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Updated Sunday, December 11, 2011 0:09 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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Striptease row strips campaign of last-remaining credibility

There goes any hope that the presidential election campaign could finish with a flourish of statesmanship, with a policy-focused battle of ideas. The odds were already long after the farmhouse and bookmaker scandals. But they shot up to impossible when KMT Legislator Chiu Yi “revealed” a “shameless” decade-old video of the wife of the opposition's vice presidential candidate Su Jia-chyuan. With his condescending air, Chiu cut away at any final strands of dignity left in Taiwanese politics.

What did the tape show that was scandalous enough to warrant Chiu losing his wig like he did? Su's wife, Hung Hen-chu, attended a friend's birthday party. Amid the celebrations, male strippers and lady boy-style crossdressers provided entertainment, something totally common at night clubs and parties in Taiwan. It is hardly a sexy or dirty video. Hung and other partygoers sit around the restaurant and laugh at the performers. So to answer the question: Nothing warranted making the video public.

Chiu claimed attending such a party is an affront to “public morality.” It might seem absurd to say that having a laugh at a private party like Hung did is a violation of ethical boundaries, but perhaps Chiu was attempting to make a larger point — that the behavior of our leaders reflects, and affects, those they lead. Maybe Chiu was trying to rip away at what he thinks are the balding standards of the nation's rich and powerful. Caesar's wife must be above reproach, they say. Perhaps personality traits, not policy targets, give one the right to lead.

Observers of the Republican Party's race to find a challenger to Obama might have something to say about this. Last week Herman Cain suspended his campaign. The “Cain train” had run straight off the rails (and off a bridge) after an almost endless list of women threw themselves onto the tracks, accusing the ex-Godfather's Pizza CEO of sexual harassment and affairs. No matter how brilliant and innovative a candidate's ideas for improving America are — not something we have to worry about in Cain's case — such deceitful, sustained deviancy, combined with an embarrassing, stonewall refusal to admit guilt, are more than enough to rule somebody out as a potential leader of the world's most powerful country.

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Comments

December 12, 2011 mrsyuchinrobb@

Can't blame Chiu, the cheap toupee wearer, poor guy, when will he learn about the plugs? Hatchet man is the only task he can pick now.
What's really unbelievable and unforgivable is Su's throwing his wife under the bus.
However, I'd give credit to Su for not forcing his wife to apologize to the public. Remember a couple of decades ago, another DPP pillar Chang ran for the HS city mayor and was exposed to have 2 families and 2 wives.
Instead of apologizing (what for?) to the public, he made his mistress shave her head on her knees to the public. That's idiotic!
So, DPP is making some progress here, gotta say.

December 12, 2011 leoczar76@

I guess whatever he does it will be used against him, and that was the obvious intention of Chiu.