Summer still here: non-news stories abound

Anti-communist publisher Jimmy Lai gets his new free daily newspaper – Hong Kong’s sixth – off to a brilliant start by having puritan do-gooder educationalists call for it to be banned near schools lest impressionable young folk catch a glimpse of the women in swimsuits or underwear that fill its pages. Any half-intelligent child will know instinctively that if our local Taliban feel a need to tear themselves away from covering up piano legs to warn about the ‘erotic content’ of Sharp Daily, the rag must be worth reading. (Judge for yourself by viewing, say, Monna, 32E.)

Perhaps fearing a drop in its circulation among younger readers, the South China Morning Post gets that bit more salacious and puts on its front page the story about Italian Prime Minister and walking Viagra ad Silvio Berlusconi taking his coke-dealing pimp with him on a visit to China to procure female company. Unless you have been in a convent for the last decade or are a member of the HK Federation of Really Moral Christian Teachers Against Onanism, you will ask whether this is news. The day the slimy 74-year-old Berlusconi does not take a personal whore-monger along – that will be worth reporting (as perhaps would a woman with an apparently oxymoronic bust size of 32E, though maybe there is a yawning cleavage in my experience here).

The SCMP reserves the ultimate item of non-news for its lead story. Beijing, the paper solemnly intones, prefers Chief Secretary Henry Tang as Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive – with verb and object safely encapsulated in inverted commas, just in case the planet is invaded by Martians who need humans called Henry for food, which is the only way anyone else is going to get the job. Anyone who doubts it need only look at the patently nonsensical reason given for Beijing’s preference – Tang’s supposed support among civil servants; the thing is so pre-ordained they can’t even be bothered to think up anything better.

This tentativeness is part of an elaborate charade throughout the local media whereby we are all invited to believe that a genuine contest is about to take place for the Big Lychee’s leadership. Normally hard-nosed journalists will carry on going weak at the knees in the months ahead, eagerly scribbling volumes of copy suggesting that an ‘election’ is to take place, and now veteran no-hoper Rita Fan has bowed out it will be a fight between nice-but-dim rich kid Henry and cunning and ruthless, self-made, closet Communist Party member CY Leung.

Why this suspension of disbelief – this fiction that we are not in a one-party state where leadership appointments are not left to chance? (We see the same delusion among international commentators predicting a fully convertible Yuan, as if the Chinese Communist Party will let foreigners’ free markets decide the People’s Republic’s exchange or interest rates.)

Conspiracy theorists would say that the local media are all ultimately puppets of Beijing. A less alarming way of putting it would be that it is impolite, too close to the bone and image-shattering to openly admit that the Chief Executive election is a sham. It would be like discussing bodily functions. Or we can get really, seriously cynical. The media engage in this silly pretense because they need a story. Otherwise, all they have is ‘Sleazebag caught running Italy’ or ‘Woman with flat but expansive mammary glands seen lounging by swimming pool’.

 

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14 Responses to Summer still here: non-news stories abound

  1. skreader says:

    My suspicion that the author is a man who has never measured himself for a bra is confirmed…

    32 E is neither oxymoronic, nor flat chested. It’s not like shoe size, where E indicates extraordinary width.

    If you go to the handy-dandy bra-size calculator http://www.85b.org/bra_calc.php and play with numbers, you will find that to have a “32 E” bra, a woman needs to have the following dimensions.

    Below the breast (at rib cage) – 28 inches

    At the “bust” (high point of the breasts) – 34 inches

    Above the breast (where they start to rise) – 28 inches.

    So, there is a 6 inch difference between her rib cage and her breasts, not flat-chested by most people’s standards.

  2. Tiu Fu Fong says:

    Certainly, further – possibly hands on – research is called for.

  3. Maugrim says:

    The puritan do-gooder is nothing of the sort and is seeking a profile pending a push for a possible Distric Council position. HK is an interesting place, not everything can be taken at face value.

  4. Diogenes the Cynic says:

    I think I’ve seen her somewhere in the sex141 web site :>

  5. Stephen says:

    Curses must remember to grab my free Sharp Daily which is certainly more visually appealing than the Sub Standard.

    Meanwhile at the HK$8 Pro-China we look forward to months of speculation from “Beijing Insiders” on whether the CCP prefers this (The Horse) that (Sinister CY) or the other (Rita) as the next CE.

    My take on this is that Sinister CY is no mug and perhaps feels that if he get the visual nod (or handshake) from someone in the upper echelons of the politburo the sycophants, on the election committee, will quickly fall into line.

    Fortunately to take our minds off this excitement we have the lovely Monna, 32E in the Sharp Daily – Well done Jimmy.

  6. Mary Hinge says:

    No-one exposes tits in Hong Kong quite like Jimmy Lai. More power to him.

  7. Real Tax Payer says:

    I definitely prefer Monna to Henry

    Reckon Henry is a 28 A

  8. Tiu Fu Fong says:

    Unrelated query for IFC dwellers – who is the Western lady who I’ve been seeing lurking around IFC rugged up in winter clothing for the last few weeks, sometimes pulling luggage? I saw her sitting outside today at lunchtime, on the outside tables a little further down from Hemlock’s Pacific Coffee, wearing a thick North Face jacket and woollen beanie and looking indifferent to the heat. I need to know what her secret for putting up with Hong Kong’s summer heat is.

  9. Sen says:

    Would someone kindly click on Monna 32 link in the article above and then click on this picture
    http://img.sharpdaily.com.hk/video/20110920/org/vaf3_0011.jpg
    on the page that appears
    them quickly press home and watch the video and tell me why the young lady is using a torch to look at an egg box?

    If Sharp is going to slap a video page on us daily with such delectable creatures doing housework – who is going to have time to read their rag?

  10. Joe Blow says:

    @TFF: that’s no lady, that’s my wife.

  11. Real Tax Payer says:

    Hello Sen

    I tried the link but no video there.

    But in an idle moment hoping I might find a few more pics of the delectable Monna, I googled sharp daily’s website this morning , clicked the first hit, and told Google to translate the page. Seemed it just scrolls some headlines . the 2nd one of which was THE most amazing news flash !

    QUOTE ( verbatim) :

    45 elderly tenants Wang : ‘ Go single oligonucleotide array Aberdeen when I did not get married , Ms Cheng Wen Ren Xiang putty to help me water’

    UNQUOTE

    Seems either vernacular Cantonese defeats Google’s language tools, or HK’s English standards have hit the rock bottom Ms Cynthia Tze predicted . Or both

  12. Tiu Fu Fong says:

    Barely released and Sharp Daily has already been blocked by my workplace’s firewall.

  13. Real Tax Payer says:

    TFF : Don’t worry … these firewalls only block E -size and bigger

    You should be safe with D or less ( and most pretty HK girls are B or A)

    😉

    That’s why they are called FIRE walls : to keep out the really hot stuff

  14. Sen says:

    Steady on RTP I don’t think words like ‘oligonucleotide’ are allowed on this website, by the time you reach the end you have forgotten what you were saying.

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