A tarnished beauty queen: Thai editorial

[EyesWideOpen]

Corruption seems to occur across the board here, but it is pretty sad when it happens at a

Thai beauty contest..... There is something sort of surreal about seeing the newly crowned

Miss Thailand as supposedly the most beautiful girl in Thailand, and then watching TV

and seeing a constant stream of commercials of Thai shampoo girls who look a hundred

times better than Miss Thailand.

[NeilSA1]

All beauty? Based on the pictures I saw of her and other contestants is seemed like they all need to get a bit of exercise.

New rule. Gotta post pictures of your own gut whenever you pass judgment on others'.

As if that's what the OP was about...

I'm not entering a beauty contest am i?

Well, before you make a decision like that, you better check your Face Book comments first.

[NeilSA1]

All beauty? Based on the pictures I saw of her and other contestants is seemed like they all need to get a bit of exercise.

New rule. Gotta post pictures of your own gut whenever you pass judgment on others'.

As if that's what the OP was about...

Not a good analogy. Beauty contestants ask to be judged!

... by who? Official judges or the public ?

[peecee]

I wish she had stuck to her guns and not apologised. Perhaps a diplomatic apology for impolite words, but with no hint of regret at the message within. And even that was unnecessary as her words were said in private and not intended to be "eavesdropped" on. Her one mistake was not checking her content before opening her page to the public.

She is in a position to spin it around and ask why she is condemned for loving the King.

As a loyal subject who loves the King, it is her duty to criticise his detractors, and natural for her to despise them.

She should remain staunch in her stance.

in wanting all the "Reds" executed?

[Maggusoil]

To be perfectly honest I wouldn't give a flying f. . .k.

She can say what she likes in my world.

Its just as well you're not making the laws.

That's what FREEDOM OF SPEECH actually gets you.

Especially before you are a celeb and in private conversations on Facebook, which however, should not matter.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH means what it stands for. Nice speech, not nice speech, good speech, bad speech, friendly speech and even hate speech.

One of the 4 cornerstones of a real democracy particularly important for Thailand at this stage of history and development.

We have to be mature enough and educated enough, to recognise what we don't like and ignore it.

People talk like this amongst themselves all the time. In her case it is so irrelevant, it shouldn't matter.

Its a beat up. The art of the beat up is alive and well these days.

Taking it seriously is the only mistake.

This new hobby of denying people the right to hate speech is the tip of the iceberg in the "control freaks", big brother armoury.

It just gets worse from there.

Absolutely she has the right to say what she wants. And we have the right to judge her based on what she says. She voluntarily entered a competition that scrutinizes people based on their appearance and what they say, thereby voluntarily forfeiting whatever privacy she may have had in regard to what she's said over the internet. So what's the problem?

Nobody is saying she should be deprived of her right to say what she wants. We're saying she should be deprived of her "crown" in the silly competition because of what she said. Given what that competition is about, surely what she says and thinks is a factor in her selection and in her maintaining her "title".

Or are you saying that her right to free speech precludes our right to saying what we think about her speech or commenting on the public contest that she won? At the end of the day, you seem to want free speech with no consequences. Freedom does not imply having no responsibility for your actions and words.

I think that every social media web and blog site, should have this quote on the Header Page.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

I am at least grateful that you preface ". . Or are you saying. . . "

So many here in TV, immediately presume.

Anyway. I did not say what you think I might have meant to say. I like to think what I wrote is complete in itself.

However, my response is, you can also say what you like about her and her rights to win a beauty competition and your perceptions of the "responsibilities", that come with it.

I agree with you that celebs, unless you are a punk rocker, or even an actor, should be mindful of their influence on the young, and weak of mind, however, even the young will be protected from those travails, should they have a good character and good upbringing.

My reaction to the original post on this subject was humour. That would be a lot of executions! How anybody took these musings of a beauty queen competition seriously, I don't know.

Apparently she wrote or made the offensive remarks before her win and now she is receiving her deserts. That's a life lesson.

I have been in the public eye. People crave recognition, however, there are great freedoms in being a non-entity.

You also use the "royal" plural of We. Are you 'we' the people, we of some club, you and everyone you know thinks like you?

I wish I had such an instant research tool, which tells me which group I am in.

Now there, is an open door.

[JCauto]

To be perfectly honest I wouldn't give a flying f. . .k.

She can say what she likes in my world.

Its just as well you're not making the laws.

That's what FREEDOM OF SPEECH actually gets you.

Especially before you are a celeb and in private conversations on Facebook, which however, should not matter.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH means what it stands for. Nice speech, not nice speech, good speech, bad speech, friendly speech and even hate speech.

One of the 4 cornerstones of a real democracy particularly important for Thailand at this stage of history and development.

We have to be mature enough and educated enough, to recognise what we don't like and ignore it.

People talk like this amongst themselves all the time. In her case it is so irrelevant, it shouldn't matter.

Its a beat up. The art of the beat up is alive and well these days.

Taking it seriously is the only mistake.

This new hobby of denying people the right to hate speech is the tip of the iceberg in the "control freaks", big brother armoury.

It just gets worse from there.

Absolutely she has the right to say what she wants. And we have the right to judge her based on what she says. She voluntarily entered a competition that scrutinizes people based on their appearance and what they say, thereby voluntarily forfeiting whatever privacy she may have had in regard to what she's said over the internet. So what's the problem?

Nobody is saying she should be deprived of her right to say what she wants. We're saying she should be deprived of her "crown" in the silly competition because of what she said. Given what that competition is about, surely what she says and thinks is a factor in her selection and in her maintaining her "title".

Or are you saying that her right to free speech precludes our right to saying what we think about her speech or commenting on the public contest that she won? At the end of the day, you seem to want free speech with no consequences. Freedom does not imply having no responsibility for your actions and words.

I think that every social media web and blog site, should have this quote on the Header Page.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

I am at least grateful that you preface ". . Or are you saying. . . "

So many here in TV, immediately presume.

Anyway. I did not say what you think I might have meant to say. I like to think what I wrote is complete in itself.

However, my response is, you can also say what you like about her and her rights to win a beauty competition and your perceptions of the "responsibilities", that come with it.

I agree with you that celebs, unless you are a punk rocker, or even an actor, should be mindful of their influence on the young, and weak of mind, however, even the young will be protected from those travails, should they have a good character and good upbringing.

My reaction to the original post on this subject was humour. That would be a lot of executions! How anybody took these musings of a beauty queen competition seriously, I don't know.

Apparently she wrote or made the offensive remarks before her win and now she is receiving her deserts. That's a life lesson.

I have been in the public eye. People crave recognition, however, there are great freedoms in being a non-entity.

You also use the "royal" plural of We. Are you 'we' the people, we of some club, you and everyone you know thinks like you?

I wish I had such an instant research tool, which tells me which group I am in.

Now there, is an open door.

Fair enough - I had misread what you said to imply that one should be allowed to say whatever one wanted without consequence, which is quite different than just being able to say whatever you want.

As to the "we", I was referring to all of us. We were talking to her as the specific person, whereas I was referring to anyone else (which includes myself, and yourself among others) as the "we". I would love to have this tool also, please don't forget to copy me if you find it.

[IAMSOBAD]

She as right all long.The coup proves her a genius.

[Emptyset]

Ah, the khaosod article, I recall (I could be wrong but), talked about her saying the reds should be executed. Was this a publishing error on their part then? Oh boy, they must be feeling embarrassed.

Before you accuse Khaosod of publishing error, why don't you do a little search? I found the screen capture of her facebook post in Thai and she did say the red activists should all be executed as Khaosod reported. CNN also reported on this. It's not that hard to find.

Did it occur to you that the author of this article might have paraphrased it as "exit from the country" instead to suit his/her own agenda?

Anyway back to the topic. I don't think "the beauty queen" receives any more public scrutiny than the politicians the author named. Perhaps the author doesn't understand that calling for the execution of political activists is a pretty big deal, especially when done by someone who will represent Thailand in the world stage? Don't get me wrong. She deserves forgiveness and since she has apologized, we should move on. However, people who criticize her do have a point.

That's exactly right. It was actually The Nation who chose to elide the most egregious part of her tweets, in order to suggest she was nothing other than an ordinary young woman doing nothing other than expressing a run of the mill political sentiment. Seriously, if she'd been a red sympathising beauty queen who called the PDRC dirty and said they should be executed, does anyone think The Nation would be running an article absolving her?