Posted on 11/05/2004 3:45:23 AM PST by NZerFromHK
Disclaimer: this talkshow has no transcripts available and it was broadcasted entirely in Chinese (Cantonese). I'm summarizing the important points here for Freepers to know what this famous HK talkshow host is saying.
Some of the mainpoints in the programme include:
On Michael Moore and Osama bin Laden:
Michael Moore is either incredibly dumb or an undercover campaigner for Bush. He (along with OBL) has unwittingly helped Bush thinking his pseudo-documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. There was a scene when Bush learned the attacks in New York on 9/11 and he was frozen and pondering. Moore remarked in the film that Bush must be thinking about his family's ties with bin Laden family. Hey, you can add whatever comment you want, and it is obvious to all learned middle class Americans how ridiculous this must be. Same with OBL.
If anone watched F9/11 and decides to vote against Bush, he or she must be an incredibly dumb idiot. Are Moore and OBL working to defeat Kerry so Hillary could run in 2008, as the US Democrats have run out of talented politicians?
On Kerry:
Bush was a very weak president - he fails to shape much of the mandate and push forward his policies forcefully. The fact Kerry was beaten shows he is incredibly weak and he mas made many serious mistakes:
a) He shouldn't go unserious on the War of Terror. It was one of few strongest points of Bush. Had he sounded as tough as Bush and promised an even tougher WOT he would have won.
b) He got the wrong impression that most Americans are liberal on social issue and publicly supported all types of abortion and gay marriage. After 9/11 and even from the late 1980s forward there is a sea change and moderation towards social issues in the United States. Homosexuality acts, sure. But formally granting gay marriage as a redognized ceremony scare off all conservative votes and even many votes which are otherwise not so politically conservative.
Sure you see seas of gay scenes in places like San Francisco on the West Coast and New York, but in other areas - the middle parts of the country, the likes of Utah, Missouri, Mississippi, they are conservative on this. If Kerry wants the social liberal votes, he only needs to say he supports granting de-facto homosexual "couples" rights recognition - this would have scared off a lot les votes.
On average liberals, esp the East Coast ones:
One thing that I hate most are those pretentious self-declared intellectuals in their 20s - the types you see on the East Coast and working as scriptwriters, journalists, film directors. They say they just read books by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Edward Said - well, all those juvenile stuff are for teething children to read and by the time you reach university (college) you should have known enough to have outgrown it. They say "Oh yeah, how terrible, this Bush! How can someone vote this stupid man?". But do they really believe it? They are just treating what they believe as fashion - put oin there to show how "enlightened" and "fashionable" they are.
On Bush:
Yes, he is weak and fails to shape agendas to his favour. But at least he is an "known evil". He is honest and frank about what he believes - he has convictions. Besides, who says pre-emptive wars are wrong? This comes directly from The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Lots of wars in the past, like China joining the Korean War, the Sino-Vietnamese war in 1978, China's crackdown on Falun Gong, were all initiated by this rationale according to Beijing. And more importantly, if Bush doesn't do so, if you only fight back when something hit you first, the damage could well ahve been immeasurably bad.
On Hong Kong's newspaper editors, journalists, and pundits:
These third rate editors, journalists, and pundits claims that we must stop using American perspectives and develop reports on the United States using the Asian angle. And then? Copy verbatim from the US's New York Times, Britain's Financial Times or the Guardian. All these MSMs have an agenda - they all stand on the left and they all claim Kerry was going to win. Come on, they are trying to shape an agenda, and OK, they could well believe these themselves as they could well be hoping "Let these be self-fulfilling", but use your brain and know that there is another side of America that you don't know! The US is not just New York and San Francisco and what they say does not necesarily depict the full pictures. And now you are claiming "It's shocking that Bush won!"? This is incredibly unthinking.
On the US Democrats
The modern US Democrats has a forefather - FDR. Roosevelt was in fact a leftie - a socialist - he set up social security, spent sums of money on infrastructure to "create jobs". All subsequent US Democrat presidents like Kennedy, Clinton were all influenced by him. The reason Kennedy was shot was because someone deemed he would wreck the nation if they let Kennedy to continue to run things.
As it takes more than a day to build a ruin (original idiom in Chinese was "A three feet deep ice was not formed with a single freezing day"), 9/11 occured 8 months after Bush came in office but much of it was the fault of Clinton's years of presidency. Saomali, First WTC attack, Saudi attack in 1995, the US Embassies bombings in Kenya and Tazania in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000. What did Clinton do? He ignored all these things - playing saxophones, playing with cigars (hint, hint). Yeah, Americans (especially those liberals) thought "He's great, a handsome president, and everything is fine at home", but the outside world was not. It was fine when the world scene is peaceful - the Democrats can and do get elected in these times, but not now and they can't get elected as a result.
The US Democrats are not serious on foreign policy and defence and Americans don't trust them. If they want to have a chance in 2008 they must get serious on these two areas.
Seems the commentator "gets it" much better than 48% of americans do..
A biography of Tao Kit:
Tao Kit, originally named Cho Chit. Born in Hong Kong in 1958 with ancestral home at Guilin in Guangxi province. He graduated from Lingnam Secondary School at 17 and attended the University of Warwick in Britain and obtained the Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. He subsequently gained a postgraduate diploma in International Relations from the London School of Economics, London University. He subsequently worked for the British Broaccasting Corporation (BBC) and the UK correspondent for the Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK).
He subequently returned to Hong Kong in 1990 and worked as deputy general editor for Overseas Chinese Daily and Ming Pao respectively. Currently he is a full-time newspaper columnist and host of a variety of radio programmes on the Commercial Radio (CR) Hong Kong and the RTHK.
This host is considered far right-wing by today's Hong Kong standards but typical of the centre-right in the late 1980s (co-incidentially he also likes Ronald Reagan).
Many considered him as "crackpot" but nonetheless he dares to speak out what many Hong Kong want to say and can't, and offer insights to many Western and Chinese cultural and political issues. His programme is currently one of the most popular in Hong Kong and definitely the most right-wing.
Where can I get a transcript in Chinese?
Sort of Hong Kong's answer to Rush Limbaugh ?
LOL...
Does he speak english?
Maybe Rush Limbaugh could do a telephone interview with him or something..
That would be a HOOT...
There was originally a shortened summary of each night's programmes on an archive (go to the page that I linked, click on the right hand side withwords "Wen ku ban"), but they have now abandoned doing so since 2 September. So it is unfortunate that you have listen it live (23:00-00:00 Hong Kong Time every Monday to Friday. Since Singapore lies in the same time zone as Hong Kong it should be the same time for you)
Unfortunately to listen to past editions requires paid subscription - HK$75 for 3 months.
Hong Kong is a very interesting society. Up until very recently the government owned "public service" broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) is one of the most right-wing (mocks the PRC, leftism) media in the territory - in fact it is even far more right-wing than the Chinese language programmes of the BBC even if produced by the same producers as RTHK. But it seems China has tightened the grip on it and many programmes are pretty mushy now. But they still maintain one very anti-Communist TV programme.
Tao Kit also hosts an English-language tutorial programme over at the RTHK and I would say he is one of the best English-language users among Hong Kong Chinese. I think he is still to the left of most Freepers here - he is probably somewhere between George W. Bush and his father.
There is also one other talk show host as anti-Communist as him - Wong Yuk-man. My father knows him personally but not a very close friend. He was injured in a politically-motivated attack earlier this year due to his viewpoint, and he quit for a while, but now has come back into the fold and hosts another programme at Commercial Radio once every week.
Interestingly Tao Kit can go freely into China and do his businesses there - and very often he is witty enough to deflect HK's local leftist attacks on him and his ideas by saying "See! Even today's newspaper xxx in Shanghai says what I have said long ago! It is you guys that are so afraid of Beijing and engage in self-castration in reporting views!"
I think what Tao Kit means when he says W. is weak is that he doesn't seem to convince enough people through his oratory. Also he seems to have lots of times in apparent indecision, and Tao Kit could well have mistaken these period as weakness of Bush himself.
Satirical Hong Kong program appears to have taken the US media to task over Zogbyism.
Consider the illegal blockade of judicial nominees (collusion between the NAACP and DNC). Nice guys finish last.
It doesn't mean he had to bully the Congress but we are the party with the upper hand and not restricted by anything other than tradition. There was no legal block to putting the nominations to a vote.
Found this page with biography and photo of Tao Kit. It is mostly in Chinese but it introduces his English tutorial programme over at RTHK so it shoulld have bits of English:
http://www.rthk.org.hk/elearning/betterenglish/speech_mail.htm
There were leftists who voted for Kerry even though they said "he is no better than the devil we already know". Their motive for voting for him was purely to oust Bush. We pushed back harder.
If John Kerry had made more of a play to the center (on restricting abortion or fighting the war on terror) he would have seen the left extreme of his base standing on principle and voting for Nader again. Other young voters would have been disillusioned and stayed home (some did this anyway).
John Kerry's support was a fragile coalition of conflicting voters. He had to be careful in stating his positions because the wrong word here or there would turn off some of his electorate.
George W. Bush was honest in his positions (and we have seen 4 years of his Presidency. He spoke to the voters and said, "Vote for me and I'm give you more of the same." Are there things that we want to see him stand firmer on? Sure. Would Kerry have given us a one of them? No.
John Kerry tried to present himself as the antiBush. Good enough reason to vote for Bush, right there.
maybe his a RUSH should so a show together sometime.
I can sense Tao Kit has nothing but contempt to these leftist base voters (young voters, Deaniacs, etc). He also said in the programme that these are "simple, naive, stupid" that I didn't translate.
Thank you very much for posting this. I love to see some of what is being said in other societies.
My take is China lets one or two go to set an example to deny they are an evil Communist empire.
If things start imploding over there, things will change.
Do you have any more information on the violent outbreaks in the Chinese village between Chinese-Muslims and the other ethnic religous Chinese? I saw one story and hear one blurb on the radio and that is it.
He says China should stop building anti-American ties with France or Russia and instead ally with the US to defend against Islamic jihad. He knows Huntington well enough to see that if the US (and Western Judeo-Christian culture) is destroyed, the next target of the jihadi movement would be Asian Confucian culture and prime target China.
And of course Tao also says China should start democratizing so as to improve relations with the US.
These third rate editors, journalists, and pundits claims that we must stop using American perspectives and develop reports on the United States using the Asian angle. And then? Copy verbatim from the US's New York Times, Britain's Financial Times or the Guardian. All these MSMs have an agenda - they all stand on the left and they all claim Kerry was going to win. Come on, they are trying to shape an agenda, and OK, they could well believe these themselves as they could well be hoping "Let these be self-fulfilling", but use your brain and know that there is another side of America that you don't know! The US is not just New York and San Francisco and what they say does not necessarily depict the full pictures. And now you are claiming "It's shocking that Bush won!"? This is incredibly unthinking.
People in China should realize that BUSH COUNTRY America (pejoratively called "flyover country") is not like the major cities on the coasts. I doubt that rural China is much like Hong Kong or Beijing in either daily life experience or even moral attitudes and political view.
The left over here seems to be other mind that the election HAD to be stolen precisely because the phony exit polls showed Kerry up. They believed the biased media and got what they deserved.
When cooking the books, it is always best to keep a second register with the real numbers so you know just how much you've stolen. The DNC did not want a paper trail and thus got caught up in believing their own lie.
I call this Zogbyism. The left calls political witchhunts McCarthyism so I figured I would create a new word for the biased media's attempt to turn out the President/elect a Democrat.
Zogby's poll results were very far off the mark (+or-4 points in some cases). He is as shamed as Senator McCarthy was for claiming he had an ever shifting number of names of guaranteed communists.
Wow!
He doesn't pull any punches.
9/11 occured 8 months after Bush came in office but much of it was the fault of Clinton's years of presidency. Saomali, First WTC attack, Saudi attack in 1995, the US Embassies bombings in Kenya and Tazania in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000. What did Clinton do? He ignored all these things.
The left has said that there is no proof that we would have faced any more attacks after 9/11. The proof is in the increasing frequency that Al Qaeda was striking at American interests.
SINCE 9/11/2001 we have seen no successful attacks (although there was a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge that was thwarted).
If this were a math problem, we would look at the dates and say "what comes next in this sequence?"
1993 (WTC bombed), 1994 (OKC building bombed), 1995 Saudi attack, 1998 Embassy bombings, 2000 USS Cole Bombing, 2001 WTC attacked. 2002, 2003, 2004. NOTHING.
There HAVE been strikes in Bali, Madrid, and Russia (the theater and Beslan hostage massacres). Russia's problem appears to be with Chechnyan muslims (if they are being blackmailed to stay out of the Gulf wars, it is not being revealed to the public). Bali and Madrid were specifically designed to shake the foundation of the coalition of troops in Iraq. Australia stood with us while Spain folded (and changed leadership).
I would like to hear that..
Granted, from the description given of him, he is not necessarilly a "Rush" type conservative, more centrist, but gaining insight into the political thought of the people of Hong Kong would be great...
I would like to see more input from various foreign sources than the MSM. ( Main Stream Media )
Our american media sources tend to "spoon feed" us only what they choose from other nations, and often it is only what is approved by their governments...
Likewise for those citizens..
If "individual" citizens in other countries had more interaction with american conservatism, we could effect a radical change in the world's opinion of america...
Or, maybe not..
But it's worth a try..
Thanks for transcribing this.
Actually, I wanted to give a copy to my friend from Mainland China. Interestingly, they get better analysis of the U.S. news from Chinese Internet sources than Americans get from their mainstream television networks.
Most of my friends from China will listen to reason and understand how propaganda in the media works (having seen it firsthand in their country.) What baffles them is that American media would be so biased. They thought that in a democracy, people would get to hear more than one point of view from the media. Thank goodness for the Internet.
Listening to it live is free, but since it is in Cantonese Mandarin speakers won't be able to understand it anyway. It is a shame actually.
Well not only that, but the center position was implausible considering his record. JF'nK would have had to have been "born-again". ;-)
1. He is a far left liberal socialist who has sided w/ Communists on to many occasions.
2. He was a traitor to the soldiers fighting in Vietnam, many of whom voted against him and so did their children.
3. He is an elite snob who spent most of his campaign faking he was a regular guy, but regular guys see through that crap.
4. Even his supporters admit they didn't know what he would do in office. Bush gave people policy he would pursue while Kerry basically wanted us to trust him that he had a plan. Thats just ridiculous.
Actually, I think you can take him at face value. When he says Bush is a "weak" president, it should be taken as meaning in opposition to a strong president like Reagan. He means that Bush has essentially squandered the opportunity presented to him by having a Republican-controlled Congress with his continuous caving and pandering to the left.
This guy is exceptionally astute. I wish we could get an English language broadcast here. Rush would have to scramble to keep his audience!
A lot of Hong Kong Chinese don't know about this. Tao Kit dares them to "go to the likes Utah, Texas, Michigan, Missouri if you want to gauge real America's pulse. Been there yet? If not you don't really know well enough about the United States yet".
That is too bad. I've been trying to teach my friends Cantonese. It's a very fun language. Hope they keep it alive in Hong Kong for a long time. Most of the "dialects" as they call them in Singapore (Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka) are dying out.
It's getting late. Jou tau.
Most people outside of the U.S. hate Bush and simply can't understand why a majority in America would choose him.
Surprisingly, the (Mainland) Chinese people I know are the most open-minded. Most Europeans, Koreans, Canadians, (and Americans) I talk to here in Asia think Bush is the devil incarnate. They get their news from local and international media, who get it second-hand from America, filtered of course by the liberal press.
Great post, thank you so much for all your work in transcribing it all!
As for the President's "weakness"--I think it might have to do with his adherence to "the high road"--sometimes I think it would suit the country better to take off the gloves, at least once in awhile. The liberals in this country are a lot like the terrorists in this regard: they view good manners and high morals as a sort of weakness, something they can take advantage of. And, indeed, they do many times.
Still, that is one of the qualities of the President I've always admired, even if I do sometimes think he should go ahead and fight back.
It was the same in the 2000 election, too. Wish I could find that excellent graphic of the bottle of "Zogby's Special Sauce." It is as relevant now as it was in 2000!
I heard numerous stories that mainland Chinese (even most Communist Party officials) that they officially keep Bush- and American-bashing in the open but privately their perspectives are entirely different. Much of the anti-Americanism are sham.
Tao Kit is considered "Hong Kong's Most Learned Person" - he is not a specialist on any fields, but he knows a lot from a diverse number of fields that most learned or average Hong Kong Chinese are ignorant of. I think this programme beats Rush Limbaugh by a mile through his reasoned, calm analyses and frequently mockings of leftist idiots, bureaucrats, and unthinking sheeples.
He has even stronger words when he comments on Chinese issues. I remember he commented how the Communists came to power in mainland China - the pre-Communist Chiang Kai Shek Nationalist government was severely weakened by the Sino-Japanese war (WWII). He dared to say about China supported Communist abortive coup in Indonesia in 1965, how they supported Chin Ping's Communist Party of Malaya during the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960).
He is probably, as you have suggested, a showcase China leaves him alone so they could claim "See! We allow freedom of speech too!"
That is too bad. I've been trying to teach my friends Cantonese. It's a very fun language. Hope they keep it alive in Hong Kong for a long time. Most of the "dialects" as they call them in Singapore (Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka) are dying out.
It's definitely still going strong in Hong Kong. I think most HK Chinese will strive to learn and use Mandarin fluently but they will have no intention of abandoning Cantonese in flavour of Mandarin in daily use.
We also used to have a variety of dialects like Shanghaiese (Wu), Teochewese, Hakka spoken in Hong Kong, but they have all but died out now, leaving a monotonous use of Cantonese.
Interestingly, Hong Kong people (and those who have migrated to the West) would not dare to speak Cantonese to Singapore's Chinese (at least not until they know the Singaporean knows Cantonese). A lot of us imagine you all speak English exclusively and no Chinese - I knew a friend who was from Singapore at high school and I remember he spoke English only. Of couese we don't know a lot about other things in Singapore as well (we just imagine it is a duller version of Hong Kong, or a HK with Malays and many more Indians, and much more English language).
Many expat Americans based in Asia are liberal/left-leaning (not the Howard Dean type, but definitely the Hillary Clinton stripe). I would not be surprised if they think so.
Ouch, a typo. Should be "favour" and not "Flavour".
Thanks for posting and translating. I am impressed by Tao Kit. His analysis is needed here in the US as well.
Glad you liked it. My apologies here that much of the wittiness is lost when you write down the messages and, to make matters worse, in another language! If you are bilingual, speak Cantonese, and understand the semi-colloquial words favoured by taxi (cab) drivers in Hong Kong (taxi drivers are some of the most outspoken and opinionated people in HK, and they all lean conservative), you would have trouble controlling your bursts of laugher. As others have said, he is very cheeky in his arguments and pulls no punches on things that deserve mockings. As this programme was about US liberals/leftists, Kerry, Chomsky, Clinton, etc I thought I should share it with Freepers here. (Unfortunately last night's episode was about a local incident so there's nothing interesting to post here)
I can't guarantee his safety if he dares to speak out in Ivy League and Berkeley though. I found conservative pundits educated with British-style oratory are particularly "dangerous" (i.e. good for our side), and if academia libs can't win by arguments, they will resort to violence.
Singapore's official languages are English, (Mandarin) Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, and Indian language. I joke that Singaporeans can speak four languages - poorly.
English dominates and many claim it as their native language. Mandarin was once a minority language in Singapore, but the government instituted a policy that banned "dialects" in favor of "putonghua." Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese are still spoken somewhat on the street and among the elderly, but sadly they are being replaced. They officially "dub" all Cantonese movies into Mandarin before releasing them in Singapore. Unfortunately, a lot is lost in translation.
Nei yau mou gau cho a! just doesn't have the same effect in Mandarin.
That should be "an" Indian language.
Oh I forgot to add this yesterday but this is very important to all freepers...Tao Kit also said something very explosive about the Democrats that I wasn't aware of. He said,
"the US liberal Democrats are hypocritical, naive, and pompous. If one day the US falls, it will be because of the hypocrisy of these people."
This is the strongest words against US liberals that I have ever heard from a foreigner. It should be spread among every American.
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