Still haven't blogged about Kuo Kuan-ying, the KMT bigot from the Taiwanese civil service who fancies himself just a cut above all those provincial Taiwanese yokels he was destined to lord it over.
Kuo initially denied that he posted anti-Taiwanese screeds on a blog under the pen name of Fan Lan-chin (A pseudonym, which roughly translated, means something like, "Respectable Chinese Nationalist"). But eventually he came clean — and, his KMT patrons, feeling the political heat, quickly fired him under the cloak of a lot of phony, made-up excuses.
End of story, I thought.
But it turns out that in the early part of the scandal, Kuo wrote an article in his own praise, attached a colleague's name to the column instead of his own (with the colleague's consent), and had the column printed in a Taiwanese paper.
You're a hell of a guy, you are, Kuo. Turning your buddy into a sockpuppet like that.
From yesterday's Taipei Times:
But Kuo's sock, Pan Shun-yun, didn't just defend Kuo. No, some of those uppity Taiwanese had the temerity to criticize the writing style of Kuo's secret blogger identity, Fan Lan-chin. So Kuo had alter ego #2 (Pan the sock) defend the honor of alter-ego #1 (Fan the bigot) as well. Yesterday's China Post contained this delightful detail:
Look at me everyone! I'm a high-class mainlander! And a literary genius! And a . . . oh dear, is this sounding vain? Never mind, it'll look much better when I put someone ELSE'S name on all this adulation and affect an "aw, shucks" demeanor afterward !
( I am so smart, I am so smart. S-M-R-T. I mean, S-M-A-R-R-T. )
OK, now I know the man's been fired already, but seriously, has anybody thought of going back to check his job application for his GIO gig? 'Cause call me crazy, but some of those "Letters of Recommendation" may not be ENTIRELY on the up-and-up . . .
Meet Kuo Kuan-ying. High-Class Mainlander. Respectable Chinese Nationalist. Literary genius.
Also congenital liar. Chinese racial supremacist. Communist sympathizer. Sockpuppeteer par excellence.
Not to mention World-Class Asshat.
Postscript: (Kuo Kuan-ying photo from the Apr 1/09 edition of the Taipei Times. Kuo's the one in glasses, surrounded by black-shirted Taiwanese gangsters.)
UPDATE: A great moment in sockpuppet history. L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzik had his blog suspended on their website for a couple years after he was exposed engaging in that sort of nonsense.
i-1
A correction to your postscript: it should read “black-shirted *Chinese* gangsters.”
Tim Maddog
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From day one, it’s always been one of the conventions of this blog for me to call every citizen of the ROC a “Taiwanese.” I think it makes things simpler for outsiders who stop by and read the blog. Just like I’d call any American citizen an American, whether they were naturalized last week, or whether their ancestors came over on the Mayflower.
So I’ve got 3 options. Call every ROC citizen “Taiwanese.” Call every ROC citizen “Chinese”. Or I start splitting people up, calling some folks Taiwanese and some Chinese.
For obvious reasons, I don’t like option #2. As for option #3, I think it’s divisive. Moreover, it leaves open the question of what to call the fence-sitters.
Admittedly, the convention I use REALLY starts to break down with people like Kuo. Within the context of this story, there’s no way I could force myself to call him a Taiwanese.
(Incidentally, d’ya think Kuo’s long-time gangster buddies offered him some betelnut to go with his Grey Poupon?)