Dear diary, it is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt, as Mark Twain said. How charming my mouth has been in the past week. If it had been Yingluck Shinawatra saying those things, I'm sure a riot would've broken out and the sound of a million whistles would've shattered your eardrums. But it's me, so it's different. It's not the action but the man. How could those pettifogging critics interpret my speech as avuncular nonsense, when in fact they're pieces of wisdom worthy of being chronicled in the national archives and inscribed onto monuments?
Someone inboxed me a song, When You Say Nothing At All. What nerve. We know there's only one song I want to sing: my song (which is yours, too). This was after the "go sell rubber on Mars" thingy. First off, where's your sense of humour? And if you listen to the whole speech, I was being very liberal in my economic theorising, because I encouraged the market-driven mechanism instead of government intervention. That's the way of the solar system, that's how we keep competing. Rubber growers, you have to understand that with all the supplies from China flooding the market, you have to adapt. Again, if Ms Yingluck had said the same thing, all hell would have broken loose and she would be branded a fool. But it's me, so, it's different. It's true. That's what I thought we had all already understood for things will proceed in this fashion for at least 12 months.
On this same page, my cheerleaders once derided Ms Yingluck for speaking bad English. Wait till you hear mine. Before we get to that, I've expounded my philosophy on Westerners wearing bikinis in Thailand. Gosh, put your money where my mouth is! This is a sensitive issue because lives had been lost, and my Freudian slip — "how could Westerners in bikinis survive here, unless they're not attractive?" — was unfortunate at best and dehumanising at worst. I did apologise. But actually, a lot of my supporters have come out and defended me as being misquoted, that the whole thing was a smear campaign by foreign spies or that I meant well but my quick wit got the better of me. I didn't mean to insult Western ladies in their preferred wardrobe, or to brand all Thai men as qualified rapists drooling after white tourists — it was just a deep-rooted instinct that I failed to check, and I didn't have to check because it's me. Imagine what would happen had Ms Yingluck said those things. She actually said a lot of embarrassing stuff, as did her brother, but we're not in a competition, are we?
Someone inboxed me a movie, In the Mouth of Madness, by John Carpenter no less. What nerve. The thing with the mouth is that we love our own and hate others. A dictatorial leader loves the sound of his own voice, because every lie becomes melodic and every bit of baloney is a gem. We love our mouth. So we open ours and shut up others — take the incident at Thammasat University on Thursday evening as the latest example. A group of scholars and students were marched off to a police station for organising an academic session that involved talking sense. The power to command what others can or cannot speak, the decree that criminalises other people's speeches and glorifies our own, the ability to make men mute even though they also have mouths — this is the violation of a basic human right, this is absolutism of the worst kind. I know it. Anyone else, zip it up.
The only other mouthful I happily encourage is the nationwide recitation of the "12 Values" dreamed up by my dazzling genius. Quite rightly, the Office of the Basic Education Commission shoe-shines my boots by making it mandatory for elementary students to shout out the 12 nationalistic items, like dumb parrots, starting next term, in front of the flag pole before they're herded off into the classroom.
We want the children to speak, but only what we permit them to speak about, because that's what their mouths are for. The path to happiness, remember this, isn't to allow several mouths to speak and drive the dialogue towards a negotiation, or a reconciliation but to make sure that only one mouth gets to yap away while others are sealed.
Dear diary, brace yourself, you ain't heard nothing yet.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.