It seems that the DPP are getting to grips with the important issues facing Taiwan:
Three ruling Democratic Progressive Party legislators launched a campaign yesterday calling on Taiwanese baseball fans to email an appeal to the New York Yankees to keep Taiwanese pitcher Wang Chien-ming in their lineup.
Every Taiwanese baseball fan should email a letter to the public relations staff and coaches of the Yankees to express their hope of seeing Wang remain in the major leagues, said Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), in response to reports indicating that the team is considering sending Wang back to the Columbus Clippers, a triple-A affiliate farm team of the Yankees.
Wang’s recent success has been big news in Taiwan recently. I am sure that these three legislators are indeed avid baseball supporters – not engaging in a spot of cheap populism at all.
The concept of keeping politics out of sports doesn’t seem to apply in Taiwan: the KMT were quick to nominate Olympic taekwondo silver medal winner Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄) into the legislature last year. Then again, given the number of fights in the legislature, having a taekwondo expert on your side has plenty of practical benefits too …
Just found your blog. Nice work mate! I really like the way you write.
You are sooo rights about the standard of political reporting here. Actually any type of legal reporting. The Taipei Times story on the arrest of the suspected drink poisioner worried me greatly today. The comment… ‘the police are reasonably confident they have cracked the case..’ concern me greatly. Shouldn’t the courts make that decision? Hell , not often the police will say “gee it could be this guy..but there was this other guy too , nah this must be him.”
The way it was written assumed this was the gulity man. I don’t want to get into the area of presumed innocent or guilt because I think and Eng language paper targeted at western readers should have framed it better while avoiding questions of legaleese.
Anyway, nice stuff, I will be reading with interest in future. You seem to have a very firm handel on the political situation here.
Cheers,
SteveC
Steve – thanks for the comment. I agree about the reporting on the poisoning case: given the choice of having a lynch mob or the Taiwanese media after me, I think i’d prefer the lynch mob (although there’s not much difference). Also, as far as I can work out, the only paper that does anything approaching ‘investigative journalism’ is … Apple Daily! And then only for sex-scandles 🙂