Cunningham revisited | 12.04.05

In my “Veera revisited” post, I quoted this snippet from Philip Cunningham:

[T]he rote, obligatory praise voiced by ruling [TRT] party supporters sounds eerily similar to the worst of communist propaganda, the irony being that the press is now beginning to loosen up in China while Thailand slips backward.

Here’s what I’ve just found from The Peking Duck:

CCTV-9 is presenting nightly interviews with a very bright political analyst named Philip Cunningham, a Harvard-educated pundit with excellent credentials. Cunningham is articulate and insightful, and on some topics we even think alike. The only problem is that he’s virulently anti-Bush and anti-the-Iraq-War. That’s his privilege and he at least backs up his points with facts, figures and keen observations. But he goes unchallenged, and his opinions are greeted as universal truths.

Worse — the interviewer leads him on and provokes him to go even further in criticizing America, breaking every rule about the role of the interviewer. Every question is loaded and reeks of the state-sanctioned party line: “Considering the unprecedented disregard the US has shown for international law and its contempt for the rights of its citizens, wouldn’t you say….” (That’s not an exact quote, but trust me, it’s quite close.)

And here also:

[I]t’s important to remember that the Harvard-educated Cunningham is always (or at least mostly) anti-America and pro-CCP. (He definitely knows where his bread is buttered.)

So what were you saying again about “communist propaganda”, Mr. Cunningham?

Thailand, it bears repeating here, is as anti-American as any country. I’d go out on a limb and surmise that it may be even worse here than in China. I watched the CCTV’s coverage of the Iraq war only once and found the Chinese guest commentator quite fair (perhaps Comrade Cunningham can reeducate him), whereas amidst tons of Thai “news” stories and commentaries that I’ve had the misfortune to encounter, there is only one that isn’t mind-boggling, hateful rubbish. Indeed, it’s the Thai media’s coverage of the America (and, increasingly, the Thaksin government) that’s eerily similar to the worst of communist propaganda. Better still, it all appears to come about voluntarily, without external sanction.

It’s already bad enough that Cunningham seems to enjoy and even contribute to such a propaganda, but to turn around and groundlessly accuse others of the very thing he’s doing and cheerleading for…

Well, let’s just say that his CCP connection explains a lot.

16:41 ▪ politics

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