Earful Of Nonsense
There’s much talk in here and in Thailand forums about the kingdom’s culture of propaganda and institutionalized brainwashing. Why are Thai people not allowed to grow up and think for themselves? Which becomes all too obvious when you switch on Thai radio or TV. OK, there are some more decent radio stations, such as 98.5 Good FM with Saturday’s On the Rocks – still airing? But hear hear, when I read the following, I found a soulmate:
I bought an FM radio to listen to while I am jogging and have to tell you that Thailand must have the worst radio stations in the world: 75% of the programing is commercials, silly DJ talking about nonsense, and the official government news – which mandatorily plays on all channels, because if it didn’t, everyone would tune in to the channel that didn’t have it.
Who selects the music? Every half hour by channel surfing I may stumble on one song. On repeated days these were Puff the Magic Dragon (on an adult channel) and When Smokey Sings (I Hear Violins). These tunes are so bad nobody even cares about the copyright.
On Sunday I also tuned in to the prime minister’s radio talk, supposedly in Thai but where every polysyllabic word was in English (“competitive target,” etc.) and only the “connectors” were in Thai. I don’t understand this because all the words I heard had Thai words for them and also why not just have the whole program in English? Also, Abhisit Vejjajiva has a very boring speaking voice and is long-winded.
The hourly news program starts off with this Hitler music and the English programs have people speaking with very weird and unnatural accents.
It would be as easy as pie to beat all of these radio stations, I don’t know why someone doesn’t do it. I am guessing that either the usual connections are required, or maybe they don’t want good music since this way some people may actually listen to the propaganda.
Mr. Abhisit, you grew up in the U.K.; let’s start fixing the broken-down TV and radio programing and brainwashing.
TIRED OF MIND CONTROL
From the Bangkok Post’s PostBag, January 05th, 2010.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the propaganda were accompanied by useful or mind-expanding material, but the usual fare for Thai radio is just shit.
The usual fare for Thai TV is akin to the kind of slapstick and “zany” comedy that used to be popular in the 1950s and early 1960s, until everyone got completely sick of it. Typical Thais, 40-50 years behind the rest of the world.
I noted a year or so ago that one of the bureaucrats in the ministry of culture (laugh) stated that Thais had no need for drama, current affairs or films on TV, because Thais only liked comedy. Indeed.
Sadly, this is a major contributor to the fact that Thais are so unintelligent and so poorly educated. Which of course is exactly the way the big house and the rightist government likes it. Keep them stupid and poor and they won’t notice they are being exploited.
For shame Abhisit, I see he made sure he got his education. And it wasn’t a Thai education.
Well that’s a somewhat overly rough generalization Rich.
You meet no less dedicated and intelligent people here than anywhere else in the world for that. Or name an exceptionally intelligent society.
What I especially adore is the Thais’ pragmatism, or why not fatalism. It allows to accept anything. To a certain point.
BangkokDan
In response to “name an exceptionally intelligent society”…. well the Italianate states of Genoa, Florence, Venice fostered some human intelligence, even the “barbaric” Scots shared their portion of genius with the world; the list of societies that nurtured “thinkers” is long, where shall we start?
Well stated.
I agree with you Dan. Rich’s comments are way over the top.
There is a lot wrong and a lot to be frustrated about here, but there’s no need to slag the population off like this. Nor, do I think it right to be so simplistic, when criticizing those who can and should do something to help the population better themselves.
I avoid using the cliché “If you don’t like it here go home” … whoops, I think I just said it?
As the old Life of Brian song goes:
“Cheer up you silly old bugger”
stefan: That’s an easy one to recall the good old back then, 555 … There’s not much “thinking” passed on from the earlier Asian societies, that’s correct. Not because there wasn’t any. We only know of the Chinese … That’s what we’re taught. Excludes a whole lot. Why is that so? Is an Italian from today’s Venice more able to handle the basics of life than a Klong Toey craftsman? Heroic older times. Lest we forget, the current Occident starts envying the modern Orient not only for consumerism reasons.
BangkokDan
Nobody is slagging Thais off by saying they are relatively unintelligent unless stating what are indisputable facts is somehow unacceptable today. Indeed, this was the exact form of words used by one retiring British ambassador to brief his successor the present British ambassador. Interestingly, when called upon to correct the statement, Mr. Quentin evidently felt unable to disagree with his predecessor, and confined himself to saying what lovely people the Thais are. Much as some of you are doing now.
There’s nothing like a few hard facts to dampen the tourist “stars-in-the-eyes” “noble savage” pap, so let’s look at some.
Check out the national IQ averages and you will see the Thai government itself assessing the average IQ in Thailand at less than 88. Which is almost in remedial territory for any of the first world countries. In some parts of Thailand’s north and the northeast, the average is reported to be below 70.
Now what was that about over the top? Oh, you want sources? Try the Thai education department. If that proves too hard to find (it will because the government doesn’t like to draw too much attention to their failings), then try the wealth of nations, an extract should be available on Wikipedia.
Still don’t believe? Well, there are none so blind as those who do not wish to see.
Over the top of my ass.
Unless you really are saying Thai TV programing and content is state of the art?
Didn’t think so.
Oops, almost forgot. Thanks for avoiding that tired old chestnut’s “if you don’t like it go home.” Oh, you didn’t, did you?
As it happens I am not in Thailand, well, not just now anyway, but I have a home there which entitles me to have a view. If you don’t agree with it then just say so without making yourself look like a muppet. I think you’ll find that “I don’t agree even though I can’t give any good reason for not agreeing” would be sufficient.
But then perhaps you feel right at home in a country where the average IQ is less than 88. For me, I think there is room for improvement in there somewhere and we don’t encourage improvement by saying things are jolly good just as they are – even though it would probably make the Thais feel all warm inside on their way to fleece you.
Brave New World if IQs and stats are the be-all and end-all.
Luckily there’s so much more to Thailand and the Thai people that meets the eye.
I’m not saying, I’m just saying.
BangkokDan
Lost my comment as your site went down Dan. Without getting lost in semantics, we know today its the corporations that foster extracurricular education – the patricians of Genoa and Florence or Edinburgh were the corporatists of their day, and regardless of my opinion of Bill Gates, his foundation does good work in Botswana, as evidenced when I attended seminars there where young African students debated eruditely and critically on social and political issues. Of course not many kids in the Washington D.C. ghetto will benefit from the philantropy of M.I.T or NASA, but those institutions do promote thinking and exploration, as does the global work of the Japan Foundation. The list of organisations that foster advancement and critical thinking is huge, and it should not be necessary to troll through such a compilation simply to point out such a lack of fundamentals of education in Thailand. The world has witnessed a conspicuous presence of Chinese business in Africa. But they arent there to educate Africans, are they? Is this the kind of Oriental consumerism that you suggest Westerners might be jealous of?
Incidentally, there is an author and professor from Venice (khikwai.com) who dares to write more candidly about Klong Toey and Thailand than any Chulalankorn University emeritus would ever have the guts to write, where these overstuffed academic “pragmatists” prefer to denounce their dissenting peers into political exile. And those who escaped were the lucky ones.
(BD: Sorry for the site’s downtime stefan, hate that part of upgrading the scripts more than anything myself. By the way, got a Khi Kwai piece coming up tomorrow.)
It appears that one comment has embraced “The Bell Curve” by Herrnstein and Murray. Particularly Chapters 13 and 14. The comment smacks of elitism.
What a PC kerfuffle …
One by one I suppose is the best way:
@BD
Sure you are, and you are (like me) entitled to an opinion and a perception of facts. The fact is that Thais are relatively unintelligent as evidenced by the IQ tables. While there is no measure of EI, I am satisfied that Thais rank pretty badly on that too. I agree that this is not all, but it is part.
I also agree that Thailand is more than just IQ, same as every other community in the world, but to use that as an argument to ignore the correctness of what I said is fatuous.
@whoopla
But really what you are saying is you find the connotation of the word unacceptable. Unacceptable to you it may be but the denotation is correct in this context. You seek to argue against facts by then introducing subjective and non-empirical content about you knowing some Thais who are intelligent. Well, so do I, but none of that makes the average IQ in Thailand any higher.
To quote BD – I’m not saying, I’m just saying. If we don’t like the facts lets say so, lets not try and smother and obscure them within equally unintelligent political correctness.
@bosunj
As it happens I was in UK when the Bell Curve was published, and witnessed at first hand the PC hysteria that ensued – typically from those of a black persuasion or who relied on those of a black persuasion for their elected office. Critically however, nobody was able to fault the methodology or the results, and as I recall, it was published by a reputable U.S. University publishing house.
Typical of the hysterical reaction was the execrable Paul Boateng who basically said that he didn’t care if the results were correct or not, he was only concerned that they shouldn’t be correct, and if they were, they shouldn’t be published. Typical but unhelpful and itself not very smart.
As people we react emotionally to stuff that conflicts with our value system. If we can teach our relatively unintelligent Thai brothers and sisters how not to do this (which they also are rather prone to), then we will be doing them a great service. But first we have to learn not to do it ourselves – don’t we?
And if we succeed in that then we will help them to be smarter people and better managers with a shot at getting out of the developing world some day.
Call me elitist if you will, but I am smart enough to see through the PC smoke and mirrors, and not react emotionally when confronted with facts that I wish were not facts.
The bottom line is this guys:
Thailand is either a 3rd world nation because it is full of smart and very savvy people with good social mores or it isn’t.
Thailand is either on the brink of failed nation status because it is good at managing itself or it isn’t.
It really isn’t that complicated but to get a clear view, some of the PC pugwash needs to be cleared away. What the esteemed former ambassador said was right. Thais are relatively unintelligent and their culture is second hand. To which I would add that their values are skewed towards self-aggrandizement than actual achievement, and this is yet another cultural burden they must learn to shrug off if they are ever going to be perceived as adults in the big world out there.
Until they stop all that nonsense they will not progress as a people. And back to the original point; radio and TV are valuable educational tools, but in a country where education is only given to those with money or the right surname (and that is rarely a Thai education but a subsidized education provided for and largely paid for by the hated Johnny Foreigner), then radio and TV will only ever be used as a soporific to amuse those who are “too stupid to have a vote” while the elites get on with the business of bleeding them dry.
*cough*
Now, where’s that umbrella and my bullshit deflector?
Do you want to hear what a little but not thin Thai woman thinks on the subject?
I tell you any way (isn’t that just typical Thai hey).
The birth of Thai media like other Western media was for the use of full-time propaganda. Sadly all parties that initiated and owned Thai media empires are very successful at what they do – keeping the people away from the real world.
Take a look at the people walking the street you can see that they are more interested in aping Thai superstars, Japanese superstars and Hollywood superstars in looks than discussing Thai renaissance art culture.
So you have generations of young media stars that are cloned Stepford Wives. They will behave like other Western media but are very two dimensional because they are not encouraged to have views other than the superficial materials views.
Even the yellow and red stations trailed off from sensibility and sank into tyrannical rants.
Thais love to follow the and originality and individuality are frowned upon as not wanting to fit into order.
Yes Thailand has all the right props – infrastructure going to make it race up from the third world to the first.
We even send our children to get first class education and they return to be a cardboard cut-out version of themselves.
We even have Princeton educated reality TV stars for god’s sake.
Happy time!
Says it all.
I’m not a proponent of PC by a long shot. It’s akin to censorship in my book yet worse. That said, where racism is apparent it is easily recognizable. As are a sense of entitlement and elitism.
Hopefully you’ll engage a head hunter that can find a capable manager willing to work for you.
Sounds just like any “news” outlet worldwide especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch. Fox News being the worst offender.
@bosunj
Well, it does rather seem that you are determined to find offence where none exists so I will leave you to it to enjoy odor of your own imagined sanctity.
As for the petty jibe of racism, allow me to inform you what nobody seems to have done already, and that is that we are all racist. You, me, everyone. Its a part of the human condition. Were it not so, there would be no need of laws to prevent its overt application.
Some people have open minds, others are like pebbles in a stream, water all around yet none penetrates. If you absorb just a little, you will be able to express opinion, which requires a developed cortex, and not just behavioral response, which almost any mammal can do.
Still, it’s a lovely day out there, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and there are no clods anywhere to be seen. Of course, I’m not in Thailand as we speak …
(BD: OK guys let’s move on, read Khi Kwai …)
@whoopla
Godwin’s rule applies.
My goodness, I do appear to have rattled some cages, but yours is a pernicous and dishonest post. I have never refused to see a difference between education and IQ, though all but the worst kind of dullard would recognize the link (dependence) between the two things.
As to the other point, conjecture dressed up as fact. Where has it been proven my friend?
All from me on this one …
(BD: Again, appreciate your energy Rich, let’s just not wander off into dogmatism. Enough to and fro.)
Sorry, BD, to prolong this, but I arrived late to the party … Just wanted to add an interesting tidbit, regarding Charles Murray’s “The Bell Curve,” which bosunj first mentioned. Did you all know that Murray was married to a Thai woman? Their two daughters were at school with me, and the elder one, Narisara, was in my year group. An extraordinarily bright, sensitive, creative woman, Narisara went on to Harvard for her undergraduate studies and then earned a Ph.D. Just thought I’d share that bit of trivia, as it ties (Thais?) together the topics of “The Bell Curve” and Thai intelligence.
On another note, I appreciate Chdarat’s trenchant insights as to young media star cloning here.
And yes, the radio stations here suck donkey di*ks! (Sorry to be so graphic, but the issue really irks me to no end.)
[...] case you missed it, this topic has kind of already been brought up in the earlier post Earful of Nonsense. Main question arising was – this being Siam – how to gauge the intellect of a people. [...]
[...] radio listener complains about the “radio programing and brainwashing” in Thailand [...]
Back to the topic, try http://www.phuketfmradio.com online and on air in Phuket on 91.5FM. You can get it on your iPhone etc etc and it’s all English, with BBC News on the hour, but sorry there are ads, that’s what pays for it. Enjoy!