Not the sharpest tool in the toolbox

The K-blogosphere is outraged — outraged, I say! — at the latest moralistic claptrap to come out of the Korea Times op-ed pages.

As I wrote at Brian's website, such people as Haydn complains about — man whores, essentially — really do exist. I'd like to think that people who are serious about their work far outnumber the people who came for whoring, but I don't think it comes anywhere near being the dominant personality type and to write about it in the KT is, well, mindless drivel. The KT needs to do a complete housecleaning and do away with the high school newspaper twaddle.

Upon further contemplation, though, it's really other things about this screed that bother me, including his admonishments to Koreans reading the KT not to become to Westernized (and by that he means Americanized). Yeah, I'm sure that message will really resonate with the English-speaking elite who can actually understand your codswallop.

I've lived in Korea off and on since I was a teenager, going back more than twenty years, so Mr Sennitt's complaints about Koreans "following the West" are quaint and cliché. (I once was acquainted with a Canadian who hated Korea because it was not like she imagined; in all seriousness she imagined Koreans would be running around in hanbok and living in thatched-roof houses. She chastised her students (who, I presume, didn't understand her all that well) for living in modern high-rises. "So, "D," you're complaint is that Korea's not one big folk village, eh?" "Yes. And what's wrong with that?"

Anyway, what bothers me more is when Australians like Mr Sennitt, New Zealanders, Irish, and especially the English go off about how Koreans (or Japanese) are trying to be American. Sure, the Starbucks Mr Sennitt rants about Koreans wanting to be seen with is American, but Koreans who want to hang out at Outback think it's Australian, so it's really not American that they're trying to be, but just modern stuff that they want to have. And for the most part, modern stuff is largely Western stuff. Sometimes, though, it's Japanese stuff, and increasingly it's Korean stuff, too. Get off the anti-American kick, jackass.

Oh, and while we're at it, choice words there equating homosexuality with social problems:

To make matters worse, family dysfunction, divorce, single-parent households, homosexuality, crime, drug use and other anti-social behavior are increasing in many western nations ― even Australia and Britain.

Gay people — even in Australia and the UK? Divorced people, too? Maybe they're getting divorced so they can be gay.

You know what, I have a sneakin' suspicion that this foray into high school journalism is all a ruse. The name Hayden Sennitt is just a bit too weird (particularly since it looks like it was spelled by a drunken Mancunian) and the Bible Thumper's screed is just a bit too touch-all-the-bases moralistic. And that email address — God's quasar — that's a red flag if ever there were one.

"But, Kushibo," you might protest, "his picture is there. He must be real."

Sure, that brickwall background... that could only be Korea. No, kids, the fact is that you could probably fake an identity-with-photograph quite easily by just downloading some photo on Facebook or elsewhere on the Interweb. Do you think these people had any idea I've used their visages in an attempt at humor?

So, yeah, I'm calling b.s. on this. I'm guessing someone out there is trying to take the piss out of finger-wagging Christians who have called him on his own bacchanalian debauchery while in the Land of Morning Calm on a teaching visa.

Oh, if the KT would just one day wake up and realize what a grossly unprofessional laughingstock their gazette really is.