When Wu Den-yih was premier of Taiwan, he was an ever flowing fountain of poor excuses and other stupid remarks. We suspect that the only reason President Ma Ying-jieo (whom the European journal Economist called "the bumbler") kept him on the job was that Wu may have been the only nationally known politician in Taiwan who, by comparison, could make President Ma look intelligent.
Let's cut to the excuses.
Recently, Vice President Wu's grandson had a reserved flight and an effectively invalid passport. The law says you can't leave the country if your passport is less than six months from expiration.
We're sure you all know what usually happens in a case like that: The snot-nosed kid has to stay home until his parents can update his passport; then he's allowed to leave.
That's what happened to Mills's son Enoch a few years ago. It was an emergency, they quickly reserved tickets, Enoch's passport was set to expire soon, and the airline wouldn't issue a boarding pass—don't forget that part: "wouldn't issue a boarding pass"—for Enoch. Some airline employees were kind enough to babysit Enoch until his mother could arrive to pick him up. In the hour or so that he had to wait to get picked up, no one—repeat: No one—said anything about renewing his passport on the spot. Of course, if he had been the grandson of a vice president, it may have been another matter.
For the grandson in question, 150 passengers were delayed eleven minutes while paper pushers for the Bureau of Consular Affairs did the necessary paperwork for the hidalgo. (That's a Spanish word that seems to fit this situation. It's a shortened form of hijo de algo, meaning "son of something." A hidalgo is considered special only because of his relationship to someone who is considered special.)
In making his excuses, Wu Den-yih resorted to the straw man argument—a distraction from the real issue. That is, he denied something that no one had ever alleged. He said, "My daughter (the kid's mother) did not call me from the airport, and my grandson's passport did not have his grandfather's name on it. There was no so-called privileged treatment involved in the incident."
Think on that one for a moment. If Hunter Biden came sashaying into an airport with his daughter Naomi wiping her nose, do you really think that airport officials wouldn't have a clue that the kid was U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's grandbrat? Consider as well, that there's rarely any sense of modesty among high muckamucks or their close relatives in Taiwan. Most of them parade about like Oriental potentates. You can hardly help but know that they're hidalgos.
According to a Taipei Times article, the web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the airport says that (quoting the article), "It does not accept any passport applications, visa applications or examinations of paperwork from Taiwanese at its airport counters."
Thus, Wu's excuse was a stupid excuse for two reasons: It was obviously false, and it was easy to disprove.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Consular Affairs added an eye-rolling excuse to the mix. He said that a passport application service has "long been available" at the ministry's two emergency contact centers (not in Enoch's case) in restricted areas of the airport, "access to which is limited to passengers holding boarding passes." As all of you well know, you don't get a boarding pass unless your paperwork is in order.
For a string of other stupid excuses by Wu Den-yeh, click here and begin reading about halfway down the page. He makes another stupid excuse three fourths of the way down the page here.
A few months ago, Wu commented on a business practice that may be taking hold in Taiwan. Instead of involuntary "unpaid leave" being used as a last resort, some businesses have been known to use it as a regular part of profit-making strategy. Of course, it visits untold hardship on the families of employees who are placed involuntarily without means of income.
Wu Den-yih publicly joked about it. He laughed, "Whoever invented [involuntary] unpaid leave should get a Nobel Prize for Economics!" When a groundswell of protest arose as a result of that callous remark, he stupidly tried to excuse the remark by trying to transfer blame to his offended listeners. He said they should "get a sense of humor." Understandably, the complaints grew more insistent, and Vice President Wu did the political thing and "apologized."
Lesson: Don't tell jokes the one above except at a sociopaths convention. If you somehow tell a joke that decent people find offensive, don't try to make excuses for it and, for crying out loud, don't scold your listeners for having healthy sensibilities. Quickly apologize with as much of an air of sincerity as you can manage.
According to a Taipei Times article, the web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the airport says that (quoting the article), "It does not accept any passport applications, visa applications or examinations of paperwork from Taiwanese at its airport counters."
Thus, Wu's excuse was a stupid excuse for two reasons: It was obviously false, and it was easy to disprove.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Consular Affairs added an eye-rolling excuse to the mix. He said that a passport application service has "long been available" at the ministry's two emergency contact centers (not in Enoch's case) in restricted areas of the airport, "access to which is limited to passengers holding boarding passes." As all of you well know, you don't get a boarding pass unless your paperwork is in order.
For a string of other stupid excuses by Wu Den-yeh, click here and begin reading about halfway down the page. He makes another stupid excuse three fourths of the way down the page here.
A few months ago, Wu commented on a business practice that may be taking hold in Taiwan. Instead of involuntary "unpaid leave" being used as a last resort, some businesses have been known to use it as a regular part of profit-making strategy. Of course, it visits untold hardship on the families of employees who are placed involuntarily without means of income.
Wu Den-yih publicly joked about it. He laughed, "Whoever invented [involuntary] unpaid leave should get a Nobel Prize for Economics!" When a groundswell of protest arose as a result of that callous remark, he stupidly tried to excuse the remark by trying to transfer blame to his offended listeners. He said they should "get a sense of humor." Understandably, the complaints grew more insistent, and Vice President Wu did the political thing and "apologized."
Lesson: Don't tell jokes the one above except at a sociopaths convention. If you somehow tell a joke that decent people find offensive, don't try to make excuses for it and, for crying out loud, don't scold your listeners for having healthy sensibilities. Quickly apologize with as much of an air of sincerity as you can manage.
No comments:
Post a Comment