Ma Ying-joke Insults the USA,. Is He Getting Gun Shy on Using English?

Sunday September 18, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Question: If you were Prime Minister in the UK, or a member of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, how would you have felt if when George Bush was President, he sent Karl Rove over to explain his policies and promote his agenda? How would any country feel if the head of state of another country sent his spin-doctor and hatchet man to represent him in your country. Insulted? To be sure. Yet that is what Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou has just done.

Some question that perhaps the reason why Ma Ying-joke, the "Harvard educated Lawyer" did not come himself is that he is getting gun shy of using his so-called touted English after the embarrassing AP interview. But of course the reality here is that Ma cannot come since neither he nor the USA want to irritate China. That does not mean he is not getting gun shy, but it is the more formal reason.

Regardless, he sent his snake-oil salesman King Pu-tsung supposedly for the main purpose of getting waishengren who had migrated to the USA to come back and vote for Ma in the 2012 election. The snake-oil salesman of course did not miss the chance to leave his slick trail in other places as well. On Taiwan, well, it is nice to have him gone for a while, we don't have to wipe the oil off the media outlets for a while.