• OPINION

  Thai idols fall in line with orthodoxy

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/09/2018

  » Poor coup-makers, no one wants to see them on TV. At 6pm sharp when the theme song begins, there's a rush of hands to the remote control. Not that you can escape them. The true mark of dictatorship is audiovisual dictatorship: They beam their images on every TV and radio channel, monopolising your sensory reception, like a sci-fi movie, or like a spoiled child demanding your full attention. At 6pm every day for the past four years, the hands clutching the remote have reached for the only possible button. Off.

• OPINION

  Sucking the wind out of the elections

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/05/2018

  » The verb of the week is "to dood".

• OPINION

  Toon and Pai, the tale of our two Jesuses

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/12/2017

  » Let's say, modestly, that Toon Bodyslam is Jesus Christ.

• OPINION

  Pokemon goes on run from state capture

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/08/2016

  » No, they will not ban Pokemon Go, though it's not hard to tell how tempting that idea must be in the post-referendum landscape where peace, order and national security have been constitutionally enshrined.

• OPINION

  All aboard for a scary trip down South

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/04/2016

  » The news reads: Hard-line critics of the regime will be sent to take intensive "training courses" in the Deep South. The National Council of Peace and (dis)Order (NCPO) has confirmed the courses in the camps, which will be longer and more rigorous than the regular attitude adjustment series.

• OPINION

  A glossary of 2014 Newspeak

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/11/2014

  » Constitution (noun/slang): A piece of paper torn to shreds every few years by gun-toting soldiers who perform such deeds on national TV. Usually, a new piece of paper is written shortly afterwards, invariably by a clique of handpicked Samaritans, legislative superheroes, heartbroken mavericks and all-purpose sycophants.

• OPINION

  We need less 'content' and more journalism

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/01/2020

  » Content, as media gurus keep preaching, is king. But such PowerPoint pep talk is shallow: "Content" -- an increasingly bastardised term that has come to signify TV newscasts, podcasts, movies, viral videos, Netflix series, memes, news articles, editorial features, real advertising, covert advertising, tweets and Facebook posts, organic or boosted -- is also an anaesthetic. It dulls the senses and kills meaning, then proceeds to belittle essence, promote shallowness and eventually undermine the practice of journalism.

• OPINION

  Beauties and the beasts of coup regime

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/04/2018

  » It's just too rich to pass up, too weird and symbolic to ignore. The summit of the week between members of the girl group BNK48 and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was the moment when politics met pop-culture, when new met old, when cuties met coupmaker, when teens met tank, when beauty met … whatever.

• OPINION

  The theory of Hawking as a parallel Thai

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/03/2018

  » Had Stephen Hawking been born here, the fate of astrophysics would likely have been different: no Theory of Everything, just a Hypothesis of Nothing. Had he been born here, the starburst of his extraordinary life would have been sucked into a black hole, a metaphorical black hole, and the proof that the universe can be so unkind to some people would have been concluded.

• OPINION

  Spoken crime tells the tale of two singers

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/03/2018

  » In a rare ruling, on Thursday the Criminal Court acquitted firebrand and former-singer Tom Dundee in a lese majeste case. He actually pleaded guilty, but in a legal paradox that is as baffling as it is mitigating, the court said it could not rule against the defendant despite his guilty plea since the prosecution failed to provide substantial evidence.

1 2 3 4 Next Last