{"id":8125,"date":"2010-03-11T19:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T11:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/03\/11\/opportunities-indiscretions-and-scandals\/"},"modified":"2010-03-11T21:20:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-11T13:20:04","slug":"opportunities-indiscretions-and-scandals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/03\/11\/opportunities-indiscretions-and-scandals\/","title":{"rendered":"Opportunities, Indiscretions and Scandals"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019re just three extended news issues running in the last week or so now. Firstly, the inquiries made to a certain Romanian DIplomat\u2019s<\/a> actions that resulted in a poor guy\u2019s 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\u2019s adventure-capades with women half his age. The forums, not unexpectedly so, have been abuzz with the usual gossip, speculation and finger-pointing \u2013 though unlike what the newspapers here seem to be suggesting, I don\u2019t get the feeling that more than a very small handful of online persons are sympathetic to Neo at all. He\u2019s pretty much the butt of jokes right now, with Mr. Brown getting into the act too<\/a> and getting his usual mileage.<\/p>\n

Funnily though, I\u2019m 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\u2019s directed.<\/p>\n

I think my sympathy might be to do with the fact that I sense there\u2019s 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<\/a>. 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\u2019s family and wife and not just him. At least the latter\u2019s already used to media and publicity, his family no.<\/p>\n

The second person was even reported as that \u201c\u2026[she] was spurred to go public after reading about Ms Chong’s story and wanted to prevent further such incidents\u201d \u2013 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\u2019s 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 \u201ca little girl\u201d<\/a> who didn\u2019t know how to handle the older man\u2019s advances. I don\u2019t buy that for a minute either. A 15 year old maybe, but a 20 year old who\u2019s already a freelance i.e. independent model\u2026? Who\u2019s she trying to kid? Not in today\u2019s world, even in the year 2004.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think Neo\u2019s indiscretions can be reasoned away or excused, and to the director\u2019s credit, he has offered no excuses for his behavior. There\u2019s also a bunch of online comments complaining about Neo\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My opinion differs: I saw a man who\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019re just three extended news issues running in the last week or so now. Firstly, the inquiries made to a certain Romanian DIplomat\u2019s actions that resulted in a poor guy\u2019s death; secondly, the extremely dry weather here that finally saw<\/p>\n

Read More Opportunities, Indiscretions and Scandals<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-letters","wpcat-12-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}