Tim Blair

Strangely, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek is still alive at the age of 104.

Is Meiling Soong still alive? Or is it Ahling? I can't remember the third one.

It's the former Soong Mayling that's now 106 years old. I didn't know there were other Madames Chaing Kai Shek.

http://www.taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/20010308/20010308s4.html

i'll have to get out my black pajamas...

were there only 3 soong sisters, or was there a forth one? college was so long ago...

er, 'fourth', i mean. the lindemans has gone straight to my head.

Someone should send some flowers to Chomsky.

Tim, that's the best headline I've seen since the NY Post's "Headless Body Found in Topless Bar."

There were 3 Soong sisters. Should be a television mini series on them. One married Chiang Kai-Shek, one married Dr Sun Yat Sen and the other a big banker type. There is a saying, "One loved money, one loved power and one loved China". I think Chingling was the third.

So Mayling (power) is still going... and in Manhattan. Is Generalismo Franco still dead? Just checking.

Tim, the amount of ignorance (and irrelevance) on your site is amazing! We're talking about Cambodia, not China - totally different cultures. But I guess most of your Yankee readers don't know where Cambodia is.

Had Pol been married to Marjorie Main, we would then have a case of the Pot calling the Kettle black.

No, really, Rob? China is different than Cambodia? This is shocking to me, but I'm just an ass-scratching American, so I must not know.

Next time, I will provide a 20-page thesis about why an aging, murderous Asian dictator's widow might bring up another aging, murderous Asian dictator's widow.

No parallels at all here. Move along.

Did Chomsky send flowers to the ceremony?

Amazing how those culturally sensitive enough to get offended by a grouping of China and Cambodia can nevertheless slam us Yankee dogs into the dirt.

Ethnic stereotyping isn't always a bad thing apparently.

And I know where Cambodia is- it's where people dress in black.

Jello's work has not been in vain!

Ignorant? What, just because I spelling Meiling wrong? Oohps, did it again. I mean Mayling.

Ok, so what of Mrs Pol Pot do you wish to talk about Rob? If you want, I can start. To me, Mrs Pot was rather obscure. I mean completely unnoticable. It was like she never existed. I think my posts reflected that very well.

Rob, is your point that readers from the southern American states have a better knowledge of east Asia than those from the north-east?

If so, I would suggest to you that that is an unfortunate piece of cultural sterotyping. Why, I know several well-educated and worldly yankees, while, on the other hand, I've come across some southerners so ignorant that they couldn't even name the capital of Bhutan, which goes to show how these steroypes seldom conform to reality.

That said, I've heard that Australians can be belligerant and obtuse. Can you confirm this?

Are you looking for fight, whatever your name is?

Rob, stop giving us a bad name. And the second reference is surely to Taiwan, not China.

Go on rob, poke the nest again....;-)

There are other countries in the world besides America? Shyeah, right. I was taught in school here in the states that all those other countries had been destroyed and paved over ages ago.

So Rob, can you prove the existence of this "China" and "Cambodia" place, huh? I'll bet you can't.

I think the moral of the story is: Eat More Rice.

Of course, I'd rather eat meat and I'm not sure I want to live to be 104.

Brian, you forgot FROG BABY AXE MURDER!

We all know that Southerners are smart, and Yankees are damn fools. :)

well aaron, it did take us a few years to go from being carpetbaggers to carpetbombers...

" Khieu Ponnary, 83, might also have been a contender for the trials had she not spent the last two decades of her life crippled with mental illness that reportedly left her without awareness either that Pol Pot had divorced her and remarried in 1985, or that he died in 1998."

so she suffered from waldheimers, too?

"achk, i forgot eye vuz uhn naht-see"

Cremated eh?

Does that make her a.... HOT POT!

If I hadn't ripped that gag off from Rodney Rude it would so much more impressive.

no, a smudge pot

I've heard that Australians can be belligerant and obtuse. Can you confirm this?

Mork,

I believe that you have identified the most commonplace opinion the Aussies hold for us damn Yankees. Certainly, I have been on the receiving end of that attitude in the past 12 years I have dwelt in this Lucky Country.

Yes, I can confirm this in my encounters with some Aussies. When I complained, oops, I mean "whinged", to my sister for being greeted by one charming young man as a "septic tank" she suggested I give them an equivelant moniker, "Ozholes". I think it is appropriate for these belligerent obtuse types we encounter here.

Interestingly, I have only experienced this hostlity from Australian menfolk. Some of them appear to have a chip on the shoulder or some kind of hangup. Perhaps they suffer more from the "Tall Poppy Synodrome" than Aussie women.I have been well received by almost all Australian women I have met, of all ages. It is the men I find "aggro".

It's no surprise to me, but I had hoped things might have changed in 50 years. My mother, a Sydney girl from Neutral Bay, fled her homeland in 1946, determined to escape White Australia's "suffocating parochial culture", as she put it, and "sexist, boorish Australian men". Imagine her surprise when I married Cooma boy! (I fondly call him The Man from Shmoey River - a little Borscht Belt humor).

So here I am, back in Sydney, her home town.

Life is like a box of chocolates.

Shalom,
Karen