Showing 1 - 5 of 5
Tabloid saga and our gang mentality
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/01/2016
» The tabloid saga of the week is a slap-fest involving 30 people, mostly women, its flurry of glorious hair-pulling captured in a video clip. The cause is a triangulated romance between a young man and his two women, one of them a TV celebrity. Love hurts, as we teach our children, or it’s not love. But let’s pause and consider: what can a catfight, the first sensational, useless headline of 2016, tell us about the state of our national politics of the past decade? That we’re in a gang war, apparently.
Proustian questions for our leaders
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/12/2015
» What is your idea of perfect happiness? When 99.5% of respondents in a government-sponsored poll think that the government is the best thing that ever happened for this country. Or maybe in the all of the universe, because such figures are even higher than God's rating.
Past actions lead to sense of numbness
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/07/2015
» The date is June 18, 2026, and this is a diary from the future. Thailand in 2026 feels like 2015 in many ways, except it’s worse, despite the half-finished high-speed rail to Chiang Mai — the budget bloated from three trillion baht to five trillion baht in 2020 — and the half-finished Pak Bara deep-sea port — the budget didn’t bloat, but the government shifted its priority to buying nuclear submarines.
South doesn't need any more gun-slingers
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/11/2014
» When you have cowboys and gun-slingers running the circus, it's likely to be all bang-bang. An eye for an eye, a rifle for a rifle, a kill for a kill, and as the Apache warriors storm the citadels of the new frontiers, the sheriffs are prodded to become trigger-happy.
'Big' South film risks missing the ugly point
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/08/2012
» I gasped, because it was the first time I'd seen an aircraft carrier in a Thai movie. Actually, it was just a trailer, and to stick to the cardinal rule of criticism, we won't judge a book by its cover or a prime minister by her dress. No matter how tempting it is.