, Indians will kill everybody else". Are we now also heartless murderers?

And then there is this piece by Rehman Rashid in the NST (culled with relevant bits , of course):

"There is now a place called the "blogosphere", touted by its denizens as a Utopia of freedom of expression.

In my opinion, what they’ve really done is prove why freedom of expression was a really bad idea. In this country, a host of folk who never had a hope of getting published are now proving why not.

The local blogosphere is the domain of life-challenged grumblestiltskins and disenfranchised pundits whose asinine maunderings only show why they should never have had day jobs in the first place.

Rumour, innuendo, half-truths and damned lies are their stock- in-trade, and previously sacrosanct standards, principles and ethics are now laughable.

Are they not entitled to their opinion? Of course they are, as much as everyone else is entitled to ignore them. I would venture, however, that everyone has an opinion and a rectum, and not that many seem capable of telling one from the other.

But no, it’s all good. Let a hundred thousand million flowers bloom; let all voices be heard, in however fractured language, whether or not they have anything pertinent to communicate or any information worth more than spittle to offer. "

Hmm...

So much has been said in response to this already that I'll just skip it. It would be a waste of energy and resources to justify why this is more than a little unjustified.

Here's what I wonder:

1. Why time and time again our nation's leaders are given to expounding absolutely mindless or baseless utterances without first filtering it through their grey matter (or do they have any?) or even their PR department. Do they not know that what they say will be taken note of? Not only by the locals but by the rest of the world? And that if they sound stupid saying them, they will be perceived as such? The problem is, not only will they be perceived as lacking of great intellect, even the general population will be perceived as such by those who know no better.

2. Why must there be so much negativity about freedom of speech, especially in cyberspace?

What's good about cyberspace is that most of the stuff you go through or read is free. You look for what you want and it pops up. If you like it, you read some more. If you don't, just ignore it and move on. After all, not everyone is gifted with the "talent" to write. Having a blog is just a means of people journaling their daily if not mundane lives. Of course, the really good ones make a living out of them.

When I brought up Item 1 with Rizal, he said plainly, " We all know that politicians basically are brainless. They're basically unqualified for their job. If they had half a brain and any skills, they would be running some corporation somewhere and wouldn't be where they are now."

I've been living here long enough to be conditioned not to pay any attention or get unduly riled up by what our nation's leaders say. After all, at the rate they are going with their "wise words", I would have died by cardiac arrest, hypertension or driven mentally insane years ago. There's only so much mental bashing that one can take without either developing an immunity to it or be totally crushed by it.

However, it is increasingly disappointing to me that as we move along into the 21st Century, we seem to be regressing as a nation of intellectual, intelligent individuals. At least, the representation that these leaders put forward to the rest of the world make it seem that we Malaysians really are a petty, insensitive, racist lot. And that instead of being concerned with bigger and more important matters, here we are bickering about bloggers, mat skodengs, chastity belts, brandishing the keris and scoring As in SPM.

There really is more to life than reading the local dailies or paying attention to what our leaders say. I for one, being the liar, cheat and unemployed vagrant that I am (The first two are probably true in some instances but the last is a totally baseless claim. See? Even I can make such claims!) am concentrating on bringing my baby girl to term (another liar, cheat and unemployed vagrant - well, the latter only until she's capable of finding her own source of income) in the next four months.