While AsiaPundit frequently looks at how blogging impacts Mainland politics, not much time has been spent on the blogosphere’s impact on Taiwan. At Jujuflop, it’s revealed that the blogosphers has the ability to make Kuomintang politicians look like dorks.:
What does a Taiwanese politician do when he finds out about weblogs - and that people are using them to make fun of him? He blames his opponent and then sues him:
Legislator Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate in the key Taipei County commissioner race, yesterday filed defamation and public humiliation lawsuits against the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) candidate, Luo Wen-chia (羅文嘉), for allegedly posting libelous information about him on an Internet Web site linked to Luo’s campaign site.
The offending website is 瑋哥部落格 (or Wiego’s blog), which seems to be a very standard blog which has a grand total of 15 entries since it started last September. Is there any evidence that this is the work of Luo Wen-chia and not some random pro-DPP internet user? Not according to Luo:
In response, Luo yesterday repeated that the blog has nothing to do with his campaign, and criticized Chou for being ignorant about the blog culture that is now especially popular among young people.
“Chou’s accusations only exposed his ignorance of blogs and youth culture,” Luo said. “I can only describe Chou’s reaction using `five noes.’ He has no idea about the law, blogs, young people, or world trends — and he has no sense of humor.”
“As far as I know, a blog is usually written by the type of young person who just doesn’t fit Chou’s political profile,” Luo said. “They use their imagination and creativity to voice their thoughts.”
Unless there is some real evidence linking Luo to this blog, Chou is coming out of this looking like a complete idiot, and Luo as someone who actually understands this new-fangled internet thingy.
While AsiaPundit is a bit skeptical about most comparisons about the current CCP and the KMT, if the KMT’s Chou is any indication of the prevailing attitude it’s possible that the Nationalists are as clueless as the Communists.
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Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, east asia, northeast asia, taiwan
