Archive for November 2007
A post that’s NOT “full of vile and obscene invective”
The Thio Li-Ann vs. Alfian Sa’at spat has left a sour aftertaste to the s. 377A controversy. Suffice to say, my estimation of a person falls dramatically when:
- You’re a highly-educated Singaporean who professes to be a ‘liberal’, and yet have “never heard of” Alfian Sa’at.
- You construe one silly, juvenile e-mail with choice epithets like “you are fucked up” and “I’ll piss on your grave”, as ‘harassment’.
- You make a police report about it.
(I still have a heck lot of respect for her as an academic, though.)
I think the main reason why people are so wary of lawyers in general is the suspicion that, given our better grasp of the law, we can always invoke, say, s.1958B(32)(iv) of the I Hate Your Guts (Amendment) Act, to screw someone over that we don’t like. So, when we talk legalese, you take our word for it, while cursing silently behind our backs. You know that there’s probably a catch somewhere, that the law can’t really be that much of an ass — but why take the chance?
