Quote No. 2

Hey ugly, your Ma and your Pa are frigging full-moon howling lunatics. They are beasts, they oughta be whipped and locked up.

And guess what, you boys don't get true love. Just you watch. Leroy gets all the breaks, Jim-boy here gets hand-me-downs on his knees.

And guess what, your good-fer-nuthin folks now wanna set their values on us, too. Those crazies wanna see us dumped.

Those lines might get you pissed, wouldn't it? Especially if it wasn't true. But hang on – which line would get you most mad? The stinging ones about Ma and Pa? Or of you and Leroy.

For me, that's easy: the former, of course. Nobody talks trash about my folks... I will get mad. Leroy and I are small matter in this scenario.

Now the tricky part. What if – just what if – there was truth to the remarks? How would you react? How would Ma and Pa? How would Leroy?

*****

In many ways, the same approach can be made with Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's comments at a recent IMF-World Bank forum at the sidelines. The senior statesman's remarks created a storm in the region.

But stemming from what? Because he dissed Malaysia or because we're reacting to an exposed raw nerve?

The issue revolves around three published quotes by LKY:

Quote No. 1: “We need a government that will have the gumption and skill to say 'no' to our neighbours in a very quiet and polite way that doesn't provoke them into doing something silly.”

Quote No. 2: "Our neighbours both have problems with their Chinese. They are successful. They are hard-working and therefore they are systemically marginalised, even in education.”

Quote No. 3: “And they want Singapore, to put it simply, to be like their Chinese – compliant.”

Depending on the degree of factuality, each was critical of the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia.

It is interesting to note which aspect struck the rawest nerve. As in action, reaction also speaks louder than words.

I find it curious Quote No.1 didn't even cause an eyelid to bat among our leaders. If I were boss of this country, and doing my damnest to do the right thing, I'd be regally pissed. If anything, it was downright condescending. It betrayed LKY's personal impression that Singapore's neighbours – us – are an edgy people prone to doing “something silly”. That we need to be treated with kids gloves. That's an insult to my proud nation. But hey, it went clean by.

Quote No. 3 claims that Malaysia and Indonesia would much prefer that the lion be taken from the Lion City. That's a strong accusation, if you ask me. It infers that we harbour ill motives against Singapore and want to see it subjugated and in servitude of us. If that too was trash talk, I'd haul in the high commissioner immediately for an explanation. But no, that too didn't raise a ripple.

Quote No. 2, if it was inaccurate, would have dealt the least harm. If a Bangsa Malaysia truly existed, it'd have been laughed off categorically. LKY would have been pitied for being a senile old man.

On the contrary, all the king's horses and all the king's men, from AAB and Najib to former boss Mahathir, were riled by Quote No.2 – that because the Chinese are hardworking and successful, “they are systemically marginalised, even in education.”

With the amount of spin, rebuttals, and commentaries flying about lately, you'd think we were on trial. Perhaps we are.

How else to explain -

• that when even the nation is described as EQ-challenged, tipped to doing “something silly”;

• that when even the nation's relationship with its neighbour is deemed ill-tended, a slap in the face of goodwill;
  

we choose instead to go sensationally beserk in debunking a supposed mundane domestic myth.

How else to explain?

Unless of course this - that Quote No. 2 has some truth in it.