“little disappointment”: Tony Tan to TOC

Here’s another example of Tony Tan and his team’s carelessness (or is it elitist meritocratic snobbery at work?).when talking to “lesser mortals”, in this case the plebs at TOC. I don’t think, based on TOC’s reply, that the plebs understood why patricians read TOC’s piece “with a little disappointment”.

Let me explain. Tony Tan and his team are disappointed because they must believe in an 18th century philosophical theory that is now treated as a forerunner of the concept of “subjective idealism”. One Bishop Berkeley argued that there are no material objects, only minds and ideas in those minds. He summarised his theory with the motto “esse est percipi” (“To be is to be perceived”). In modern PR-speak, this translates into,“Perception is reality”, one of the major tenets of the PR and public communication industry.

This theory of “Perception is reality” is best summarised in the following example he gave. If a tree in a forest falls, but no-one sees or hears it fall, has it fallen? Berkeley argues that it has not fallen. It is still standing.

An example in the S’pore context would be that S’poreans were not aware of how close the voting would be on polling day in 1988 in Eunos GRC and in Cheng San GRC in 1991. The mainstream media did not report the sentiment on the ground in these two GRCs, so S’poreans were not aware that many S’poreans were unhappy with the PAP. The unhappiness did not exist because it was not reported.

Coming back to Tony Tan. We know that our constructive, nation building media did not see it fit to cover the questions raised by netizens after Tony Tan issued a statement on FaceBook explaining his son’s very, very long disruption from NS. One could reasonably argue (based on the reporting of voters’ views in Eunos and Cheng San) that the media didn’t report the statement and the queries it raised because the media were adopting Berkeley’s reasoning that if no-one knew a tree fell, it hadn’t fallen.

Here because mainstream S’poreans were not aware of the questions raised by some netizens, these questions were never asked (i.e. did not exist). But because TOC informed mainstream S’poreans that the questions existed, they (the questions) came into existence. And this disappointed Tony Tan and team “a little”.

Get it? If you don’t, don’t worry. I am just trying to show that Tony Tan and his team communes not with us “lesser mortals”, but with the immortals. Well let the immortals vote for him.

As for myself,in a three-Tan race, I was planning to vote (admittedly through gritted teeth) for Tony Tan because I didn’t want a “feedback”, “constructive criticism only”, and fickle-minded president i.e. TKL by default. But after this and other public communication failures by Tony Tan, I’ll vote for the guy I want as President, Tan Cheng Bock.

If TKL becomes president, the government can come to a deal with him (remember the 2008 Income AGM?) or remove him.