there's something about ..... brownie

This post is about the brown vs goverment vs today saga. Super duper old news but it's better to make comments now when the dust has settled, anything earlier, it would be too emotional.

Click here for the full transcript of brown

Everybody loves Raymond brown. He is like the Mentor Minister of Blogging. Everybody knows Brown as a humorous chap unless you work for the Ministry for Information, Communications and the Arts. They don't see humour. Which is why "Arts" is added to the ministry but not "Comedy".

But what they do know is that Brown is a very very popular man. And if a very very popular man says something not politically correct, general public may believe him. Blog may not be as accessible as Today. They do not have a computer with Brown as the homepage in all MRT, 7/11s and Mamashops. They realised the influence of Brown and they need to set the records straight.

I read Brown's column via his website all the time. I enjoy it thoroughly. Even when I read his last column, I found it to be humorous tackling on rising costs issue. But I do sense some "red alert" in the article, perhaps testing new boundary of OB?

And what do you expect the Government to do? They need to do a job. If this is the Qing Dynasty, Brown would have been taken and he will be beheaded. But in modern Singapore, you only kenna a "scolding" from Ministry and lose your rice-bowl from the same Newspaper who failed to see this coming and approved the article.

I don't see anything wrong with the Goverment's reply. They are government what.... they are not human beings. They function with a set of rules of high order. They are supposed to be rigid like iRobots. "Yes" is "Maybe"... "No" is "No". As I said, they have a job to do.

In fact they did the job the right way. By writing to the forum page of Today. They didn't try to send emails to the boardroom of Today to take action. The reply was also targeting at journalism as a whole, indirectly on the role of Today. They were... transparent about their action. They should be applauded for doing a job, nevermind that it's a unpopular thing to do.

What happen at the board room in TODAY is anyone's guess. Someone has to lose a job. So let's put the blame on the columist, afterall, without his article... they wouldn't be in that sorry situation.

But what about the Editor? The Chief Editor?

Someone must have vetted through the article. What happen to them? If anyone is at fault, it's the editor. Not brown. Otherwise, why give a salary to editor who didn't do the job of editing?

Today's action of terminating Brown is that of a evil "TAI JIAN" or eunuch (dunno how to spell). Very below the belt. (oopss....)

Make TODAY... yesterday's news.