Who Controls Singapore’s Bully Pulpit? Guess!
OK, so we know that Singapore is not America. There are advantages to this; believe me, I can see them.
On the other hand, yesterday’s Straits Times newspaper featured a half-page article, the upshot of which is that if a Singaporean uses an English name it’s a sign of insecurity – a symptom of post-colonial anxiety to fit in with earlier oppressors. No statistics or studies cited, just the fruit of the author’s imagination or reasoning. This may or may not be true, but the article didn’t prove anything in that half page of prose. That’s a lot of space to devote to vacuity.
And who was the writer, that fount of knowledge and authority? The blurb at the end claimed she is a director of the Neurosciences Institute. In fact, I’m pretty sure that she’s the Prime Minister’s sister. She’s a well-educated and articulate woman, but does she have any support for her printed claims about popular psychology? Why should we listen to her?
I can sort of see why we should pay attention to the opinion pieces of the Minister Mentor, Lee Kwan Yew. After all, he ran the country for a good forty years, and probably knows a thing or two. His daughter, not so much.
My husband suggests that my knickers are needlessly twisted, and argues that Stanley Fish, who writes pieces for the New York Times, also has a cv unrelated to the things he writes about. On the other hand, Fish is a professor emeritus of literature and literary criticism, and tends to write about trends in American universities, the fate of reading as a widespread public pastime, and other related matters. He’s not a doctor writing about the symptoms of post-colonialist trauma.
Maybe the Straits Times just didn’t have enough actual news to fill its pages and needed some fluff from the first family. I guess they’re reduced to that pretty frequently, since they apparently are forbidden to publish anything that’s interesting or at all suggestive of the notion that Singapore is not the most perfect country on earth. Not really worth reading, in any case. Save your money, unless you’re housebreaking a puppy.