June 18, 2007

Response to a comment

I received this rather harsh comment today in reference to President Nguyen coming to NYC:

"Why should we pay to see any of them??? whom we ran away from ?????? He (any of them) should be the one who wish to pay to see and talk to us. Shame on you to post this note. You must be a communist too, so stay away from the Vietnamese community, we had enough with them, with you. Smart people do want to pay to listen to liars."

Poor English aside, I'm not even sure how to respond. Notwithstanding the fact that the postings on this site are not necessarily endorsements of the event themselves it seems unwise to me to ignore the opposition's viewpoint. Every story has many sides and while I may not agree with how Communism affected Vietnam, there can still be value found in a luncheon with the other side. Isn't a smart person an informed person? I would think that true even if that might mean listening to what the "liars" have to say.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

just goes to show how ignorant a portion of the viet community is with regards to their ineffective and stigmatic views on political issues. many viet ppl sadly are not very informed in a global society and do not understand what the term "objective" implies. instead of analysis, observation and dialogue to further a viewpoint, many seem to suffice with just "he sucks, why are you interested in him" followed by "thus you are communist". I guess that means all political science majors, asian stiudies and historians that have "paid" tuition to study communist theory are commies?!

vietnamese ppl seem to equate listening = agreeing, and being deaf, uneducated = a magical problem solving method.

that poster should be ashamed of hypocrisy - condemning others as being tyrants ("whom we ran away from") while concurrently shunning people exercising their human rights ("so stay away from...").

Anonymous said...

inferiority complex in that last line from the poster? no such thing as analytical observation for many viet ppl. they think listening means agreeing and ignorance means our problems will go away.

that aside, do you know of any viet discussion forums on the net without that mentality, especially those related to art, design, and culture? im not looking for forums where viet ppl talk trash or teeny bopper around the latest paris by night singer.