1月2日
Familarity Breeds Contempt?
Yesterday I was having lunch as a relative's place, and we got to talking about the short messages that's been keeping our cell phones ringing off the hook all day long. Someone finally picked up the phone and read the latest message -- a funny New Year's wishes kind of thing poking fun at the names of this country's Big Nine men. Neither derogatory nor particularly sarcastic, just funny, puns and everything using parts of their names.
And hell this thing spread like a virus. Just as we were talking about it my cell phone started ringing and within minutes I received three of the same messages, from friends all over the country. I usually don't care about this teenager sort of fun, but I find the last line particularly amusing -- wishing the receiver good luck at mahjong using His Majesty's name.
At that point my learned relative started relating a story about late Cold War-era Eastern Bloc, where the West actually invested time and money producing and spreading political jokes about state leaders. It was supposed to have played a part in bringing down the curtain. This was probably a bit far-fetching but the Chinese certainly never have been short of their own political jokes (often obscene ones) about the Emperors and his Ministers, with one very unfortunate former Prime Minister playing the prominent idiot in a lot of them, for the duration of the last two dynasties.
That said, it seems that the masses have been very sparing of the current royalty, compared with the last generation of them. This message was acutally one of the first political (if it qualifies) jokes I've even read about the the House of Harmony. As I said, neither derogatory nor very sarcastic. It is also amazing to notice how positive netizens' general opinons have been, as least of His Majesty and His Prime Minister.
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