The Foreigner in Formosa

Is Shih Ming-teh Taiwan's Tyrone F. Horneigh?

You bet your bippy. DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen must be wondering where Ruth Buzzi is when you need her.

[Update: Make that Ruth Buzzi...OR Don Rickles.]

(Laugh-In video from YouTube)

Aside from sharing Horneigh's dirty mind, Shih even looks like 'im. Give or take a couple years.

(Arte Johnson as Tyrone F. Horneigh. Image from WebPan.com)

Shih Ming-teh's Favorite Pick-Up Line

"Hey baby, why don't you come over to MY place and prove you're not a lesbian!"

Oh, you silver-tongued smoothie. From last Friday's Taipei Times:

At a separate setting later in the day, [former DPP chairman] Shih [Ming-teh] called on [Taiwanese DPP presidential candidate] Tsai [Ing-wen], who is single, to clarify her sexual orientation, saying voters deserved “a clear answer” before voting for her.

She's 54 and single. And you ALL know what THAT means (wink, wink).

Pretty sad what history books will say about Shih, though: "Shih Ming-teh -- went from being Taiwan's Mandela to a creepy, toothless old perv so gradually that most people didn't even notice."

Hell of an epitaph.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: Perhap's the transition wasn't as gradual as we thought. His second favorite line to wow the ladies -- "Mmm...you like popsicles?"

(Image from WantChinaTimes.com)

Here's a sweet photo from back in the day of the wholesome Mr. Shih with his daughters. (SECOND image on the list after plugging his name into Google Image search.)

The kicker is, Shih HIMSELF released this photo during a press conference on the occassion of his 70th birthday party, a few months ago.

Charming detail: some of his buds in attendance dubbed this portrait, "Three layers of meat."

Isn't that special?

Could be, it's the illustrious Shih Ming-teh who has some clarifyin' to do . . .

UPDATE #2: Says something when Shih's gay-baiting is a wee bit too dirty for even Taiwan's China Post (hereafter referred to as the Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece newspaper, for reasons obvious in the second link of this update).

Action, Meet Opposite And Equal Reaction

Google must have figured out I was perusing sites about rare earths after China recently cut off its supply, both to Japan and to the West. So today, AdSense intuited that I might wish to see a banner ad for this site (a Mongolian rare earth mining venture).

Give them credit: that "Checkmate China!" slogan certainly DOES attract one's attention...

The company's transport lines do that, as well. Can anyone spot which neighboring country they AVOID sending cargo through? Why, it's almost as though they anticipate China might engage in politically-motivated export interruptions, or something . . .

Bright lads. Noticing that China's notorious unreliability as a supplier represents a unique marketing opportunity -- for the competition.

(Image from RareEarthExporters.com)

Taiwan's China Post On Zhongnanhai's Payroll

Till today, I never knew the fellow-travellers there were actually on the take -- receiving advertorial money on a regular basis from the Butchers of Beijing.

From their grotesque opposition to defensive weaponry for Taiwan, to their sly anti-Dalai Lama rhetoric, to their enthusiastic support of the Politburo's demeaning "Chinese Taipei" appellation for the R.O.C., down to their unseemly cheerleading for the modern Chinese economic model (& on occassion, its political leadership as well) -- all these stances for several years now have made the paper's sell-out apparent to all.

But I'd always chalked-up the KMT mouthpiece's new-found pro-Communist leanings to the sentiments of Chinese ultranationalists who had made their peace with 'Communism' (if not 'communism'). How wrong I was.

As the paper was once fond of saying, cui bono?

That's Latin for, "Who benefits?" Or in the modern vernacular, "Follow the money".