There’re just three extended news issues running in the last week or so now. Firstly, the inquiries made to a certain Romanian DIplomat’s actions that resulted in a poor guy’s death; secondly, the extremely dry weather here that finally saw very welcome respite in the form of island wide downpours yesterday, and local director Jack Neo’s adventure-capades with women half his age. The forums, not unexpectedly so, have been abuzz with the usual gossip, speculation and finger-pointing – though unlike what the newspapers here seem to be suggesting, I don’t get the feeling that more than a very small handful of online persons are sympathetic to Neo at all. He’s pretty much the butt of jokes right now, with Mr. Brown getting into the act too and getting his usual mileage.
Funnily though, I’m feeling a little more sympathy for Jack Neo than other Singaporeans seemingly, and certainly more than Ris Low six months ago when a saga though of a very different sort reached the same kind of online fervor. Not sure why. His indiscretions are a lot more impactful and were obviously destructive to his family and at the same time made the more ironical when one considers the moralistic-styled themes of the series of films he’s directed.
I think my sympathy might be to do with the fact that I sense there’s some degree of opportunism from the persons who seemed to be lining up to expose him, with two so far announcing that they have come to the public because they wanted to shame him. But why was that even necessary to begin with? Surely they must have realized that by going full media public, the persons who were going to be hurt the most would had been Neo’s family and wife and not just him. At least the latter’s already used to media and publicity, his family no.
The second person was even reported as that “…[she] was spurred to go public after reading about Ms Chong’s story and wanted to prevent further such incidents” – but I think that was either just mind-numbingly bad judgment or pure vindictiveness. The same objective of preventing further incidents would had been equally reached if she had just gone to Neo’s wife directly to let her know, since news had already broke from the first woman. Moreover, the same second woman claims that at the age of 20, she was just “a little girl” who didn’t know how to handle the older man’s advances. I don’t buy that for a minute either. A 15 year old maybe, but a 20 year old who’s already a freelance i.e. independent model…? Who’s she trying to kid? Not in today’s world, even in the year 2004.
I don’t think Neo’s indiscretions can be reasoned away or excused, and to the director’s credit, he has offered no excuses for his behavior. There’s also a bunch of online comments complaining about Neo’s rudeness at the press this morning when he yelled at them to get away when they started photographing his wife after she collapsed from sorrow during the press conference.
My opinion differs: I saw a man who’s finally realized the net effect of his carelessness on his wife, but who is going all out to protect her now. Surely, that must count for something.
Recent comments