Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Election Shorts on Tsai, Liberty Times.

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This fellow made his wife a nifty little trailer for his electric vehicle.

Echo Taiwan contacted me the other day to let me know a couple of interesting things. First, he's got a post up on the interesting reaction among Light Blues, at least on the blogs, to Tsai Ing-wen. Apparently she's been sending out reassuring signals to them. She understands them. She isn't on some hellbent ethnic revolution, unlike Su Tseng-Chang, whom they believe will make them into second-class citizens like the Taiwanese used to be in the apartheid martial law era. In other words, they really like her.

If you could put your finger on the difference between Light and Deep Blues, it's social class values vs ideological commitment. The Deep Blues tend to the True Believers. The Light Blues are all about being the Taiwan vision of "modern". Tsai's foreign education, advanced degree, independence, and general wonkishness are very appealing to this crowd. Note also that Tsai is not a member of the generation that was made by the Kaohsiung Incident of 1979. Not only is she moving the DPP into the post-Chen era, she's moving it into the post-activist era as well. Hopefully Echo will chime in with comments to expand these thoughts.

I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.

Unfortunately the old stupidity still prevails in other area. The blogger Black Rain, who has a prominent position in the Taiwan blogging community, has been studying the Liberty Times' coverage of Su and Tsai and argues that LT is in the tank for Su (black rain post one and post two). Apparently three days after the announcement that Tsai and Su were running for the northern mayor posts, LT had nine positive commentaries/letters on Su, none on Tsai. They also systematically omit negative news about Su. I ran this past a local media person, who confirmed that the brain trust of LT is close to Su. This sort of five year old behavior is unconscionable, when so much is a stake.
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