I know, I know, Colbert is a nice guy, he's just putting himself in character, he's just joking.

It seems that some people are happy that the Indonesian minister of communication regularly brings the country into the spotlights by the force of ridicule and inanity.
He does deserve being mocked. Plenty.
But to me, those writing "Grow a sense of humor" makes mocking the whole Indonesia over the mistakes of one person looks okay.
It also makes spreading, humorously or not, the word that Indonesia is backward look ok.

And seriously, I don't like that.

Indonesians are stupid/lazy/naive/backward... How many time I've heard it from the mouth of expats? Enough to want to punch.
No, Indonesia's reputation is not that good abroad.
Taken from the Fark thread about the controversial handshake here we can read pearls like: "While Christians do seem to be stuck in the Bronze Age, Muslims are still stuck in the Stone Age." The thread then directly swerves to conversations about radical Islam. That's where it goes.
Then, I perpetually hear Indonesians compain about how they are exploited by foreign companies, about how the country's riches goes away. The same kind of educated people that goes about growing tougher toward an armless joke.  You don't see a dissonance there? I thought that a country who's people are usually looked down upon by others didn't deserve racist jokes... or is it just true for some parts of the world?

Finally there is this slight timing problem. Irruptions, earthquakes, floods... It would have happened 6 month ago I would have ignored.
I'd chose another time to make a racist joke. Even in character.

Yes yes, I get it, everybody should be tuned to American comedy shows.
Everybody should know that Colbert is in character.
As a matter of fact, not everybody does.

But hey, you guys have much better standards. You probably studied abroad, and you can afford cable TV. And too bad for the coconut banging TKIs or something...

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back