As previously scheduled, the organizers of VAALA’s “FOB II: Art Speaks” exhibit held a panel discussion. Titled “Slant or Slander?: Community, art, and media coverage,” the panel instead got entangled in arguments over freedom of expression and a photograph that includes images of the current Vietnamese flag and a bust of Ho Chi Minh (read here).
One audience member, Bui Kim Thành (standing and speaking in the picture - see also here) drew hearty applause when she managed to spontaneously give in one breath a description of the government of Vietnam as, and the Bolsavik paraphrases from memory: “the hoodlum terrorist atheist barbaric hooligan mafia communist VC.”
While she’s at it, Mrs Thành also said that President Bush had been conned by the “terrorist mafia communist Nguyen Tan Dung” the Vietnamese prime minister.
Cal State Fullerton journalism professor and panelist Jeff Brody at one point cited social science studies showing that people’s tolerance of differing viewpoints tends to depend on three factors: education, religious devotion, and age. According to these studies, conducted starting in the 1950s, the highly educated tend to be most tolerant, the highly religious tend to be least tolerant, and the degree of tolerance tends to decrease with age. Not sure why he brought it up, but that made some members of the audience really unhappy.
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With the one-year anniversary of the protests outside its doors only a few weeks away, the Nguoi Viet newspaper published a New Year’s day column by its award-winning commentator Ky-Phong Tran.
